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“That I can understand,” said the Chief of Police, “but what I don’t believe for an instant

is that a man in your position would lose a sum like that without making an uproar about it.

Would you?”

“No, sir,” said the prisoner promptly.

“That is, if he ever had such a sum. Has there been any complaint about a serious loss of

money among the goods yard porters?”

“No, sir,” said the Superintendent present. “Inquiries have been made.”

“So you see,” said Lehmann, addressing the prisoner again, “it doesn’t seem as though

your story could be true, does it?”

“But it is, sir,” insisted Jakob.

“Would you believe it yourself, if you were in my place?”

Jakob hesitated.

“No, sir,” he said, facing Lehmann squarely. “I don’t believe I would. But it is true, sir.”

“Dammit, I believe the fellow’s telling the truth,” muttered Lehmann to the

Superintendent. “Remanded in custody for a week, both of them. Have that car looked up,

you’ve got its number.”

“The Herr Oberhaupt has a funny way of examining prisoners,” said one Inspector

quietly to another.

“What odds so long as he gets at the facts?” said the other.

“Supposing this man to be speaking the truth,” said Lehmann, talking to the

Superintendent in private, “it is perfectly obvious that the man who lost the money had no right

to it. Nobody swaps eleven thousand marks for a couple of ounces of sausage without howling

about it, not in these days, thank God.”

“No, sir. Looks like proceeds of a robbery, sir.”

“So I think. Either that, or they’re forged. I will take them away and have them

investigated. I’ll sign a receipt for them if you’ll make it out.”

It was soon established that the notes were not forgeries, so Hambledon sent a list of their

numbers to the various banks, with a request to know when they had last been passed out and to

whom, and sat down to consider the pencilled entries on the cardboard cover. They ran:

“April 7th Gagel Dettmer Kitzinger Tietz Rautenbach Militz Eigenmann Baumgartner

May 4th”

“Message ends,” said Tommy to himself. “Since the faculty of reasoning is what mainly

distinguishes us from the brute creation, what do we deduce from this? How much did Altmann

have on him after his night out?” He turned up a note on the amount. “11,820. And to think of

him lying asleep on the pavement with all that mob surging round him and nobody picked his

pocket! However, I think that Herr Altmann spent one hundred and eighty marks on his evening

beer. What a jag! I wonder how much of that he gave his wife.”

He looked at the two dates and the list of names. “April 7th, that was the night of the fire.

I think there was going to be a share-out that night among the Herren Gagel, Dettmer and Co.,

but when they got there the cupboard was bare and so the poor dogs got none. I wonder what

they said to the treasurer when he offered them two and a half ounces of sausage instead.” He

looked again at the list of names, some of them were familiar. “Rautenbach, Militz, Eigenmann

and Baumgartner are creatures of Goebbels,” he said thoughtfully, unlocked his safe and took a

book out of it. “Let’s see if we have any notes about them. Yes, I thought so. Eigenmann is up to

the neck in this Jewish racket, Militz, s.n.p.—suspected, not proved. Nothing against the other

two. Kitzinger, I think I’ve heard of him before. Yes, Jewish racket again, and so is Dettmer if I

don’t mistake—I don’t. He is. Tietz, s.n.p. again. Gagel, no mention.” He locked up the book

again and lit a cigar. “The bag turns up on the railway, and the railway people are deep in this

Jew swindle. We are getting on, we really are. I don’t think this is quite an ordinary robbery,

somehow, I think it’s a share-out of some of the cash extracted from our Jewish emigrants, poor

shorn lambs, and if Herr Goebbels takes any interest in the case, I shall know I’m right. It will be

interesting to see what the banks report and in the meantime I think I’ll copy out this little list.”

He made a copy, locked it up in his safe, and spent ten minutes in going through a police

report which came in. He smiled secretly to himself when an S.S. trooper tapped on the door and

announced, “The Herr Minister-of-Propaganda Goebbels.”

“I beg your forgiveness, my dear Lehmann, for breaking in upon your labours like this. I

am anxious to know whether you have been able to get any light upon the abominable fire at the

Record House.”

“Please sit down,” said Hambledon, setting a chair for his visitor, “I trust that you will

never think it necessary to apologize for coming to see me. I am firmly of the opinion that the

effective functioning of a Government is only possible when the heads of Departments are upon

terms, not merely of formal interrelation, but of genuine collaboration.”

“How true,” said Goebbels, “but—”

“But you did not favour me with minutes of your valuable time to hear my platitudinous

remarks upon Governmental efficiency. Exactly. With regard to the fire at the Record House, I

think there can be no doubt but that it was a case of deliberate arson.”

Goebbels gulped slightly. “I had no idea that anybody doubted that for a moment,” he

said acidly. “The facts speak for themselves.” The old fool Lehmann must be entering his

dotage; it was inconceivable that he was daring to pull Goebbels’ leg.

“Not necessarily,” said the Chief of Police. “I have known facts which lied like—like

Ananias, till one found out some more. However, I think we may safely assume this to have been

arson. The two men who, presumably, caused it were so completely destroyed by fire as to be

quite unrecognizable when found. Unfortunately, the sergeant who saw them through the letter-

box slit also perished, so we shall never know whether he recognized them or not.”

“So you’ve got no further in the matter?”

“On the contrary,” said Hambledon, leaning back in his chair and putting the tips of his

fingers together, “several interesting points have emerged. There have been, as no doubt Your

Excellency knows, a number of cases of arson in various parts of Germany during the past

twelve or fifteen months. I now know them to be the work of criminals already known to the

authorities, since they were so anxious for the destruction of all records of such criminals as to be

willing to take the risk involved in destroying by fire a large and important building in the—”

“Yes, yes, my dear Lehmann, but that is all rather vague, is it not? It would have been

encouraging to hear that you had found out something a little more definite.”

“Your Excellency brings me to a point which, if you had not done me the honour to visit

me, I should have called upon you to discuss. A constable who was passing the Record House

shortly before the alarm was given—the same who found Reinhardt—noticed a car standing by

the roadside about fifty yards from the door, with its engine running. He took its number.”

“Well?”

“The moment the alarm was given the driver threw in his clutch and drove off at a furious

rate. My men regarded the incident as suspicious.”

“Quite right.”

“They could not chase him because they had no means at their disposal, but they

subsequently looked up the number. It was that of a car belonging to one Eigenmann who is, I

understand, one of Your Excellency’s private secretaries.”

“The car must have been stolen,” said Goebbels instantly.

“Inquiries were made,” said Hambledon, fitting his fingers together in a different order,

“of Herr Eigenmann personally as to his movements that evening, with a view to elucidating that

point. He told my representative that he had spent that evening driving the car in question to a

house near Lindow where some of his cousins live.”

“That is true—”

“That he arrived there soon after seven and did not leave again for Berlin till after eleven.

As Lindow is fully sixty miles from Berlin—”

“It is plain,” said Goebbels, “the car by the Record House had false number-plates.”

“That may be,” said Hambledon. “I—forgive my careless inattention! Let me offer you a

cigar. You may possibly prefer these, let me give you a light. I was about to tell Your Excellency

that a robbery took place near Gransee that evening, and as the thieves had escaped in a car all

the roads were picketed and every car stopped. Herr Eigenmann’s car was not in that

neighbourhood that night.”

“He exchanged cars for some reason,” said Goebbels hastily. “Possibly he had a

breakdown.”

“He particularly assured my man that he had driven his own car all the way,” said

Tommy blandly. “We thought of that.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Goebbels angrily. “This is a mare’s nest you have found, Herr

Lehmann. I will ask Eigenmann to tell me clearly what happened, and inform you in due

course.”

“That is precisely what I was going to ask Your Excellency to do. If Herr Eigenmann was

involved that night in some little indiscretion, it is natural he should not wish to tell the police

about it, though, of course, it would be no concern of ours—probably. At the same time, I should

be glad to have the fullest possible details of the movements of that car that night.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Another point, what about that money?”

“We think it must have been the proceeds of a robbery. I am having inquiries made.”

“If you find out nothing?”

“It reverts to the Treasury, of course, who will give me a receipt for it.”

Goebbels looked as if he could have killed the Chief of Police, but merely said, “An odd

complication. How much was there?”

“Eleven thousand eight hundred and twenty marks by the time it came into our hands,

though apparently it was twelve thousand marks originally.”

“How do you know?”

“I assume it by the notes on this card,” said Hambledon, handing it to him. “The notes

were held together—I fear you are not well, Herr Goebbels. You are quite pale. The cigar,

perhaps—”

“I have a slight chill, it is nothing,” said Goebbels carelessly. “Common names, all of

these.”

“It would have been better if we had had their initials also,” agreed Hambledon.

“I will not take up more of your valuable time,” said Goebbels, and took his leave.

“Considering,” said Tommy after he had gone, “that you knew perfectly well Eigenmann

was waiting with the rest of the hungry crew somewhere in Berlin for the cash to arrive, that’s a

pretty stout effort.”

“Damn the fellow,” thought Goebbels. “I’ll get rid of him somehow, only he’s so

infernally incorruptible. Wonder if there’s anything in his past; I’ll have him looked up.

Heidelberg man, by his scars. Before my time, of course. Wonder which Student Corps he was

in?”

A week later Jakob Altmann and Gregor Buergers came up again at the police-court to

answer for their doings on the night of the fire. As it was perfectly obvious that they could not

have had anything to do with the fire, not even with the sandbagging of Reinhardt, since they

were far too inebriated at the time, they were merely charged with stealing by finding the sum of

twelve thousand marks, the property of some person or persons unknown, Altmann as principal

and Buergers as accessory. They were sentenced to periods of two years and nine months

respectively of forced labour on the roads of Westphalia.

“Nice long way off,” said Jakob, with a glance at Gertrud, who was sitting in court

weeping ostentatiously. “Thank you, gentlemen.” Buergers said nothing.

It was another ten days before Hambledon received a reply from any of the various

German banks to his question about the mark notes. Eventually, one of them reported that the

notes in question, together with others of considerably larger denomination making a total of

eighteen thousand five hundred marks altogether, had been paid out on March the 2 5th to Herr

Rolf Weinecke of Aachen. Since they knew that the inquiry came from the Chief of Police they

added all the information they could give, particularly the numbers and denominations of the

larger notes. They added that some of the notes were again in circulation in Aachen, and that the

whole sum was produced by the sale of bearer bonds deposited with them ten months earlier by

the said Herr Weinecke.

“So,” said Tommy to himself. “What proportion do they allow these wretched Jews to get

away with? Twenty per cent, I believe. Now twenty per cent of eighteen thousand five hundred

is-er-three thousand seven hundred.” He wrote the figure down and looked at it. “Strange. That’s

just the total of the few notes of really large denomination. Now, if a Jew were bolting out of

Germany with the paltry marks allowed him by the Government, he would change one of his big

notes as soon as possible, I think. Going from Aachen, that would be Brussels, or possibly

Ostende if he were going to England. I’ll try both. Twelve thousand plus three thousand seven

hundred is fifteen thousand and seven hundred. Subtracted from eighteen thousand five hundred,

it leaves—er—two thousand eight hundred. I think Herr Weinecke pocketed two thousand eight