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Chapter Nineteen

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« on: May 12, 2023, 10:40:33 am »

A WEEK later Jakob Altmann and Gregor Buergers came up again at the police-court to answer for their doings on the night of the fire. As it was perfectly obvious that they could not have had anything to do with the fire, not even with the sandbagging of Reinhardt, since they were far too inebriated at the time, they were merely charged with stealing by finding the sum of twelve thousand marks, the property of some person or persons unknown, Altmann as principal and Buergers as accessory. They were sentenced to periods of two years and nine months respectively of forced labour on the roads of Westphalia.

“Nice long way off,” said Jakob, with a glance at Gertrud, who was sitting in court weeping ostentatiously. “Thank you, gentlemen.” Buergers said nothing.

It was another ten days before Hambledon received a reply from any of the various German banks to his question about the mark notes. Eventually, one of them reported that the notes in question, together with others of considerably larger denomination making a total of eighteen thousand five hundred marks altogether, had been paid out on March the 25th to Herr Rolf Weinecke of Aachen. Since they knew that the inquiry came from the Chief of Police they added all the information they could give, particularly the numbers and denominations of the larger notes. They added that some of the notes were again in circulation in Aachen, and that the whole sum was produced by the sale of bearer bonds deposited with them ten months earlier by the said Herr Weinecke.

“So,” said Tommy to himself. “What proportion do they allow these wretched Jews to get away with? Twenty per cent, I believe. Now twenty per cent of eighteen thousand five hundred is---er---three thousand seven hundred.” He wrote the figure down and looked at it. “Strange. That’s just the total of the few notes of really large denomination. Now, if a Jew were bolting out of Germany with the paltry marks allowed him by the Government, he would change one of his big notes as soon as possible, I think. Going from Aachen, that would be Brussels, or possibly Ostende if he were going to England. I’ll try both. Twelve thousand plus three thousand seven hundred is fifteen thousand and seven hundred. Subtracted from eighteen thousand five hundred, it leaves---er---two thousand eight hundred. I think Herr Weinecke pocketed two thousand eight hundred marks for his trouble---and the risk, of course. Dealing with a Jew, naughty. Helping a Jew to evade the law, very naughty.”

Four days later he learned from his agents in Brussels that a hundred-mark note, bearing one of the numbers quoted, had been changed into Belgian money on March 29th last by a Jew named Reuben Schwartz, who was now living in rooms in the Street of the Candle at Brussels, having apparently settled there.

“Splendid,” said Tommy Hambledon, and sent two of his police to bring him the person of Rolf Weinecke from Aachen, instantly, in haste. Next morning Rolf Weinecke, ruffled and uneasy, was shown into Hambledon’s office. Hambledon did not ask him to sit down, but sent the troopers away and came straight to the point in a voice as hard and cold as stone.

“You are Rolf Weinecke from Aachen?”

“Yes, sir. May I ask----”

“No. I will do all the asking that may be needed. On Friday, March the 25th last, you went to your bank in Aachen and drew out the sum of eighteen thousand five hundred marks.”

“I believe I did, but----”

“I know you did. This sum was made up of thirty-seven hundred-mark notes, fifty-six fifty-mark notes, and the rest in tens to the value of twelve thousand marks.”

The man merely looked at him.

“This money was the proceeds of the sale of bearer bonds which you deposited with the bank about ten months ago.”

“That is so,” said Weinecke. “The bonds were----”

“You transferred the thirty-seven hundred-mark notes to a Jew named Reuben Schwartz, at present living in the Rue de la Bougie, Brussels.”

“But, sir, that is----”

“You were about to admit that that is a crime against the State. Are you aware of the penalties attaching to it?”

“Yes, sir, but----”

“But what?”

“But there are so many people---it is so often done,” stammered the man.

“It will be done a lot less in future, believe me. While I am Chief of Police I will not tolerate such irregularities, perhaps if an example is made in a few flagrant cases such as yours, it will be realized that I mean what I say. This practice will stop,” said Hambledon incisively, and banged the table.

Weinecke looked as though if he had much more of this his knees would give way.

“But, sir, I am a good German and a good Nazi. I pay all the taxes without grumbling, I subscribe to Party funds, I give generously to the Winter Help----”

“You cannot buy the right to sin,” said Hambledon magnificently, “with these subscriptions. No man is a good German who gives help to the enemies of his country as you have done. The Jew, the Jew, always the Jew behind these abuses.” (“Streicher ought to hear me now,” he thought.) “What is there about these Jews that you must defile yourself by serving them? One would think you were a Jew yourself.”

Weinecke’s face turned green with terror. He had never liked his Jewish grandmother; when he was a little boy that heavy white face, the dark smouldering eyes, the hooked nose approaching the jutting chin, had seemed to him to embody all he had heard of witches; and the strange unknown rites from which he was rigidly excluded, but of which he heard garbled accounts from his Lutheran nurse, were doubtless witchcraft. The fact was that his mother hated her husband’s Jewish connection and imbued the boy with her prejudices. Later in his life Weinecke realized that most of his ideas about the Jews were childish nonsense and his hysterical dislike reacted into a sort of inquisitive sympathy, but by that time his parents and the old grandmother were dead, and as he had never had any intercourse with his Jewish cousins the connection had dropped. It was, he believed, entirely unknown by the time the anti-Jewish agitation began in Germany. He would help a Jew if he could, just as he would a non-Jew, that is to say, if there were any money to be made out of it, but admit a Jewish connection, never, never. And now here was this terrible and powerful man, who knew everything, dragging out this ghastly secret also and shaking it in his face. His knees bent inwards, his back curved, his shoulders went up in spite of all efforts to straighten himself, and his eyes showed a line of white all along below the iris.

Tommy Hambledon watched this in amazement, for he had no idea that there was any truth in a suggestion he had merely thrown out to frighten the man. “I must be getting Jews on the brain,” he thought. “The creature’s turning into one before my eyes.”

“Oh, I am not, gracious sir,” protested Weinecke, “I am Aryan all through.”

“Protest that to the court when you are brought before it. You must know that it will be quite easy to prove you are a Jew,” said Hambledon, meaning merely that the evidence could be fabricated if necessary, but Weinecke took the words as proof that his ancestry was known. He still denied it, however, hysterically.

“I am not,” he shrieked, instinctively turning up his palms in the ageold gesture of protest. “Revered sir, I am not, on the head of my father I swear----”

He stopped abruptly. On the head of my father, what evil demon had put the betraying phrase into his mouth? Tommy Hambledon leaned back in his chair. Evidently his chance arrow had sunk to the feather and he had got this man where he wanted him.

“You see,” said the Chief of Police loftily, “it is useless to try to deceive the Reich. I think you are in rather bad case, Herr Rolf Weinecke.”

The man actually fell on his knees. “I am a good Nazi, all the same,” he wailed. “I never liked them---the Jews, I mean. It was only my grandmother, I couldn’t help my grandfather marrying her, could I? Kind, gracious sir, you are too just to punish a poor man for what isn’t his fault!” Tommy was, but he had no intention of showing it at the moment. “Let me off, don’t tell anybody. I will do anything you wish, anything----”

“You are a disgusting and repulsive sight,” said Hambledon from the bottom of his heart. “However, I will give you one chance to serve the Reich, just one. If you satisfy me fully in that, it may incline me to mercy.”

“Tell me what you want,” said Weinecke instantly, rising to his feet and clasping his hands in a gesture of submission.

“Put your hands down by your sides for a start,” snapped Hambledon, who found the man more intolerable every moment. “Stand up straight and answer my questions. You will not, I think, lie to me. Now, about the twelve thousand marks you sent to Berlin----”

Weinecke supplied a great deal of very useful information. He was the head of the Aachen branch of the organization which fleeced the Jews at the expense of the Government, for that was what it amounted to. The Jews declared to the Government for forfeit, a mere fraction of their actual possessions. Weinecke, and others in similar positions on every German frontier, not only connived at this but actively assisted the Jews by banking the rest of the money as their own. When the moment came for the Jew to leave Germany, he was given one-fifth of his property to take with him and the organization applied the rest to its own uses. Weinecke explained that they always---or nearly always---kept faith with the Jews, and gave them so high a proportion as twenty per cent, to induce other Jews to deal with them in the same way. It paid the Jew and it paid them.

“Yes,” thundered Hambledon, “and the only one that suffers is the Government of the Reich, and what do you care for that? Go on. These people in Berlin.”

Weinecke said plainly that Herr Goebbels was the brain behind the affair, but never appeared openly. The Berlin Committee, so to express it, were the eight gentlemen whose names the gracious Herr had deigned to read to him---Gagel, Dettmer, Kitzinger, Tietz, Rautenbach, Militz, Baumgartner and Eigenmann. They received, of course, subscriptions from all parts of Germany, not only from Aachen, at their monthly meetings. This twelve thousand marks in which the Herr was interested was not, naturally, the whole of the month’s supply from Aachen, as amounts were transmitted weekly. It so happened that in that week there was only one windfall, but a large one.

“So when they got there the cupboard wasn’t really bare,” said Tommy to himself. “Only one plum missing. When’s the next meeting?” he added aloud. Weinecke said, as Hambledon expected, May the 4th. It was the second date on the card found with the money.

“Where do they meet?”

“I don’t know, honoured sir, I’ve never heard. On my honour I’ve no idea.”

“Your honour! You mean, on the head of your father.”

Weinecke, to whom speech had given a certain amount of confidence, shrivelled up again, and Hambledon improved the moment by extracting full details of the Aachen end of the business, names, addresses and all, with a view to effective action. “Now,” he said, “what about Ginsberg?”

“Ginsberg?”

“Ginsberg was a member of the Frontier Guard at Aachen. He was shot at Aachen in August last year---nine months ago.”

“Oh, I remember now. Ginsberg, yes. He took it upon himself to disapprove of this business. He made trouble. He was one of those would-be superior people----”

“Silence!” roared Hambledon, really angry this time. “He was my servant, and you dared----”

“Oh, my God, what have I done? I did not know, noble sir, I didn’t know---I didn’t do it, I didn’t even complain of him. Schultz did that, I had nothing to do with it, Schultz complained to the local court and they shot him, I didn’t, I----”

Hambledon touched the bell-push on his desk; two troopers came in promptly. Hambledon pointed one finger at Weinecke and said, “Take him away, he annoys me. Return for orders.”

Weinecke collapsed on the carpet and was dragged, howling and struggling, from the room. Hambledon poured himself out a drink and swallowed it, lit a cigar and took a turn or two up and down the room till the trooper returned and saluted.

“The man is guilty of murder,” said the Chief of Police. “He will be shot at eight to-morrow morning.”

The trooper saluted again and went back to his mate in the ante-room outside.

“Speakin’ generally,” he said, “the Chief is easy though stric’, an’ not given to tempers, not like some I could mention. But when he gets going proper, Herrgott, give me Goering!”

Hambledon took another turn across the room.

“There is also Schultz,” he said to himself. “One of these days, Ginsberg my servant, I will deal with Schultz.”

A day or two later he spoke to Franz. “I think you once told me that you and your friends between you served most of the Nazi leaders in private service.”

“That is so, sir.”

“If it so happened that among your patrons were any of these men, it would be interesting to know where and when they are going to meet on May the 4th. Their names are Gagel, Dettmer, Kitzinger, Tietz, Rautenbach, Militz, Baumgartner and Eigenmann.”

“On May the 4th,” said Franz.

“On May the 4th---that’s next Thursday. To-day’s Saturday. Not too much time.”

“I will do my best to ascertain, sir.”

“Thank you. It will, I fear, be my painful duty to arrest eight members of your German Freedom League at that meeting.”

“Sir?” said the startled Franz.

“Yes. Their names are Gagel, Dettmer---and so on. I repeated them to you just now.”

“I should be very surprised, sir, to learn that any of these gentlemen are Freedom League members.”

“Not half so surprised as they will be, Franz, if all goes well.”

Franz stared at his master for a moment, and then broke into a low but distinct chuckle. “To serve you, sir, if I may take the liberty of saying so, is not merely a duty, but a pleasure.”

“I reciprocate your sentiments,” said Tommy solemnly. “ ‘You’re exceedingly polite,’ ” he hummed, as the man left the room, “ ‘and I think it only right to return the compliment.’ Some day, please God, I’ll sit in the stalls at the Savoy again and see a Gilbert and Sullivan opera right through from the overture to ‘God Save the King.’ ”

There was a small lecture-hall attached to the Rektor Art School in Berlin, a room about thirty feet by twenty, with a stage at one end adorned by a backcloth representing the Rhine at Ehrenbreitstein, and double entrance doors at the other. There was also, of course, a door at each side of the stage giving on to dressing-rooms behind, two bare rooms with looking-glasses on the walls and pegs for hats and coats. One of these rooms communicated with the Art School, the other had a door which opened into a side street. This door was kept locked, but Tommy Hambledon had seen to it that the lock was well oiled, and what is more, he had a key to it, for it was in this hall that the Land and Field Club held their monthly meetings.

“Land and Field Club,” said Tommy, when this was reported to him. “Lynx and Fox Club. Association of Stoats and Weasels. Thank you, Franz.”

There was a full meeting on the night of May the 4th. Eigenmann as chairman and Rautenbach as treasurer sat at a table in front of the stage to conduct proceedings, while the other six grouped themselves in gracefully negligent attitudes on the chairs facing them. The entrance doors at the end of the hall were guarded outside, but not the side door giving to the dressing-room, since that, of course, was locked. Eigenmann had tried it himself. The table was covered with papers, interesting and informative in themselves, and there were also eight fat little packets of notes which the company found even more interesting than the papers. Business was proceeding in an atmosphere of peace, comfort and security. “A good month, on the whole,” said Rautenbach, settling his eyeglass more securely in his right eye. “I will begin as usual with the ports. Stettin, seventeen thousand five hundred marks. Lübeck, two thousand six-fifty. Kiel, seven thousand two-seventy-five. Hamburg, twenty-four thousand three hundred. Bremen, only seven----”

Rautenbach saw Dettmer, facing him, suddenly sit up and stare past him towards the stage with a look of horror.

“---hundred and twenty,” finished Rautenbach, turning his head to see what the other was looking at. Dettmer had seen the left-hand door open quietly, Rautenbach saw a file of police come rapidly through it, jump off the stage, and hurl themselves on the assembled company, including himself. Eigenmann, having his back to the stage, was taken completely by surprise and promptly handcuffed, but the others put up a good fight and there ensued a very notable uproar. In the struggle the table was upset and papers and money slid to the floor in a heap; the gigantic Tietz, flinging from him the two policemen who had attached themselves to his arms, made a dive at this and started tearing up papers with the muddle-headed idea of destroying evidence. One of the police immediately hit him on the head with the leg of a chair, and Tietz passed into unconsciousness still clasping a double handful of lists and memoranda, snatched up haphazard from the ground.

When the fracas died down and the prisoners had been quelled and handcuffed, victors and victims, alike panting, saw the Chief of Police return to the stage. His dignity was a little marred by his collar, which stuck out at right-angles behind his left ear, but he surveyed the scene with a benignity which the Land and Field Club disliked intensely.

“Well, well,” he said. “Dear me, you have done it now, haven’t you? Sergeant, have those papers on the floor carefully collected and taken to the police station; they are important evidence. Let a bucket of water be poured over the large gentleman, it may revive him. I think the gentlemen’s coats are in the cloakroom we came through; they may resume them and then be handcuffed again. The gentlemen will be searched at the station, locked up for the night and charged to-morrow afternoon, I will go through the evidence in the morning. I suppose the smaller fry outside the door have also been netted? Good. I commend the police for their efficiency. I am now going home. Good night, gentlemen.”

Herr Goebbels was not himself present at the police-court proceedings the following afternoon, but he went nearly insane with anger when his representative gave an account of what had taken place.

“The Herr Polizei Oberhaupt himself gave evidence. He gave a detailed account of the way the Jewish money business is worked, and it appears he pounced at Aachen last night too. Every member of the organization there was hauled out of bed and arrested. Schultz evaded the police and came up here on a motor-cycle, riding all night, to report it. But that is not the worst.”

“What----”

“All the papers at the Rektor Art School Hall were of course impounded, and the eight men are charged, not with defrauding the State of the Jews’ money as you’d expect, but with being members of the German Freedom League.”

What?

“The German Freedom League. Not ordinary members, either, but a sort of local executive committee. Important documentary evidence was found, not only on the table but also in the gentlemen’s pockets, and worse still, in the houses of some of them when they were searched. Eigenmann’s, Rautenbach’s and Baumgartner’s, to be exact.”

“What happened?”

“The magistrate sentenced them to ten years in a concentration camp, each. I don’t know what’s happened to our people at Aachen.”

“Damn the people at Aachen,” said Goebbels hoarsely. “Go away and let me think this out---if I can,” he added, as the man went. “Freedom League! That devil Lehmann has worked this somehow. It can’t be true. It’s impossible. No, it’s not impossible, but I don’t believe it. Eigenmann would never---but he’s easily led. Rautenbach is capable of it, but he wouldn’t dare. On the other hand, where do the Freedom League get their funds from? Must be from something like this and somebody runs it, why not Rautenbach? No, it’s ridiculous. Lehmann has done this somehow, and the Leader will be so pleased. Who are those two men----” He rang the bell and his informant returned.

“Who were those two men we put into Lehmann’s police? Send for them at once, I want to speak to them.”

“They may be on duty----”

“I said, send for them!”

They came, and found Goebbels white and shaking with fury.

“What do you know about these arrests last night?”

“We were there, sir. We were among the police selected for the duty.”

“Oh, were you? Good. Now, those Freedom League papers were planted. Tell me how it was done.”

“They couldn’t have been, sir. There was some among the papers on the table and some in the gentlemen’s pockets.”

“They were put there beforehand.”

“If you say so, sir. But why didn’t the gentlemen see them on the table?”

“They were brought in afterwards.”

“Impossible, sir. I found some of them myself, almost before the fight was over.”

“They were----” Goebbels fought for self-control and stopped. “You may go,” he said, and the men were glad to do so.

“It seems true,” he said. “But I don’t believe it. This is Lehmann’s work; pompous, sententious devil, always talking about virtue and morality, blast him. Rautenbach could do it---- If it’s the last thing I do in this life I’ll get Lehmann----”

“Quite easy,” said Tommy to Reck. “I distributed papers in their coats while my gallant police charged in, then I followed them into the fray, fell over the table, which upset, papers cascaded from under my overcoat and the helpful Tietz clasped them to his bosom. Always remember this, Reck, my pippin. When men are fighting, they aren’t looking.”

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