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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

tonight, 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that night, too, because his crowd were unexpectedly withdrawn and replaced by the Prussian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