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Chapter Twelve

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« on: May 11, 2023, 10:46:14 am »

TOMMY Hambledon considered for a time the advisability of leaving at once without even waiting to pack a toothbrush, for he was very severely frightened. If Ginsberg had been taken with the plans of the magnetic mine on him, the Chief of Police’s chance of survival was microscopic. Klaus Lehmann had handled the case, Klaus Lehmann was present when Hauser was arrested, Klaus Lehmann himself found the missing file; it could be proved, if anyone really tried, that he had been in touch with Ginsberg, and finally Ginsberg, if he were questioned by Party officials, would talk. Naturally, since he had no idea he had done anything but serve his country, probably he was rather proud of it. Then out would come all the pretty details of papers inserted into travellers’ luggage, of which the case of Henry Winter was only one example, of memoranda slipped into passports---- Hambledon broke into a gentle perspiration. Probably it was already too late to leave, the next time the door opened there would be a squad of S.A. men no longer regarding him deferentially. He opened a drawer, took out an automatic and slipped it into his pocket. No, it didn’t seem much use trying to bolt, better stay and try to face it out. Besides, there was Ludmilla, not that it would do her much good if he faced a firing-squad, but he could hardly depart without a word and leave her to bear the brunt.

However, the next man who came into his office behaved quite normally and made no attempt to arrest him, nor the next, nor the next. Somehow the interminable day passed slowly by and still men saluted when they met him and took orders from him, and no one addressed him as “Hey, you!” adding, “Come along quiet, now.” He went home in safety and to bed in peace, though it cannot be said that he slept particularly well.

The next day he went to his office as usual, not that he wanted to in the least, but he found it impossible to stay away. Still nothing happened.

“Too much dentist’s waiting-room atmosphere about life at the moment to please me,” said Tommy to himself on the third day. “I wonder whether nothing’s going to happen or whether they’re just waiting to pounce. To think I might have been in England by now.”

Towards the evening reports of Party activities as they affected the police were brought in, among them was an item from the S.A. Headquarters at Aachen. “Heinrich Ginsberg, shot while attempting to escape, Sept. 2nd.”

“Dear me,” said Hambledon bleakly.

He determined on a bold stroke and sent for the papers connected with the case. He had a perfect right to send for any such papers of course, only it was just possible that the Party leaders were waiting for him to make some move like that to incriminate himself. He felt as though he were feeling his way blindfold about a dark room full of horribly explosive furniture. One touch in the wrong place and a highly coloured detonation would immediately follow.

However, the papers came without demur and Hambledon learned to his surprise that Ginsberg had been arrested at 8 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 1st, for suspected race-defilement, to wit, having an affair with the daughter of a Jewish provision merchant in Aachen. Informant, Georg Schultz. The prisoner, evidently actuated by a consciousness of guilt, had attempted to escape when he was taken from prison for interrogation, and was shot in the act.

“If this is true and not a trap,” said Hambledon, “he was shot before interrogation, but after having got rid of the plans. If this is true and not a trap, a miracle has occurred and I’ve got away with it once more. Informant, Georg Schultz. That’s the clumsy oaf who was Ginsberg’s subordinate, very odd. There’s something funny going on here. I wonder if Schultz has stepped into Ginsberg’s shoes. I think I’ll look into this further. Poor Ginsberg, a nice fellow, what a damn shame. I don’t believe this tale. If Schultz has framed him he shall wish he was dead before I’ve done with him and then he’ll wake up and find he is, damn him.”

At the end of a week in which nothing untoward had happened, Tommy Hambledon decided to go to Aachen to try and find out for himself what was behind the murder of Ginsberg. He frankly called it murder in his own mind because the man had been shot without a trial, and he did not believe one word of the “attempting-to-escape” formula. It was usually a lie, and this time he knew it, for where would a man escape to in the stone passages and a staircase or so between his cell and the charge room?

He noted down Ginsberg’s home address from the papers relating to the case, and arrived one evening at a small house in a row of workmen’s dwellings in the outskirts of Aachen. He knocked at the door and was kept waiting while faces peered at him through the lace curtains at the front window. Eventually the door was opened to him by a thin old man with a frightened brow-beaten look.

Grüss Gott,” said the man. “I beg pardon, I mean Heil Hitler!” and he gave the Nazi salute.

Grüss Gott,” said Hambledon gently. “I am sorry to intrude on your sorrow. I was a friend of your son’s. May I come in?”

He was shown into the family living-room, which seemed at first glance to be completely filled with large women in black. The old man edged past him as he hesitated on the threshold and said, “Mother, this gentleman says he is a friend of Heinrich’s.” Heinrich’s mother struggled up from an armchair by the fireplace, a short unwieldy woman in which the features seemed half submerged in layers of fat, but the expression of pain in her red-rimmed eyes made Hambledon feel sick, as one feels who looks on torture. She stared at him with plain distrust, and said, “The Herr is very kind, but my son is dead,” in a toneless voice which struck Hambledon as more tragic by far than the emotional agonies with which youth confronts bereavement. “My son is dead,” she said again, still staring at him. Hambledon felt that unless he took a firm hold of himself he would turn and run.

“I---I have heard,” he stammered, “I am desperately sorry.”

The old man came to his rescue. “These are Heinrich’s sisters,” he said, referring to three stout young women standing politely against the wall. “Annchen, Emilie and Lotte.”

There was a fourth girl in the room whom no one introduced, a slim, fair girl like one white rose in a garden of peonies, who sat on a stool by Frau Ginsberg’s chair and took no notice of anyone, slowly and continually twisting her hands; she did not even look up when Hambledon came in. He wondered who she was, she was so obviously not one of the family.

“There’s no need to be so sorry,” said the old woman in a harsh voice. “Will not the Herr sit down?”

Hambledon did so, everyone else who was standing did so too, and all looked at him silently except the girl who took no notice of anyone but went on twisting her hands.

He felt as if he were entangled in some insane charade, a Russian sort of charade like some of those plays Bill Saunders used to go to see in Köln where dreadful families sat in comfortless rooms and discussed suicide. He tried desperately to think of something to say, but found himself wishing so passionately he had never come that he was afraid to speak lest those words and no others should gush out in spite of himself. “I wish to God I hadn’t come. Why did I come? I wish I hadn’t come. I was a fool to come----” And still the women stared at him and the girl went on twisting her hands.

“There’s no need,” said the old woman, still in the same angry voice, “to be sorry. I am told my son broke some of the rules of the Party, that’s all.”

“I came to---to see if there was anything I could do,” said Hambledon desperately. “He---I liked him.”

“The Herr is too kind,” said Frau Ginsberg, and again silence descended on the room.

“If I had known in time,” said Hambledon. “It is useless to say that, I know, but I would have tried to defend him.”

“Why do you come and say such things to us? He broke the laws of the Party, I am told, that’s enough. Are you trying to make us speak against the Party?”

“Mother, Mother,” broke in the old man, “I think the Herr means to be kind.”

“Then let him leave us alone. Nobody can do anything. How can we complain of what the Party does? There’s no one to complain to, and I don’t want any notice taken of us.”

“If only he’d stayed with the trunk-maker,” said Emilie.

“I should have had a son to-day,” said her mother. “I don’t want to lose my husband also, so we won’t complain.”

“I believe I am a good Party member,” said Hambledon, “but that doesn’t mean I approve of every single thing that every other member of the Party may do. I hope these walls have no ears. I hoped I should find myself among friends here.”

“The Herr can trust us,” said the old man.

“I believe you. I tell you quite frankly that I think there’s something behind this matter of your son’s death and I am going to find it out.”

“Leave it alone,” said Frau Ginsberg monotonously. “My son is dead, you can’t bring him back.”

“May we know the Herr’s name?” asked Ginsberg.

“Lehmann. Klaus Lehmann.”

The old man gasped. “You are---sir, you cannot be the Chief of Police?”

“I am,” said Hambledon grimly, “and as such it is my duty to investigate murder.”

“Better let it alone,” said the mother.

The girl sitting on the stool looked up for the first time, and Ginsberg asked, “What does the gracious Herr wish to know?”

“Anything you can tell me. This girl he was supposed to be running after, had she any real existence?”

“Oh, she’s real all right,” began the old man, but the girl on the stool broke in with a torrent of words.

“But he wasn’t running after her, it’s a lie to say he was. He was my love and nobody else’s. He’d never have anything to say to that greasy Jewess, he didn’t like her. He was my very own, and we were going to be married next month.”

Gnädiges Fräulein,” began Hambledon, but she took no notice.

“It’s all a lie and that pig Schultz ought to have been shot for saying it. It wasn’t that Heinrich liked the Jews too much, he didn’t like them enough, that’s what was wrong.”

“Leonore,” said Frau Ginsberg angrily, “be quiet at once. It’s no good, I tell you, hold your tongue.”

“I won’t be quiet. You all sit here letting everybody say horrible things about Heinrich and you don’t say a word. I don’t care if they do shoot me, I wish they would. Do you really want to know why they killed Heinrich?”

“Yes, please, Fräulein,” said Hambledon.

“Be quiet, Leonore, for God’s sake, you’ll ruin us all,” said the old woman.

“Not by speaking to me, Madam,” said Hambledon sternly.

“I don’t care,” said Leonore. “It was this. Schultz used to get money out of the Jews when they went over the frontier, Heinrich told me because he was worried about it and didn’t know what to do. Something about they aren’t allowed to take money with them, but if they gave Schultz some he used to let them take the rest. He wasn’t the only one either, most of the others were in it, but not Heinrich. He made them ashamed, so they killed him.”

“He could have laid a complaint before a higher authority,” said Hambledon. “There are means provided for such a case.”

“Yes, he said so, but the higher authority was in it too, so that was no good.”

“I see,” said Hambledon grimly, “and I am going to see a whole lot more. After that, a number of people are going to wish they had never been born.” He got up and bowed over the girl’s hand. “Good-bye, Fräulein Leonore. I wish more people had your courage. Ginsberg, if there is the faintest suspicion of an attempt on the part of anyone whatever to interfere with any of you, come direct to me at once.”

“It’s no use,” said the old woman. “My son is dead.”

“If only he’d stayed with the trunk-maker,” said Emilie.

Hambledon returned to Berlin and set in train certain inquiries into the Ginsberg affair; while these were proceeding he turned his attention to the matter of Otto Hauser and the designs of the magnetic mine. The police had gathered in a dozen or so assorted people of both sexes who were associates of Hauser’s in Mainz, where he lived except when the Elektrische Gesellschaft sent him away on errands such as this. Most of them were obviously innocent and could be returned at once to their presumably loving families with a warning to be more careful with whom they associated in the future. Two were plainly guilty and were permitted no futures in which to be careful, and three were doubtful, these were put back for further investigation. One of them was an ex-Army officer named Kaspar Bluehm.

This name sent Hambledon’s mind back to Köln and Bill Saunders; there was a girl in Köln called Marie Bluehm who had a brother named Kaspar if he remembered aright, though they had never met. It would be an odd coincidence if this were the same man. If this were the same man it would be pleasant to get him in and make him talk of Köln and the good days when a man had a friend at his back and was not always alone, when there was someone to talk to frankly, someone with whom it was not necessary to act a part, someone with whom one could relax and be puzzled or anxious or afraid, someone who would relieve the strain of this unending tension. “God! How I miss Bill,” said Tommy Hambledon. Perhaps this fellow Bluehm would talk about him, that would be something, if, of course, it were the same man.

Hambledon shook himself impatiently, touched the bell on his desk and told the trooper who answered it to bring in Kaspar Bluehm. While he was waiting he thought that if it were possible he would get the poor chap out of this mess, merely because once he had a sister for whom Bill had cared greatly. “Getting sentimental in my old age,” said Hambledon, but he looked up eagerly when the door opened. “You may go,” he said to the trooper. Bluehm came up to his table and saluted.

Hambledon looked at him attentively and was reminded of Marie at once, though the blue eyes which in her case had been so clear and true were blurred and faded here, Marie’s mouth had shown sweetness and strength while Kaspar’s displayed weakness and obstinacy, but the likeness was unmistakable and Hambledon’s face softened.

“Sit down,” he said kindly. “You are Oberleutnant Kaspar Bluehm?”

“Obersatz Bluehm when the war was over,” said the man, and sat down.

“I beg your pardon. I find it difficult to believe that a man with your war record could be guilty of espionage against Germany. I want you to talk to me frankly and we will clear this matter up.”

“I am certainly not guilty,” said Bluehm, but he did not respond to Hambledon’s kindness. “Trying to entrap me into making admissions,” he thought, “suspected traitors are not handled so gently as all that, does he take me for a fool?”

Hambledon saw growing suspicion in Bluehm’s face and felt like shaking him. “Tell me,” he said, “you knew this Otto Hauser, didn’t you? Where did you meet him?”

“In Buenos Aires originally. I was there for a time after the war, working as an engineer, he was in the same works. We were both Germans, he came from Mainz and I knew the place well, my mother lived there. We used to talk about Mainz and---and things like that. That’s all.”

“Very natural. What happened then?”

“He went home, oh, about four years ago. I came home last year.”

Bluehm was fidgeting all the time with the hat he held on his knee, pulling out the lining and pushing it back with nervous fingers, never looking steadily at Hambledon but only glancing at him from time to time. “You may not be guilty of espionage, my lad, but you’ve something on your mind or I’m the Queen of Sheba,” he said to himself. “Please go on,” he added aloud. “When you came home you met him again, did you?”

“I found my mother and my aunt desperately poor, I had to get something to do. I remembered Hauser, found out where he lived, and went to see him, he got me a job in the Elektrische Gesellschaft. I was grateful, I used to see something of him sometimes, not much, a man like that---but he had helped me.”

“What do you mean, a man like that? Did you know that he was----”

Gott im Himmel, no! I only meant he was merely a workman----”

“Not your social equal, of course not. Did you ever meet people at his house?”

“I never went to his house. We used to go to a café, sometimes to a theatre or the cinema.”

“I quite understand,” said Hambledon, leaning back in his chair. “Apart from having met him abroad and from his having been of use to you, you were the merest acquaintances?”

Bluehm also relaxed, feeling that Hambledon was convinced and that the worst of the interview was over. “Exactly that. Besides, he was an intelligent fellow, I learned a lot from him about the work.”

“On your honour as an officer,” said Hambledon formally, “you had no suspicion whatever that he was engaged in espionage?”

“On my honour, none. He would not have been likely to tell me if he were.”

“No,” said Hambledon, noticing the indecisive mouth and unintelligent eyes, “no, I don’t think he would. I believe you. Unless anything else crops up to incriminate you, you are cleared.”

“Then I may go?” said Bluehm, springing to his feet.

“Sit down again and talk to me a little longer. Tell me, you lived in Köln at one time, didn’t you?”

Bluehm collapsed into the chair rather than sat in it. “I---my family did,” he said. “I was in the Army.”

“Yes, of course. But you spent your leaves there, didn’t you? You knew many people there?”

“I knew a good many, naturally. Why?”

“I knew some Köln people at one time, we might have some mutual acquaintances, that’s all. My dear Bluehm, you’ll destroy that perfectly good hat if you tear at the lining like that, what is the matter with you?”

“Nothing, nothing. My nerves are not what they were, that’s all.”

“Am I so very terrifying? I only thought it would be pleasant to talk over old times.”

“What did you want to know?”

“Oh, nothing of any importance,” said Hambledon, who was getting tired of all this beating about the bush. “Did you know a man I used to meet occasionally, a Dutch importer, Dirk Brandt?”

Bluehm sprang to his feet, his face working. “You’re playing with me,” he cried, “I knew you were. You think I was in touch with British Intelligence then----”

“Great heavens,” said the startled Hambledon, who had no idea anyone knew about Brandt, but Bluehm swept on.

“I didn’t know he was a spy, I thought he was a friend of mine and asked him to look after my sister Marie. But he killed von Bodenheim and Elsa shot herself so Hedwige went to the dogs, and he took Marie and disgraced her, she died too, so when I found out who and what he was----”

He stopped and stared at Hambledon, whose face had grown terrible.

“Yes,” said Hambledon in a cold voice. “When you found out what he was, what did you do?”

“I traced him to England and shot him,” said Bluehm defiantly. “He deserved it anyway for the harm he did, and there was my sister----”

“Damn your sister. Who told you about Brandt?”

“What is the matter?” asked the puzzled Bluehm. “I deserve well of Germany, I destroyed one of her most dangerous enemies----”

“Don’t bleat. Who told you about Brandt?”

“I can’t understand you. I tell you, I had nothing to do with British Intelligence; when I found out that that was what Brandt had been doing I hunted him down and killed him. It took me nearly a year----”

“Damn your autobiography. Answer me at once. Who told you about Brandt?”

“Reck,” said Bluehm, startled into a direct answer. “You wouldn’t know him, a person of no importance, a teacher in some school or other. He went mad, he drank, I believe----”

“Reck,” said Hambledon quietly, “a person of no importance,” and stared straight in front of him, unheeding Bluehm, who went on talking of how he had forced the secret out of Reck in the mad-house, tracked down Brandt in spite of his having changed his name twice and moved from place to place.

Hambledon returned from his abstraction to hear Bluehm saying, “So you see, I have deserved well of the Reich. What is more, I have further information to give. There is no doubt that the other partner, Wolff, was a British spy too, the older man certainly was, Brandt admitted it. He was drowned years ago, though, so we can’t catch him now, I mean the one who passed as Brandt’s uncle, I never met him as it happened. His real name was Hambledon----”

Hambledon broke in with a laugh so bitter that Bluehm stopped talking and stared at him again.

“You fool,” said Hambledon, “you fool. You boast of having shot him and come to me for reward---to me, of all people. Why, I’ve been looking for you for years. Oh, I’ll reward you all right, if I were you I’d say my prayers, fool.”

“What d’you mean?” stammered Bluehm, but Hambledon touched his bell twice and two guards came in.

“Take him away,” said Hambledon harshly, “and send Hagen to me.” He did not look up as Bluehm was led out of the room.

“I told Denton I’d clear this up and I have,” he muttered. “Bill, what were you doing to let that stupid lump get the better of you?”

Hagen entered. “The prisoner who has just left me,” said Hambledon, “Kaspar Bluehm, is a danger to the Reich. He must not be allowed to speak to anyone. You know what to do.”

Hagen saluted and went out. Hambledon spent ten minutes or so carefully tidying his desk, lit a cigar and walked up and down the room till Hagen returned.

“I have to report, sir, that the prisoner eluded his guards and had to be shot to prevent his escape.”

“Do not let it grieve you, Hagen,” said the Chief of Police blandly. “He would have been shot anyway.”

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