Chapter Seventeen

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THOUGH the days passed by without any overt attack upon Hambledon, he was always aware of being watched and followed, and the thought of his fingerprints, neatly docketed and filed, waiting in their proper place for Goebbels to ask for them, made him feel sick. The neatest way to solve the problem would be simply to substitute somebody else’s fingerprints for his own, but he had not the technical ability to do this, as he told Reck. “I don’t even know how they photograph the dam’ things,” he said irritably. “They powder them, don’t they? What with? Besides, how do they file them? Alphabetically, between Brain and Brawn?”

“No,” said Reck, “I don’t think so. I think they’re classified according to pattern, as it were.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. If I got the wrong sort of loops into that place, the experts would spot it at once. That is, supposing I could get hold of it, or having got it could fake an imitation. Besides, there may be two copies under a sort of cross-reference system. I wish I’d taken an intelligent interest in the business earlier, I daren’t now. I only used them when necessary and asked not how nor why. I’d like to plant a bomb in the place, but there are technical difficulties even in such a simple scheme as that. Now Bill would have persuaded Goebbels that it was in the Nazi interest to have the records destroyed, and Goebbels would have beamed on him and asked him to attend to it himself.”

“Ask Franz to attend to it,” suggested Reck lazily.

Tommy Hambledon looked at him much as Balaam must have looked at his ass, and walked thoughtfully away.

The next evening, when Franz came into the study as usual to switch on lights and draw curtains, Hambledon said: “By the way, I have no desire to meddle in any way with that organization of yours, but I did hear a piece of news to-day which might interest you.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Your emissaries scattered quite a large number of leaflets about in most of the larger towns of Germany some time recently.”

“That is so, sir, and not one of the distributors was caught in the act.”

“No, Franz, but most of ’em left their fingerprints behind.”

“I warned them,” said Franz anxiously, “to be careful about that---having been careless myself.”

“Yes, but you can’t separate papers in the dark with gloves on. The fingerprints have been collected and filed, Franz, and if any one of them can be identified he will either be dropped on and persuaded to talk, or watched to see who his contacts are.” This happened to be true, which, as Hambledon remarked to Reck, was convenient, because he’d probably have said it anyway. “I can’t do anything, this is the Gestapo’s work.”

“It looks as though some steps should be taken in the matter, sir.”

“I leave it to you, Franz, with the utmost confidence,” said Tommy blandly.

Franz fidgeted about the room for some moments. “It would be very wrong, sir, of me even to wonder what advice you would give.”

“It would be positively immoral of me to offer any,” said his master.

“Yes, sir. Would it be inconvenient to you, sir, if I were to go out for an hour to-morrow afternoon? It is not my usual day.”

“Not at all, Franz, by all means go. There is a very exciting film being shown at some of the cinemas, it is called, I think, ‘Flames of Desire,’ or some such title.”

“Sir?” said the surprised servant.

“It is, of course, well known to everyone that photographic records are inflammable,” said Tommy patiently.

A slow smile spread across Franz’s face, and he left the room without replying.

A few days later Franz came to Hambledon and said without preamble, “There are certain men, sir, who are prepared to burn the fingerprint records in possession of the Government, if they could obtain access to the building.”

“It so happens,” said Hambledon, “that I know the place fairly well. At night it is, of course, always locked up and the night caretaker will not open to anyone. If any person in authority should want to turn up a record after the office shuts for the night, he would have to go with one of the three principal heads of Departments, who would take him there, let him in with his own key, stand over him while he transacted his business, and convey him out again. The outer doors have an ordinary lock which opens by turning a handle like any sitting-room door, and in addition, a Yale lock or something very like it. You know, it locks itself automatically when you pull the door shut after you and you can’t open it again unless you have a key.”

“Are the doors locked all day, sir?”

“No, the catch of the spring lock is held back by a snib, which you slide up to put the lock out of action and pull down again to release the catch. By day, the lock is not working, it’s only after office hours that it is used.”

“If one could get----” began Franz, but Hambledon interrupted him.

“So you see, if one night someone were to come out of the door and absent-mindedly slip up the snib as he went, any man who happened to be outside at the time could merely turn the handle and walk in.”

Franz nodded eagerly. “And the night caretaker?”

“He’s a very decent old fellow named Reinhardt, a veteran of the war, a Saxon; he fought at Ypres in ’16, he tells me. Reinhardt must be got out of the way somehow.”

“If the gentleman who was going home would send him for a taxi,” suggested Franz.

“Gentlemen,” corrected Hambledon. “There will be two of them, because one will be an official with a key.”

“Of course, you said so just now. If Reinhardt were sent for a taxi, the taxi would come.”

Hambledon nodded. “To-day is Tuesday. Friday night about 10 p.m.? The side door, not the main entrance.”

“Yes, sir,” said Franz, suddenly becoming the servant again. “Certainly, sir. Very good, sir.”

---

“I must really apologize,” said Hambledon to the Records official, “for dragging you away from your family like this. A man should have his evenings undisturbed.”

“Not at all, Herr Polizei Oberhaupt. Besides being my duty, it is a pleasure to serve the Herr.”

“You are too kind,” said Hambledon, as the other man put his key in the lock. “I only heard to-night that this man has been traced, and to-morrow---to-morrow is Saturday, is it not?---he is going to Holland and it will be too late. Good evening, Reinhardt.”

“Why do you not arrest him at once just in case?”

“It is not a political offence,” explained Hambledon, “it is a case of private blackmail, a crime which I hold in such abhorrence, Herr Gerhardt, that I would not even accuse a man of it unless I were morally sure of his guilt.”

“It is evident that the Herr has the scales of justice implanted in his soul,” said Gerhardt with poetic, but confused, metaphor. “The dossier you require should be in this folder---here it is.”

Hambledon spent some time making notes from the dossier of a gentleman who had indeed been convicted of blackmail in the past, and then glanced at his watch to discover to his horror that it was five minutes past ten.

“I have completely ruined your evening,” he said. “What will Frau Gerhardt say to me? On such a night, too, there is rain beating the windows again. I’ll send Reinhardt for a taxi and drop you at your house on my way home. Reinhardt! Are you there? Oh, get me a taxi, would you?”

“I beg the Herr Polizei Oberhaupt not to inconvenience himself----”

“It is no inconvenience, it is a pleasure----”

“The Herr is too polite----”

“Besides, I owe you a little return----”

“On one condition, then, that the Herr will deign to come in and take a little something. Frau Gerhardt will remember the honour all her life.”

“I shall be glad to make my peace with the gracious Frau,” said Hambledon, who had the best of reasons for wanting an impeccable alibi for the next hour or so. “I shall be delighted. What a wonderful filing system you must have here,” he went on. “Do you keep the fingerprints here too?”

“The fingerprint section is on the floor above this, directly over our heads,” said Gerhardt, and went on telling Hambledon about it regardless of the sound of a taxi drawing up outside till the Chief of Police permitted himself another glance at his watch, Gerhardt took the hint, and they walked towards the outer door.

“Where is Reinhardt?” asked the Records official. “He should be here to open the door for us.”

“We can easily open it for ourselves,” suggested Hambledon, but his host continued to fuss.

“Reinhardt!” he called, turning back from the door. “Where are you? This is positively discourteous.”

But Hambledon had already opened the door and was standing holding the handle. “Please don’t trouble, Herr Gerhardt; no doubt he has a perfectly good explanation, perhaps it is time for one of his rounds. Come on,” he added, taking the man by the arm in friendly fashion, “let’s go; you have been on business long enough to-night already.” He slammed the door behind them and the two men got into the waiting taxi and drove away.

When Reinhardt had been sent for the taxi ten minutes earlier, he had walked briskly down the street whistling under his breath in spite of the rain. There was a taxi-rank at the end of the road, he was thinking, as he walked towards it, how lucky it was that this had happened to-night, for Herr Lehmann always tipped well, and now they would be able to have a goose for dinner on Sunday instead of just ordinary veal; it would make a real feast for the boy’s birthday, twenty-two on Sunday, a good lad. Reinhardt’s mind went back to the day when first he knew he had a son, when the letter came to the sodden trenches before Ypres in ’16. He had been lucky that night, too, because his crowd were unexpectedly withdrawn and replaced by the Prussian Guards, tall arrogant men whom nobody liked, but there was no doubt they were grand fighters. It was just as well they were, too, for in the dawn of the next day the English attacked, and the fighting was savage since they were no ordinary English, though these were bad enough, but the awful 29th Division who were reported to eat rusty nails and broken glass for breakfast. Reinhardt in his walk came to the entry of a short cul-de-sac, leading only to the door of a church, silent, dark and deserted at that hour of the night. He started to cross it, thinking of the ear-splitting roar and the blinding flashes of the artillery barrages which preceded an attack---there were those flashes now before his eyes, searing bursts of flame, and in his ears the unbearable shock of explosion. He staggered, tried to run and could not, his feet would not move---the mud, of course. He threw out his arms feebly and crashed to the ground.

So it was all a dream that he had ever come home from the war and seen his son grow up; probably he had fallen asleep on his feet as men did when they were so very tired, and had a sudden vivid dream. If he opened his eyes now he would see again the seas of foul mud, the wet trench in which he stood, that hanging rag of slimy sacking at the corner of the next traverse which was only sacking by day but at night turned into something stealthy and menacing which always stopped moving when you looked at it. After a while it occurred to him that the place where he lay was curiously quiet for a battlefield and smelt cleaner too; curiosity opened his eyes, and he saw a doctor leaning over him and a man in uniform at the foot of his bed.

“Congratulations, Reinhardt,” said the doctor, pleased at the return to consciousness.

“Thank you,” said Reinhardt feebly, “but I don’t think it’s a very nice time for babies to be born, just now.”

“My dear soul,” said the doctor, laughing quietly, “you don’t imagine you’ve had a baby, do you?”

“Of course not,” said Reinhardt. “My wife has, though. I’ve been hit, I suppose.”

“With a sandbag,” said the doctor. “Thank the good God who gave you such a lovely thick skull.”

“Sandbag? Off the parapet?”

“He thinks he’s back in the trenches again,” said the policeman at the foot of the bed. “Hope he hasn’t lost his memory.”

“No, no,” said the doctor. “A little confused for the moment, that’s all. The war has been over these twenty years, Reinhardt, you are night caretaker at the Record House, and last night somebody slogged you with a sandbag.”

“I remember now. I went to get a taxi----”

Directly after the taxi had driven off with Hambledon and Gerhardt inside, a car drew up at the same door and two men with suit-cases got out. The car moved off to a point fifty yards down the road and stopped again with its engine running quietly; the driver lit a cigarette and waited, his eyes on the driving-mirror reflecting the street behind him. The two men carried their suit-cases across the pavement, opened the door by simply turning the handle, and went in, locking the door carefully behind them.

“Have a good look at how this catch works, Erich,” said one. “If this stuff flares up properly we may have to make a dash for it. Hans has pinched Eigenmann’s car for an hour or two because the police will always pass it through; you know, Goebbels’ secretary.”

“Good idea. I know all about those locks; we’ve got one like that on the front door at home. Where’d we better start it? Anywhere in this long passage? I’ve never been inside this place before.”

“This leads to the central hall where the stairs go up, there at the end, you can see them. If we start in a room near the stairs and open the window first, there’ll be a good draught. Come on.”

They entered the last room, next to the hall, and one pushed up the windows while the other opened the suit-cases. The walls of the room were lined with wooden pigeon-holes, full of papers, and there were besides screens six feet high across the room at intervals of a yard apart, screens themselves all pigeon-holes of papers, neatly filed.

“What a wonderful spot for the job,” murmured Erich. “Why, you’d think one match would be enough without what we’ve brought.”

“Yes. I don’t think we need use it all in here,” said his friend. “We’ll start one here, and if we’re quick, another one farther down the passage as well before we go.”

He took handfuls of cinematograph film, cut into short lengths, from one suit-case and strewed it on the floor along the walls while Erich threw coils of film over the screens in all directions.

“I should think that would be enough, then,” said Erich. “Going to light it now?”

“Of course.”

“But won’t they see the flames from outside?”

“No, this window looks on an inner court. Stand back---no, get right out in the passage. Take the suit-cases, I shall have to jump for it.”

“All right, I’ve got them,” said Erich. “All clear.”

The other man struck a match and applied it to one of the coils; immediately there was a spluttering crackle and the flare of burning celluloid. He lit another and another, tossed the match onto a heap on the floor, and sprang into the passage.

“That’ll do for that,” he said, “let’s find another. What’s in here? Books---not too good. This one---tin boxes, no. This’ll do, it’s very like the first.”

“My hat,” said Erich, glancing back, “that’s taken hold. Looks like the doorway of hell already.”

“Come on, don’t waste time.”

“This room looks out on the street,” said Erich, as they tossed the stuff about and pulled papers down to make them burn more readily.

“No matter, we shall be out before the flames show. Pull the blinds down. That’s right, now get out while I finish off.”

Erich heard the crackle of the lighted film as he turned away and the second man joined him in the passage. “Better than the other, I think,” he said. “Now---- Good God, what’s that?”

It was a rattle as someone tried the handle of the outer door, followed by hammering on the panels and the shout, “Open, in the name of the Reich!”

“It’s the police,” said the older man calmly. “They must have found the caretaker.”

Erich turned to run back along the passage but checked at once. “We can’t get through now,” he said. “Look at it.” The flames had barricaded the passage and even the floor was flaring.

“Dangerous stuff, linoleum,” said his friend. “No, we can’t go that way.”

“The windows, then?”

“They’re all barred. No. I’m sorry, Erich, I brought you into this.”

“Can’t we---- What’s that?”

“They’re trying to shoot the lock off, they’ll probably succeed.”

“Can’t we do anything?”

“There is just a rather feeble chance that there may not be many of them, and if they’re silly enough to come in we might shoot them down and get clear away before reinforcements arrive. I’ve a good mind to go and open the door for them, you know, they’ve no need to come in, they’ve only to wait till the fire forces us out. I think I’ll do that. Listen! There’s the car moving off, if we do get out we shall have to run for it.”

“Has Hans gone off and left us, then?”

“Of course, he had orders to do that. What could he do if he stayed? Nothing. Erich, look at that door! It’s opening! Into that doorway!”

The two men dodged into doorways as the outer door burst open and the police charged in. There was the repeated crack of automatics, and the sergeant who was leading doubled up, stumbled, came running up the passage under his own momentum, and collapsed like a sack at Erich’s feet. A constable by the door uttered a yelp, clasped his arm, and jumped back, the others threw the door wide open and withdrew hastily into the street outside, from whence they could see down the passage with its creeping inferno of fire behind the two desperate men in the doorways.

“They’ve done us now,” shouted the older man. “They can see us and we can’t see them. Better get shot, it’s pleasanter than burning. Let ’em have it!”

The exchange of shots went on, lessening suddenly from within and finally ceasing altogether. The fire-engines came, and the fire-brigade leader asked if it was safe for his men to start.

“The fire don’t look too safe to me,” said the surviving sergeant of police. “I reckon the men are harmless enough by now.”

By this time the fire had taken secure hold of the building and was spreading from room to room and bursting through ceilings to the floors above; windows shattered with the heat and flames gushed out, lighting up the decorous streets and squares of the Government quarter with an incongruous dancing bonfire light. Crowds gathered and were shooed back by the police, telephone wires buzzed and celebrities arrived, among them Goebbels in person, to whom the Superintendent of Police reported.

“Arson, sir, there’s no doubt,” and he told the story of the two men. “Reinhardt---that’s the caretaker, sir---was decoyed out somehow and sandbagged. He’s now in hospital.”

“Did anyone visit the place to-night after closing hours?”

“Yes, sir, Herr Gerhardt came with Herr Lehmann, the constable on duty saw them go in.”

“Herr Lehmann, eh? Did they come out again?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. The constable’s beat takes him right round the square, and they might well have gone while he was out of sight.”

“Lehmann,” said Goebbels thoughtfully to himself. “Lehmann. Then the two men----” But the idea of the respectable Gerhardt loosing off an automatic at the police was quite beyond credit, if one of the men was Lehmann the other certainly wasn’t Gerhardt. After all, it was equally ridiculous to suspect the correct Lehmann of such behaviour, only Goebbels was getting into the habit of suspecting him of having a finger in any unpleasantness which might crop up---not even quite a suspicion, more a hope that the incorruptible Chief of Police would slip up. “Has Herr Gerhardt been informed?”

“Apparently his telephone is out of order, sir, we can’t get an answer. I have sent a constable to his house to inform him.”

Goebbels grunted.

The firemen confined their efforts to saving the farther wing since this one was clearly past praying for, the flames leaped higher into the thick rolls of smoke, and the crowd said “A-aah” as the roof fell in with a crash and a shower of sparks. Very reminiscent of the Reichstag fire, this, with the important difference that this one was inconvenient, damned inconvenient. All those irreplaceable records----

He started violently as a quiet voice behind his elbow said, “An appalling sight, Herr Goebbels, yet impressive in its grandeur and disregard of human endeavour.”

“Lehmann! When did you leave here---where have you been?”

“At my house, Herr Minister, at my house,” said Gerhardt’s agitated voice. “For the past hour we have been taking a little refreshment in the Herr Polizei Oberhaupt’s esteemed company. We went home together from here, soon after ten. All was well then.”

“The devil you did,” said Goebbels to himself. “A little job for you, Lehmann. Find the miscreants,” he added aloud.

“The search will be the subject of my unremitting care,” said the Chief of Police earnestly.