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mercilessly in stamping out the reactionary rebels who are trying to plunge the country into

chaos, and breaking their oath of loyalty to him under the slogan of carrying out a 'Second

Revolution.'"

Dispatches come from Berlin and Munich which convince the Führer that it is necessary to

act instantly; he telephones orders for the putting down of the rebels, and so: "Half an hour

later a heavy tri-motored Junkers plane leaves the aviation field near Bonn and disappears into

the foggy night. The clock has just struck two. The Führer sits silently in the front seat of the

cabin and gazes fixedly into the great expanse of darkness."

Arriving in Munich at four in the morning they find that the traitorous leaders have already

been apprehended. "In two brisk sentences of indignation and contempt Herr Hitler throws

their whole shame into their fearful and perplexed faces. He then steps to one of them and rips

the insignia of rank from his uniform. A very hard but deserved fate awaits them in the

afternoon."

The center of the conspiracy is known to be in the mountains, and so a troop of loyal S.S.

men have been assembled, and, narrates Dr. Juppchen, "at a terrific rate the trip to Wiessee is

begun." He gives a thrilling account of the wild night ride, by which, at six in the morning

"without any resistance we are able to enter the house and surprise the conspirators, who are

still sleeping, and we arouse them immediately. The Führer himself makes the arrest with a

courage that has no equal . . . I may be spared a description of the disgusting scene that lay

before us. A simple S.S. man, with an air of indignation, expresses our thoughts, saying: 'I only

wish that the walls would fall down now, so that the whole German people could be a

witness to this act.'"

The radio orator went on to tell what had been happening in Berlin. "Our party comrade,

General Göring, has not hesitated. With a firm hand he has cleared up a nest of reactionaries and

their incorrigible supporters. He has taken steps that were hard but necessary in order to save the

country from immeasurable disaster."

There followed two newspaper columns of denunciation in which the Reichsminister of Popular

Enlightenment and Propaganda used many adjectives to praise the nobility and heroism of his

Führer, "who has again shown in this critical situation that he is a Real Man." A quite different

set of adjectives was required for the "small clique of professional saboteurs," the "boils, seats

of corruption, the symptoms of disease and moral deterioration that show themselves in

public life," and that now have been "burned out to the flesh."

"The Reich is there," concluded Juppchen, "and above all our Führer."

III

Such was the story told to the German people. Lanny noticed the curious fact that not once

did the little dwarf name one of the victims of the purge; he didn't even say directly that

anybody had been killed! As a specimen of popular fiction there was something to be said for

his effusion, but as history it wouldn't rank high. Lanny could nail one falsehood, for he knew

that Hugo Behr had been shot at a few minutes after nine on Friday evening, which was at

least three hours before the Führer had given his orders, according to the Goebbels account.

The jail buzzed with stories of other persons who had been killed or arrested before

midnight; in fact some had been brought to this very place. Evidently somebody had given the

fatal order while the Führer was still inspecting labor camps.

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