arrest for any offense or under any charge of even the remotest political nature. I don't
suppose that your friend could have been arrested, say for drunk driving."
"He does not drink and he does not drive, Herr Oberleutnant. He plays delicately and
graciously upon the clarinet, and is a devoted student of your classics. If you should give him the
beginning of any quotation from Goethe he would complete it and tell you in what work it was
to be found."
"It is really too bad, Herr Budd. If there is anything you can suggest to me"
"It has occurred to me that the young man might be in some place of confinement outside
of Prussia, and so might not appear in your police card-file. Suppose, for example, that he
was in Dachau?"
Lanny was watching his dinner companion closely; but if the officer smelled the rat, he was a
skillful actor. "Your friend could not be in Dachau," he declared, "unless he were a Bavarian.
Being a Berliner, he would be in Oranienburg or some other place near by. However, if you wish,
I will cause an inquiry to be made through the
turned up."
"That is most kind of you," declared Lanny. "It is more than I should have ventured to ask in a
time when you and your associates have your hands so full. Permit me to mention that while
the young man's name is actually Freddi, some official may have assumed it to be Friedrich, or
they might have listed him as Fritz. Also it is conceivable that some one may have set him down
as Rabinowitz, the name which his father bore in the city of Lodz."
The staff officer took out his notebook and duly set down these items. "I will promise to do
my best, Herr Budd," he declared.
"Perhaps it will be better if you do not trouble Seine Exzellenz with this matter," added the
visitor. "I know that he must be the busiest man in the world, and I do not want him to think
that I have come to Berlin to annoy him with my personal problems."
Said the staff officer: "He is one of those great men who know how to delegate authority and
not let himself be burdened with details. He has time for social life, and I am sure he will be
interested to hear what you have to report from the outside world."
Said the undercover diplomat: "I got some reactions of the British Foreign Office to Seine
Exzellenz's speech in Geneva. Lord Wickthorpe was really quite stunned by it. You know how
it is, the British have been used to having their own way of late years— perhaps much too easily,
Herr Leutnant. I doubt if it is going to be so easy for them in future!"
22
I
IT WAS Lanny's hope that as soon as his arrival was announced in the papers he would
receive some sort of communication from whoever had taken the trouble to write that Freddi
was in Dachau. He was careful in his newspaper interviews to declare himself a non-political
person, hoping that some of his former acquaintances among the Social-Democrats would take
the hint. But the days passed, and no letter or telephone call was received. Lanny had got
from Rahel a list of Freddi's former comrades; most of them would probably be under arrest,
or in hiding, "sleeping out," as it was called, never two nights in the same place. Before trying
to meet any of them, it seemed wiser for Lanny to try out his Nazi contacts. It would be difficult
to combine the two sorts of connections.
He went to call on Heinrich Jung, who burst into his customary excited account of his
activities. He had recently come back from the
hours had been a new climax, a fresh revelation of
in the soul of National Socialism. "Honestly, Lanny, the most cynical persons were moved to
tears by what they saw there!" Lanny couldn't summon any tears, but he was able to bring
smiles to his lips and perhaps a glow to his cheeks.
"Do you know Nürnberg?" asked Heinrich. Lanny had visited that old city, with a moat
around it and houses having innumerable sharp gables, crowded into narrow streets which
seldom ran straight for two successive blocks. An unpromising place for the convention of a
great political party, but the Nazis had chosen it because of its historic associations, the
memories of the old Germany they meant to bring back to life. Practical difficulties were
merely a challenge to their powers of organization; they would show the world how to take
care of a million visitors to a city whose population was less than half that. Suburbs of tents
had been erected on the outskirts, and the Stormtroopers and Hitler Youth had slept on straw,
six hundred to each great tent, two blankets to each person. There had been rows of field
kitchens with aluminum spouts from which had poured endless streams of goulash or coffee.
Heinrich declared that sixty thousand Hitler Youth had been fed in half an hour—three
