i 16b0d473103b6aa5 (32 page)

doors at the end of the hall were guarded outside, but not the side door giving to the dressing-

room, since that, of course, was locked. Eigenmann had tried it himself. The table was covered

with papers, interesting and informative in themselves, and there were also eight fat little packets

of notes which the company found even more interesting than the papers. Business was

proceeding in an atmosphere of peace, comfort and security. “A good month, on the whole,” said

Rautenbach, settling his eyeglass more securely in his right eye. “I will begin as usual with the

ports. Stettin, seventeen thousand five hundred marks. Lübeck, two thousand six-fifty. Kiel,

seven thousand two-seventy-five. Hamburg, twenty-four thousand three hundred. Bremen, only

seven—”

Rautenbach saw Dettmer, facing him, suddenly sit up and stare past him towards the

stage with a look of horror.

“—hundred and twenty,” finished Rautenbach, turning his head to see what the other was

looking at. Dettmer had seen the left-hand door open quietly, Rautenbach saw a file of police

come rapidly through it, jump off the stage, and hurl themselves on the assembled company,

including himself. Eigenmann, having his back to the stage, was taken completely by surprise

and promptly handcuffed, but the others put up a good fight and there ensued a very notable

uproar. In the struggle the table was upset and papers and money slid to the floor in a heap; the

gigantic Tietz, flinging from him the two policemen who had attached themselves to his arms,

-made a dive at this and started tearing up papers with the muddle-headed idea of destroying

evidence. One of the police immediately hit him on the head with the leg of a chair, and Tietz

passed into unconsciousness still clasping a double handful of lists and memoranda, snatched up

haphazard from the ground.

When the fracas died down and the prisoners had been quelled and handcuffed, victors

and victims, alike panting, saw the Chief of Police return to the stage. His dignity was a little

marred by his collar, which stuck out at right-angles behind his left ear, but he surveyed the

scene with a benignity which the Land and Field Club disliked intensely.

“Well, well,” he said. “Dear me, you have done it now, haven’t you? Sergeant, have

those papers on the floor carefully collected and taken to the police station; they are important

evidence. Let a bucket of water be poured over the large gentleman, it may revive him. I think

the gentlemen’s coats are in the cloakroom we came through; they may resume them and then be

handcuffed again. The gentlemen will be searched at the station, locked up for the night and

charged to-morrow afternoon, I will go through the evidence in the morning. I suppose the

smaller fry outside the door have also been netted? Good. I commend the police for their

efficiency. I am now going home. Good night, gentlemen.”

Herr Goebbels was not himself present at the police-court proceedings the following

afternoon, but he went nearly insane with anger when his representative gave an account of what

had taken place.

“The Herr Polizei Oberhaupt himself gave evidence. He gave a detailed account of the

way the Jewish money business is worked, and it appears he pounced at Aachen last night too.

Every member of the organization there was hauled out of bed and arrested. Schultz evaded the

police and came up here on a motor-cycle, riding all night, to report it. But that is not the worst.”

“What—”

“All the papers at the Rektor Art School Hall were of course impounded, and the eight

men are charged, not with defrauding the State of the Jews’ money as you’d expect, but with

being members of the German Freedom League.”

“
What
?”

“The German Freedom League. Not ordinary members, either, but a sort of local

executive committee. Important documentary evidence was found, not only on the table but also

in the gentlemen’s pockets, and worse still, in the houses of some of them when they were

searched. Eigenmann’s, Rautenbach’s and Baumgartner’s, to be exact.”

“What happened?”

“The magistrate sentenced them to ten years in a concentration camp, each. I don’t know

what’s happened to our people at Aachen.”

“Damn the people at Aachen,” said Goebbels hoarsely. “Go away and let me think this

out—if I can,” he added, as the man went. “Freedom League! That devil Lehmann has worked

this somehow. It can’t be true. It’s impossible. No, it’s not impossible, but I don’t believe it.

Eigenmann would never—but he’s easily led. Rautenbach is capable of it, but he wouldn’t dare.

On the other hand, where do the Freedom League get their funds from? Must be from something

like this and somebody runs it, why not Rautenbach? No, it’s ridiculous. Lehmann has done this

somehow, and the Leader will be so pleased. Who are those two men—” He rang the bell and his

informant returned.

“Who were those two men we put into Lehmann’s police? Send for them at once, I want

to speak to them.”

“They may be on duty—”

“I said, send for them!”

They came, and found Goebbels white and shaking with fury.

“What do you know about these arrests last night?”

“We were there, sir. We were among the police selected for the duty.”

“Oh, were you? Good. Now, those Freedom League papers were planted. Tell me how it

was done.”

“They couldn’t have been, sir. There was some among the papers on the table and some

in the gentlemen’s pockets.”

“They were put there beforehand.”

“If you say so, sir. But why didn’t the gentlemen see them on the table?”

“They were brought in afterwards.”

“Impossible, sir. I found some of them myself, almost before the fight was over.”

“They were—” Goebbels fought for self-control and stopped. “You may go,” he said, and

the men were glad to do so.

“It seems true,” he said. “But I don’t believe it. This is Lehmann’s work; pompous,

sententious devil, always talking about virtue and morality, blast him. Rautenbach could do it—

If it’s the last thing I do in this life I’ll get Lehmann—”

“Quite easy,” said Tommy to Reck. “I distributed papers in their coats while my gallant

police charged in, then I followed them into the fray, fell over the table, which upset, papers

cascaded from under my overcoat and the helpful Tietz clasped them to his bosom. Always

remember this, Reck, my pippin. When men are fighting, they aren’t
looking
.”

Goebbels’ eight friends arrived at the concentration camp; a group of pampered, arrogant

men who hid their uneasiness behind a screen of defiance. The Camp Commandant looked them

over and decided he did not like them, after which they ceased at once to be pampered, their

arrogance vanished, and even their defiance wore thin.

In one part of the camp there was a row of cells with a warders’ room at the end which

was sometimes used for interviewing prisoners. It was a -bare, ugly room with a wide window in

front looking on to the parade ground; at the back of the room was a row of horizontal ventilating

windows well above eye-level, set wide open on this sunny May morning. Outside the back wall

of this room, below the ventilators, a wide garden bed ran the whole length of the row of cells,

and here one of the prisoners, with a line, a dibber, and a can of water, was setting out young

cabbages.

He heard talking inside the room but took no interest at first in what was said. Nothing

that anybody said could ever make him less of a Jew, and as that was the only offence he had

committed there was no atonement possible. He had a large share of the fatalism of his race; he

knew perfectly well that compared with most of his fellows he was extremely lucky so long as

the same Camp Commandant remained, and he had sunk into an uneasy apathy with his lot,

broken only by occasional frenzied attacks of craving for freedom, freedom, and the air again. So

he worked on placidly, sometimes murmuring to the cabbages about their roots, till his attention

was attracted by a voice raised higher than before.

“Of course they were planted, Herr Goebbels! The police brought them in.”

Goebbels. Talking to his prisoner friends, no doubt. The gardener moved even more

quietly than before and listened.

“Not the police,” said Goebbels’ incisive voice. “That swine Lehmann.”

There followed a confused murmur, presumably of assent, and presently Goebbels went

on:

“I have been looking up his past. He joined the Party at Munich in the early days, he was

a curator in the Deutsches Museum then. Before that again, in ’18, he worked in the Naval

Establishment at Hamburg. It is known that he came there from a hospital at Ostende, so

presumably he had been wounded, but what branch he served in or where he came from, I can’t

find out. The hospital staff scattered and the books were lost or destroyed when we retreated at

the end of the war, and he never talks about himself.”

“Sounds like a thoroughly worthy citizen,” said somebody, with a sneer.

“It does seem as though there’s nothing in his past to bring up against him—unlike most

of us,” said Goebbels, with a sardonic laugh. “Besides, if there were it wouldn’t do any good, the

Leader trusts him.”

“So you’ve just got to sit down under it,” said a deep voice, “while we rot in here.”

“I can’t attempt to get you out while he’s in office,” said Goebbels, “but I’m certainly not

going to sit down under it, Tietz. I’m going to do something very definite quite soon; in July, to

be exact. If I don’t, he’ll frame me next, and then where will you be?”

“Showing you round the camp, I expect,” someone said, and laughed.

“There is a very important commission going to Danzig in July,” said the voice of

Goebbels, “they are going to—er—arrange and expedite future events. They are arriving

unostentatiously, so they can’t have the usual conspicuous guards, but as they are very important

I think I can persuade the Führer to send the Chief of Police with them in person. While he is

there he will be assassinated by the ill-mannered Danzigers.”

“How will you persuade them that he’s the right man to assassinate?”

“I shan’t attempt it, of course, I shall send two men to do it, and the Danzigers can take

the blame. The anti-Nazi Danzigers, that is. I’ll send Schultz for one, he’s done one or two little

jobs for me before, and I’ll find someone to go with him.”

“Thought Schultz was at Aachen,” said another voice. “Wasn’t he roped in with the

rest?”

“No, he wasn’t at home that night when they called for him and the rumour got round. He

hopped on a motor-cycle and left for Berlin, he’s there now.”

“Why wait till Lehmann goes to
Danzig
?” asked the deep voice. “Why not do it now and

let us get out of this filthy hole?”

“Do you want a heresy-hunt started in Berlin, with everyone looking round to see whom

Lehmann has annoyed recently? Don’t be a fool—”

Two guards turned the corner and came strolling down the path towards the cabbage-

planter, who suddenly awoke to the fact that he had not done a stroke of work for ten minutes, so

he hastily went on planting. The guards passed him without comment, but stopped a little farther

on to discuss some matter of dog-breeding, he had to appear industrious in their presence. In a

few minutes the voices in the room ceased and he heard a car drive off, the interview was over.

He ought to have been grateful to Goebbels, who had given him that priceless boon in a

prisoner’s life, something fresh to think about, instead of which he spent many hopeful hours

invoking new and ingenious curses on the sleek black head of the Minister of Propaganda.

It was nearly a week later that the camp had another distinguished visitor, the Herr

Polizei Oberhaupt. He drove his own car, an Opel saloon, and went a little out of his way to drop

the Fräulein Ludmilla Rademeyer at the small house where her friend, the Frau Beckensburg,

was living in terrified obscurity.

“I am very unhappy about Christine, dear. She has aged so you would hardly know her,

in fact she seems to be breaking up. I am really afraid if you can’t do something soon she won’t

live much longer.”

“Tell her to be brave and hold on,” said Tommy. “I hope it won’t be much longer now. I

am going to the camp this afternoon mainly to see the Beckensburgs and have a look round the

place, I hope that may give me an idea. It’s not easy, even for the Chief of Police, to get two

Jews out of a concentration camp.”

“I know, dear, I know. I feel a tiresome old woman to keep on worrying you about her,

but we have been friends for nearly sixty years. After all, you must have much more important

things to deal with—”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Hambledon almost roughly. “I haven’t forgotten a winter’s

day at Dusseldorf when we were cold and starving. Someone gave us firing and food—do you

remember the real butter?” When I forget that—”

“Klaus dear,” said the old lady, “I wish it wasn’t so public, I should like to kiss you.”

“Better not, I should probably run us into a lamp-post. Here you are, give her my love

and tell her to hold on a little longer. Shall I call for you on my way back?”