Hugo had been talking to some of his party comrades in Munich, the birthplace of their movement, and had picked up news which didn’t get into the gleichgeschaltete Presse. There was a terrible state of tension in the party; everybody appeared to be quarreling with everybody else. Göring and Goebbels were at daggers drawn over the question of controlling policy—which, Lanny understood, meant controlling Hitler’s mind. Goebbels had announced a program of compelling industry to share profits with the workers, and this, of course, was criminal to Göring and his friends the industrialists. Just recently von Papen, still a Reichsminister, had made a speech demanding freedom of the press to discuss all public questions, and Göring had intervened and forbidden the publication of this speech. A day or two ago the man who was said to have written the speech for the “gentleman jockey” had been arrested in Munich, and the town was buzzing with gossip about the quarrel. It was rumored that a hundred and fifty of Goebbels’s personal guards had mutinied and been sent to a concentration camp. All sorts of wild tales like this, and who knew what to believe?
They had come to the Tegernsee, a lovely mountain lake, and there was a road-sign, reading: “Bad Wiessee, 7 km.” Hugo said: “The papers report that Röhm is having his vacation there. I hear he’s had several conferences with the Führer in the past week or two, and they’ve had terrible rows.”
“What’s the trouble between them?” inquired the gossip-hungry visitor.
“The same old story. Röhm and his friends want the original party program carried out. Now, of course, he’s wild over the idea of having his Stormtroopers disbanded.”
Lanny could credit the latter motive, if not the former. He had heard the red-headed Chief of Staff speak at one of the Nazi Versammlungen, and had got the impression of an exceedingly tough military adventurer, untroubled by social ideals. Perhaps that was due in part to his battle-scars, the upper part of his nose having been shot away! Röhm wanted the powers of his Brownshirts increased, and naturally would fight desperately against having them wiped out.
Seven kilometers was nothing, so Lanny turned his car in the direction indicated by the sign. A lovely little village with tree-shaded streets, and cottages on the lakefront. In front of one of the largest, and also of the Gasthaus Heinzlbauer, were parked a great many fancy cars. Hugo said: “They must be having a conference. Only our leaders can afford cars like those.” The note of bitterness indicated that he didn’t trust his new Führer much more than his old.
“Do you know him?” asked Lanny.
“I know one of the staff members in Berlin, and he has told the Chief that I am working on his behalf.”
“Would you like to go in and meet him?”
“Do you know him?” countered Hugo, startled.
“No; but I thought he might be interested to meet an American art expert.”
“Aber, Lanny!” exclaimed the young sports director, whose sense of humor was not his strongest suit. “I really don’t think he has much time to think about art right now!”
“He might take a fancy to a magnificent young athlete like yourself, Hugo.”
“Gott behüte!” was the reply.
It seemed almost blasphemy to talk about this subject while under the shadow of Röhm and his entourage; but when the American put the question point blank, Hugo admitted that he had heard about the habits of the Sturmabteilung Chief of Staff. Everybody in Germany knew about them, for Hauptmann Röhm, while acting as a military instructor in Bolivia, had written a series of letters home admitting his abnormal tastes, and these letters had been published in the German press. Now, said Hugo, his enemies gave that as the reason for not taking him and his staff into the regular army. “As if the Reichswehr officers were lily-white saints!” exclaimed the S.A. man.
XI
Back in the city, Lanny took a long walk in the Englischer Garten, going over his plans and trying to make all possible mistakes in advance. Then he went back and read the co-ordinated newspapers, and picked up hints of the struggle going on—you could find them if you were an insider. It looked very much as if the N.S.D.A.P. was going to split itself to pieces. Lanny was tempted by the idea that if he waited a few days, Freddi Robin might come out from Dachau with a brass band leading the way!
At the appointed hour Jerry Pendleton called; he was rolling on, and all was well. It was slow on the mountain roads, but he thought he could make it by noon the next day. “What is the deadline?” he asked, and Lanny replied: “Two o’clock.” Jerry sang: “O.K.” and Lanny lay down and tried to sleep, but found it difficult, because he kept imagining himself in the hands of the Gestapo, who had prisons inside of prisons. What would he say? And more important yet, what would they do?
Next morning the conspirator received a telephone call from “Herr Boecklin,” and drove to meet his friend and receive some bad news; one of the men concerned was demanding more money, because the thing was so very dangerous. Lanny asked how much, and the answer was, another five thousand marks. Lanny said all right, he would get it at once; but Hugo wanted to change the arrangement. He hadn’t paid out the money, and wanted to refuse to pay more than half until the prisoner was actually delivered. His idea now was to drive to Dachau with Lanny at the appointed time, and to keep watch near by. If Freddi was produced and everything seemed all right, he would emerge and pay the rest of the money.
Lanny said: “That’s a lot more dangerous for you, Hugo.”
“Not so very,” was the reply. “I’m sure it’s not a trap; but if it were, they could get me anyhow. What I want to do is to keep you from paying the money and then not getting your man.”
XII
Lanny went back to his hotel and waited until early afternoon, on pins and needles. At last came a telephone call; Jerry Pendleton was at the hotel in Munich to which Lanny had told him to come. “Everything hunkydory, not a scratch.”
Lanny said: “Be out on the street; I’ll pick you up.”
“Give me ten minutes to shave and change my shirt,” countered the ex-lieutenant from Kansas.
Delightful indeed to set eyes on somebody from home; somebody who could be trusted, and who didn’t say “Heil Hitler!” The ex-lieutenant was over forty, his red hair was losing its sheen and he had put on some weight; but to Lanny he was still America, prompt, efficient, and full of what it called “pep,” “zip,” and “ginger.” A lady’s man all his life, Lanny was still impressed by the masculine type, with hair on its chest. Though he would have died before admitting it, he was both lonely and scared in Naziland.
Driving in the traffic of the Ludwigstrasse, he couldn’t look at his ex-tutor, but he said: “Gee whiz, Jerry, you’re a sight for sore eyes!”
“The same to you, kid!”
“You won’t be so glad of my company when you hear what I’m in this town for.”
“Why, what’s the matter? I thought you were buying pictures.”
“I am buying Freddi Robin out of the Dachau concentration camp.”
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Jerry.
“He’s to be delivered to me at ten o’clock tonight, and you’ve got to help me smuggle him out of this goddam Nazi country!”
27
A Deed of Dreadful Note
I
Jerry had known that Freddi Robin was a prisoner in Germany, but hadn’t known where or why or how. Now, in the car, safe from eavesdroppers, Lanny told the story and expounded his plan. He was proposing to take his own photograph from his passport and substitute that of Freddi Robin which he had brought with him. Then he would pick up Freddi in Dachau, drive to some other part of the town and get Jerry, and let Jerry drive Freddi out of Germany under the name of Lanning Prescott Budd. Such was the genial scheme.
“At first,” Lanny explained, “I had the idea of fixing up your passport for Freddi to use, and I would drive him out. But I realized, there’s very little danger in the driving part—the passports will be all right, and once you get clear of Dachau everything will be O.K. But the fellow who�
��s left behind without a passport may have a bit of trouble; so that’s why I’m offering you the driving part.”
“But, my God!” cried the bewildered Kansan. “Just what do you expect to do about getting out?”
“I’ll go to the American consul and tell him my passport has been stolen. I have made friends with him and he’ll probably give me some sort of duplicate. If he won’t, it’ll be up to me to find a way to sneak out by some of the mountain passes.”
“But, Lanny, you’re out of your mind! In the first place, the moment Freddi’s escape is discovered they’ll know he’s heading for the Austrian border, and they’ll block the passes.”
“It’ll take you only an hour or two to get to the border from Dachau, and you’ll be over and gone. You’re to drive my car, understand, not the camion.”
“But there will be the record of the Lanny Budd passport and of mine at the border.”
“What then? They’ll draw the conclusion that you are the man who stole my passport. But it’s not an extraditable offense.”
“They’ll know it was a put-up job! You’re the brother-in-law of Freddi’s brother and you’ve been trying to get him released. It’ll be obvious that you gave me your papers.”
“They won’t have a particle of evidence to prove it.”
“They’ll sweat it out of you, Lanny. I tell you, it’s a bum steer! I could never look your mother or your father or your wife in the face if I let you put your foot into such a trap.” As ex-tutor, Jerry spoke for the family.
“But I have to get Freddi out of Germany!” insisted the ex-pupil. “I’ve been a year making up my mind to that.”
“All right, kid; but go back to your original idea. You steal my passport and drive Freddi out.”
“And leave you in the hole?”
“That’s not nearly so bad, because I’m not related to the prisoner and I’m not known. I’m a fellow you hired to get your paintings, and you played a dirty trick on me and left me stuck. I can put up a howl about it and stick to my story.”
“They’d sweat you instead of me, Jerry.”
So the two argued back and forth; an “Alphonse and Gaston” scene, but deadly serious. Meanwhile the precious time was passing in which exit permits and visas had to be got. There appeared to be a deadlock—until suddenly an inspiration to the ex-tutor. “Let’s both go out with Freddi, and leave Cyprien to face the music. I’ll steal his passport in earnest.”
“That would be a rotten deal, Jerry.”
“Not so bad as it seems. Cyprien’s a French peasant, who obviously wouldn’t have the brains to think up anything. He’ll be in a rage with us, and put on a fine act. I’ll get him loaded up with good Munich beer and he’ll be smelling of it when the police come for him. When we get to France you can telegraph some money to the French consul here and tell him to look after his own. When Cyprien gets home with his truck you can give him a few thousand francs and he’ll think it was great adventure of his life.”
Lanny didn’t like that plan, but his friend settled it with an argument which Lanny hadn’t thought of. “Believe me, Freddi Robin looks a lot more like the name of Cyprien Santoze than like the name Lanning Prescott Budd!” Then, seeing Lanny weakening: “Come on! Let’s get going!”
II
Jerry took the truckman to get their exit permits and to have their passports “visaed” for Switzerland—he thought it better not to trust themselves in Mussolini’s land. Lanny went separately and did the same, while Jerry treated Cyprien to a square meal including plenty of good Munich beer. The Frenchman, who hadn’t grown up as saintly as his mother had named him, drank everything that was put before him, and then wanted to go out and inspect the girls of thirteen years and up who were offering themselves in such numbers on the streets of Munich. His escort said: “Those girls sometimes pick your pockets, so you’d better give me your papers to keep.” The other accepted this as a reasonable precaution.
Lanny drove his friend out to Dachau to study the lay of the land. He pointed out the spot where the prisoner was to be delivered, and made certain that Jerry knew the street names and landmarks. It was the Kansan’s intention to “scout around,” so he said; he would find a place from which he could watch the spot and see that everything went off according to schedule. Hugo would be doing the same thing, and Lanny wasn’t at liberty to tell Jerry about Hugo or Hugo about Jerry. It sufficed to warn his friend that there would be a Nazi officer watching, and Jerry said: “I’ll watch him, too!”
One serious difficulty, so far as concerned the ex-tutor, and that was, he knew only a few words of German. He said: “Tell me, how do you say: ‘Hands up!’?”
Lanny answered: “What are you thinking about, idiot? Have you got a gun?”
“Who? Me? Who ever heard of me carrying a gun?” This from one who had been all through the Meuse-Argone in the autumn of 1918!
“You mustn’t try any rought stuff, Jerry. Remember, murder is an extraditable offense.”
“Sure, I know,” responded the other. “They extradited a couple of million of us. You remember, the A.E.F., the American Extraditable Force!” It was the old doughboy spirit.
Lanny knew that Jerry owned a Budd automatic, and it was likely he had brought it along with him in the truck. But he wouldn’t say any more about it; he just wanted to learn to say: “Hände hoch!”
They studied the map. They would drive north of Dachau, then make a circle and head south, skirt the city of Munich and streak for the border. When they had got the maps fixed in mind, they went over the streets of Dachau, noting the landmarks, so as to make no mistake in the dark. All this done, they drove back to Munich and had a late supper in a quiet tavern, and then Jerry went to his hotel. There were a few things he didn’t want to leave behind, and one or two letters he wanted to destroy. “I didn’t know I was embarking upon a criminal career,” he said, with a grin.
At the proper hour he met his pal on the street and was motored out to Dachau and dropped there. It was dark by then, a lovely summer evening, and the people of this workingclass district were sitting in front of their homes. Lanny said: “You’ll have to keep moving so as not to attract attention. See you later, old scout!” He spoke with assurance, but didn’t feel it inside!
III
Back in Munich, the playboy drove past the spot where he was accustomed to meet Hugo, in front of a tobacco shop on a well-frequented street. Darkness had fallen, but the street was lighted. Lanny didn’t see his friend, and knowing that he was ahead of time, drove slowly around the block. When he turned the corner again, he saw his friend not far ahead of him, walking toward the appointed spot.
There was a taxicab proceeding in the same direction, some thirty or forty feet behind Hugo, going slowly and without lights. Lanny waited for it to pass on; but the driver appeared to be looking for a street number. So Lanny went ahead of it and drew up by the curb, where Hugo saw him and started to join him. Lanny leaned over to open the door on the right side of the car; and at the same moment the taxicab stopped alongside Lanny’s car. Three men sprang out, wearing the black shirts and trousers and steel helmets of the Schutzstaffel. One of them stood staring at Lanny, while the other two darted behind Lanny’s car and confronted the young sports director in the act of putting his hand on the car door.
“Are you Hugo Behr?” demanded on of the men.
“I am,” was the reply.
Lanny turned to look at the questioner; but the man’s next action was faster than any eye could follow. He must have had a gun in his hand behind his back; he swung it up and fired straight into the face in front of him, and not more than a foot away. Pieces of the blue eye of Hugo Behr and a fine spray of his Aryan blood flew out, and some hit Lanny in the face. The rest of Hugo Behr crumpled and dropped to the sidewalk; whereupon the man turned his gun into the horrified face of the driver.
“Hände hoch!” he commanded; and that was certainly turning the tables upon Lanny. He put them high.
“Wer si
nd Sie?” demanded the S.S. man.
It was a time for the quickest possible answers, and Lanny was fortunate in having thought up the best possible. “I am an American art expert, and a friend of the Führer.”
“Oh! So you’re a friend of the Führer!”
“I have visited him a several times. I spent a morning with him in the Braune Haus a few months ago.”
“How do you come to know Hugo Behr?”
“I was introduced to him in the home of the Heinrich Jung, a high official of the Hitler Jugend in Berlin. Heinrich is one of the Führer’s oldest friends and visited him many times when he was in the Landsberg fortress. It was Heinrich who introduced me to the Führer.” Lanny rattled this off as if it were a school exercise; and indeed it was something like that, for he had imagined interrogations and had learned his Rolle in the very best German. Since the S.S. man didn’t tell him to stop, he went on, as fast as ever: “Also on the visit to the Reichsführer in the Braune Haus went Kurt Meissner of Schloss Stubendorf, who is a Komponist and author of several party-songs which you sing at your assemblies. He has known me ever since we were boys at Hellerau, and will tell you that I am friend of the National Socialist movement.”
That was the end of the speech, so far as Lanny had planned it. But even as he said the last words a horrible doubt smote him: Perhaps this was some sort of anti-Nazi revolution, and he was sealing his own doom! He saw that the point of the gun had come down, and the muzzle was looking into his navel instead of into his face; but that wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He stared at the S.S. man, who had black eyebrows that met over his nose. It seemed to Lanny the hardest face he had ever examined.
“What were you doing with this man?”—nodding downward toward what lay on the pavement.
“I am in Munich buying a painting from Baron von Zinszollern. I saw Hugo Behr walking on the street and I stopped to say Grüss Gott to him.” Lanny was speaking impromptu now.
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