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Chapter Sixteen

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« on: May 12, 2023, 07:29:50 am »

HAMBLEDON, having some work he wished to finish at home, returned from his office a little earlier than usual one evening and went straight to his study. He was investigating a series of fires in various parts of Germany, in some of which (a) arson was suspected but not proved, (b) it was certainly arson but no arrest had been made, and (c) those cases in which an arrest had been made; but Hambledon was by no means satisfied that it was always the right person who had been arrested. He had left the papers in a tidy pile to the left of his desk, categories (a), (b) and (c) each in alphabetical order and, on top of the whole lot, a separate sheet containing a list of all these cases. He sat down at his desk, drew the pile towards him, and after the first glance examined it with curiosity.

In the first place, the list was not at the top, it was at the bottom, but what really made him gnash his teeth was that the rest of the papers, instead of being carefully and methodically sorted as he had left them, were thoroughly and horribly mixed up.

“Damn it,” said Hambledon, looking through them, “someone has shuffled them like a pack of cards.”

He looked at the other papers on his desk; though they had not been so carefully arranged as the arson cases he was sure they had been changed about. That demand from Goebbels for full statistics of the number of women (a) single, (b) married, or (c) widowed who had been convicted of shoplifting in the last two years classified so as to show how many of them were (1) countrywomen, i.e., dwellers in places of up to 1,000 inhabitants and (2) townswomen, dwellers in places of 1,000 inhabitants and over, hadn’t been at the top of any pile for at least five weeks. Confound Goebbels, anyway, this recent and increasing thirst for statistics was becoming a wholetime nuisance, and Hambledon had a shrewd idea that Goebbels meant it to be. “He’s getting after me,” said Hambledon to himself, “wonder why?” He made a rude gesture at Goebbels’ query and put it firmly back at the bottom of the “miscellaneous” tray.

Having thus restored himself to good temper, he rose from his chair and went in search of Fräulein Rademeyer.

“I say, dear, have you by any chance been dusting my desk lately?”

“No, Klaus, why? Is it badly done?”

“No, that is, it’s perfectly clean, but my papers are all muddled up and it’s rather tiresome. Who does it, Agathe?”

“No, it’s Franz’s business to wait on you. I am sorry, dear, if he is getting careless, would you like me to speak to him about it?”

“Don’t bother, I will,” said Hambledon, and returned to his study and rang for Franz.

“Did you dust my desk to-day, Franz?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This pile of papers which were carefully sorted are all in confusion. Do you think you could----”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I had an accident with that pile of papers, I picked them up and held them in one hand, sir, thus, while I dusted underneath them with the other, and they slipped out of my hand and skated all over the floor, if I may put it like that, sir. I picked them all up, I was not aware they were in any particular order. I am very sorry, sir, I will see it does not occur again.”

“That’s all right, Franz, only you understand that sort of thing is tiresome when one is busy.”

“Certainly, sir. Thank you,” said Franz, and left the room.

“Quite a good explanation,” thought Hambledon, looking after the man. “It may be quite true, it’s a way papers have, but---- Oh, well, I suppose I’m naturally suspicious.”

Nevertheless, when he left the study that evening he put most of the papers away in the drawers of his desk and locked them up. Among them was an order to raid the headquarters of the German Freedom League, it was complete except for his signature, but he was not quite satisfied with the bona fides of all the information received. He thought it over, decided to make a few more inquiries, and put it away in its envelope unsigned.

Two days later he opened the envelope again, but instead of the order there was a neatly-written note saying simply, “No good. They have escaped to Switzerland.”

“This is too much,” said Hambledon, justly indignant. “A joke’s a joke, but taking papers out of my desk and replacing them with little notes telling me where I get off is just plain damned impertinence. Who does the feller think I am? Von Papen?”

He considered the matter carefully and came to the conclusion that the culprit must be either Franz, Reck, or somebody from outside. It was almost too much to hope that whoever it was would have left useful fingerprints on the note, but it was worth trying, so he picked it up carefully by its edges and slid it into an envelope which he sealed down, marked A, and put in his pocket.

“We’ll start at the easiest end first,” he said. “Franz.”

There was a cupboard in a corner of the room where glasses were kept in case Hambledon wished to entertain visitors in the privacy of his study, or even occasionally to entertain himself: he walked across and opened it. It was small and overfull, tumblers on one side, wineglasses on the other, in ranks of three abreast. Hambledon put on his gloves, took a clean linen handkerchief from his pocket, and very carefully polished each of the three wineglasses in the front row.

“There,” he said, replacing them, “now it won’t matter which one he takes.” He rang the bell for Franz and sat at his desk again.

“You rang, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Bring me a half-bottle of Graves, will you? I’m thirsty.”

Franz brought it in on a tray and got out a wineglass from the cupboard. He drew the cork from the bottle and picked up the glass to fill it; just at that moment Hambledon glanced up from his work.

“Don’t pour it out yet, Franz. I’ll do it---I’ll just finish this first.”

“Very good, sir,” said Franz, and departed.

Hambledon put his gloves on again and, holding the glass carefully by the base, swathed it in tissue paper. He then rolled it up in a sheet of newspaper and tied a label on it inscribed B. After which he extracted a wineglass from the very back of the cupboard where Franz would not notice a gap in the ranks, poured out his Graves and thought about Reck. It was a little unlikely that Reck should be of the inner ring of the Freedom League, but not impossible: it was a lot more likely than, for example, that the Chief of the German Police should be a British agent. He would have Reck’s fingerprints too, just in case.

He resumed his gloves, took a half-sheet of notepaper and wrote on it in blue pencil, in a hand as unlike his own as possible, the cryptic sentence, “The bee has crawled into the tulip in search of honey.” He folded and creased it as though it had been in an envelope, took his gloves off again, drank another glass of Graves, and strolled off to Reck’s room. Reck was mixing chemicals.

“Hullo,” said Hambledon, “how’s the photography going?”

“All right,” said Reck. “Expensive hobby, rather.”

“Don’t let that worry you. Harmless amusements are always included in the expense account.”

“Yes, I know,” said Reck cynically. “The operative word is ‘harmless.’ ”

“Quite. Got any good ones to-day?”

“How can I tell till they’re developed? I exposed plates at the principal entrance to the Zeughaus, a collision between two cars and a tram, and a small boy being rude to a policeman.”

“On the whole,” said Hambledon, sinking into an armchair, “I have had an uneventful day. The only interesting thing that happened was that I found a note when I got home this evening.”

Reck was pouring something out of a bottle into a graduated measure-glass; his hand did not shake nor did the flow of liquid vary. “Either he knows nothing about it,” thought Hambledon, “or teetotalism is all it’s cracked up to be and more.”

“Assignation or libel?” asked Reck, when the measure had been filled exactly to the desired line and no more.

“Neither. Here it is,” said Hambledon, offering him the folded sheet, which he held lightly between his fingers like a cigarette. “What d’you make of it?”

Reck took it without hesitation, unfolded it and read it aloud. “What does it mean?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Hambledon with complete truth.

“How did it come?”

“By post. Posted in Berlin last night.”

“Evidently someone is flattering you,” said Reck acidly.

“Why? Am I the industrious bee or the colourful tulip?”

“Neither. They thought you’d understand.”

“You are neither kind nor helpful,” said Hambledon in a pained voice. “I thought you might be able to suggest something.”

“Oh, I can suggest plenty of things, but I doubt if they’ll be helpful. It’s a warning of intended burglary, do you know a burglar whose name begins with B?”

“No.”

“It has a political significance. Our heaven-sent Leader is going to march into Rumania after the oil-fields.”

“What am I supposed to do about it? Arrest him?”

“Goering’s going to invade Russia in search of caviar.”

“You are incurably flippant,” said Hambledon, getting up and taking his paper from Reck. “I shall go and brood over it alone.”

He put the half-sheet into an envelope, labelled it C, and took all three exhibits to the fingerprint experts in the morning, asking whether, if there were any prints on A, they coincided with those on either B or C, and if not, were they among the Department’s records. He received the report the same afternoon. There were two sets of fingerprints on exhibit A, one being the same as on exhibit B, i.e., the glass, and the other coincided with a set acquired by the Intelligence section during the Great War 1914-18; they were those of a Dutch importer at Cologne named Hendrik Brandt.

Hambledon really felt for a moment as though he were going to faint. A man can plan so carefully: with a little luck he works himself into an unassailable position, he has a flawless identity and a better background than the Leader himself, and all of a sudden Fate rises to her full height and socks him on the jaw. It only remained for Goebbels to obtain one of his fingerprints and make a similar inquiry, and the balloon would go up in a shower of sparks and a strong bad smell. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” said Tommy Hambledon, “I wonder who did that? Von Bodenheim, I’ll bet, just taking precautions in the usual routine manner. Fancy a man you’d shot down twenty years earlier rising from the dead to get his own back like this---after twenty years.” He clutched his head in both hands. “Goebbels must have hundreds of my fingerprints; he may send them in to-morrow---he may have already done it---I’d better not think about it or he might get the idea and act on it. I must get Ludmilla out at once, and Frau Christine---and her family. Oh, dear, I wish Bill was here, he’d suggest something. Franz---then it was Franz who put the note in my desk. Franz belongs to the Freedom League. He must have duplicate keys to all my drawers and probably the safe as well, heaven knows how much he’s read. Oh, dear, I wish things didn’t all happen at once----”

He got up and walked distractedly about the room trying to think calmly, but it was very difficult. He felt acutely the need of someone to whom he could talk. The only available person was Reck, so Hambledon picked up his hat and went home. Reck raised his eyebrows as Hambledon walked into his room, and said, “Hallo! Come to arrest me?”

“Don’t make these ill-timed jokes,” snapped Hambledon. “Come along to the study, will you, I want to talk to you. Franz! Franz, bring whisky and soda into the study, will you? What’ll you have, Reck?”

“Grenadine, please.”

“Grenadine, please, Franz. Grena---oh, my hat. Wait till Franz has been in and gone again, I could a tale unfold, etc. Lovely weather we’re having for the time of year, aren’t we? I always think it’s so much warmer when the sun shines, don’t you?”

“For pity’s sake,” said Reck earnestly, “pull yourself together. Franz will notice something.”

“I will when he comes, besides, Franz knowing a spot more or less hardly matters now, he knows too much already. At the moment I’d like to run round in small circles putting straw in my hair.”

“There isn’t any straw.”

“Franz will obtain some. What have you been doing to-day?”

“Oh, nothing in particular,” said Reck, as Franz came into the room. “Walking about looking at things. I’d like to take some night photographs of Berlin, it’s only a question of giving a long enough exposure. The only trouble is lighted vehicles passing, they leave a sort of fiery trail which is tiresome.”

“I know, I’ve seen it in photos,” said Hambledon. “Scarcely life-like, is it? Thank you, Franz, that will be all. I shall have to have the traffic stopped for you, that’s all. How long would it---- Thank goodness he’s gone. Listen,” and Hambledon told Reck everything, admitting also that he had suspected him.

“Naturally,” said Reck. “It would have been absurd not to.”

“Yes, but evidently your fingerprints are not recorded, whereas mine are duly docketed as Brandt, Hendrik, importer, Dutch, Höhe Strasse, Cologne. You see the beauty of it, don’t you? Goebbels has got a down on me already, don’t know why; if he starts looking round for evidence against me----”

Reck whistled dolefully, and the two men looked at each other in a painful silence.

“You are in the soup, aren’t you?” said Reck.

“Not yet, but I’m teetering on the edge of the tureen. I don’t see what I can do. I can’t very well have the record expunged.”

“Burn down the Record House or whatever they call it.”

“You drastic old man. But something like that will have to be done. I can’t go on living over a volcano like this day after day. It might be simpler to shoot Goebbels.”

“Frame him,” said Reck.

“I’ll bear that suggestion in mind, too. Now there’s Franz to deal with, I think I’ll have him in and talk seriously to him. I should think he could be managed; he knows his life is in my hands, even if Goebbels’s isn’t, and, of course, I don’t really mind if Germany is riddled with Freedom Leaguers, Moonlighters, Ku-Klux-Klansmen, Fenians, Sons of Suction, Ancient Buffaloes, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Besides, I don’t want to lose a good servant. In my official capacity I have to discourage these activities, that’s all.”

Reck merely grunted, and absent-mindedly helped himself to one of Tommy Hambledon’s best cigars.

“I must get Aunt Ludmilla out at the earliest possible moment, and Frau Christine Beckensburg and her clan too. As for you, Reck, I think you’d better slide out unostentatiously, too. Can’t you attend a photographic conference in Paris or somewhere?”

“No,” said Reck. “I think I’d better stay here.”

“Why?”

“Well, judging by the mess you’re getting yourself into, somebody ought to look after you.”

“Good Lord! Look after me!”

“Yes, why not?”

“B---but----”

“Besides, you keep rather good cigars, and I’d hate the source to dry up.”

Reck finished his Grenadine, nodded to the Chief of Police and strolled nonchalantly out of the room, leaving Hambledon gaping.

“The idea of that moss-grown old buffer thinking he ought to look after me. I must be getting old. Oh, well, I suppose I must deal with Franz now.” He rang the bell, and Franz appeared.

“Oh, Franz----”

“Sir?”

“Franz, I have got to talk to you very seriously. Don’t stand over there by the door all ready to bolt at any moment, come over here.”

Franz walked up to the desk with his usual perfect composure, and with no expression on his ugly lined face beyond courteous inquiry.

“I hope, sir, that I have not in any way failed to give satisfaction.”

“You are a damned good servant and I’d hate to lose you, why did you go and get yourself mixed up with those poisonous Freedom Leaguers?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t stand there saying ‘sir’ at intervals like a talking parrot, you heard what I said. You took out of a locked drawer---a locked drawer, Franz---an order to raid the League’s offices, and left this note in its place.” Hambledon slammed down the note in question on the table. “It is of no use to deny it, your fingerprints are on it.”

“I was not aware that I had attempted to deny it, sir.”

“Look here, Franz. You and I have been together now for a number of years. It is acutely painful to me to find that you are working against me in my own household.”

“Oh, no, sir. Believe me, I have never worked against you and I never would. What you were good enough to say just now about----”

“Franz. You belong to the German Freedom League, therefore you are working against the Government.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Franz calmly, “but so, I think, are you.”

Hambledon leaned back in his chair and looked at the man with so savage an expression that most men would have turned and fled. Franz merely shifted his weight from the right foot to the left, and continued:

“For instance, sir, it is known that the man Otto Hauser, who stole the specification of the magnetic mine, made a copy of it which was never found; he told a friend of mine about it. I think you searched for it yourself, did you not, sir?”

“Go on,” said Hambledon quietly.

“Coming nearer home, there is Herr Reck and his transmitting set, which he keeps in the roof-space above his bedroom. It was purely by accident, sir, that I discovered that the plug in the wall above his chest of drawers, to which he connects his tapping key, was not the ordinary power-plug it resembles. I endeavoured to work the vacuum-cleaner from it, sir.”

Hambledon’s grim face relaxed a little, but he merely said “Go on” again.

“Though I must admit, sir, that all our efforts to decipher the code he uses have so far failed completely.”

“I am glad I still retain a few secrets from my domestic staff,” said Hambledon.

“Yes, sir, certainly. On the other hand, there are a few things I could perhaps tell you, if you would permit me. For example, is Your Excellency aware that you are followed wherever you go by the orders of Herr Goebbels?”

“I am not altogether surprised.”

“There are two men outside the house now, sir, waiting in case you should go out again this evening.”

“Do you know how long this has been going on?”

“I could not say precisely, sir, but it was shortly before you went to see that forger to get the label for Herr Ogilvie’s portable gramophone.”

“So you know that too,” said Hambledon.

“Yes, sir. The man is one of our most useful, if not one of our most respected, members. Yes,” said Franz thoughtfully, “it was just before that, about the time when Herr Reck took up photography.”

“You know, Franz, I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I shall have to have you painlessly destroyed----as painlessly as possible. You know too much, you must see that.”

“On the contrary, sir, it is precisely because I know so much---not only about you---that I could be of use to you.”

“What do you mean by ‘not only about me’?”

“To answer that, sir, I must tell you something about the Freedom League. When the Nazi Party first received any notable measure of public support, some of us who remembered an earlier Germany were not favourably impressed, and a careful study of Mein Kampf confirmed us in our opinions. For after all, sir, it is all set down there, what he meant to do and how he meant to do it, the only mystery is why so many people were surprised at what he does. Why did they not simply believe him? Well, we did, and we regarded the future with such forebodings that we formed a League to protect what we foresaw would be most endangered, our personal freedom. That was in 1924, and since then, with the growth of the Nazi Party, the Freedom League has also grown till now there are thousands upon thousands of us. It is a lowly and inconspicuous organization, sir, we have no mass meetings and we carry no banners, but we do a lot of good work---literally,” added Franz with a smile. “The ivy is an inconspicuous plant, sir, but it has been known to pull down the forest oak.”

“Please go on,” said Hambledon, “I am most interested.”

“We thought you would be, sir. I may say that if you had not brought about this éclaircissement, I should shortly have initiated it myself. To return to the Freedom League. We decided that it was necessary to install ourselves into positions of confidence in the Party without having to take any share in its iniquities, so as most of us had fairly good manners and knew how things ought to be done---I was a Captain of Uhlans myself---we readily became butlers, valets and so forth. We were fortunate in obtaining situations with most of the Party leaders, I came to you because from the earliest days it was evident that your outstanding capabilities and integrity of character would carry you far----”

“Stop a minute,” said Hambledon, “you’re making my head ache. Do you mean to say you have a whole network of---of supervision running through the Nazi Party?”

“Among all the more important members, sir.”

“And that you planted yourself on me on purpose to---er---supervise me?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, until recent years I thought you were as convinced a Nazi as any of them, but when I discovered you were not, I was only all the more interested.”

“Naturally. Er---sit down, Captain----”

“Thank you,” said Franz, but not supplying his name. “I think perhaps I’d better not, someone might come in. Thanks all the same, I appreciate that.”

“Tell me, who do you think I am?”

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t the faintest idea and I’ve never been able to find out. It annoys me---it is a failure on my part,” said the man with a frank smile. “I think, however, that you love Germany as we do, and loathe the Nazis as we do. We have seen you defending the cause of simple, honest people against tyranny in power, that is our aim also. We mean to pull down this foul regime which is making the name of Germany a stench in the nostrils of decent men of all nations, and we will set up in its place a Government founded on justice, humanity and peace.”

“If you succeed,” said Hambledon carefully, “you will no doubt receive a large measure of support from, as you say, decent men everywhere.”

“We shall want a new President,” said Franz, his eyes kindling with the visions his mind beheld, “a man who can be trusted, whose instincts are sound, whose heart is upright, whose word is his bond.”

“Such men are scarce, Franz.”

“I think I know of one, sir. I have served him for some time and I should be glad, if he would rescue Germany, to serve him till I died.”

Franz clicked his heels, bowed to Hambledon, and marched out of the room before his master could find words to reply.

“Good Lord,” said the horrified Hambledon when he was alone, “that settles it. I must get out, I couldn’t stand that. President---what a frightful thought. Franz looks quite capable of it---oh, gosh! No more beautiful blondes, and I should have to live on cabbage. This is where I go home.”

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