Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c

strangers to the place, having a special duty and a special trust. Johannes represented a treasure

of several tens of millions of marks—Lanny didn't know how many, exactly. If he should take a

notion to commit suicide, Minister-Prasident Goring would lose all chance of getting that

portion of the treasure which had been stored abroad, nor could he get the part stored in

Germany without violating his Führer's "legality complex."

VIII

The car stopped before a great red brick building in the Alexanderplatz, and Lanny was

escorted inside. Steel doors clanged behind him—a sound which he had heard in the building of

the Sûreté Générale in Paris and found intensely disagreeable. He was escorted down a bare stone-

paved corridor, with more doors opening and clanging, until he found himself in a small room

with one steel-barred window, a table, and three chairs. "Bitte, setzen Sie sich," said the

Oberleutnant. The chair which Lanny took faced the door, and he sat, wondering: "Will they

have shaved his head and put him in stripes? Will he have any marks on him?"

He had none; that is, unless you counted spiritual marks. He was wearing the brown

business suit in which he had set out for his yacht; but he needed a bath and a shave, and

came into the room as if he might be on the way to a firing-squad. When he saw his daughter-

in-law's half-brother sitting quietly in a chair, he started visibly, and then pulled himself

together, pressing his lips tightly, as if he didn't want Lanny to see them trembling. In short,

he was a thoroughly cowed Jew; his manner resembled that of an animal which had been

mistreated—not a fighting animal, but a tame domestic one.

"Setzen Sie sich, Herr Robin," ordered the Oberleutnant. On Lanny's account he would be

polite, even to a Missgeburt. Johannes took the third chair. "Bitte, sprechen Sie Deutsch"

added the officer, to Lanny.

Two S.S. men had followed the prisoner into the room; they closed the door behind them and

took post in front of it. As Lanny was placed he couldn't help seeing them, even while absorbed in

conversation. Those two lads in shining black boots and black and silver uniforms with skull and

crossbones insignia stood like two monuments of Prussian militarism; their forms rigid, their

chests thrust out, their guts sucked in—Lanny had learned the phrase from his ex-sergeant

friend Jerry Pendleton. Their hands did not hang by their sides, but were pressed with palms

open and fingers close together, tightly against their thighs and held there as if glued. Not the

faintest trace of expression on the faces, not the slightest motion of the eyes; apparently each

man picked out a spot on the wall and stared at it continuously for a quarter of an hour. Did

they do this because they were in the presence of an officer, or in order to im press a foreigner—

or just because they had been trained to do it and not think about it?

"Johannes," said Lanny, speaking German, as requested, "Irma and I came as soon as we

heard about your trouble. All the members of your family are safe and well."

"Gott set Dank!" murmured the prisoner. He was holding onto the chair in which he had

seated himself, and when he had spoken he pressed his lips together again. For the first time

in his life Johannes Robin seemed an old man; he was sixty, but had never shown even that

much.

"The situation is a serious one, Johannes, but it can be settled for money, and you and your

family are to be allowed to go to France with us."

"I don't mind about the money," said the Jew, quickly. He had fixed his eyes on Lanny's face

and never took them away. He seemed to be asking: "Am I to believe what you tell me?" Lanny

kept nodding, as if to say: "Yes, this is real, this is not a dream."

"The charge against you is that you tried to carry money out of the country on your yacht."

"Aber, Lanny!" exclaimed the prisoner, starting forward in his chair. "I had a permit for

every mark that I took!"

"Where did you put the permit?"

"It was in my pocket when I was arrested."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Absolutely. I would have been mad to try to carry money out of Germany without it."

Lanny was not too much surprised by this. "We have to assume that some malicious person

destroyed the paper, Johannes."

"Yes, but there will be a record of it in the office of the Exchange Control Authority."

"I have been told on the best possible authority that no such record exists. I am afraid we

shall have to assume that some mistake has been made, and that you had no valid permit."

Johannes's eyes darted for the fraction of a second toward the S.S. officer. Then he said, as

humbly as any moneylender in a medieval dungeon: "Yes, Lanny, of course. It must be so."

"That makes a very serious offense, and the punishment, I fear, would be more than your

health could stand. The only alternative is for you to part with your money. All of it."

Lanny was prepared for some anguish, some kind of Shylock scene. "Justice! the law! my

ducats, and my daughter!" But Johannes sank back in his chair and resumed his dull tone. "I

have been expecting that, Lanny. It is all right."

The man's aspect and manner revealed even more than his words. Lanny knew how he loved his

money; how hard he had worked for it, how many plans he had for the use of it. But here he

was kissing it good-by, as casually as if he had been a darling of fortune whose interest was

dancing, playing the piano, and listening to parlor Pinks discussing the expropriation of the

expropriators!

What had happened to him to produce such a change? Had he been worked over with rubber

hose, which leaves few marks? Had he seen his fellow Jews being compelled to lash one

another's faces with whips? Had he lain awake all night listening to the screams of men with

camphor injected in their urinary ducts? Something of the sort must have happened.

IX

The visitor had to leave no uncertainty in his friend's mind. He had to be as implacable as

Minister-Prasident Goring himself. He said: "It means everything you have, Johannes—both

here and abroad."

"I understand."

"They have had a man in your office and have all the records."

"I had become aware of that."

"I have gone into the situation carefully, and I'm afraid you will have to give up."

"If they will really let me go, and my family, they may have everything."

"I have the word of Minister-Prasident Goring, and I believe that he means what he says. He

has explained in the clearest language that he has no interest in you or yours, and will be glad

to be rid of you."

"I am sure that Minister-Prasident Goring is a man of honor, and I accept his promise."

"He wants your money to use for the upbuilding of National Socialism. From his point of

view that is, of course, a worthy purpose."

"The money would be of no use to me in this place."

"Exactly, Johannes. We can go abroad and you and Robbie can start business, again. Irma

will back you."

"Thank you, Lanny. I'll get along, I am sure."

"I have had to agree, and you have to agree, not to say a word about the case to anybody.

We'll just get out and forget it."

"God knows I don't want to talk about it, Lanny. What good would that do me?"

"All right, then. Papers will be brought for you to sign."

"I will sign them."

"Some papers must go to New York, you know. It should take a week or two. Irma and I will

wait here, and take you and the others out with us."

"I will never be able to express my gratitude, Lanny."

"Don't waste any energy on that. All we want is to have the family with us on the Riviera. We

can have a good time without so much money. Are you being treated reasonably well?"

"I have no complaint."

"Is there anything I could send you—assuming I can get permission?"

"I have everything I need—everything unless perhaps some red ink."

Johannes said this without the flicker of an eyelash; and Lanny answered, without change of

tone or expression: "I will see if it is possible to get some."

Rote Tinte! "Oh, the clever rascal!" Lanny thought. "His mind works like greased lightning."

Johannes could sit there in the presence of a Schutzstaffel officer and two privates, and with

all this pressure of terror and grief upon him—in the midst of having to make the most fateful

decision of his life—he could think up a way to tell Lanny what he wished him to know, and

without the slightest chance of his enemies' guessing what he had said!

For fifteen years Lanny and his old friend had been watching the experiment in the Soviet

Union and arguing about it. Johannes, taking the negative, had delighted himself by collecting

ironical stories, to be repeated to the credulous Lanny, and over Lanny's shoulder to

Johannes's two misguided sons. One such story had to do with two German business men, one

of whom was going to make a trip into the proletarian paradise, and promised his friend to

write a full account of what he found there. "But," objected the friend, "you won't dare to write

the truth if it's unfavorable." The other replied: "We'll fix it this way. I'll write you everything is

fine, and if I write it in black ink it's true, and if in red ink the opposite is true." So he went,

and in- due course his friend received a letter in black ink, detailing the wonders of the

proletarian paradise. "Everybody is happy, everybody is free, the markets are full of food, the

shops well stocked with goods—in fact there is only one thing I cannot find, and that is red ink."

While Lanny and the Oberleutnant were driving to the hotel, the latter inquired: "What does

he want red ink for?"

Lanny, who wasn't slow-minded himself, explained: "He keeps a diary, and writes it in red

ink to keep it separate from his other papers."

The officer replied: "One cannot keep a diary in prison. They will surely take it away from

him."

X

It was the Oberleutnant's duty to report to his superior, and mean while Lanny had to wait.

He was deposited at his hotel a few minutes before two o'clock, and called his wife and told

her: "I have seen our friend and he is all right. I think matters can be arranged. Take your

time. "To his mother, his father, and Rick he sent telegrams. "Have seen our friend. Believe

matters arranged." He decided against using code names; if the Gestapo was interested, let

them know what he was saying, and to whom. He called Heinrich and reported: "I think that

matters are being arranged, and I am grateful for the help of yourself and your friends. I have

been asked to keep the matter confidential, so I cannot say any more." That was satisfactory to a

perfect young bureaucrat.

The afternoon papers contained the story of the arrest of Johannes Robin, made public by the

Prussian government. Eighty million Germans, minus the infants and a few malcontents,

would learn that a Jewish Schieber had been caught trying to smuggle money out of the

country on his yacht. Eighty million Germans, minus the infants and malcontents, would

continue every day to believe statements issued on official authority, which statements would be

carefully contrived fiction. It was a new kind of world to be living in, and for the present Lanny