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« on: May 12, 2023, 06:26:47 am » |
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TOMMY Hambledon received a coloured picture-postcard of the Kursaal at Wiesbaden, taken across the ornamental water. The message written upon it said, “Playing here to-morrow, Coblentz Saturday, Cologne Monday, going home Tuesday, auf wiedersehen some day, greetings, good-bye,” it was signed D. Ogilvie. “Lucky devil,” said Hambledon, threw the card in a drawer of his writing-table and went to a meeting of the Party Chiefs, summoned by the Leader. Now this was January 1938.
One never knew what to expect from these meetings of the Leader’s. Sometimes they were addressed on stirring subjects such as a new badge for machine-gunners, or how to stimulate the birth-rate; sometimes they heard of a new tax to be imposed or new measures against the Jews, sometimes there was an announcement about something really important like the reoccupation of the Rhineland or the building of the Siegfried Line, and sometimes it seemed to Tommy that they just gathered together to blow off hot air and tell each other how wonderful they were, just like the Monkey-People in the Jungle Books, only a lot more dangerous. “You never know,” said Tommy, “whether it’s gas or high explosive. Wonder what it is this time.”
He soon learned, for they were informed in singularly few words, considering who was speaking, that Austria would be incorporated in the Reich in March. There would be internal troubles in Austria, unrest, rioting, faction-fighting in the streets and so forth. The Austrians, realizing that their paltry Government was too weak to keep order, would naturally appeal to their powerful neighbour for help, and union with Germany would naturally follow. Thus so many millions more Germans would return to their spiritual home, the Reich, and Germany would become greater Germany. Hoch der Anschluss! Hoch!
It was perfectly obvious that the inner circle of Party leaders whom Hambledon rudely called the Big Six had got this scheme all cut and dried, and the purpose of this somewhat larger meeting was merely to inform the various heads of departments about a decision already taken. They were not asked for comment, still less criticism; a few well-chosen words of congratulation, yes, but no more. One less tactful individual asked what would happen if any of the Austrians fought.
“Fought! Fought whom?”
“Us,” said the Deputy bluntly.
“No worthy Austrians will fight us. There are, as I have said, subversive elements which require suppression. They will be suppressed.”
“But----”
“There is no room for doubt. There is unrest in Austria, that is why we march in. If there is unrest after we have marched in, that will only show how right we were to do so.”
The Deputy gave it up.
The meeting ended with the executive officers being told to prepare plans, each in his separate sphere, for reorganizing the administration of Austria in line with that of the Reich; posts, telephones, railways, tax collections, and so forth. Hambledon received written orders for the reorganization of the Austrian police, supersession would be a better word. He was to submit detailed schemes for putting these orders into effect. He clicked heels, gave the Nazi salute, and marched out.
“There goes a good servant of the Reich,” said the Führer approvingly.
“I had occasion to say a few words to him the other day about minding his own business,” said Goebbels. “They seem to have done good.”
“Indeed! What about?”
“He had some views about the Jewish question which hardly came within his province, that is all,” said Goebbels smoothly. “There was nothing wrong---every man has the faults of his virtues. He was a little over-zealous, that is all.”
“I wish every man I had to deal with had only Lehmann’s faults. He has one outstanding merit which I will ask you to remember and cherish.”
“What is that?”
“He is the only man in the Party whom we all of us trust.”
“That is true,” said Goebbels thoughtfully.
“Herr Goebbels will remember in future.”
Herr Goebbels would, with displeasure, in fact the Führer had made a dangerous enemy for his incorruptible Chief of Police.
Hambledon returned to his office to get some books of reference, said that he would not be returning that day as he was going to work at home, and returned to the flat. In point of fact he often did work at home when he wanted to be uninterrupted, his study there was not to be approached once he gave the warning, “I shall be busy, Franz, this afternoon.” The meal-time gong was not sounded, no wireless played, even footsteps passing the door were hushed, for Tommy Hambledon, who had never raised his voice or lost his temper in his own house, yet knew how to make himself obeyed.
He settled down with maps and reference books to work out a scheme for the effectual policing of Austria, and it took him several hours. He made copious notes, drew up a draft report, and then corrected, amended and annotated it till it was barely legible. When he was finally satisfied he opened his typewriter, put in a sheet of paper, looked at it for a moment and took it out again, replacing it by two sheets with a carbon paper between. “I’ll give ’em something to think about,” he said with a grin, and proceeded to make a fair copy of his report. By the time he had finished it was past seven and he was stiff, tired and hungry, but there was a little more to see to yet. He rang the bell and Franz came.
“Is Herr Reck in the house?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Ask him to come to me, will you?”
Reck came, Hambledon gave him a cigar and asked him if he knew anything about photography.
“Did you ever know a science master who didn’t? I made a hobby of it at one time.”
“Got a camera now?”
“Heavens, no. What for? Want a series of photos of yourself for a magazine article entitled ‘Great Men at Home’?”
“Of course,” said Hambledon, “how did you guess? One of me at my desk with an expression of grim concentration, one with my feet on the mantelpiece nursing the cat, and one with me in the background and the whole foreground occupied by the glass bottom of a tankard of beer which veils, without entirely obscuring, these classic features which are the admiration of the law-abiding and a terror to evil-doers. Oh, yes, another of me setting out to the office in the morning with my chin up and my chest thrown out, and another of me coming home in the evening, haggard and bent with my day’s toil for the Fatherland, but my features irradiated with that pleasing inward glow which comes only from a sense of duty well done----”
“Or from whisky,” said Reck. “You’re pleased about something, aren’t you?”
“Why?”
“You always babble like that when you’re pleased.”
“Or frightened. Perhaps you’re right.”
“This photography. What about it?”
“Could you take a photograph of this so that the prints will be completely legible?” asked Hambledon, holding up the two sheets of the orders he had received anent the policing of Austria.
“Nice black typing,” said Reck. “Top copy, not too large. Yes, I think so. One of those old-fashioned wooden cameras with bellows extension, half-plate size, wide-angle lens.”
“Can you buy such a thing?”
“Second-hand. Oh, yes, I expect so.”
“What pretext would you have for wanting a camera like that?”
“They are used mainly for photographing architectural features---ancient Gothic archways, that sort of thing. I take up a new hobby.”
“What, publicly?”
“It might be as well,” said Reck. “I shall moon about with camera on long tripod legs, prodding people wherever I turn round. Focusing cloth. Pockets bulging with dark slides, and so forth.”
“What about developing?”
“I shall process them myself---may I use the bathroom?”
“Except when I want it,” said Tommy handsomely. “Ask Fräulein Rademeyer.”
Hambledon made a detour on his way to the office in the morning, to pay a visit to a shabby man who lived in a slummy street in the poor quarter of Berlin. The shabby man opened the door himself, and when he recognized the Chief of Police he looked alarmed and indignant.
“Herr Polizei Oberhaupt, I’ve done nothing, honest I haven’t, don’t even want to, got a good job now writin’ copies for the children’s copybooks, straight I have----”
“It’s all right,” said Hambledon reassuringly. “There’s nothing against you---at the moment. I only want you to do a little job for me.”
For this man had the gift of being able to write most beautifully in any style he chose; he made a living by practising this gift, only unfortunately he sometimes practised on cheques, and that was how he came to know the Chief of Police.
“Anything I can do for you, sir, of course---please come in.”
Hambledon went in, when the door was shut behind them he produced a picture-postcard of the Kursaal at Wiesbaden and said, “Can you imitate that writing?”
“Bit funny, isn’t it?” said the man, studying Dixon Ogilvie’s farewell message. “Foreigner, isn’t he?”
“Yes, can you do it?”
“Bless you, sir, yes, have to be a lot funnier than that before it stumps me. What d’you want?”
“Only a luggage label, here are some. Write on it ‘Dixon Ogilvie’—here, I’ll write it down for you. ‘Dixon Ogilvie, à Londres via Bruxelles, Ostende et Douvre.’ That’s all.”
“How many d’you want?”
“Only one. Don’t post it to me, bring it to my house at nine to-night.”
---
Dixon Ogilvie and his uncle, homeward bound from Cologne, sat in the train at the frontier waiting while customs formalities were being observed by passengers not going beyond Belgium. As the Ogilvie luggage was registered through to London, they did not expect to be disturbed, but a porter came to the door and said, “M’sieu’ Deexon Ojeelvie?”
“More or less,” said Dixon. “What is it?”
“A small matter of m’sieu’s baggages, if m’sieu’ would come?”
They both went, and were told at the customs office that there was a little difficulty because whereas D. Ogilvie’s way-bill declared there were only six packages, there were in fact seven, as m’sieu’ would see for himself.
“How many did you have, Dixon?”
“I don’t know, six or seven. I suppose the man at Cologne counted wrong.”
“I expect so. Perhaps we’d better just look at them.”
Dixon pointed at one and said, “That’s not mine.”
“It’s a portable gramophone,” said his uncle.
“It is, in effect, a musical instrument,” agreed the customs officer.
“You can’t call a portable gramophone a musical instrument,” objected Dixon, “any more than you’d call a sardine tin the Atlantic Ocean.”
The customs official begged pardon, and Alexander Ogilvie said, “Don’t be so damned high-brow. It is probably classed as a musical instrument, you know, like ‘cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs, but tortoises is hinsects and goes free.’ ”
The customs official understood English, but was not a student of Punch, so he found this a trifle baffling. However, he let it go and returned to the main subject.
“Gramophones are musical instruments for the purposes of customs,” he began, and Ogilvie senior said, “I told you so.”
“I’m not going to pay customs duty on the thing,” said Dixon languidly. “I don’t want it.”
“Nobody desires that m’sieu’ should----”
“Then what’s all the fuss about?”
“As I have already told m’sieu’, there is a package in excess of the number on the way-bill----”
“Present it to the local Female Orphanage, they’ll probably love it.”
“I say, Dixon----”
“Yes, Uncle Alec?”
“The label is in your handwriting.”
“Eh?”
“Exactly like all the others.”
Dixon walked over and examined it, and it occurred to him for the first time that there might be more in this affair than met the eye. His uncle snapped open the case, which had compartments in the lid for half a dozen records. He drew out the first, wound up the motor and set it going. The song was a French version of “Oh, Mamma!” and the singer was Waltheof Leibowitz.
“Waltheof Leibowitz,” said Alexander Ogilvie thoughtfully. “I’ve heard that name somewhere.”
The introduction ended, the singer started off with notable verve. Dixon Ogilvie clapped his hands to his ears and said, “For heaven’s sake!”
“I have it, it was that comic hotel baritone Denton punched on the nose in Switzerland.”
“He ought to have killed him,” moaned Dixon. “Stop it, stop it. How does one stop these dam’ things?”
“One takes the needle off, for a start,” said his uncle, doing so, “and then one stops the motor, thus.”
“Thank you. I suppose the thing would play a decent record by Moskowski instead, would it?”
“Of course it would.”
“Present my excuses to the Female Orphanage,” said Dixon Ogilvie to the customs official, “I will take the thing on. What do I have to do about it?”
“It is only necessary for m’sieu’ to acknowledge ownership. I will make out an additional way-bill.”
“Thanks awfully, carry on, will you? I am sorry to have given so much trouble,” said Dixon. “Allow me to---er----”
“Thank you, m’sieu’. The affair is now in order.”
“That’s an odd business,” said Alexander Ogilvie, as the train moved off again. “Are you sure you didn’t buy it as a present for somebody and forget about it?”
“It’s more probably that some luggage labels came loose at Cologne and were later tied on the wrong things,” said Dixon.
“In that case, you’ve lost something. I wonder what it is.”
“So do I.”
“You don’t seem very worried about it. By the way, no, you can’t have lost one, the way-bill said six packages, and this one was an extra.”
“Oh, the man counted wrong, that’s all, but if they insist the thing’s mine I’m jolly well going to keep it,” said Dixon, but all the time he was wondering whether Hambledon had had anything to do with it, and if so, what and why. There didn’t seem much sense in it, but Intelligence agents are always mysterious people, and perhaps it was only a joke---a little return for the concert of school songs. Or possibly Hambledon really thought that this crooner fellow was something wonderful. Ogilvie shuddered faintly, but he knew that some people would agree. In that case, why not send it to him openly, without all this mystery, unless Hambledon had got so in the habit of being mysterious that he just couldn’t help it. Ogilvie gave it up and dozed in his corner, anyway the thing would be an interesting memento of an interesting man, he was glad to have it and would value it highly, records and all. After all, one needn’t play the beastly things.
At Dover, a porter collected their luggage, including the gramophone, and wheeled them on a barrow into the customs shed, the two Ogilvies following. They saw him slide all the things on to the bench, though they were themselves impeded from reaching it at once by a lady with several daughters who passed before them in single file, adhering to each other. A large trunk shot on the counter and masked the Ogilvie luggage for a moment, but at last they arrived where it was and waited for the customs officer, looking about them, with the ghoulish curiosity we all feel when passing customs, to see if anybody else was going to be bowled out. However, no such entertainment offered itself, and at last the customs man reached them.
“Anything to declare?” he said, and held up before them a card bearing a list of dutiable articles.
“One portable gramophone,” said Dixon Ogilvie promptly, and looked among the pile of luggage for it.
“What value, sir?”
“No idea, I had it given to me---I don’t see it. It’s not here. Where is it?”
“You are sure----” began the man, but Ogilvie cut him short.
“I saw the porter load it on his barrow with the rest, wheel them in here and put them on the bench. I saw him put the gramophone on the bench, I was watching him.”
The customs officer consulted the way-bill and counted the luggage. “It says six articles, sir, and there are six.”
“I know. There was a mistake at Cologne, and the gramophone had a ticket all to itself.”
“I have no other way-bill in your name, sir.”
“D’you think I’m lying?” stormed Ogilvie, thoroughly losing his temper. “It was in your charge and it’s missing. I will have it, it must be found at once.”
“A search shall be made,” said the customs man, and consulted a colleague.
“Someone has stolen it,” said Dixon furiously. “Blasted inefficiency! Infernal carelessness! If one’s goods aren’t safe in a customs house in an English port, where are they?”
“My dear boy,” said his uncle, “did you really want it as badly as all that? You nearly gave it to the Female Orphans before. No doubt if it can’t be found the authorities will replace it.”
“I don’t want it replaced, I want that one,” began Dixon, but suddenly became aware that everyone was staring at him, and relapsed into purple silence.
---
Denton returned to his flat in town and Liese ran out to meet him.
“Charles dear, you are so late, be quick, the dinner is spoiling.”
“Yes, angel, just a minute, I must look at this thing.”
“It’s a gramophone, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I want to know why the Department sent me all the way to Dover to collect a wedding present in person.”
“Oh, who gave us that, Charles?”
“A friend of your father’s, m’dear. Records in the lid---my hat!”
“Oh! They’re Waltheof’s, how lovely. Is ‘Im Monat Mai’ there? Yes, here it is, let’s have that one, Charles darling.”
“If you wish,” said Charles, putting it on. “Unhealthy distorted sense of humour I call this,” he muttered as Waltheof’s voice rang out, “confound Hambledon. Fancy having to listen to this.”
But to their intense surprise, a third of the way through the record Waltheof’s ringing tones suddenly ran down the scale, and came to an abrupt stop.
“So he never kissed the kleine Mädchen after all,” said Denton, laughing at his wife, “or did he? Something wrong here, where’s a screwdriver?”
“Oh, darling, the dinner!”
“Let me just do this, angel, won’t be a minute. No room on this table, I’ll do it on the floor. Look, it won’t take a minute, just these four screws and the whole thing lifts out——”
“Not on the carpet!” shrieked his wife. “Oh, you pig, darling, on our lovely cream-coloured carpet, all that black grease----”
But Denton was too busy staring to listen to Liese’s wails, for the vacant space round and under the motor was packed with papers. One envelope was addressed to him and he tore it open.
“Dear Denton,” ran the note inside. “These few nuts for the Dept., with my salutations. Hope your wife likes the records, she can play them when you’re out, can’t she? Every good wish. T.H.”
Denton drew out one thin packet and two thick ones, and put them in his pocket, his wife watching him in that dutiful silence which Dixon Ogilvie so rightly admired.
“Sorry about the dinner, my sweet, got to go out,” he said, and her face fell. “I am sorry, I won’t be a minute longer than I can help, and you are a darling not to argue. I adore you----”
“Dearest,” she said, as he was leaving the room with a rush.
“Yes, what? I can’t stop just now.”
“Not even to wash your hands?”
“No---oh, Lor’! As you were, yes.”
Denton took a taxi to the Foreign Office, handed over the papers and explained where he had found them.
“I had an idea that there might be something there,” said his chief. “Hambledon would not wireless such detailed instructions for collecting the thing if it were only a wedding present and nothing more---how did Ogilvie take its disappearance?”
“When I left he was jumping up and down and making turkey-cock noises,” began Denton, but the other man cut him short.
“My godfathers, look at this. Photographic copies of an Order to the German Chief of Police to get out a scheme for the effective policing of Austria after its union with the Reich in March. In March, good Lord! A carbon copy of the said Chief of Police’s scheme, not merely a copy, Denton, but a carbon duplicate. How the devil---what are these?” he went on, opening the two fatter envelopes, full of sheets of flimsy paper. “Dossiers of German agents in this country, dozens of ’em. Dozens of ’em.” He put the papers down and filled his pipe. “So Germany marches into Austria in March, does she? Hambledon, you ought to have the K.C.B. No, he ought to have the Garter. Dammit, he’s earned a halo, only I hope he doesn’t get it just yet.”
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