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Freddi will be there at ten tomorrow, and it's worthwhile for Rahel to take the chance. Get

Beauty's car from Bienvenu, if you like. I advise you to come by way of the Rhone valley,

Besancon and Mulhouse. Drive all night if you can stand it and let Rahel sleep in the back seat. I

will be at the Hotel de la Ville-de-Paris in Strasbourg."

Lanny had another problem, a delicate one. He didn't want to take Irma on this trip, and at the

same time he didn't want to hurt her feelings. "Come if you want to," he said, "but I'm telling

you it may be a painful experience, and there won't be much you can do."

"Why did you ask me to Paris, Lanny, if you didn't want my help?"

"I asked you because I love you, and wanted to see you, and I thought you would want to see

me. I want your help in everything that interests you, but I don't want to drag you into

something that you have no heart for. I haven't seen Freddi, and I'm just guessing: he may look

like an old man; he may be ill, even dying; he may be mutilated in some shocking way; he may be

entirely out of his mind. It's his wife's job to take care of him and nurse him back to life; it's not

your job, and I'm giving you the chance to keep out of another wearing experience."

"We'll all be in it, if they're going to live at Bienvenu."

"In the first place, Rahel may have to take him to a hospital. And anyhow, we aren't going

back until fall. Hansi and Bess are making money, and so is Johannes, I have no doubt, and

they'll want to have a place of their own. All that's in the future, and a lot of it depends on

Freddi's condition. I suggest leaving you at Emily's until I come back. I'm having Jerry bring

Rahel in a car, so he can take her wherever she wants to go, and then you and I will be free.

There's a maison de sante here in Paris, and a surgeon who took care of Marcel when he was

crippled and burned; they're still in business, and I phoned that I might be sending them a

patient."

"Oh, Lanny!" she exclaimed. "How I would enjoy it if we could give just a little time to our

own affairs!"

"Yes, darling," he said. "It's a grand idea, and England will seem delightful after I get this job

off my hands. I'm eager to see what Rick has done with his last act, and maybe I can give

him some hints."

It wasn't until he saw Irma's moue that he realized what a slip he had made. Poor Lanny, he

would have a hard time learning to think about himself!

X

Irma was duly deposited at the Chateau les Forêts, an agreeable place of sojourn in mid-July.

In fifteen years the noble beech forests had done their own work of repair, and the summer

breezes carried no report of the thousands of buried French and German soldiers. Since Emily

had been a sort of foster-mother to Irma's husband, and had had a lot to do with making the

match, they had an inexhaustible subject of conversation, and the older woman tried tact fully

to persuade a darling of fortune that every man has what the French call les défauts de ses

qualités, and that there might be worse faults in a husband than excess of solicitude and

generosity. She managed to make Irma a bit ashamed of her lack of appreciation of a sweet and

gentle Jewish clarinetist.

Meanwhile Lanny was speeding over a fine highway, due eastward toward the river Rhein. It

was in part the route over which the fleeing king and queen had driven in their heavy "berlin";

not far to the south lay Varennes, where they had been captured and driven back to Paris to

have their heads cut off. Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets

write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief

becomes a source of present pleasure—such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

The traveler had supper on the way, and reached his destination after midnight. There was

no use looking at an empty bridge, and he wasn't in the mood for cathedrals, even one of the

oldest. He went to bed and slept; in the morning he had a breakfast with fruit, and a telegram

from Jerry saying that they were at Besancon and coming straight on. No use going to the place

of appointment ahead of time, so Lanny read the morning papers in this town which had changed

hands many times, but for the present was French. He read that Adolf Hitler had called an

assembly of his tame Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, and had made them a speech of an

hour and a half, telling how he had suffered in soul over having to kill so many of his old friends

and supporters. When he was through, he sat with head bowed, completely overcome, while

Göring told the world how Hitler was the ordained Führer who was incapable of making a

mistake; to all of which they voted their unanimous assent.

With thoughts induced by this reading Lanny drove three or four miles to the Pont de Kehl,

parked his car, and walked halfway across. He was ahead of time, and standing by the railings

he gazed up and down that grand old river. No use getting himself into a state of excitement over

his own mission; if it was going to succeed it would succeed, and if it didn't, he would go to the

nearest telephone and get hold of the Oberleutnant and ask why. No use tormenting himself

with fears about what he was going to see; whatever Freddi was would still be Freddi, and they

would patch it up and make the best of it.

Meantime, look down into the depths of that fast-sliding water and remember, here was

where the Rheinmaidens had swum and teased the dwarf Alberich. Perhaps they were still

swimming; the motif of the Rheingold rang clear as a trumpet call in Lanny's ears. Somewhere on

the heights along this stream the Lorelei had sat and combed her golden hair with a golden

comb, and sung a song that had a wonderfully powerful melody, so that the boatman in the

little boat had been seized with a wild woe, and didn't see the rocky reef, but kept gazing up to the

heights, and so in the end the waves had swallowed boatman and boat; and that with her

singing the Lorelei had done. Another of those tragic events which the alchemy of the spirit had

turned into pleasure!

Every minute or two Lanny would look at his watch. They might be early; but no, that would

be as bad as being late. "Punktlich!" was the German word, and it was their pride. Just as the

minute hand of Lanny's watch was in the act of passing the topmost mark of the dial, a large

official car would approach the center line of the bridge, where a bar was stretched across, the

east side of the bar being German and the west side French. If it didn't happen exactly so, it

would be the watch that was wrong, and not deutsche Zucht und Ordnung. As a boy Lanny had

heard a story from old Mr. Hackabury, the soapman, about a farmer who had ordered a new

watch by mail-order catalogue, and had gone out in his field with watch and almanac,

announcing: "If that sun don't get up over that hill in three minutes, she's late!"

XI

Sure enough, here came the car! A Mercedes-Benz, with a little swastika flag over the

radiator-cap, and a chauffeur in S.S. uniform, including steel helmet. They came right up to

the barrier and stopped, while Lanny stood on the last foot of France, with his heart in his

mouth. Two S.S. men in the back seat got out and began helping a passenger, and Lanny got

one glimpse after another; the glimpses added up to a gray-haired, elderly man, feeble and

bowed, with hands that were deformed into claws, and that trembled and shook as if each of

them separately had gone mad. Apparently he couldn't walk, for they were half-carrying him,

and it wasn't certain that he could hold his head up—at any rate, it was hanging.

"Heil Hitler !" said one of the men, saluting. "Herr Budd?"

"Ja," said Lanny, in a voice that wasn't quite steady.

"Wohin mit ihm?" It was a problem, for you couldn't take such a package and just walk off

with it. Lanny had to ask the indulgence of the French police and customs men, who let the

unfortunate victim be carried into their office and laid on a seat. He couldn't sit up, and

winced when he was touched. "They have kicked my kidneys loose," he murmured, without

opening his eyes. Lanny ran and got his car, and the Frenchmen held up the traffic while he

turned it around on the bridge. They helped to carry the sufferer and lay him on the back seat.

Then, slowly, Lanny drove to the Hotel de la Ville-de-Paris, where they brought a stretcher

and carried Freddi Robin to a room and laid him on a bed.

Apparently he hadn't wanted to be freed; or perhaps he didn't realize that he was free;

perhaps he didn't recognize his old friend.

He didn't seem to want to talk, or even to look about him. Lanny waited until they were

alone, and then started the kind of mental cure which he had seen his mother practice on the

broken and burned Marcel Detaze. "You're in France, Freddi, and now everything is going to

be all right."

The poor fellow's voice behaved as if it was difficult for him to frame sounds into words. "You

should have sent me poison!" That was all he could think of.

"We're going to take you to a good hospital and have you fixed up in no time." A cheerful

"spiel," practiced for several days.

Freddi held up his trembling claws; they waved in the air, seemingly of their own

independent will. "They broke them with an iron bar," he whispered; "one by one."

"Rahel is coming, Freddi. She will be here in a few hours."

"No, no, no!" They were the loudest sounds he could make. "She must not see me." He kept

that up for some time, as long as his strength lasted. He was not fit to see anybody. He wanted

to go to sleep and not wake up. "Some powders!" he kept whispering.

Lanny saw that the sick man was weakening himself by trying to argue, so he said, all right. He

had already called for a doctor, and when the man came he whispered the story. Here on the

border they knew a great deal about the Nazis, and the doctor needed no details. He gave a

sleeping powder which quieted the patient for a while. The doctor wanted to examine him, but

Lanny said no, he would wait until the patient's wife had arrived to take charge. Lanny didn't

reveal that he had in mind to get an ambulance and take the victim to Paris; he could see that

here was a case that called for a lot of work and he wanted it done by people whom he knew and

trusted. He was sure that Rahel would agree with this.

XII

A moment not soon to be forgotten when the two travelers arrived, and Freddi's wife came

running into the hotel suite, an agony of suspense in her whole aspect; her face, gestures, voice.

"He's here? He's alive? He's ill? Oh, God, where is he?"

"In the next room," replied Lanny. "He's asleep, and we'd better not disturb him."

"How is he?"

"He needs to be gone over by a good surgeon and patched up; but we can have it done. Keep

yourself together, and don't let him see that you're afraid or shocked."

She had to set her eyes upon him right away; she had to steal into the room, and make it real to

herself that after so many long months he was actually here, in France, not Germany. Lanny

warned her: "Be quiet, don't lose your nerve." He went with her, and Jerry on the other