The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (20 page)

She told him, too, because the mere presence of Hiram filled her with such love and recklessness that it banished all caution. From her he learned many curiou
s details of the plan gradually
to acquire an armed body in America so that Germany would have a million storm-troopers in the United States, which were to be placed at the service of any political demagogue pledged to overthrow the democracy and establish a Dictatorship of the Huey Long type. He gained an insight into the fantastic, far-flung Nazi propaganda organization which in its brutal and efficient activity made the Communist world revolution look like a nursery affair by comparison.

Once he had asked her in amazement: 'But the money, Irmgarde - where does the money for all this come from?'

'Blackmail,' she had replied. 'Theft and blackmail. We steal from Jew and Gentile alike, and what they have hidden we make them disgorge. We are not yet through bleeding Austria, and when that is dry we will take Czechoslovakia. Baron Rothschild will pay us twenty million marks for his
freedom. The fortune of the Fü
rstenhof family held in banks in England and France is estimated at ten million pounds. It will be returned to us because in Vienna we hold their boy for ransom
...'

Hiram had felt as though he had been plunged into icy water. The scene in the
battle-wrecked room in the Pode
bradova in Prague had swept through his mind again and he had been filled with revulsion at the cold-blooded, brutal philosophy that Irmgarde represented.

And yet he continued to go to her because the truth was that she, and she alone, drew him. He could not keep away from her. It was curiosity and danger that had appealed to him at first, but now it was the woman. It was his first encounter with a brilliant, cultured, sophisticated, morally decayed European aristocrat. And it was not a decay that came inwardly from her as a human being, but rather an outward canker, an abrasion from the life she led, her contact with a brittle, cynical European society that had in itself become degenerate. She had played the game as it had seemed most profitable and exciting to her, but underneath she had strong yearnings for such simplicities as truth, beauty and fearlessness. Inured to intrigue, artifice, the self-seeking cunning, the cowardice and conspiracy of those in power with whom she had contact, Hiram Holliday had made her his slave by his simple, brave gesture of striking a blow in protest against all of these things, and striking it at a time and place that courted almost certain destruction. Its very foolhardiness enhanced the purity and glory of the gesture. There was not a man she knew, or had ever known, not a man living in Germany who would have dared to do the same.

The next four days were whirlwinds of emotion and activity for Hiram. He worked hard during the daytime only to kill ·the hours that separated him from Irmgarde. There was always a tinge of caution in his own recklessness, but he trusted her to do her part, and did not know that there was none whatsoever in hers, that she had lost all caution and judgement and thought only of having him with her.

It was one o'clock, the morning of November 16, that Hiram entered the tiny private lift and went directly to the third floor of the house where Irmgarde awaited him. He found her depressed and moody. Her passion was in abeyance. She seemed to be in need of tenderness and the comfort of quiet companionship. They talked for an hour, when Irmgarde shivered suddenly, and said: 'It is cold here. Let us go downstairs, Hiram. I want to sit there by the fire with you.'

They went down the little
winding staircase to the large
salon
where the fire was alwa
ys burning. And the reason they
did not see the man who was sitting
there was because he was
so small that his head did
not rise above the back of the
brocaded wing-chair that was turned to the fire. They were
thus almost to the fire-place
when Irmgarde suddenly twitched
convulsively and said:
'Ach Herr Gott!’
and the man
rose
from the chair, or rather slid to his feet, bowed cou
rteously,
and said-'Gootefening
'

Irmgarde's hand in his had gone to ice, and her twitch had sent a little chill down Hiram's spine, but there was nothing in the man that caused him particular alarm. He was a hunchback, and so Hiram knew that it was Dr Grunze. But his appearance was not menacing. His head was large with bushy black hair, his chin was smooth-shaven and deft. His eyeglasses were attached to a black ribbon. In the buttonhole of his frock coat was a tiny swastika button. But for the hump on his back that deformed him, Hiram decided that he looked like a family doctor.

There was a terrible silence and Hiram pressed Irmgarde's hand hard to try to restore her courage. Without looking at her he knew that she was very close to fainting. The man bowed again and smiled, and he had wonderful white teeth, and said: 'Do you not introduce me, Irmgarde ?'

There was no sound but Irmgarde's breathing. Hiram knew that he must break this silence, restore at least an appearance of normality. He dropped the
Gra
fin's
hand and bowed. 'Permit me,' he said. 'My name is Hiram Holliday
...'
and then something, a sense of irony, impelled him to add:
'I
am a correspondent for the
New York Sentinel.'
Irmgarde sucked in her breath again.

Dr Grunze smiled, bowed again, and extended his hand. 'It iss a pleasure,' he said, and then added with a shrug, and a look of mischief on his face that was almost boyish:
'A
pleasure which I naff denied myself up to now. I haff never met a reporter from a newspaper. I am glad that the first iss an American. It iss a great country. We will do much wis it.'

Irmgarde said in a strained voice
:'
Heinrich. You frightened me so.'

Dr Grunze patted her arm genially, and said:
'Aber
...
aber.
I did not mean to. I zink perhaps I was a little asleep.' He turned to Hiram and said casually: 'You see, zat iss ze rewards of kindness. The
Grafin
permits me to come here and rest when I am tired from ze arduous duties of State. You are indeed fortunate, my frent, to have found this never-drying fountain of youth and graciousness.'

He spoke with great care and precision as one does who is unfamiliar with a language. Hiram could detect no trace of irony or mockery in either speech or manner. So this was the mysterious and dangerous Dr Grunze. Like all such hedgedaround beings, Hiram thought, when once they were reached they became ordinary and simple human beings.

'Can we not all zit ?' said the Doctor and sank back into the wing-chair. The
Gra
fin
sat on a nearby chaise-longue in front of the fire. She was wearing a simple Nile-green
negligee.
Hiram, who sat in a chair opposite her, thought that never in his life had he seen a face so tragic and so frightened. There was not one drop of blood in it beyond the green eyes and the paint on her mouth. They sat in silence for a moment. Then the Doctor leaned forward, his eyes twinkling cheerfully. He tapped Hiram on the knee and said: 'My frent, I can read your soughts. You are wishing that you may interview me.'

For the first time Hiram grinned. 'Yes,' he said,
'I
was. May
I?'

The Doctor lit a flat cigarette with a gold tip and puffed the smoke ruminatively for a moment before he said:
'I
giff to you the permission.'

Hiram forgot about Irmgarde and her desperate, warning face. He forgot about everything because for the moment he was blinded by the lines of black type: '
first
and
exclusive
interview
with
dr
heinrich
grunze,
by Hiram Holliday
...'
that swam before his eyes.

He leaned forward and said: 'Dr Grunze, will you tell me. What are Germany's feelings with regard to the United States ? What is the reason for such obvious organizations as the German-American Bund which beneath the American flag, and protected by the laws of a democracy, propagandize against that country ? What do you hope to accomplish ?'

The little hunchback began to chuckle. 'Ha-ha-ha, my frent. Your question iss as naive as your people. Germany was captured by us from much smaller beginnings than what we do in your country now. The philosophy of National Socialism must be prepared for. We are preparing you. When
we
are ready for you,
you
will be ready for us.' He laughed again, heartily, and then suddenly grew serious, leaned forward and touched Hiram on the knee, a black incubus with a hump on his back.

'My frent, we will take your country, not with guns, and bomps and aeroplanes, but with an idea.' He rapped his large bulging skull-front with his forefinger.' It iss here. We will tell zat idea to so many peoples in your country, over and over again, that they will believe it. And zat idea is zat zey were not made to rule but to be ruled over, and zat zey will be happier zat way. We will succeed because you have not ze strengs to put us in prison, or in concentration camp, or shoot us. But when we are zere in command, we will shoot, and put in prison who does not zink as we do. We haff made ze greatest discovery in ze history of man. We make all ze peoples zink in the same way.
Gehorsamkeit
- obedience. Only once before in history has it been tried, and zat was by ze Church, and it fails because zey have left to man his soul. We take his soul, too. It does not fail. Ze worse thing what has happened to zis world iss idealism - morals you say. We haf no morals. Yours we use against you to destroy
you....'

Irmgarde was sitting bolt upright on the couch, silent, her only motion a slight weaving of her body. She looked like a Laurencin painting, ragged colours on a white face. And Hiram listened completely bemused and spellbound with the depth and significance of his world scoop, as the little black Doctor, emphasizing his points with his long, white fingers and nods of his head, laid bare the fantastic scope of the plot against the United States. It was the Communist-planned world revolution all over again, but on a basis of philosophy and psychology so Germanic, from the red lips of the Doctor, that Hiram was appalled. Every detail of the seduction was bared. Ten years was the time allotted. 'It cannot be stopped,' concluded the pleasant little Doctor, 'otherwise, of course, I would not haff give you the interview.' He looked at his watch.
'Achy die Zeit, die Zeit
..
‘
he said. 'Perhaps that is why I am never seen, because I am too fond to talk. Irmgarde, a thousand pardons if I haff disturbed you. It iss ze privilege you haff given me. So. Gootbye, my dear. Gootbye, Mr Holliday....'

During his last words he had risen, donned a Chesterfield and a black Homburg hat and picked up a gold-knobbed umbrella and pushed the button for the lift. When it arrived, he bowed to them both, donned his hat, entered the lift and sank from sight, and nothing remained to Hiram but the memory of the picture of his descending smile.

Irmgarde was shaking him by the shoulders, weeping, sobbing, crying: 'Hiram! Hiram!
Um
Gottes Willen! Mem Lieb.
Do you understand ? Do you understand what has happened ? I have killed you! Killed you. Oh,
Gott!
What shall we do ? You must not leave here tonight. You must telephone to the American Embassy in the morning to send for you. You must not be an instant alone. But still, he will find a way. Hiram
...
Hiram, what have I done ?'

Her panic, curiously, struck no response in Hiram. Of all the places he had been, here somehow in the stronghold of Nazidom he felt the most secure. Closeness to them and watching them at work during the pogrom had bred contempt. He said: 'Irmgarde! Nonsense. Pull yourself together. I'm an American citizen. No one is going to do anything to me. Grunze wouldn't have told me those things if he hadn't wanted to - for his own reasons. I'm going home. I want to think.' In his mind he was already writing his story. But it was addressed not to 'Beauheld, Managing Editor,
New York Sentinel,'
but 'To the President of the United States.'

'Fool,' screamed Irmgarde, and suddenly began to beat at his chest with her fists. 'Didn't you understand? He was
reading you your death sentence.
Hiram! You cannot go. It was I who am to blame. I was not careful because I wanted to see you so. I did not make sure that he was not in Berlin.'

It was her melodramatics that made him turn so cold and stubborn. Had she explained quietly and earnestly, made him see
...

Hiram said: 'Irmgarde, stop it! If there is any danger I'll be safer in the hotel than I will here. I am neither a spy nor a German. They'll think twice before they touch an American in Berlin. Grunze said what he did because like all Germans he cannot help boasting.'