The Devil's Advocate Read online

  The car rolled on and approached the Holland Tunnel. Durant continued to read. Now his eyes, just awakened, began to notice certain smaller headlines which had not impinged on his consciousness in the months past. “Three colonels, five majors and a number of lesser officers” had been shot for “subversive” acts and opinions, in Chicago. Durant had read of these things before, and had dismissed them indifferently, for there was always rivalry and jealousy among soldiers. Now he began to wonder if the Minute Men were not responsible for the occasional oppression of the Military. He would never know, of course, but he suddenly smiled.

  There was a photograph in the newspaper of a burly farmer and his three sons, all grinning joyously before the background of their large white home: “We are ready!” said the caption over the photograph. And underneath: “John Lincoln, of Tauton, Section 7, and his three sons, Harry, Merle and Bob, pledge themselves to do their part for the war effort. Mr. Lincoln owns one of the largest farms in Section 7, two thousand acres, and is a veteran of World War Three. During World War Four his farm produced almost twice as much as any other similar farm in the Section. He has received three Government prizes for his wheat, and one for his cattle, which are famous. Harry and Merle are married, and each has two children and a home of his own on the farm, while Bob, the youngest, is his father’s right arm. Bob is a veteran of Warld War Four, and has developed a new hybrid corn. Not shown is Mr. Lincoln’s pretty daughter, Grace, who was a member of the Women’s Combat League in the last war, having held the rank of sergeant, and later, lieutenant. Typically American, they were chosen by the President as the Family of the Year. ‘This family reveals all the traits which have made The Democracy the greatest and most independent and prosperous country in the world,’ the President said, when the Lincoln family paid a visit to the White House.”

  “Nice piece of white meat, Gracie,” said Lieutenant Grandon, who had been reading the paper over Durant’s shoulder.

  “You know them?” Something began to stir in Durant’s mind.

  “I sure do. They live about twenty miles out of Philadelphia, sir. Wonderful house, a mansion I suppose you’d call it. Everything at fat as butter on that farm, the old man and his sons and his wife. Except Gracie.” The lieutenant smacked his lips and rolled his lively eyes. “Twenty-two years old, and not married yet; old man’s darling.”

  “As fat as butter.” Durant looked through the car window again, and saw the shuffling, pallid swarms, their pinched faces, their haggard eyes. He thought of the millions of pounds of meat and butter and the tons of wheat and sugar which were destroyed every year by order of the Government, in order to maintain “shortages,” rationing and regimentation, and in order to keep the farmers rich and satisfied. He glanced again at the shining white house, which was “a mansion,” the massive trees sheltering it lovingly, the rolling lawns which were almost parklike. And he thought of the tumbling tenements of the cities, the foul choked alleys, the broken windows, the heatless rooms, the filth, the rationed electricity, the stench, the starveling children, the scraps of mildewed food on tens of millions of plates, the milkless, meatless, wheatless, breadless, sugarless days. Such a rage filled him then that his throat closed and he choked.

  “Something wrong, sir?” asked the lieutenant, with concern.

  Durant strangled for a moment or two, and turned scarlet. Then he said in a stifled voice: “Swallowed the wrong way.” He coughed hoarsely.

  Not on the farmers had the Military been afflicted. But the homes in the city had been used by officers and men as their “quarters.” The farmer shut his strong door, and his fat and ruddy family were safe, come war, come peace, come “emergency” or “sacrifice.” Let the farmers revolt—

  Durant said abruptly: “That hotel, in Philadelphia. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve taken a liking to that farmhouse. We’ll move in on them.”

  The lieutenant uttered an exclamation, but his eyes danced. “Isn’t that against the law, sir?” he asked.

  “The Chief Magistrate of New York is also the Magistrate of Section 7,” replied Durant. “I’m sure he’d want his military staff to be well housed, and I prefer the country anyway. I’ll call him when we are settled there.”

  “There are four of us on your staff, Major—me, the sergeant here, and two captains.”

  “Good. I think we’d all like the best—fresh country milk, the fresh eggs and the meat, instead of the city rations. Not to speak of Gracie.”

  Now the lieutenant whistled, involuntarily, and the sergeant grinned. Durant said tolerantly: “I’m sure the great patriot, our friend Mr. Lincoln, will be happy to have us. What do you think?”

  The lieutenant burst out laughing, and slapped his knee. “The old boy would have us out to dinner when the other major was in Philadelphia, but not too often. Have to coddle the damned famers, you know, sir. Government orders. Old Johnny would watch his little pet lamb, too, and wouldn’t let us put a paw on her, or have just a little feel. He won’t like us crowding him in his big house. He’s got big friends in the Government, and he might make trouble.”

  “The other major.” What had happened to him? But Durant could not ask. He said, with a wink: “Well, I have even bigger friends in the government, so perhaps you’ll have even more than a ‘little feel,’ Lieutenant.”

  The young lieutenant roared with delight. The warm spring sun poured into the car. Durant sat back and pretended to doze. But he was thinking furiously. He had been directed to a certain hotel in Philadelphia, and he began to question his new decision. However, Arthur Carlson had told him: “What you think should be done, do. Move boldly, but carefully. Time is closing in on us, and you must improvise as fast as you can, according to the situations. I depend upon your intelligence, and, if in doubt, communicate with me immediately. However, I’m certain you’ll have little reason to do that very often, if at all.”

  “Desperate men in a desperate cause,” the Magistrate had said last night. This was a time for desperate moves. Durant decided not to call the Magistrate, but to write him after he had installed himself in Lincoln’s house. He thought: if there was just someone I could trust! But there was no one. During his life as a lawyer and his few years as a Minute Man, he had had some friends. He had had companions in the secret places where they had all gathered. Now he was completely alone.

  All that had once been New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania was no Section 7, under the jurisdiction of the Chief Magistrate, Arthur Carlson. All at once Durant felt completely confident, and he smiled grimly to himself. When other military staffs heard what he was doing they would descend like rats upon the fatted countryside, and this time the farmers would feel the lash of oppression, themselves. The President was Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and so far they had been his bulwark, and he had pampered them. He was also mortally afraid of them. Move quickly! Boldly. But not too boldly at first, for if he, Durant, were killed he would have gained nothing. However, if the Armed Forces swarmed upon the country, as he intended to swarm now, the President would not dare oppose them. The Military, even more than the President and his Cabinet, ruled America, and they served him because he served them, and they were more powerful than the farmers.

  Now Durant firmly believed that the Chief Magistrate had known what he would do, and again he smiled grimly.

  The streets of the cities might be pock-marked with craters, but the monster highways were kept in perfect condition “for defense.” The great fleets of private cars, which, twenty years ago, had rolled like masses of beetles on the highways, had almost disappeared. There had been little, if any, steel for private cars during the last two decades, and even the few cars were invariably marked for the Military, farmers, officials, and bureaucrats. Only occasionally did one see an ancient, twenty-year-old car, staggering along the roads, wrapped in a cloud of burning oil, but quite often sleek new vehicles owned by the privileged classes raced along like silver, black and golden bullets. A few contained the rich farmers, rotund and re
d-faced, and their families, equally rotund and rosy; more, however, were occupied by military officers and their men. Durant noted with satisfaction that farmers were careful to give their friends, the Armed Forces, the right of way. At first he did not respond to their jocular salutes, for he was too full of hatred. Later, he saluted smilingly, remembering his new role.

  The car rolled along the glorious spring countryside. Farm after farm passed the windows in the green haze of newly leafed trees and brilliantly green fields. Golden bushes blazed briefly as the car went on, and herds of rounded cattle stood mildly in the sunshine. Here was no starvation, no misery, no hopelessness, no fear! Joyous children ran along the road to school, plump children with bright eyes and good shoes, and arrogant young voices. Durant thought of the tattered white-faced children in Central Park, and his rage returned. Wait! he thought savagely. There was no pity in him when he looked upon these farmers’ offspring, and he tried to keep down another surge of hatred. The children were not at fault, he told himself. But these, too, were being trained as oppressors. He must remember that, as he must also remember not to hate, where hatred would do no good.

  Each farmhouse he passed appeared more comfortable and brighter than the last. The red silos glowed in the sun; the barns were heaped up with food which would inevitably find its way to Government storehouses, there to be rationed meagerly to the cities, the rest to be destroyed or to be sent to current allies. There would be fresh gold in the farmers’ pockets, for the farmers had, fifteen years ago, demanded to be paid in gold and not in the frightfully depreciated paper currency. The farmers deposited their gains in the Grange Banks, where it would be safe, and not in Government institutions.

  “The farmers live well, don’t they, Grandon?” asked Durant idly.

  “They certainly do, Major Curtiss,” replied the lieutenant. “Better than we do, especially better than those of us who are in the cities.” A curious flicker, like the flash of a bared knife, passed over the young man’s face, and Durant looked more closely at him. Durant felt, rather than saw, the sergeant’s shoulders jerk. “Sometimes,” continued the lieutenant reflectively, “I hate the goddamn farmers.”

  Durant kept himself very still. He pursed his lips. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. What would the country be without them?”

  “Yes,” said the officer very softly, as if to himself, “what would the country be without them?”

  Again, the sensation of complete isolation came to Durant. He had been warned not to approach anyone, not to speak thoughtlessly to anyone not to trust anyone, not even the men in his command. If there were Minute Men among them, he was not to know, just as they would know nothing about him. Grandon might be a friend, or an enemy.

  What had Grandon been told about him? That he was simply a new major, replacing the old? He could not ask. His loneliness, his isolation, began to impress themselves forcibly upon him.

  He said: “As we are not stopping in Philadelphia, after all, we’d better avoid it. When we get to the Lincoln farm you must call the other officers and have them join us in the country.”

  Grandon smiled broadly, and again slapped his knee. Durant closed his eyes, and thought about his wife and children who had been sent to an unknown section of the country. Maria, too, had been given her orders. She would have her own private problems in teaching the children to respond to new names, and in obliterating the memory of him from their minds. She, too, would be desperately lonely, and would live in fear for him.

  In spite of what the Chief Magistrate had told him, that he was inevitably doomed to die, he found himself resolutely determined that some day he would find his family, and that he would live. He had only to trust no one, to be careful, always to be alert, always to watch. He was willing to sacrifice his life for America, but if there came on opportunity to save himself he would do so, honorably and boldly.

  He must have dozed, for all at once he heard the lieutenant say in what seemed a very loud voice: “We’re about there, Major.” He opened his eyes at once. The car was slowing down, approaching two gray stone pillars at the left. “Entrance to the Lincoln farm, sir.” The car turned in on a smooth gravel driveway, and in the distance, atop a proud rise, was the big white house of the photograph, shimmering in the sun behind its trees. Quiet purplish mountains had appeared, and the land was rolling and gentle, almost unnaturally green in its fertility.

  “How did Lincoln get those two thousand acres?” asked Durant.

  The lieutenant grinned, and shrugged. “Why, sir, don’t you know how the ‘subversive’ farmers were liquidated, when they wouldn’t come to heel a long time ago? And don’t you know how their farms were turned over to—men like Lincoln?”

  “Yes. But I had forgotten,” replied Durant, angered at his own stupidity. The young officer gave him a sidelong glance. “You city officers have too much else on your minds,” he suggested.

  Durant only nodded. He concentrated on the house. Two yellow collies came racing and barking toward them, their coats sleek in the sun. The trees fell back, and Durant could see the polished windows of the farmhouse and the red chimneys. “City officers.” Durant could not restrain himself. “You’ve lived in the country, Grandon?”

  The young officer’s face closed, became blank of all expression. “Yes, in Section 18,” he replied. “Out west.” He stared ahead at the farmhouse, and Durant did not ask him any other questions, nor did he notice, a moment later, a white line about Grandon’s mouth.

  There was a circular driveway in front of the house, and the car stopped before the closed door. The sergeant jumped out to open the car door for Durant, and for an instant Durant stared at that brutal but intelligently Latin face. Italian, French, Spanish, blood? The sergeant looked back at him in silence.

  Grandon ran up the white steps of the house and knocked loudly and gayly upon the door. Durant and Sergeant Keiser followed him. There was an annoyed grunt inside the house, and the door opened. John Lincoln, himself, in fine gray country tweeds, a pipe in his hand, stood there, scowling. When he saw the military men, he instantly smiled, but there was no servility about him.

  “The new major of the district, Mr. Lincoln,” said Grandon, with a quick salute. “Major Curtiss.”

  “How do you do, how do you do!” exclaimed Lincoln heartily. “Come in! Glad to see you, Major. How’s Major Burnes?”

  “Very well, I believe,” replied Durant, taking the big beefy hand offered him.

  “We miss him,” said Lincoln. “Nice old feller. Sent to another Section?”

  Grandon replied: “Yes, indeed. He’s a colonel now.” Again that knifelike flash passed swiftly over his face, but he smiled easily.

  They entered a pleasant hall with paneled walls of carved mahogany, and a fine bare wood floor of darkly polished wood. The hall was large and square, and in its exact center was an exquisite Oriental rug flowing with blue and rose and gold. Excellent antique chairs stood about a beautifully turned chest. Durant’s mouth tightened, especially at the sight of a wonderful landscape in oils which hung on one wall. Here were the treasures which had been drained from the starving city for a little bread, a little meat, a little milk. He stood and examined the landscape minutely, and wondered what the genius who had painted it had received for his magnificent work.

  Lincoln, on the threshold of the living room, saw that Durant had stopped. He smiled, pleased. “Nice, eh?” he asked. Durant deliberately let his eyes rove over the chairs, the chest, the rug, the walls. Lincoln chuckled contentedly.

  Durant said absently: “When I was a child, I spent two summers in a farmhouse. It was a very good place, but it wasn’t like this.”

  Lincoln chuckled again. “I bet not! But we farmers have come into our own, now.”

  “Congratulations,” murmured Durant. He turned to look for his companions. Grandon was humming indifferently, but Sergeant Keiser had narrowed his black eyes intently on the major, though the rest of his face remained impassive.

  The vast living room
, radiant with sunshine, was no less lavishly furnished than the hall. Cloisonné, marble, silks, Oriental rugs, eighteenth century love-seats, lace, pictures, ornaments—all the loveliness of aristocratic families reduced to beggary, or worse, was here, exchanged for a few days’ extra survival. Lincoln beamed about the room, his large fat face ruddy and complacent, his little hazel eyes proud, his pipe in his big thick mouth. “Got most of it for a song,” he confided. “There was a rich subversive family in Philadelphia, who wouldn’t be reconstructed. Feller’s business taken away from him. Government invited farmers to the auction, and kept the money. I got the best part; in with Washington, you know.” And he winked at Durant.

  Durant laughed pleasantly. “What would we do without the farmers!” he exclaimed. “Most influential class in The Democracy, second only to the bureaucrats and third only to the Military. Good. Good.”

  His voice had been genial, but Lincoln, who was no fool, thought that there was something disagreeable in the intonation. Like all the members of the great Farm Bloc, he was afraid of the Military, who were the absolute rulers of the country. Even the President truckled to them, for without the vast Armed Forces of The Democracy he would be nothing. The Grange would be nothing, in spite of the millions of farmers. The Military, if it so desired, could oust the President in less than an hour, and it could subdue and take over the farmers in less than a week. It had the guns, the officers and the men. Everything lived by sufferance of the Military, or died at its word.

  Lincoln, after a moment’s uneasy reflection, boomed happily: “Sit down, sit down, Major! And you, Lieutenant.” He drew out his best chairs, opened boxes of precious cigarets, cigarets which had almost disappeared in the cities. He glanced at the sergeant, and hesitated. It was customary for sergeants and lesser of the Military to find their way into the big kitchens of farmhouses. Durant knew this, so he said: “Thanks. And you, Sergeant, find yourself a seat, too.” Sergeant Keiser smiled surlily, and sat down. Again, a finger of uneasiness ran down Lincoln’s padded spine.