Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c

from Rahel a list of Freddi's former comrades; most of them would probably be under arrest,

or in hiding, "sleeping out," as it was called, never two nights in the same place. Before trying

to meet any of them, it seemed wiser for Lanny to try out his Nazi contacts. It would be difficult

to combine the two sorts of connections.

He went to call on Heinrich Jung, who burst into his customary excited account of his

activities. He had recently come back from the Parteitag in Nürnberg; the most marvelous of all

Parteitage— it had been five days instead of one, and every one of the hundred and twenty

hours had been a new climax, a fresh revelation of das Wunder, die Schönheit, der Sieg hidden

in the soul of National Socialism. "Honestly, Lanny, the most cynical persons were moved to

tears by what they saw there!" Lanny couldn't summon any tears, but he was able to bring

smiles to his lips and perhaps a glow to his cheeks.

"Do you know Nürnberg?" asked Heinrich. Lanny had visited that old city, with a moat

around it and houses having innumerable sharp gables, crowded into narrow streets which

seldom ran straight for two successive blocks. An unpromising place for the convention of a

great political party, but the Nazis had chosen it because of its historic associations, the

memories of the old Germany they meant to bring back to life. Practical difficulties were

merely a challenge to their powers of organization; they would show the world how to take

care of a million visitors to a city whose population was less than half that. Suburbs of tents

had been erected on the outskirts, and the Stormtroopers and Hitler Youth had slept on straw,

six hundred to each great tent, two blankets to each person. There had been rows of field

kitchens with aluminum spouts from which had poured endless streams of goulash or coffee.

Heinrich declared that sixty thousand Hitler Youth had been fed in half an hour—three

half-hours per day for five days!

These were specially selected youth, who had labored diligently all year to earn this

reward. They had been brought by special trains and by trucks, and had marched in with their

bands, shaking the air with songs and the great Zeppelin Meadow with the tramp of boots. For

five days and most of five nights they had shouted and sting themselves hoarse, making up in

their fervor for all the other forty-four political parties which they had wiped out of

existence in Germany. Only one party now, one law, one faith, one baptism! A temporary hall

had been built, accommodating a small part of the hundred and sixty thousand official delegates;

the others listened to loud-speakers all over the fields, and that served just as well, because

there didn't have to be any voting. Everything was settled by the Führer, and the million others

had only to hear the speeches and shout their approval.

Heinrich, now a high official in the Hitler Youth, had been among those admitted to the opening

ceremonies. He lacked language to describe the wonders, he had to wave his arms and raise

his voice. The frenzied acclaim when the Führer marched in to the strains of the Badenweiler

Marsch— did Lanny know it? Yes, Lanny did, but Heinrich hummed a few bars even so. After

Hitler had reached the platform the standards were borne in, the flags consecrated by being

touched with the Blood Flag, which had been borne in the Munich civil struggle. Heinrich,

telling about it, was like a good Catholic witnessing the sacred mystery of the Host. He told

how Ernst Rohm had called the roll of those eighteen martyrs, and of all the two or three

hundred others who had died during the party's long struggle for power. Muffled drums beat

softly, and at the end the S.A. Chief of Staff declared: "Sie marschieren mit uns im Geist, in

unseren Reihen."

Five days of speechmaking and cheering, marching and singing by a million of the most active

and capable men in Germany, nearly all of them young. Heinrich said: "If you had seen it,

Lanny, you would know that our movement has won, and that the Fatherland is going to be

what we make it."

"I had a long talk with Kurt," said Lanny. "He convinced me that you and he have been

right." The young official was so delighted that he clasped his friend's hand and wrung it.

Another Hitler victory. Sieg Heil!

II

Most of Irma's fashionable acquaintances had not yet returned to the city, so she employed

her spare time accustoming her ears to the German language. She struck up an acquaintance

with the hotel's manicurist, a natural blonde improved by art, sophisticated as her profession

required, but underneath it naive, as all Germans seemed to Irma. An heiress's idea of how to

acquire knowledge was to hire somebody to put it painlessly into her mind; and who could be a

more agreeable injector than a young woman who had held the hands of assorted millionaires

and celebrities from all parts of the world, chattering to them and encouraging them to chatter

back? Fraulein Elsa Borg was delighted to sell her spare hours to Frau Budd, geborene Barnes,

and to teach her the most gossipy and idiomatic Berlinese. Irma practiced laboriously those

coughing and sneezing sounds which Tecumseh had found too barbarous. To her husband she

said: "Really the craziest way to put words together! I will the blue bag with the white

trimmings to the hotel room immediately bring let. I will the eggs without the shells to be broken

have. It makes me feel all the time as if children were making it up."

But no one could question the right of Germans by the children their sentences to be shaped

let, and Irma was determined to speak properly if at all; never would she consent to sound to

anybody the way Mama Robin sounded to her. So she and the manicurist talked for hours about

the events of the day, and when Irma mentioned the Parteitag, Elsa said yes, her beloved Schatz

had been there. This "treasure" was the block leader for his neighborhood and an ardent party

worker, so he had received a badge and transportation and a permit to leave his work, also his

straw and two blankets and goulash and coffee—all free. Irma put many questions, and

ascertained what the duties of a block leader were, and how he had a subordinate in every

apartment building, and received immediate reports of any new person who appeared in it, and

of any whose actions were suspicious, or who failed to contribute to the various party funds, the

Büchsen, and so on. All this would be of interest to Lanny, who might use a block leader,

perhaps to give him information so that he could outwit some other block leader in an

emergency.

Elsa's "treasure" afforded an opportunity to check on the claims of Heinrich and to test the

efficiency of the Nazi machine. One of a hundred clerks in a great insurance office, Elsa's Karl

worked for wretched wages, and if it had not been for his "little treasure" would have had to

live in a lodging-house room. Yet he was marching on air because of his pride in the party and

its achievements. He worked nights and Sundays at a variety of voluntary tasks, and had never

received a penny of compensation—unless you counted the various party festivals, and the

fact that the party had power to force his employers to grant him a week's holiday to attend the

Parteitag. Both he and Elsa swelled with pride over this power, and a word of approval from his

party superior would keep Karl happy for months. He thought of the Führer as close to God,

and was proud of having been within a few feet of him, even though he had not seen him. The

"treasure" had been one of many thousands of Brownshirts who had been lined up on the street

in Nürnberg through which the Führer made his triumphal entrance. It had been Karl's duty to

hold the crowds back, and he had faced the crowds, keeping watch lest some fanatic should

attempt to harm the holy one.

Elsa told how Karl had seen the Minister-Präsident General Göring riding in an open car

with a magnificent green sash across his brown party uniform. He had heard the solemn words

of Rudolf Hess, Deputy of the Führer: "I open the Congress of Victory!" He had heard Hitler's

own proud announcement: "We shall meet here a year from now, we shall meet here ten

years from now, and a hundred, and even a thousand!" And Reichsminister Goebbels's

excoriation of the foreign Jews, the busy vilifiers of the Fatherland. "Not one hair of any Jewish

head was disturbed without reason," Frau Magda's husband had declared. When Irma told

Lanny about this, he thought of poor Freddi's hairs and hoped it might be true. He wondered

if this orgy of party fervor had been paid for out of the funds which Johannes Robin had

furnished. Doubtless that had been "reason" enough for disturbing the hairs of Johannes's head!

III

Lanny took Hugo Behr for a drive, that being the only way they could talk freely. Lanny

didn't say: "Did you write me that letter?" No, he was learning the spy business, and letting the

other fellow do the talking.

Right away the sports director opened up. "I'm terribly embarrassed not to have been of any

use to you, Lanny."

"You haven't been able to learn anything?"

"I would have written if I had. I paid out more than half the money to persons who agreed

to make inquiries in the prisons in Berlin, and also in Oranienburg and Sonnenburg and

Spandau. They all reported there was no such prisoner. I can't be sure if they did what they

promised, but I believe they did. I want to return the rest of the money."

"Nonsense," replied the other. "You gave your time and thought and that is all I asked. Do

you suppose there is any chance that Freddi might be in some camp outside of Prussia?"

"There would have to be some special reason for it."

"Well, somebody might have expected me to be making this inquiry. Suppose they had

removed him to Dachau, would you have any way of finding out?"

"I have friends in Munich, but I would have to go there and talk to them. I couldn't write."

"Of course not. Do you suppose you could get leave to go?"

"I might be able to think up some party matter."

"I would be very glad to pay your expenses, and another thousand marks for your trouble.

Everything that I told you about the case applies even more now. The longer Freddi is missing,

the more unhappy the father grows, and the more pressure on me to do something. If the Detaze

show should prove a success in Berlin, I may take it to Munich; meantime, if you could get the

information, I could be making plans."

"Have you any reason to think about Dachau, especially?"

"I'll tell you frankly. It may sound foolish, but during the World War I had an English friend

who was a flyer in France, and I was at my father's home in Connecticut, and just at dawn I was

awakened by a strange feeling and saw my friend standing at the foot of the bed, a shadowy

figure with a gash across his forehead. It turned out that this was just after the man had

crashed and was lying wounded in a field."

"One hears such stories," commented the other, "but one never knows whether to believe

them."

"Naturally, I believed this. I've never had another such experience until the other night. I was