Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels) by Sinclair Upton

Author:Sinclair, Upton [Sinclair, Upton]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781504026499
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

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Hansi and Bess arrived; they didn’t put up at the same hotel with Lanny, nor appear in public with him, but he would go to their rooms: and stay, and listen while they rehearsed their recital. For Lanny it was like coming home; he kept little from this couple, only his dealings with Roosevelt and Trudi. He had told them that he was collecting information for an important purpose, and they took it for granted that this meant Rick—as in part it did. Bess still wondered why he didn’t get a wife, and was prepared to co-operate with Beauty to this end; but she didn’t bother Lanny about it, and both musicians listened gladly to what he told them about Europe’s affairs.

When it came to Communism, Lanny would say: “Well, maybe so; I’m not taking any sides.” They knew it was a polite evasion, and had learned to accept it and avoid arguments. They had their formulas, simple and satisfying. Nazi-Fascism represented the last stage of capitalism on its way to collapse; the Nazi-Fascists were gangsters whom the capitalists hired to protect them, just as Henry Ford and other great capitalists of America had done in the effort to keep labor unions out of their plants. If these gangsters now and then took to blackmailing their employers, that, too, was according to precedent. When finally the gangsters were overthrown, capitalism would fall with them, and there would be nobody but the Communists organized and able to take control.

Lanny would smile and say: “Well, I have a sister who will become a commissar, and a brother-in-law who has been made a Distinguished Artist of Soviet Europe; so I’ll probably get by.” Meantime, he would go on sending data to Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, who wrote under the pen-name of “Cato,” and was quite sure that when the British people had been sufficiently informed, they would turn out the semi-Fascists and appeasers of Fascism and install a democratic regime; also to Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the U.S.A., who pleaded that he couldn’t go any faster than his people would let him, and asked his friends to trust him while he gave the dictators rope enough so that they could hang themselves.

Lanny sat quietly and inconspicuously in a large audience and listened while Hansi and Bess played a Mozart sonata, and then the very fine César Franck, which was one of Hansi’s favorites, and which he had chosen to play on a notable occasion of his life. Two sensitive Jewish lads had come to Bienvenu to meet the wonderful Lanny Budd, about whom their father had been telling for years; two dark-eyed shepherd boys out of ancient Judea, transplanted magically to the French Riviera, playing fiddle and clarinet instead of harp and shawm. Hansi had been so nervous that he had, hardly been able to hold his instrument; but as soon as he had got going and the lovely first theme came floating to Lanny’s ears, Lanny realized that here was a musician

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