Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c

• Название: o 3b3e7475144cf77c
• Автор: Пользователь
• Жанр: Прочая старинная литература

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It was well known that Göring had flown to the Rheinland with his master, and had then

flown back to Berlin. Hermann was the killer, the man of action, who took the "steps that were

hard but necessary," while Adi was still hesitating and arguing, screaming at his followers,

threatening to commit suicide if they didn't obey him, falling down on the floor and biting the

carpet in a hysteria of bewilderment or rage. Lanny became clear in his mind that this was the

true story of the "Blood Purge." Göring had sat at Hitler's ear in the plane and terrified him

with stories of what the Gestapo had uncovered; then, from Berlin, he had given the orders,

and when it was too late to reverse them he had phoned the Führer, and the latter had flown to

Munich to display "a courage that has no equal," to show himself to the credulous German people

as "a Real Man."

The official statement was that not more than fifty persons had been killed in the three days

and nights of terror; but the gossip in the Ettstrasse was that there had been several hundred

victims in Munich alone, and it turned out that the total in Germany was close to twelve

hundred. This and other official falsehoods were freely discussed, and the jail buzzed like a

beehive. Human curiosity broke down the barriers between jailers and jailed; they whispered

news to one another, and an item once put into circulation was borne by busy tongues to

every corner of the institution. In the corridors you were supposed to walk alone and not to

talk; but every time you passed other prisoners you whispered something, and if it was a tidbit

you might share it with one of the keepers. Down in the exercise court the inmates were

supposed to walk in silence, but the man behind you mouthed the news and you passed it on to

the man in front of you.

And when you were in your cell, there were sounds of tapping; tapping on wood, on stone,

and on metal; tapping by day and most of the night; quick tapping for the experts and slow

tapping for the new arrivals. In the cell directly under Lanny was a certain Herr Doktor

Obermeier, a former Ministerialdirektor of the Bavarian state, well known to Herr Klaussen.

He shared the same water-pipes as those above him, and was a tireless tapper. Lanny learned

the code, and heard the story of Herr Doktor Willi Schmitt, music critic of the Neueste

Nachrichten and chairman of the Beethoven-Vereinigung; the most amiable of persons, so

Herr Klaussen declared, with body, mind, and soul made wholly of music. Lanny had read his

review of the Eroica performance, and other articles from his pen. The S.S. men came for him,

and when he learned that they thought he was Gruppenführer Willi Schmitt, a quite different

man, he was amused, and told his wife and children not to worry. He went with the Nazis, but

did not return; and when his frantic wife persisted in her clamors she received from Police

Headquarters a death certificate signed by the Burgermeister of the town of Dachau; there had

been "a very regrettable mistake," and they would see that it did not happen again.

Story after story, the most sensational, the most horrible! Truly, it was something fabulous,

Byzantine! Ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen, still a member of the Cabinet, had been attacked in

his office and had some of his teeth knocked out; now he was under "house arrest," his life

threatened, and the aged von Hindenburg, sick and near to death, trying to save his "dear

comrade." Edgar Jung, Papen's friend who had written his offending speech demanding

freedom of the press, had been shot here in Munich. Gregor Strasser had been kidnaped from

his home and beaten to death by S.S. men in Grunewald. General von Schleicher and his wife

had been riddled with bullets on the steps of their villa. Karl Ernst, leader of the Berlin S.A.,

had been slugged unconscious and taken to the city. His staff leader had decided that Göring

had gone crazy, and had flown to Munich to appeal to Hitler about it. He had been taken back

to Berlin and shot with seven of his adjutants. At Lichterfelde, in the courtyard of the old

military cadet school, tribunals under the direction of Göring were still holding "trials" averaging

seven minutes each; the victims were stood against a wall and shot while crying: "Heil Hitler!"

IV

About half the warders in this jail were men of the old regime and the other half S.A. men,

and there was much jealousy between them. The latter group had no way of knowing when the

lightning might strike them, so for the first time they had a fellow-feeling for their prisoners. If

one of the latter had a visitor and got some fresh information, everybody wanted to share it, and

a warder would find a pretext to come to the cell and hear what he had to report. Really, the

old Munich police prison became a delightfully sociable and exciting place! Lanny decided that

he wouldn't have missed it for anything. His own fears had diminished; he decided that when

the storm blew over, somebody in authority would have time to hear his statement and realize

that a blunder had been made. Possibly his three captors had put Hugo's money into their

own pockets, and if so, there was no evidence against Lanny himself. He had only to crouch in

his "better 'ole"—and meantime learn about human and especially Nazi nature.

The population of the jail was in part common criminals—thieves, burglars, and sex

offenders—while the other part comprised political suspects, or those who had got in the way of

some powerful official. A curious situation, in which one prisoner might be a blackmailer and

another the victim of a blackmailer—both in the same jail and supposedly under the same law!

One man guilty of killing, another guilty of refusing to kill, or of protesting against killing!

Lanny could have compiled a whole dossier of such antinomies. But he didn't dare to make

notes, and was careful not to say anything that would give offense to anybody. The place was

bound to be full of spies, and while the men in his own cell appeared to be genuine, either or

both might have been selected because they appeared to be that.

The Hungarian count was a gay companion, and told diverting stories of his liaisons; he had

a passion for playing the game of Halma, and Lanny learned it in order to oblige him. The

business man, Herr Klaussen, told stories illustrating the impossibility of conducting any honest

business under present conditions; then he would say: "Do you have things thus in America?"

Lanny would reply: "My father complains a great deal about politicians." He would tell some of

Robbie's stories, feeling certain that these wouldn't do him any harm in Germany.

Incidentally Herr Klaussen expressed the conviction that the talk about a plot against Hitler

was all Quatsch; there had been nothing but protest and discussion. Also, the talk about the

Führer's being shocked by what he had discovered in the villa at Wiessee was Dummheit,

because everybody in Germany had known about Röhm and his boys, and the Führer had

laughed about it. This worthy Bürger of Munich cherished a hearty dislike of those whom he

called die 'Preiss'n— the Prussians—regarding them as invaders and source of all corruptions.

These, of course, were frightfully dangerous utterances, and this was either a bold man or a

foolish one. Lanny said: "I have no basis to form an opinion, and in view of my position I'd

rather not try." He went back to playing Halma with the Hungarian, and collecting anecdotes

and local color which Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson might some day use in a play.

V

Lanny had spent three days as a guest of the state of Bavaria, and now he spent ten as a guest of

the city of Munich. Then, just at the end of one day, a friendly warder came and said: "Bitte,

kommen Sie, Herr Budd."

It would do no good to ask questions, for the warders didn't know. When you left a cell, you

said Ade, having no way to tell if you would come back. Some went to freedom, others to be

beaten insensible, others to Dachau or some other camp. Lanny was led downstairs to an office

where he found two young S.S. men, dapper and correct, awaiting him. He was pleased to

observe that they were not the same who had arrested him. They came up, and almost before

he realized what was happening, one had taken his wrist and snapped a handcuff onto it. The

other cuff was on the young Nazi's wrist, and Lanny knew it was useless to offer objections.

They led him out to a courtyard, where he saw his own car, with another uniformed S.S. man

in the driver's seat. The rear door was opened. "Bitte einsteigen."

"May I ask where I'm being taken?" he ventured.

"It is not permitted to talk," was the reply. He got in, and the car rolled out into the tree-lined

avenue, and into the city of Munich. They drove straight through, and down the valley of the

Isar, northeastward.

On a dark night the landscape becomes a mystery; the car lights illumine a far-stretching

road, but it is possible to imagine any sort of thing to the right and left. Unless you are doing

the driving, you will even become uncertain whether the car is going uphill or down. But there

were the stars in their appointed places, and so Lanny could know they were headed north.

Having driven over this route, he knew the signposts; and when it was Regensburg and they

were still speeding rapidly, he made a guess that he was being taken to Berlin.

"There's where I get my examination," he thought. He would have one more night to do his

thinking, and then he would confront that colossal power known as the Geheime Staats-Polizei,

more dark than any night, more to be dreaded than anything that night contained.

The prisoner had had plenty of sleep in the jail, so he used this time to choose his Ausrede,

his "alibi." But the more he tried, the worse his confusion became. They were bound to have

found out that he had drawn thirty thousand marks from the Hellstein bank in Munich; they

were bound to know that he had paid most of it to Hugo; they were bound to know that some

sort of effort had been made to take Freddi out of Dachau. All these spelled guilt on Lanny's part;

and the only course that seemed to hold hope was to be frank and naive; to laugh and say:

"Well, General Göring charged Johannes Robin his whole fortune to get out, and used me as

his agent, so naturally I thought that was the way it was done. When Hugo offered to do it for

only twenty-eight thousand marks, I thought I had a bargain."

In the early dawn, when nobody was about except the milkman and the machine-gun

detachments of the Berlin police, Lanny's car swept into the city, and in a workingclass

quarter which he took to be Moabit, drew up in front of a large brick building. He hadn't been

able to see the street signs, and nobody took the trouble to inform him. Was it the dreaded

Nazi barracks in Hedemannstrasse, about which the refugees talked with shudders? Was it the

notorious Columbus-Haus? Or perhaps the headquarters of the Feldpolizei, the most feared group

of all?

"Bitte aussteigen," said the leader. They had been perfectly polite, but hadn't spoken one

unnecessary word, either to him or to one another. They were machines; and if somewhere

inside them was a soul, they would have been deeply ashamed of it. They were trying to get

into the Reichswehr, and this was the way.

They went into the building. Once more they did not stop to "book" the prisoner, but

marched him with military steps along a corridor, and then down a flight of stone stairs into

a cellar. This time Lanny couldn't be mistaken; there was a smell of blood, and there were

cries somewhere in the distance. Once more he ventured a demand as to what he was being

held for, what was to be done to him? This time the young leader condescended to reply: "Sie

sind ein Schutzhäftling."

They were telling him that he was one of those hundred thousand persons, Germans and

foreigners, who were being held for their own good, to keep harm from being done to them.

"Aber," insisted Lanny, with his best society manner, "I haven't asked to be a Schutzhäftling —

I'm perfectly willing to take my chances outside." If any of them had a sense of humor, this was

not the place to show it. There was a row of steel doors, and one was opened. For the first time

since these men had confronted Lanny in the Munich jail the handcuff was taken from his

wrist, and he was pushed into a "black cell" and heard the door clang behind him.

VI

The same story as at Stadelheim; only it was more serious now, because that had been an

accident, whereas this was deliberate, this was after two weeks of investigation. Impossible to

doubt that his plight was as serious as could be. Fear took complete possession of him, and

turned his bones to some sort of pulp. Putting his ear to the opening in the door, he could have

no doubt that he heard screaming and crying; putting his nose to the opening, he made sure

that he smelled that odor which he had heretofore associated with slaughter-houses. He was in

one of those dreadful places about which he had been reading and hearing, where the Nazis

systematically broke the bodies and souls of men—yes, and of women, too. In the Brown Book

he had seen a photograph of the naked rear of an elderly stout woman, a city councilor of the

Social-Democratic party, from her shoulders to her knees one mass of stripes from a scientific

beating.

They weren't going to trouble to question him, or give him any chance to tell his story. They

were taking it for granted that he would lie, and so they would punish him first, and then he

would be more apt to tell the truth. Or were they just meaning to frighten him? To put him

where he could hear the sounds and smell the smells, and see if that would "soften him up"? It

had that effect; he decided that it would be futile to try to conceal anything, to tell a single lie.