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rattled this off as if it were a school exercise; and indeed it was something like that, for he had

imagined interrogations and had learned his Rolle in the very best German. Since the S.S. man

didn't tell him to stop, he went on, as fast as ever: "Also on the visit to the Reichsführer in the

Braune Haus went Kurt Meissner of Schloss Stubendorf, who is a Komponist and author of

several part-songs which you sing at your assemblies. He has known me since we were boys

at Hellerau, and will tell you that I am a friend of the National Socialist movement."

That was the end of the speech, so far as Lanny had planned it. But even as he said the last

words a horrible doubt smote him: Perhaps this was some sort of anti-Nazi revolution, and

he was sealing his own doom! He saw that the point of the gun had come down, and the muzzle

was looking into his navel instead of into his face; but that wasn't enough to satisfy him. He

stared at the S.S. man, who had black eyebrows that met over his nose. It seemed to Lanny

the hardest face he had ever examined.

"What were you doing with this man?"—nodding downward toward what lay on the

pavement.

"I am in Munich buying a painting from Baron von Zinszollern. I saw Hugo Behr walking on

the street and I stopped to say Gruss Gott to him." Lanny was speaking impromptu now.

"Get out of the car," commanded the S.S. man.

Lanny's heart was hitting hard blows underneath his throat; his knees were trembling so

violently he wasn't sure they would hold him up. It appeared that he was being ordered out so

that his blood and brains might not spoil a good car. "I tell you, you will regret it if you shoot

me. I am an intimate friend of Minister-Präsident General Göring. I was on a hunting trip with

him last fall. You can ask Oberleutnant Furtwaengler of Seine Exzellenz's staff. You can ask

Reichsminister Goebbels about me—or his wife, Frau Magda Goebbels—I have visited their home.

You can read articles about me in the Munich newspapers of last November when I conducted

an exhibition of paintings here and took one of them to the Führer. My picture was in all

the papers—"

"I am not going to shoot you," announced the S.S. man. His tone indicated abysmal

contempt of anybody who objected to being shot.

"What are you going to do?"

"Take you to Stadelheim until your story is investigated. Get out of the car."

Stadelheim was a name of terror; one of those dreadful prisons about which the refugees

talked. But it was better than being shot on the sidewalk, so Lanny managed to control his

nerves, and obeyed. The other man passed his hands over him to see if he was armed. Then the

leader commanded him to search the body of Hugo, and he collected a capful of belongings

including a wad of bills which Lanny knew amounted to some fifteen thousand marks.

Apparently they meant to leave the corpse right there, and Lanny wondered, did they have a

corpse-collecting authority, or did they leave it to the neighborhood?

However, he didn't have much time for speculation. "Get into the back seat," commanded

the leader and climbed in beside him, still holding the gun on him. The man who had got out

on Lanny's side of the car now slipped into the driver's seat, and the car sprang to life and sped

down the street.

IV

Lanny had seen Stadelheim from the outside; a great mass of buildings on a tree-lined

avenue, the Tegernsee road upon which he had driven Hugo Behr. Now the walls of the place

loomed enormous and forbidding in the darkness. Lanny was ordered out of the car, and two of

his captors escorted him through the doorway, straight past the reception room, and down a

stone corridor into a small room. He had expected to be "booked" and fingerprinted; but

apparently this was to be dispensed with. They ordered him to take off his coat, trousers, and

shoes, and proceeded to search him. "There is considerable money in that wallet," he said, and the

leader replied, grimly: "We will take care of it." They took his watch, keys, fountain-pen,

necktie, everything but his handkerchief. They searched the linings of his clothing, and looked

carefully to see if there were any signs that the heels of his shoes might be removable.

Finally they told him to put his clothes on again. Lanny said: "Would you mind telling me

what I am suspected of?" The reply of the leader was: "Maul halten!" Apparently they didn't

believe his wonder-tales about being the intimate friend of the three leading Nazis. Not wishing

to get a knock over the head with a revolver butt, Lanny held his mouth, as ordered, and was

escorted out of the room and down the corridor to a guarded steel door.

The head S.S. man appeared to have the run of the place; all he had to do was to salute and

say: "Heil Hitler!" and all doors were swung open for him. He led the prisoner down a narrow

flight of stone stairs, into a passage dimly lighted and lined with steel doors.

Old prisons have such places of darkness and silence, where deeds without a name have been

done. A warder who accompanied the trio opened one of these doors, and Lanny was shoved

in without a word. The door clanged behind him; and that, as he had learned to say in the land

of his fathers, was that.

V

In the darkness he could only explore the place by groping. The cell was narrow and had an

iron cot built into the stone wall. On the cot were two sacks of straw and a blanket. In the far

corner was a stinking pail without a cover; and that was all. There was a vile, age-old odor, and

no window; ventilation was provided by two openings in the solid door, one high and one low;

they could be closed by sliding covers on the outside, but perhaps this would be done only if

Lanny misbehaved. He didn't.

He was permitted to sit on the straw sacks and think, and he did his best to quiet the tumult

of his heart and use his reasoning powers. What had happened? It seemed obvious that his

plot had been discovered. Had the would-be conspirators been caught, or had they taken the

money and then reported the plot to their superiors? And if so, would they shoot Freddi? No

use worrying about that now. Lanny couldn't be of any use to Freddi unless he himself got out,

so he had to put his mind on his own plight, and prepare for the examination which was bound

sooner or later to come.

Hugo's part in the jailbreak had evidently been betrayed; but Hugo had never named

Lanny, so he had said. Of course this might or might not have been true. They had found a

bunch of thousand-mark notes on Hugo, and they had found some on Lanny; suddenly the

prisoner realized, with a near collapse of his insides, what a stupid thing he had done. The clue

which a criminal always leaves! He had gone to the bank and got thirty new thousand-mark

bills, doubtless having consecutive serial numbers, and had given some of these to Hugo and kept

some in his own wallet!

So they would be sure that he had tried to buy a prisoner out of Dachau. What would the

penalty be for that crime? What it would have been under the old regime was one thing, and

under the Nazis something else again. As if to answer his question there came terrifying

sounds, muffled yet unmistakable; first, a roll of drums, and then shooting somewhere in those

dungeon depths or else outside the walls. Not a single shot, not a series of shots, but a volley, a

closely-packed bunch of shots. They were executing somebody, or perhaps several bodies.

Lanny, who had started to his feet, had to sit down again because his legs were giving way.

Who would that be? The S.A. man in Dachau with whom Hugo had been dealing? The man

higher up who had demanded more money? The plot must have been betrayed early, for it

couldn't be much after ten o'clock, and there had hardly been time for the jailbreak to have

been attempted and the guilty parties brought from Dachau to this prison. Of course it might be

that this was some execution that had nothing to do with Dachau. Shootings were frequent in

Nazi prisons, all refugees agreed. Perhaps they shot people every night at twenty-two o'clock,

German time!

After the most careful thought, Lanny decided that the Nazis had him nailed down; no

chance of wriggling out. He had come to Germany to get Freddi Robin, and the picture-dealing

had been only a blind. He had had a truck brought from France—they would be sure he had

meant to take Freddi out in that truck! And there was Jerry—with two one-thousand-mark

bills which Lanny had handed him! Also with the passport of Cyprien Santoze, having the picture

of Freddi Robin substituted! Would they catch the meaning of that?

Or would Jerry perhaps get away? He would be walking about, passing the appointed spot,

waiting for the prisoner and for Lanny to appear. Would the Nazis be watching and arrest

anybody who passed? It was an important question, for if Jerry escaped he'd surely go to the

American consul and report Lanny as missing. Would he tell the consul the whole truth? He

might or he might not; but anyhow the consul would be making inquiries as to the son of

Budd Gunmakers.

VI

More drum-rolls and more shooting! Good God, were they killing people all night in German

prisons? Apparently so; for that was the way Lanny spent the night, listening to volleys, long or

short, loud or dim. He couldn't tell whether they were inside or out. Did they have a special

execution chamber, or did they just shoot you anywhere you happened to be? And what did they

do with all the blood? Lanny imagined that he smelled it, and the fumes of gunpowder; but

maybe he was mistaken, for the stink of a rusty old slop-pail can be extremely pungent in a

small cell. An art expert had seen many pictures of executions, ancient and modern, so he

knew what to imagine. Sometimes they blindfolded the victims, sometimes they made them turn

their backs, sometimes they just put an, automatic to the base of their skulls, the medulla; that

was said to be merciful, and certainly it was quick. The Nazis cared nothing about mercy, but

they surely did about speed.

Every now and then a door clanged, and Lanny thought: "They are taking somebody to his

doom." Now and then he heard footsteps, and thought: "Are they coming or going?" He

wondered about the bodies. Did they have stretchers? Or did they just drag them? He imagined

that he heard dragging. Several times there were screams; and once a man going by his door,

arguing, shouting protests. What was the matter with them? He was as good a Nazi as anyone

in Germany. They were making a mistake. It was eine gottverdammte Schande— and so on. That

gave Lanny something new to think about, and he sat for a long time motionless on his straw

pallet, with his brain in a whirl.

Maybe all this hadn't anything to do with Freddi and a jailbreak! Maybe nothing had been

discovered at all! It was that "Second Revolution" that Hugo had been so freely predicting!

Hugo had been shot, not because he had tried to bribe a Dachau guard, but because he was on

the list of those who were actively working on behalf of Ernst Rohm and the other malcontents

of the Sturmabteilung! In that case the shootings might be part of the putting down of that

movement. It was significant that Lanny's captors had been men of the Schutzstaffel, the "elite