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he was pounced on by a couple of Storm Troopers, summarily arrested, and taken to prison.

The Chief of Police received daily a list of Party members arrested for non-Party

activities of various kinds, and usually he gave it a purely formal perusal. On this occasion he ran

his eyes casually down the list as usual till he was brought up with a jerk by the name Ginsberg,

address Aachen, arrested Sept. 1st. Klaus Lehmann leaned back in his chair.

“Now I do wonder,” he said to himself, “exactly why he was arrested, and where, and at

what time?”

He glanced at the clock for no particular reason except that the beat of the pendulum

seemed to be louder than usual, and was horrified to find it was his own heart he could hear

thumping.

“Well,” he said philosophically, “I’ve had a damn good run, anyway.”

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