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It was well known that Göring had flown to the Rheinland with his master, and had then
flown back to Berlin. Hermann was the killer, the man of action, who took the "steps that were
hard but necessary," while Adi was still hesitating and arguing, screaming at his followers,
threatening to commit suicide if they didn't obey him, falling down on the floor and biting the
carpet in a hysteria of bewilderment or rage. Lanny became clear in his mind that this was the
true story of the "Blood Purge." Göring had sat at Hitler's ear in the plane and terrified him
with stories of what the Gestapo had uncovered; then, from Berlin, he had given the orders,
and when it was too late to reverse them he had phoned the Führer, and the latter had flown to
Munich to display "a courage that has no equal," to show himself to the credulous German people
as "a Real Man."
The official statement was that not more than fifty persons had been killed in the three days
and nights of terror; but the gossip in the Ettstrasse was that there had been several hundred
victims in Munich alone, and it turned out that the total in Germany was close to twelve
hundred. This and other official falsehoods were freely discussed, and the jail buzzed like a
beehive. Human curiosity broke down the barriers between jailers and jailed; they whispered
news to one another, and an item once put into circulation was borne by busy tongues to
every corner of the institution. In the corridors you were supposed to walk alone and not to
talk; but every time you passed other prisoners you whispered something, and if it was a tidbit
you might share it with one of the keepers. Down in the exercise court the inmates were
supposed to walk in silence, but the man behind you mouthed the news and you passed it on to
the man in front of you.
And when you were in your cell, there were sounds of tapping; tapping on wood, on stone,
and on metal; tapping by day and most of the night; quick tapping for the experts and slow
tapping for the new arrivals. In the cell directly under Lanny was a certain Herr Doktor
Obermeier, a former Ministerialdirektor of the Bavarian state, well known to Herr Klaussen.
He shared the same water-pipes as those above him, and was a tireless tapper. Lanny learned
the code, and heard the story of Herr Doktor Willi Schmitt, music critic of the Neueste
Nachrichten and chairman of the Beethoven-Vereinigung; the most amiable of persons, so
Herr Klaussen declared, with body, mind, and soul made wholly of music. Lanny had read his
review of the Eroica performance, and other articles from his pen. The S.S. men came for him,
and when he learned that they thought he was Gruppenführer Willi Schmitt, a quite different
man, he was amused, and told his wife and children not to worry. He went with the Nazis, but
did not return; and when his frantic wife persisted in her clamors she received from Police
Headquarters a death certificate signed by the Burgermeister of the town of Dachau; there had
been "a very regrettable mistake," and they would see that it did not happen again.
Story after story, the most sensational, the most horrible! Truly, it was something fabulous,
Byzantine! Ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen, still a member of the Cabinet, had been attacked in
his office and had some of his teeth knocked out; now he was under "house arrest," his life
threatened, and the aged von Hindenburg, sick and near to death, trying to save his "dear
comrade." Edgar Jung, Papen's friend who had written his offending speech demanding
freedom of the press, had been shot here in Munich. Gregor Strasser had been kidnaped from
his home and beaten to death by S.S. men in Grunewald. General von Schleicher and his wife
had been riddled with bullets on the steps of their villa. Karl Ernst, leader of the Berlin S.A.,
had been slugged unconscious and taken to the city. His staff leader had decided that Göring
had gone crazy, and had flown to Munich to appeal to Hitler about it. He had been taken back
to Berlin and shot with seven of his adjutants. At Lichterfelde, in the courtyard of the old
military cadet school, tribunals under the direction of Göring were still holding "trials" averaging
seven minutes each; the victims were stood against a wall and shot while crying: "Heil Hitler!"
IV
About half the warders in this jail were men of the old regime and the other half S.A. men,
and there was much jealousy between them. The latter group had no way of knowing when the
lightning might strike them, so for the first time they had a fellow-feeling for their prisoners. If
one of the latter had a visitor and got some fresh information, everybody wanted to share it, and
a warder would find a pretext to come to the cell and hear what he had to report. Really, the
old Munich police prison became a delightfully sociable and exciting place! Lanny decided that
he wouldn't have missed it for anything. His own fears had diminished; he decided that when
the storm blew over, somebody in authority would have time to hear his statement and realize
that a blunder had been made. Possibly his three captors had put Hugo's money into their
own pockets, and if so, there was no evidence against Lanny himself. He had only to crouch in
his "better 'ole"—and meantime learn about human and especially Nazi nature.
The population of the jail was in part common criminals—thieves, burglars, and sex
offenders—while the other part comprised political suspects, or those who had got in the way of
some powerful official. A curious situation, in which one prisoner might be a blackmailer and
another the victim of a blackmailer—both in the same jail and supposedly under the same law!
One man guilty of killing, another guilty of refusing to kill, or of protesting against killing!
Lanny could have compiled a whole dossier of such antinomies. But he didn't dare to make
notes, and was careful not to say anything that would give offense to anybody. The place was
bound to be full of spies, and while the men in his own cell appeared to be genuine, either or
both might have been selected because they appeared to be that.
The Hungarian count was a gay companion, and told diverting stories of his liaisons; he had
a passion for playing the game of Halma, and Lanny learned it in order to oblige him. The
business man, Herr Klaussen, told stories illustrating the impossibility of conducting any honest
business under present conditions; then he would say: "Do you have things thus in America?"
Lanny would reply: "My father complains a great deal about politicians." He would tell some of
Robbie's stories, feeling certain that these wouldn't do him any harm in Germany.
Incidentally Herr Klaussen expressed the conviction that the talk about a plot against Hitler
was all Quatsch; there had been nothing but protest and discussion. Also, the talk about the
Führer's being shocked by what he had discovered in the villa at Wiessee was Dummheit,
because everybody in Germany had known about Röhm and his boys, and the Führer had
laughed about it. This worthy Bürger of Munich cherished a hearty dislike of those whom he
called die 'Preiss'n— the Prussians—regarding them as invaders and source of all corruptions.
These, of course, were frightfully dangerous utterances, and this was either a bold man or a
foolish one. Lanny said: "I have no basis to form an opinion, and in view of my position I'd
rather not try." He went back to playing Halma with the Hungarian, and collecting anecdotes
and local color which Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson might some day use in a play.
V
Lanny had spent three days as a guest of the state of Bavaria, and now he spent ten as a guest of
the city of Munich. Then, just at the end of one day, a friendly warder came and said: "Bitte,
kommen Sie, Herr Budd."
It would do no good to ask questions, for the warders didn't know. When you left a cell, you
said Ade, having no way to tell if you would come back. Some went to freedom, others to be
beaten insensible, others to Dachau or some other camp. Lanny was led downstairs to an office
where he found two young S.S. men, dapper and correct, awaiting him. He was pleased to
observe that they were not the same who had arrested him. They came up, and almost before
he realized what was happening, one had taken his wrist and snapped a handcuff onto it. The
other cuff was on the young Nazi's wrist, and Lanny knew it was useless to offer objections.
They led him out to a courtyard, where he saw his own car, with another uniformed S.S. man
in the driver's seat. The rear door was opened. "Bitte einsteigen."
"May I ask where I'm being taken?" he ventured.
"It is not permitted to talk," was the reply. He got in, and the car rolled out into the tree-lined
avenue, and into the city of Munich. They drove straight through, and down the valley of the
Isar, northeastward.
On a dark night the landscape becomes a mystery; the car lights illumine a far-stretching
road, but it is possible to imagine any sort of thing to the right and left. Unless you are doing
the driving, you will even become uncertain whether the car is going uphill or down. But there
were the stars in their appointed places, and so Lanny could know they were headed north.
Having driven over this route, he knew the signposts; and when it was Regensburg and they
were still speeding rapidly, he made a guess that he was being taken to Berlin.
"There's where I get my examination," he thought. He would have one more night to do his
thinking, and then he would confront that colossal power known as the Geheime Staats-Polizei,
more dark than any night, more to be dreaded than anything that night contained.
The prisoner had had plenty of sleep in the jail, so he used this time to choose his Ausrede,
his "alibi." But the more he tried, the worse his confusion became. They were bound to have
found out that he had drawn thirty thousand marks from the Hellstein bank in Munich; they
were bound to know that he had paid most of it to Hugo; they were bound to know that some
sort of effort had been made to take Freddi out of Dachau. All these spelled guilt on Lanny's part;
and the only course that seemed to hold hope was to be frank and naive; to laugh and say:
"Well, General Göring charged Johannes Robin his whole fortune to get out, and used me as
his agent, so naturally I thought that was the way it was done. When Hugo offered to do it for
only twenty-eight thousand marks, I thought I had a bargain."
In the early dawn, when nobody was about except the milkman and the machine-gun
detachments of the Berlin police, Lanny's car swept into the city, and in a workingclass
quarter which he took to be Moabit, drew up in front of a large brick building. He hadn't been
able to see the street signs, and nobody took the trouble to inform him. Was it the dreaded
Nazi barracks in Hedemannstrasse, about which the refugees talked with shudders? Was it the
notorious Columbus-Haus? Or perhaps the headquarters of the Feldpolizei, the most feared group
of all?
"Bitte aussteigen," said the leader. They had been perfectly polite, but hadn't spoken one
unnecessary word, either to him or to one another. They were machines; and if somewhere
inside them was a soul, they would have been deeply ashamed of it. They were trying to get
into the Reichswehr, and this was the way.
They went into the building. Once more they did not stop to "book" the prisoner, but
marched him with military steps along a corridor, and then down a flight of stone stairs into
a cellar. This time Lanny couldn't be mistaken; there was a smell of blood, and there were
cries somewhere in the distance. Once more he ventured a demand as to what he was being
held for, what was to be done to him? This time the young leader condescended to reply: "Sie
sind ein Schutzhäftling."
They were telling him that he was one of those hundred thousand persons, Germans and
foreigners, who were being held for their own good, to keep harm from being done to them.
"Aber," insisted Lanny, with his best society manner, "I haven't asked to be a Schutzhäftling —
I'm perfectly willing to take my chances outside." If any of them had a sense of humor, this was
not the place to show it. There was a row of steel doors, and one was opened. For the first time
since these men had confronted Lanny in the Munich jail the handcuff was taken from his
wrist, and he was pushed into a "black cell" and heard the door clang behind him.
VI
The same story as at Stadelheim; only it was more serious now, because that had been an
accident, whereas this was deliberate, this was after two weeks of investigation. Impossible to
doubt that his plight was as serious as could be. Fear took complete possession of him, and
turned his bones to some sort of pulp. Putting his ear to the opening in the door, he could have
no doubt that he heard screaming and crying; putting his nose to the opening, he made sure
that he smelled that odor which he had heretofore associated with slaughter-houses. He was in
one of those dreadful places about which he had been reading and hearing, where the Nazis
systematically broke the bodies and souls of men—yes, and of women, too. In the Brown Book
he had seen a photograph of the naked rear of an elderly stout woman, a city councilor of the
Social-Democratic party, from her shoulders to her knees one mass of stripes from a scientific
beating.
They weren't going to trouble to question him, or give him any chance to tell his story. They
were taking it for granted that he would lie, and so they would punish him first, and then he
would be more apt to tell the truth. Or were they just meaning to frighten him? To put him
where he could hear the sounds and smell the smells, and see if that would "soften him up"? It
had that effect; he decided that it would be futile to try to conceal anything, to tell a single lie.
