The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (17 page)

The case was a cut-and-dried one. The prisoner was a Hermann Weide, age forty, a German citizen who had been brought up in the United States. He was a member of the Communist Party, and had come to Germany to take part in the subversive underground propaganda against the Third Reich and its leaders. He had been apprehended in his room in the Adlon Hotel. Incriminating documents were found among his effects, including plans for setting up an illicit broadcasting station to send out treasonable material to the German people.

The trial was conducted with the utmost simplicity and in German, which the prisoner apparently did not understand. After the reading of the indictment, the evidence, a mass of documents and the passport of Hermann Weide were placed before the judges, who studied them, frowning.

Finally the first judge looked up and inquired: 'Has the prisoner been identified?'

The chief prosecutor, a large man with grizzled, brush-like hair, arose and adjusted a pince-nez, and read from a paper.

'He was identified, Your Worship,
at
the time of arrest, by Frau Johanna Reuche of No. 3 Alt Graben Strasse. She is his aunt and remembered him from several previous visits he made to the Reich. She is an innocent woman and knew nothing of his activities. She can be produced immediately if Your Worship wishes it.'

'Not necessary.'

An S.S. man gave testimony as to how Weide had been taken when he returned late one night to his quarters in the Adlon. He had fought desperately, and in the capture had been so injured that the bandaging was necessary. The three judges conferred, whispering, and examined the documents again. The first judge then said: 'What is the defence of the prisoner?'

Although the prisoner did not understand the language the import of the nod of the judge's head in his direction was plain. He half arose, struggling to speak through the bandages, when he was pulled back to the bench by the two S.S. men, one of whom said:
'Schweigen!
It is not permitted to talk. Your advocate will speak for you.'

The prisoner's lawyer arose. He was a small, nervous man with his coat buttoned too tightly. 'With the permission of Your Worships,' he began.' It is the contention of the prisoner that he is the victim of a plot. He maintains that he is not Hermann Weide but that his name is Hiram Holliday, that he is an American citizen and a newspaper correspondent with connexions in New York, and respectfully begs that the American Embassy be advised of his predicament.'

The judge looked in the direction of the prosecutor and said: 'Who is this American that the prisoner claims to be ?'

The prosecutor arose again. 'He is an American newspaper correspondent, Your Worship, a harmless one. May I read from my record. A Mr Hiram Holliday arrived in Berlin from Prague on Tuesday, November 8, and registered at the Hotel Adlon. He engaged in no subversive activites as far as could be determined, but spent most of his time sightseeing. On November 15, the day before the arrest of the prisoner Weide, he ordered an air ticket to Paris. I have here a statement from the
portier
of the Hotel Adlon. He left by cab at eight-thirty in the morning. The previous day he had notified the American Embassy by telephone of his intention of leaving for Paris. He took the nine-thirty plane for Paris. I have here the records of the Lufthansa agents at the Tempelhofer Flughaben. He occupied seat Number Five. His passport and
Devisen Schein
were examined and stamped at Cologne at eleven o'clock. I have here the records of the Grenze and Devisen Polizei at Cologne for that day, and also the cancelled
Devisen Schein
(money declaration) given up by Holliday there. And finally, he left at the Adlon, as his forwarding address, the Hotel St R£gis in Paris. If Your Worship desires, we can attempt to contact him there through one of our agents for purposes of verifi
...'

The judge interrupted curtly and sternly: 'Not necessary. The evidence is clear and sufficient.'

There was very little more. The three judges conferred a short while longer. The first judge then said
:'
Hermann Weide! You have been adjudged guilty of high treason against the Third Reich and are hereby sentenced to be executed the morning of Wednesday, November 23. The next case, please.'

The prisoner was on his feet and a protest half-uttered when one of the S.S. men guarding him slugged him on the shoulder with his pistol butt and knocked him back to the bench again. Others from the side of the room leaped forward and helped secure him. Stumbling, Hermann Weide, under sentence for high treason, was hustled from the room and back to his steel and stone cell in Moabit prison.

Except that the man hidden by the close bandages was not Hermann Weide. His name was Hiram Holliday, correspondent for the
New York Sentinel.
And he was being led away to certain death.

How Hiram Holliday Saw a Pogrom in Berlin and Met a Woman with Red Hair

It was in the early afternoon of November 9 that the telephone rang in Room 32 in the Hotel Adlon, Unter Den Linden, Berlin, and Hiram Holliday went to pick up the receiver. He had arrived there the day before from Prague in obedience to instructions from a cable from Beauheld, Managing Editor of the
New York Sentinel,
which read: 'Vom Rath Germa
n Embassy Secretary shot in Paris by Jew if dies suspect trouble in Berlin suggest go there immediately cover if can enter without trouble.'

Holliday had flown to Berlin at once. His passport was checked in at Dresden with no trouble whatsoever, because it bore the visa granted by the German Consul in New York collected, among others, when Hiram had prepared to go on the first European vacation. If the authorities in Germany were advised of his curious activities in Europe since his arrival no news of it had apparently reached the Grenz-Polizei in Dresden. They had smilingly wished him a pleasant stay in Germany, and two hours later he was registered at the Hotel Adlon.

The voice out of the receiver said:
'Herr Holliday? Ein moment
3
bitte.
Herr Biederman wishes to speak with you.'

Hiram's lip curled a little as he waited for Biederman, the Berlin correspondent of the
Sentinel,
to come on. He had not much respect for him. For years, at the copy-desk of the
Sentinel,
he had been reading and headlining the dry, newsless, Government-biased despatches of the man, and his meeting with the wizened, self-important old fellow the day before had not improved his opinion.

'Hello - Holliday? Biederman speaking. I thought you might want to know. Von Rath is dead. May be some trouble. I'd stay off the streets tonight if I were you.'

Out of natural politeness Hiram tried hard to keep the contempt out of his voice. But he said: 'What the hell for? If anything happens, I'm supposed to be there to take a look at it.'

Biederman made little impatient, testy noises at the other end of the phone.
'...
It won't do you any good, and you're safer in your room. You can't send the story out of the country, anyway. If anything happens, you can get a statement from the Foreign Office afterwards. You can do as you like, of course. I'm just telling you for your own good. Beauheld knows very well that if anything of importance takes place he can count upon me to cover it for him.'

'O.K., O.K.' said Hiram. 'Much obliged
'He
wanted
to be rid of the whining voice at the other end.

'Oh yes, and Holliday - you remember our little talk about Dr Grunze, the Foreign Propaganda Minister. Hm
...

ah You weren't serious abou
t trying to interview him, were
you?'

'Of course I was,' said Hiram sharply.

'Well
...
ah
...
you must forget about it, old man. No one has done it yet, and if I haven't succeeded no one can. You'll just get yourself into trouble. Beauheld is always sending rash young men through here with crazy orders and then I have to get them out of trouble. We'll be lunching at Baarz tomorrow. Come over and join us if you can.'

Hiram hung up the receiver, and made a face. Anything he hoped to accomplish in Berlin he knew he would have to do alone. And there was the matter of the pledge he had given the Princess Heidi. He had been glad when he was ordered to Berlin. Somewhere, somehow, in the Nazi stronghold he hoped to come upon a clue to the whereabouts of the kidnapped boy. He realized now that he must not even mention the affair to the Berlin correspondent.

He put Biederman out of his mind and went down to the famous Rococo Adlon Bar and had himself a Scotch and soda for which he paid an outrageous price. The bar, with its friezes and bas-relief panels and nymphs and fauns frescoes, was deserted, as was the little lounge that opened off it to the left. The bar-tender studied the big, stoutish man with the bland face behind steel-rimmed spectacles, and the nondescript tousled hair, and decided that there was no mischief in him. It is surprising the confidences a bar-tender will sometimes receive, and he made regular reports to certain officials in the Wilhelmstrasse. Hiram knew that he was being weighed, and
it amused him, and when the bar
tender said: 'You like Berlin, yes ?' he put on the breezy air he had learned from travelling Americans and replied:

'Oh yeah, sure. Great town. Clean. That's what I like about it. Say, how do you fellas tell a store that's run by a Jew from any other store?'

The bar-tender was caught off guard. Before he knew that he had said it he replied: 'The name of the owner must be on the outside on the window in big white letters.' All the help in the hotel were under strict orders not to discuss the Jewish question with foreigners, not to admit even that it existed.

'Well, well, well,' said Hiram fatuously, 'isn't that interesting. I declare.' He paid for his drink and departed, leaving the bar-tender lulled. He went out to the gold-braided doorman and said to him still in the American style
:'
Get me a cab, and tell the feller to drive me around the town a little and show me the sights... .' He was beginning to feel the contempt that all Americans in Berlin do eventually for the clumsy, heavy-handed Nazi police spy system, but he felt that the role of fatuous American tourist suited him, and that it might come in handy.

The chauffeur dutifully drove him around Berlin and showed him the palaces of the former Kaisers, the Friedrich Strasse, the Charlottenburger Chaussee, the famous Sieges Allee and the Tiergarten, the Kurfursten Damm, the night-life and shopping centre, and when he had concluded the principal points of interest, Hiram kept him at it with: 'Just drive around through the streets for a while. Boy, I sure get a kick seein' how clean everything is.' By the time he had the driver deposit him at Horchers in the Luther Strasse, where he proposed to dine, Hiram Holliday had a good knowledge of the layout of the immediate city, the location of the principal synagogues as well as a mental map of the distribution and situation of most of the important Jewish-owned stores in Berlin. For he had a hunch that if there was any trouble to come as the result of the death of Vom Rath in Paris it would be centred at those points.

At Horchers he dined on the curious coppery-flavoured Dutch oysters, and saddle of deer with cream sauce. The decor of the place reminded him of '21,' in New York, and he listened to the guttural babel
of German spoken all about him,
with occasional snatches of French. There were, he noted, some stunning women dining there, large, clear-skinned, tawny-haired, animal-like creatures, and he suddenly felt excited and stimulated, more so than he ever had in Paris. In Paris the women had been light and airy and unconcerned about the business of being women. Or rather, he felt they concerned themselves so much with it that the results were wholly natural and undisturbing. In Berlin he already felt the powerful undercurrent of smouldering, suppressed passion, the despairing, heavy-scented passion of a people who had been commanded to love for the sole sake of proc
reating, and who yearned re
belliously, and torturedly, so that one could almost smell it through the pores of their skin, to love for the sake of loving. Somehow, he felt that there was more attraction in one of these great, clean, chatteled bodies doomed to breed for the State than in all the painted, febrile women of Paris at liberty to love as they choose.

After he had eaten, Hiram walked over to the Kurfursten Damm and mingled with the crowds that paraded the pavements of that broad street, passing the shops and cafes and beer restaurants, and felt again that curious excitement that had gripped him while dining, and he noted too that he had a nervous constriction at the throat. The feeling was yet new to him, but later he was to know it as a warning.

He stopped in front of a famous antique store, its windows full of lovely and graceful
objets d'art,
in porcelain, marble and bronze. There was a priceless head by Durer, some little gems of Bokhara prayer rugs, a small, blue vase in whose slender form lay the limitless and ageless art of ancient China, and there was too a graceful, polished harpsichord at which Mozart had once sat. Hiram wished that he might go inside and lay his hands upon its smooth surface and feel what it had once felt of grace and light and inspired beauty. But the store was closed, and Holliday noted on the window in large white lettering the name of the proprietor: 'Herschel Jacobsen, Berlin, Paris, London, New York...Something made
him
shudder and he turned away and continued to walk. He was still walking the confines of his mental map at three o'clock in the morning when the streets of the grey city were all but deserted except for an occasional cruising green, high-bodied taxi with the checkerband design.