“Of course they'd find out how to approach you, Emily. But they probably don't tell anybody all they know, and they might take it for granted that you wouldn't either.”
“What on earth are you driving at, Beauty?”
“Well, Lanny keeps telling me how the French are always calling the Crillon staff 'pro-German'; and if there should be German agents in Paris trying to make propaganda on behalf of lifting the blockade, wouldn't it please the French to be able to tie them up with us?”
“What a witch you are!” exclaimed her friend. “You look so innocent and trusting and then you talk like a Sherlock Holmes!”
“Well, Lanny told me the other day that since I have no money I have to develop brains.”
“I wonder what Lanny is thinking about me!” reflected the salonnière; and in their laughter Lanny's mother found a chance to hide the nervous tension under which she was laboring.
II
Beauty declined to have lunch with her friend, saying that she wasn't feeling well and wouldn't dress. As soon as the visitor had departed, she called the Crillon, and said: “Come at once, Lanny. Tell the professor your mother is ill.”
The youth had no trouble in guessing what that meant. He made the necessary excuses and reached the hotel as quickly as a taxi could bring him. He found his mother weeping uncontrolledly, and he guessed the worst, and was both relieved and puzzled when he learned that the Sûreté hadn't yet got hold of Kurt, so far as Beauty knew. “Certainly they didn't have him last night,” he argued. “And he may be out of the country after all.”
“I just know he isn't, Lanny! Something tells me!” Beauty sobbed on; her son hadn't seen her in such a state of distress since the days when she was struggling with Marcel, first to keep him alive, and then to keep him from plunging back into the furnace of war.