power; he had been fighting all his life to get it, and had succeeded beyond anything he could
have dared expect. His lion-cub yawned and stretched his legs. It was time to go hunting.
"Finally," said Goring, "let me make plain what will happen to this
to defy my will. You know that German science has won high rank in the world. We have
experts in every department of knowledge, and for years we have had them at work devising
means of breaking the will of those who stand in our path. We know all about the human body,
the human mind, and what you are pleased to call the human soul; we know how to handle
each. We will put this pig-carcass in a specially constructed cell, of such size and shape that it
will be impossible for him to stand or sit or lie without acute discomfort. A bright light will
glare into his eyes day and night, and a guard will watch him and prod him if he falls asleep.
The temperature of the cell will be at exactly the right degree of coldness, so that he will not die,
but will become mentally a lump of putty in our hands. He will not be permitted to commit
suicide. If he does not break quickly enough we will put camphor in his
understand our medical terms?"
"I can guess, Exzellenz."
"He will writhe and scream in pain all day and night. He will wish a million times to die, but
he will not even have a mark on him. There are many other methods which I will not reveal to
you, because they are our secrets, gained during the past thirteen years while we were
supposed to be lying helpless, having the blood drained out of our veins by filthy, stinking
Jewish-Bolshevik vampires. The German people are going to get free, Mr. Budd, and the money
of these parasites will help us. Are there any other questions you wish to ask me?"
"I just want to be sure that I understand you correctly. If Johannes accepts your terms
and signs the papers which you put before him, you will permit me to take him and his family out
of Germany without further delay?"
"That is the bargain. You, for your part agree that neither you nor the Jew nor any member of
his family will say anything to anybody about this interview, or about the terms of his leaving."
"I understand, Exzellenz. I shall advise Johannes that in my opin ion he has no alternative but
to comply with your demands."
"Tell him this, as my last word: if you, or he, or any member of his family breaks the
agreement, I shall compile a list of a hundred of his Jewish relatives and friends, seize them all
and make them pay the price for him. Is that clear?"
"Quite so."
"My enemies in Germany are making the discovery that I am the master, and I break those
who get in my way. When this affair has been settled and I have a little more leisure, come
and see me again, and I will show you how you can make your fortune and have an amusing
life."
"Thank you, sir. As it happens, what I like to do is to play the works of Beethoven on the
piano."
"Come and play them for the Führer," said the second in command, with a loud laugh which
somewhat startled his visitor. Lanny wondered: Did the eagle-man take a patronizing attitude
toward his Führer's fondness for music? Was he perchance watching for the time when he
could take control of affairs out of the hands of a sentimentalist and
with a gift for rabble-rousing but no capacity to govern? Had the Minister-Prasident's Gestapo
reported to him that Lanny had once had tea with the Führer? Or that he had spent part of the
previous evening in the Führer's favorite haunt?
When Lanny rose to leave, the lion-cub stretched himself and growled. The great man
remarked: "He is getting too big, and everybody but me is afraid of him."
VII
Four days and nights had passed since Johannes Robin had been taken captive; and Lanny
wondered how he was standing it. Had they been giving him a taste of those scientific tortures
which they had evolved? Or had they left him to the crude barbarities of the S.A. and S.S. such
as Lanny had read about in the Manchester
thought it wise to ask the General, and he didn't ask the young Schutzstaffel Ober-leutnant
who sat by his side on their way to visit the prisoner.
Furtwaengler talked about the wonderful scenes on the National Socialist First of May. His
memories had not dimmed in eighteen days, nor would they in as many years, he said. He
spoke with the same naive enthusiasm as Heinrich Jung, and Lanny perceived that this was no
accident of temperament, but another achievement of science. This young man was a product of
the Nazi educational technique applied over a period of ten years. Lanny questioned him and
learned that his father was a workingman, killed in the last fighting on the Somme—perhaps by
a bullet from the rifle of Marcel Detaze. The orphan boy had been taken into a Hitler youth
group at the age of fifteen, and had had military training in their camps and war experience in
