Mrs. Roosevelt said cheerily, amid the laughter, “What else happened, Franklin, to make it a good day?”
“Why the fellows finally finished the umpteenth draft of my big speech. It looks pretty good, pretty good. So I let them have coffee and sandwiches, and now they’re locked up downstairs doing draft umpteen-plus-one. What’s the betting now, Sumner? Am I going to ask for war, or proclaim convoying, or what? Why, the suspense is even getting me.” The President laughed and added, “Mr. Maugham, as a great writer have you no ideas for my speech? War? Convoy? Or some real new inspiration?”
“Mr. President, you r-remember your Oliver Twist? ‘Please, sir, I w-want some more’?”
“Of course,” said the President, his close-set clever eyes twinkling in anticipation of a joke.
“Well, p-please, sir,” said the author with a dead serious face, “I w-want some w-war.”
The whole table broke into laughter. “Ha ha ha! Spoken like a true British agent!” said the President, gaining another general laugh.
Uniformed waiters cleared the table for the next course. Franklin Roosevelt took obvious pleasure in slicing the saddle of lamb. Rhoda Henry ventured to remark, “My goodness, I wish Pug could carve like that!”
“Oh, I’m sure he can.” Arching his thick grizzled eyebrows with self-satisfaction, the President swept the knife artistically through the meat. “I do like a
Victor Henry was answering Mrs. Roosevelt’s questions about Nazi Germany, raising his voice because she had said she was rather deaf.
“What’s that Pug?” the President said, cocking an ear as he sliced meat. “Am I missing something good?”
“I was saying, sir, that when I left Germany, their industrial effort was just getting into high gear.”
“You don’t say. They scored pretty well in low gear, then.”
“Well, Mr. President, as it turned out, the others had been doing even less.”
Roosevelt faced Maugham, on the other side of the crown princess. “Captain Henry was in the intelligence business too, Willie. He was naval attache in Berlin. He predicted that pact between Hitler and Stalin before it happened. All the clever diplomats, generals, and columnists were caught flat-footed, but not Pug. What’s your prediction now, Pug? How about all that massing of troops in the east? Will Hitler attack Russia?” The President’s quick wily glance told Pug that he was thinking of the document they had discussed on the train.
“Mr. President, after that piece of luck, I hocked my crystal ball and threw away the ticket.”
Maugham wagged a knobby tobacco-stained finger. “C-captain, don’t ever admit to luck, in our r- racket.”
“What do you think, Sumner?” the President said.
“If one studies
“How long ago did he write that book? Twenty years ago?” said Franklin Roosevelt, his powerful voice reminding Rhoda very strongly of his radio manner. “I’d hate to be bound by anything I said or wrote way back then.”
Mrs. Roosevelt said, “Mr. Maugham — if Germany attacks the Soviet Union, will England help Russia, or leave Stalin to stew in his own juice?”
The author looked at the President’s wife for several seconds. A heavy silence enveloped the table. “I-I can’t really say.”
“You know, Willis,” said the President, “a lot of folks here don’t believe the story that Rudolf Hess is crazy. They say that he was sent over to advise your people of the coming attack on Russia, and to get a hands-off agreement, in return for a promise to help you keep the Empire.”
“That very plan is in
Somerset Maugham, caught in the cross-fire of crisp words from the President and his wife, spread his hands, crouching in his chair, looking small, old, and tired.
“Sumner, do you suppose we could explain it to the American people,” said Roosevelt, “if the British did not help Russia?”
“I think that would finish off aid to England, Mr. President,” said Sumner Welles. “If Hitler is a menace to mankind, that’s one thing. If he’s just a menace to the British Empire, that’s something very different.”
With a brief look at the British author, the President said in a much lighter tone, “Well! Shall I slice some more lamb?”
“I will thank you for some, Mr. President,” spoke up the crown princess. “Of course, Hitler may be massing his troops in the east precisely because he intends to invade England.” The princess talked precise English with a Scandinavian lilt. She was making a tactful cover, Pug thought, for the awkward moment with Maugham. She had not previously said anything. “You know every time Hitler starts a new campaign, Stalin pinches off something here and something there. This may be show of force to keep him out of the Rumanian oil fields.”
“That too, is possible,” said Sumner Welles.
“European politics can be such a miserable tangle,” said Mrs. Roosevelt.
“But it all boils down to Hitler’s impulses nowadays,” said the President. “Pity we must live in the same century with that strange creature. Say, we have here two men who talked at length face to face with the fellow. Let’s take a Gallup poll. Sumner, do you think Hitler is a madman?”
“I looked hard for such evidence, Mr. President. But as I reported, I found him a cool, very knowledgeable, very skilled advocate, with great dignity and — I’m afraid — considerable charm.”
“How about you, Pug?”
“Mr. President, don’t misunderstand me. But to me, so far, all heads of state are more alike than they are different.”
Roosevelt looked taken aback, then he threw his head back and guffawed, and so the others laughed. “Well! That’s something! At my own table, I’ve been compared to Hitler! Pug, you’d better talk your way out of that one fast.”
“But it’s the truth. He has a very powerful presence, sir, face to face — though I hate to admit it — with an incredible memory, and a remarkable ability to marshal a lot of facts as he talks. In his public speeches he often raves like a complete nut. But I think when he does that, he’s just giving the Germans what they want. That impressed me, too. His ability to act such different parts.”
Roosevelt was slightly smiling now. “Yes, Pug, that would be part of the job. The fellow
Rhoda blurted, “Pug, when on earth did you have a talk with Hitler? That’s news to me.” The artless injured-wife tone made the President laugh, and laughter swept the table. She turned on Roosevelt. “Honestly, he’s always been closemouthed, but to keep something like that from me!”
“You didn’t need to know,” Pug said across the table.
“C-captain Henry,” said Somerset Maugham, leaning forward, “I bow to a p-p-professional.”
The conversation broke into little amused colloquies. Roosevelt said to Rhoda Henry, “My dear, you couldn’t have paid your husband a handsomer compliment in public.”
“I didn’t intend to. Imagine! He’s just a sphinx, that man.” She darted a tender look at Pug. She was feeling very kindly toward him, and indeed to all the world, having enjoyed a moment of spontaneous success at the Presidential table.
“Pug is a fine officer,” said the President, “and I expect great things of him.”
Rhoda felt warm excitement. “I always have, Mr. President.”
“Not everybody deserves such a beautiful wife,” Roosevelt said, with a decidedly human glance at her that took in her decolletage, “but he does, Rhoda.”
With the oldest instinct in the world, blushing, Rhoda Henry looked toward Mrs. Roosevelt, who was deep in conversation with Sumner Welles. It flashed through Rhoda’s mind that there was a tall woman who married a very tall man. But Pug at least could walk. Life balanced out in strange ways, Rhoda thought; the heady situation was making her philosophical.
Madeline and Byron sat on opposite sides of the table, she between Maugham and Welles, Byron between the crown princess and a deaf, very old lady in purple named Delano. This lady had said nothing all evening; a
