the street righting of Moabit, Neukoln, Schoneberg, and other proletarian districts of Berlin.
He was on his toes with eagerness to become a real officer, like those of the Reichswehr; the
S.S. aspired to replace that army, considering such transfer of power as part of the proletarian
revolution. Oberleutnant Furtwaengler wanted to click his heels more sharply and salute more
snappily than any regular army man; but at the same time he couldn't help being a naive
workingclass youth, wondering whether he was making the right impression upon a foreigner
who was obviously elegant, and must be a person of importance, or why should the Minister-
President of Prussia have spent half an hour with him on such a busy morning?
They were now being driven in an ordinary Hispano-Suiza, not a six-wheeled near-tank; but
again they had a chauffeur in uniform and a guard. There were hundreds of such cars, of all
makes, including Packards and Lincolns, parked in front of the Minister- Prasident's official
residence and other public buildings near by. Such were the perquisites of office; the reasons for
seizing power and the means of keeping it. Leutnant Furtwaengler was going to have a new
uniform, as well as new visiting cards; it was a great day in the morning for him, and his
heart was high; he needed only a little encouragement to pour out his pride to an American
who must be a party sympathizer—how could anyone fail to be? Lanny did his best to be
agreeable, because he wanted friends at court.
Johannes had been taken out of the Nazi barracks, the so-called Friesen Kaserne, to the main
police headquarters, the Polizei-prasidium; but he was still in charge of a special group of the
S.S. It was like the Swiss Guard of the French kings, or the Janissaries of the Turkish sultans—
strangers to the place, having a special duty and a special trust. Johannes represented a treasure
of several tens of millions of marks—Lanny didn't know how many, exactly. If he should take a
notion to commit suicide, Minister-Prasident Goring would lose all chance of getting that
portion of the treasure which had been stored abroad, nor could he get the part stored in
Germany without violating his Führer's "legality complex."
VIII
The car stopped before a great red brick building in the Alexanderplatz, and Lanny was
escorted inside. Steel doors clanged behind him—a sound which he had heard in the building of
the Sûreté Générale in Paris and found intensely disagreeable. He was escorted down a bare stone-
paved corridor, with more doors opening and clanging, until he found himself in a small room
with one steel-barred window, a table, and three chairs.
Oberleutnant. The chair which Lanny took faced the door, and he sat, wondering: "Will they
have shaved his head and put him in stripes? Will he have any marks on him?"
He had none; that is, unless you counted spiritual marks. He was wearing the brown
business suit in which he had set out for his yacht; but he needed a bath and a shave, and
came into the room as if he might be on the way to a firing-squad. When he saw his daughter-
in-law's half-brother sitting quietly in a chair, he started visibly, and then pulled himself
together, pressing his lips tightly, as if he didn't want Lanny to see them trembling. In short,
he was a thoroughly cowed Jew; his manner resembled that of an animal which had been
mistreated—not a fighting animal, but a tame domestic one.
polite, even to a
added the officer, to Lanny.
Two S.S. men had followed the prisoner into the room; they closed the door behind them and
took post in front of it. As Lanny was placed he couldn't help seeing them, even while absorbed in
conversation. Those two lads in shining black boots and black and silver uniforms with skull and
crossbones insignia stood like two monuments of Prussian militarism; their forms rigid, their
chests thrust out, their guts sucked in—Lanny had learned the phrase from his ex-sergeant
friend Jerry Pendleton. Their hands did not hang by their sides, but were pressed with palms
open and fingers close together, tightly against their thighs and held there as if glued. Not the
faintest trace of expression on the faces, not the slightest motion of the eyes; apparently each
man picked out a spot on the wall and stared at it continuously for a quarter of an hour. Did
they do this because they were in the presence of an officer, or in order to im press a foreigner—
or just because they had been trained to do it and not think about it?
"Johannes," said Lanny, speaking German, as requested, "Irma and I came as soon as we
heard about your trouble. All the members of your family are safe and well."
