The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr Norris. Goodbye to Berlin

“We’re neither of us much good at letter-writing, I’m afraid.”

“The spirit was willing, dear boy. I hope you’ll believe that. You were ever-present in my thoughts. It is indeed a pleasure to have you back again. I feel that a load has been lifted from my mind already.”

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This sounded rather ominous. Perhaps he was on the rocks again. I only hoped that poor Frl. Schroeder wouldn’t have to suffer for it. There she sat, glass in hand, on the sofa, beaming, drinking in every word; her legs were so short that her black velvet shoes dangled an inch above the carpet.

“Just look, Herr Bradshaw,” she extended her wrist, “what Herr Norris gave me for my birthday. I was so delighted, will you believe me, that I started crying?”

It was a handsome-looking gold bracelet which must have cost at least fifty marks. I was really touched:

“How nice of you, Arthur!”

He blushed. He was quite confused.

“A trifling mark of esteem. I can’t tell you what a comfort Frl. Schroeder has been to me. I should like to engage her permanently as my secretary.”

“Oh, Herr Norris, how can you talk such nonsense!”

“I assure you, Frl. Schroeder, I’m quite in earnest.”

“You see how he makes fun of a poor old woman, Herr Bradshaw?”

She was slightly drunk. When Arthur poured her out a second glass of cherry brandy, she upset some of it over her dress. When the commotion which followed this accident had subsided, he said that he must be going out.

“Sorry as I am to break up this festive gathering … duty calls. Yes, I shall hope to see you this evening, William. Shall we have dinner together? Would that be nice?”

“Very nice.”

“Then I’ll say au revoir, till eight o’clock.”

I got up to go and unpack. Frl. Schroeder followed me into my room. She insisted on helping me. She was still tipsy and kept putting things into the wrong places; shirts into the drawer of the writing-table, books in the cupboard with the socks. She couldn’t stop singing Arthur’s praises.

“He came as if Heaven had sent him. I’d got into arrears with the rent, as I haven’t done since the inflation days. The porter’s wife came up to see me about it several times. ‘Frl. Schroeder,’ she said, ‘we know you and we don’t want to be

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hard on you. But we’ve all got to live.’ I declare there were evenings when I was so depressed I’d half a mind to put my head in the oven. And then Herr Norris arrived. I thought he’d just come to pay me a visit, as it were. ‘How much do you charge for the front bedroom?’ he asked. You could have knocked me over with a feather. ‘Fifty,’ I said. I didn’t dare ask more, with the times so bad. I was trembling all over for fear he’d think it was too much. And what do you think he answered? ‘Frl. Schroeder,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t possibly dream of letting you have less than sixty. It would be robbery.’ I tell you, Herr Bradshaw, I could have kissed his hand.”

Tears stood in Frl. Schroeder’s eyes. I was afraid she was going to break down.

“And he pays you regularly?”

“On the moment, Herr Bradshaw. He couldn’t be more punctual if it was you yourself. I’ve never known anybody to be so particular. Why, do you know, he won’t even let me run up a monthly bill for milk? He settles it by the week. 1 don’t like to feel that I owe anyone a pfennig,’ he says. . • . I wish there was more like him.”

That evening, when I suggested eating at the usual restaurant, Arthur, to my surprise, objected:

“It’s so noisy there, dear boy. My sensitive nerves revolt against the thought of an evening of jazz. As for the cooking, it is remarkable, even in this benighted town, for its vileness. Let’s go to the Montmartre.”

“But, my dear Arthur, it’s so terribly expensive.”

“Never mind. Never mind. In this brief life, one cannot always be counting the cost. You’re my guest this evening. Let’s forget the cares of this harsh world for a few hours and enjoy ourselves.”

“It’s very kind of you.”

At the Montmartre, Arthur ordered champagne.

“This is such a peculiarly auspicious event that I feel we may justifiably relax our rigid revolutionary standards.”

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I laughed: “Business seems to be flourishing with you, I must say.”

Arthur squeezed his chin cautiously between finger and thumb.

“I can’t complain, William. At the moment. No. But I fear I see breakers ahead.”

“Are you still importing and exporting?”

“Not exactly that… . No… . Well, in a sense, perhaps.”

“Have you been in Paris all this time?”

“More or less. On and off.”

“What were you doing there?”

Arthur glanced uneasily round the luxurious little restaurant; smiled with great charm:

“That’s a very leading question, my dear William.”

“Were you working for Bayer?”

“Er—partly. Yes.” A vagueness had come into Arthur’s eyes. He was trying to edge away from the subject.

“And you’ve been seeing him since you got back to Berit

linr

“Of course.” He looked at me with sudden suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. When I saw you last, you didn’t seem very pleased with him, that’s all.”

“Bayer and I are on excellent terms.” Arthur spoke with emphasis, paused and added:

‘Tfou haven’t been telling anybody that I’ve quarrelled with him, have you?”

“No, of course not, Arthur. Who do you suppose I’d tell?”

Arthur was unmistakably relieved.

“I beg your pardon, William. I might have known that I could rely on your admirable discretion. But if, by any chance, the story were to get about that Bayer and I were not friendly, it might be exceedingly awkward for me, you understand?”

I laughed.

“No, Arthur. I don’t understand anything.”

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Smiling, Arthur raised his glass.

“Have patience with me, William. You know, I always like to have my little secrets. No doubt the time will come when I shall be able to give you an explanation.”

“Or to invent one.”

“Ha ha. Ha ha. You’re as cruel as ever, I see … which reminds me that I thoughtlessly made an appointment with Anni for ten o’clock … so that perhaps we ought to be getting on with our dinner.”

“Of course. You mustn’t keep her waiting.”

For the rest of the meal Arthur questioned me about London. The cities of Berlin and Paris were tactfully avoided.

Arthur had certainly transformed the daily routine of life at Frl. Schroeder’s. Because he insisted on a hot bath every morning, she had to get up an hour earlier, in order to stoke the little old-fashioned boiler. She didn’t complain of this. Indeed, she seemed to admire Arthur for the trouble he caused her.

“He’s so particular, Herr Bradshaw. More like a lady than a gentleman. Everything in his room has its place, and I get into trouble if it isn’t all just as he wants it. I must say, though, it’s a pleasure to wait on anybody who takes such care of his things. You ought to see some of his shirts, and his ties. A perfect dream! And his silk underclothes! ‘Herr Norris,’ I said to him once, ‘you should let me wear those; they’re too fine for a man.’ I was only joking, of course. Herr Norris does enjoy a joke. He takes in four daily papers, you know, not to mention the weekly illustrateds, and I’m not allowed to throw any of them away. They must all be piled up in their proper order, according to the dates, if you please, on top of the cupboard. It makes me wild, sometimes, when I think of the dust they’re collecting. And then, every day, before he goes out, Herr Norris gives me a list as long as your arm of messages I’ve got to give to people who ring up or call. I have to remember all their names, and which ones he wants to see, and which he doesn’t. The doorbell’s for ever

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ringing, nowadays, with telegrams for Herr Norris, and express letters and air mail and I don’t know what else. This last fortnight it’s been specially bad. If you ask me, I think the ladies are his little weakness.”

“What makes you say that, Frl. Schroeder?”

“Well, I’ve noticed that Herr Norris is always getting telegrams from Paris. I used to open them, at first, thinking it might be something important which Herr Norris would like to know at once. But I couldn’t make head or tail of them. They were all from a lady named Margot. Very affectionate, some of them were, too. ‘I am sending you a hug,’ and ‘last time you forgot to enclose kisses.’ I must say I should never have the nerve to write such things myself; fancy the clerk at the post office reading them! These French girls must be a shameless lot. From my experience when a woman makes a parade of her feelings like that, she’s not worth much… . And then she wrote such a lot of nonsense, besides.”

“What sort of nonsense?”

“Oh, I forget half of it. Stuff about teapots and kettles and bread and butter and cake.”

“How very queer.”

“You’re right, Herr Bradshaw. It is queer. . , . I’ll tell you what I think.” Frl. Schroeder lowered her voice and glanced towards the door; perhaps she had caught the trick from Arthur. “I believe it’s a kind of secret language. You know? Every word has a double meaning.”

“A code?”

“Yes, that’s it.” Frl. Schroeder nodded mysteriously.

“But why should this girl write telegrams to Herr Norris in code, do you suppose? It seems so pointless.”

Frl. Schroeder smiled at my innocence.

“Ah, Herr Bradshaw, you don’t know everything, although you’re so clever and learned. It takes an old woman like me to understand little mysteries of that sort. It’s perfectly plain: this Margot, as she calls herself ( I don’t suppose it’s her real name), must be going to have a baby.”

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“And you think that Herr Norris …”

Frl. Schroeder nodded her head vigorously.

“It’s as clear as the nose on your face.”

“Really, I must say, I hardly think …”

“Oh, it’s all very well for you to laugh, Herr Bradshaw, but I’m right, you see if I’m not. After all, Herr Norris is still in the prime of life. I’ve known gentlemen have families who were old enough to be his father. And, besides, what other reason could she have for writing messages like that?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“You see?” cried Frl. Schroeder triumphantly. “You don’t know. Neither do I.”

Every morning Frl. Schroeder would come shuffling through the flat at express speed, like a little steam-engine, screaming:

“Herr Norris! Herr Norris! Your bath is ready! If you don’t come quick the boiler will explode!”

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Arthur, in English. “Just let me clap on my wig.”

He was afraid to go into the bathroom until the water had been turned on and all danger of an explosion was over. Frl. Schroeder would rush in heroically, with face averted and, muffling her hand in a towel, wrench at the hot tap. If the bursting-point was already very near, this would at first emit only clouds of steam, while the water in the boiler boiled with a noise like thunder. Arthur, standing in the doorway, watched Frl. Schroeder’s struggles with a nervous, snarling grimace, ready at any moment to bolt for his life.

After the bath came the barber’s boy, who was sent up daily from the hairdresser’s at the corner to shave Arthur and to comb his wig.

“Even in the wilds of Asia,” Arthur once told me, “I have never shaved myself when it could possibly be avoided. It’s one of those sordid annoying operations which put one in a bad humour for the rest of the day.”

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When the barber had gone, Arthur would call to me:

“Come in, dear boy, I’m visible now. Come and talk to me while I powder my nose.”

Seated before the dressing-table in a delicate mauve wrap, Arthur would impart to me the various secrets of his toilet. He was astonishingly fastidious. It was a revelation to me to discover, after all this time, the complex preparations which led up to his every appearance in public. I hadn’t dreamed, for example, that he spent ten minutes three times a week in thinning his eyebrows with a pair of pincers. (“Thinning, William; not plucking. That’s a piece of effeminacy which I abhor.” ) A massage-roller occupied another fifteen minutes daily of his valuable time; and then there was a thorough manipulation of his cheeks with face cream ( seven or eight minutes) and a little judicious powdering (three or four). Pedicure, of course, was an extra; but Arthur usually spent a few moments rubbing ointment on his toes to avert blisters and corns. Nor did he ever neglect a gargle and mouth-wash. (“Coming into daily contact, as I do, with members of the proletariat, I have to defend myself against positive onslaughts of microbes.” ) All this is not to mention the days on which he actually made up his face. ( “I felt I needed a dash of colour this morning; the weather’s so depressing.”) Or the great fortnightly ablution of his hands and wrists with depilatory lotion. ( “I prefer not to be reminded of our kinship with the larger apes.”)

After these tedious exertions, it was no wonder that Arthur had a healthy appetite for his breakfast. He had succeeded in coaching Frl. Schroeder as a toast-maker; nor did she once, after the first few days, bring him an unduly hard-boiled egg. He had home-made marmalade, prepared by an English lady who lived in Wilmersdorf and charged nearly double the market price. He used his own special coffee-pot, which he had brought with him from Paris, and drank a special blend of coffee, which had to be sent direct from Hamburg. “Little things in themselves,” as Arthur said, “which I have come, through long and painful experience,

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to value more than many of the over-advertised and overrated luxuries of life.”

At half-past ten he went out, and I seldom saw him again until the evening. I was busy with my teaching. After lunch, he made a habit of coming home and lying down for an hour on his bed. “Believe me or not, William, I am able to make my mind an absolute blank for whole minutes at a time. It’s a matter of practice, of course. Without my siesta, I should quickly become a nervous wreck.”

Three nights a week, Frl. Anni came; and Arthur indulged in his singular pleasures. The noise was perfectly audible in the living-room, where Frl. Schroeder sat sewing.

“Dear, dear!” she said to me once, “I do hope Herr Norris won’t injure himself. He ought to be more careful at his time of life.”

One afternoon, about a week after my arrival, I happened to be in the flat alone. Even Frl. Schroeder had gone out. The doorbell rang. It was a telegram for Arthur, from Paris.

The temptation was simply not to be resisted; I didn’t even struggle against it. To make things easier for me, the envelope had not been properly stuck down; it came open in my hand.

“Am very thirsty,” I read, “hope another kettle will boil soon kisses are for good boys.—Margot.”

I fetched a bottle of glue from my room and fixed the envelope down carefully. Then I left it on Arthur’s table and went out to the cinema.

At dinner, that evening, Arthur was visibly depressed. Indeed, he seemed to have no appetite, and sat staring in front of him with a bilious frown.

“W’hat’s the matter?” I asked.

“Things in general, dear boy. The state of this wicked world. A touch of Weltschmerz, that’s all.”

“Cheer up. The course of true love never did run smooth, you know.”

But Arthur didn’t react. He didn’t even ask me what I meant. Towards the end of our meal, I had to go to the back

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of the restaurant to make a telephone call. As I returned I saw that he was absorbed in reading a piece of paper which he stuffed hastily into his pocket as I approached. He wasn’t quite quick enough. I had recognized the telegram.

CHAPTER TEN

Arthur looked up at me with eyes which were a little too innocent.

“By the way, William,” his tone was carefully casual, “do you happen to be doing anything next Thursday evening?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“Excellent. Then may I invite you to a little dinner-party?”

“That sounds very nice. Who else is coming?”

“Oh, it’s to be a very small affair. Just ourselves and Baron von Pregnitz.”

Arthur had brought out the name in the most offhand manner possible. Ť

“Kuno!” I exclaimed.

“You seem very surprised, William, not to say displeased.” He was the picture of innocence. “I always thought you and he were such good friends?”

“So did I, until the last time we met. He practically cut me dead.”

“Oh, my dear boy, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think that must have been partly your imagination. I’m sure he’d never do a thing like that; it doesn’t sound like him at all.”

“You don’t suggest I dreamed it, do you?”

“I’m not doubting your word for an instant, of course. If

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he was, as you say, a little brusque, I expect he was worried by his many duties. As you probably know, he has a post under the new administration.”

“I think I did read about it in the newspapers, yes.”

“And anyhow, even if he did behave a little strangely on the occasion you mention, I can assure you that he was acting under a misapprehension which has since been removed.”

I smiled.

“You needn’t make such a mystery out of it, Arthur. I know half the story already, so you may as well tell me the other half. Your secretary had something to do with it, I think?”

Arthur wrinkled up his nose with a ridiculously fastidious expression.

“Don’t call him that, William, please. Just say Schmidt. I don’t care to be reminded of the association. Those who are foolish enough to keep snakes as pets usually have cause to regret it, sooner or later.”

“All right, then. Schmidt. … Go on.”

“I see that, as usual, you’re better informed than I’d supposed,” Arthur sighed. “Well, well, if you want to hear the whole melancholy truth, you must, painful as it is for me to dwell on. As you know, my last weeks at the Courbierestrasse were spent in a state of excruciating financial anxiety.”

“I do indeed.”

“Well, without going into a lot of sordid details which are neither here nor there, I was compelled to try and raise money. I cast about in all sorts of likely and unlikely directions. And, as a last desperate resort, when the wolf was literally scratching at the door, I put my pride in my pocket… .”

“And asked Kuno to lend you some?”

“Thank you, dear boy. With your customary consideration for my feelings, you help me over the most painful part of the story… . Yes, I sank so low. I violated one of my most sacred principles—never to borrow from a friend. ( For I may say I did regard him as a friend, a dear friend. ) Yes …”

“And he refused? The stingy brute!”

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“No, William. There you go too fast. You misjudge him. I have no reason to suppose that he would have refused. Quite the contrary. This was the first time I had ever approached him. But Schmidt got to know of my intentions. I can only suppose he had been systematically opening all my letters. At any rate, he went straight to Pregnitz and advised him not to advance me the money; giving all sorts of reasons, most of which were the most monstrous slanders. Despite all my long experience of human nature, I should hardly have believed such treachery and ingratitude possible …”

“Whatever made him do it?”

“Chiefly, I think, pure spite. As far as one can follow the workings of his foul mind. But, undoubtedly, the creature was also afraid that, in this case, he would be deprived of his pound of flesh. He usually arranged these loans himself, you know, and subtracted a percentage before handing over the money at all. … It humbles me to the earth to have to tell you this.”

“And I suppose he was right? I mean, you weren’t going to give him any, this time, were you?”

“Well, no. After his villainous behaviour over the sitting-room carpet, it was hardly to be expected that I should. You remember the carpet?”

“I should think I did.”

“The carpet incident was, so to speak, the declaration of war between us. Although I still endeavoured to meet his demands with the utmost fairness.”

“And what did Kuno have to say to all this?”

“He was, naturally, most upset, and indignant. And, I must add, rather unnecessarily unkind. He wrote me a most unpleasant letter. Quite gentlemanly, of course; he is always that. But frigid. Very frigid.”

“I’m surprised that he took Schmidt’s word against yours.”

“No doubt Schmidt had ways and means of convincing him. There are some incidents in my career, as you doubt—

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less know, which are very easily capable of misinterpretation.”

“And he brought me into it, as well?”

“I regret to say that he did. That pains me more than anything else in the whole affair; to think that you should have been dragged down into the mud in which I was already wallowing.”

“What exactly did he tell Kuno about me?”

“He seems to have suggested, not to put too fine a point upon it, that you were an accomplice in my nefarious crimes.”

“Well I’m damned.”

“I need hardly add that he painted us both as Bolsheviks of the deepest crimson.”

“He flattered me there, I’m afraid.”

“Well—er—yes. That’s one way of looking at it, of course. Unfortunately, revolutionary ardour is no recommendation to the Baron’s favour. His view of the members of the Left Wing is somewhat primitive. He imagines us with pockets full of bombs.”

“And yet, in spite of all this, he’s ready to have dinner with us next Thursday?”

“Oh, our relations are very different now, I’m glad to say. I’ve seen him several times since my return to Berlin. Considerable diplomacy was required, of course; but I think I’ve more or less convinced him of the absurdity of Schmidt’s accusation. By a piece of good luck, I was able to be of service in a little matter. Pregnitz is essentially a reasonable man; he’s always open to conviction.”

I smiled: “You seem to have put yourself to a good deal of trouble on his account. I hope it’ll prove to have been worth while.”

“One of my characteristics, William, you may call it a weakness if you like, is that I can never bear to lose a friend, if it can possibly be avoided.”

“And you’re anxious that I shan’t lose a friend either?”

“Well, yes, I must say, if I thought I had been the cause, even indirectly, of a permanent estrangement between Preg—

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nitz and yourself, it would make me very unhappy. If any

little doubts or resentments do still exist on either side, I

sincerely hope that this meeting will put an end to them.” “There’s no ill feeling as far as I’m concerned.” “I’m glad to hear you say that, dear boy. Very glad. It’s so

stupid to bear grudges. In this life one’s apt to lose a great

deal through a mistaken sense of pride.” “A great deal of money, certainly.” “Yes … that too.” Arthur pinched his chin and looked

thoughtful. “Although I was speaking, just then, more from

the spiritual point of view than the material.” His tone implied a gentle rebuke. “By the way,” I asked, “what’s Schmidt doing now?” “My dear William,” Arthur looked pained, “how in the

world should I know?”

“I thought he might have been bothering you.” “During my first month in Paris, he wrote me a number of

letters full of the most preposterous threats and demands for

money. I simply disregarded them. Since then, I’ve heard

nothing more.”

“He’s never turned up at Frl. Schroeder’s?”

“Thank God, no. Not up to now. It’s one of my nightmares

that he’ll somehow discover the address.”

“I suppose he’s more or less bound to, sooner or later?” “Don’t say that, William. Don’t say that, please. … I

have enough to worry me as it is. The cup of my afflictions

would indeed be full.”

As we walked to the restaurant on the evening of the dinner-party, Arthur primed me with final instructions.

“You will be most careful, won’t you, dear boy, not to let drop any reference to Bayer or to our political beliefs?”

“I’m not completely mad.”

“Of course not, William. Please don’t think I meant anything offensive. But even the most cautious of us betray ourselves at times… . Just one other little point: perhaps, at this stage of the proceedings, it would be more politic not

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to address Pregnitz by his Christian name. It’s as well to preserve one’s distance. That sort of thing’s so easily misunderstood.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll be as stiff as a poker.”

“Not stiff, dear boy, I do beg. Perfectly easy, perfectly natural. A shade formal, perhaps, just at first. Let him make the advances. A little polite reserve, that’s all.”

“If you go on much longer, you’ll get me into such a c Irate that I shan’t be able to open my mouth.”

We arrived at the restaurant to find Kuno already seated at the table Arthur had reserved. The cigarette between his fingers was burnt down almost to the end; his face wore an expression of well-bred boredom. At the sight of him, Arthur positively gasped with horror.

“My dear Baron, do forgive me, please. I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. Did I say half-past? I did? And you’ve been waiting a quarter of an hour? You overwhelm me with shame. Really, I don’t know how to apologize enough.”

Arthur’s fulsomeness seemed to embarrass the Baron as much as it did myself. He made a faint, distasteful gesture with his fin-like hand and murmured something which I couldn’t hear.

“… too stupid of me. I simply can’t conceive how I can have been so foolish… .”

We all sat down. Arthur prattled on and on; his apologies developed like an air with variations. He blamed his memory and recalled other instances when it had failed him. (“I’m reminded of a most unfortunate occasion in Washington on which I entirely forgot to attend an important diplomatic function at the house of the Spanish Ambassador.”) He found fault with his watch; lately, he told us, it had been gaining. ( “I usually make a point, about this time of year, of sending it to the makers in Zürich to be overhauled.”) And he assured the Baron, at least five times, that I had no responsibility whatever for the mistake. I wished I could sink through the floor. Arthur, I could see, was nervous and un-105

sure of himself; the variations wavered uneasily and threatened, at every moment, to collapse into discords. I had seldom known him to be so verbose and never so boring. Kuno had retired behind his monocle. His face was as discreet as the menu, and as unintelligible.

By the middle of the fish, Arthur had talked himself out. A silence followed which was even more uncomfortable than his chatter. We sat round the elegant little dinner-table like three people absorbed in a difficult chess problem. Arthur manipulated his chin and cast furtive, despairing glances in my direction, signalling for help. I declined to respond. I was sulky and resentful. I’d come here this evening on the understanding that Arthur had already more or less patched things up with Kuno; that the way was paved to a general reconciliation. Nothing of the kind. Kuno was still suspicious of Arthur, and no wonder, considering the way he was behaving now. I felt his eye questioningly upon me from time to time and went on eating, looking neither to right nor to left.

“Mr. Bradshaw’s just returned from England.” It was as though Arthur had given me a violent push into the middle of the stage. His tone implored me to play my part. They were both looking at me, now. Kuno was interested but cautious; Arthur frankly abject. They were so funny in their different ways that I had to smile.

“Yes,” I said, “at the beginning of the month.” ,

“Excuse me, you were in London?”

“Part of the time, yes.”

“Indeed?” Kuno’s eye lit up with a tender gleam. “And how was it there, may I ask?”

“We had lovely weather in September.”

“Yes, I see. …” A faint, fishy smile played over his lips; he seemed to savour delicious memories. His monocle shone with a dreamy light. His distinguished, preserved profile became pensive and maudlin and sad.

“I shall always maintain,” put in the incorrigible Arthur, “that London in September has a charm all its own. I re—

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member one exceptionally beautiful autumn—in nineteen hundred and five. I used to stroll down to Waterloo Bridge before breakfast and admire St. Paul’s. At that time, I had a suite at the Savoy Hotel… .”

Kuno appeared not to have heard him.

“And, excuse me, how are the Horse Guards?”

“Still sitting there.”

“Yes? I am glad to hear this, you see. Very glad… .”

I grinned. Kuno smiled, fishy and subtle. Arthur uttered a surprisingly coarse snigger which he instantly checked with his hand. Then Kuno threw back his head and laughed out loud: “Ho! Ho! Ho!” I had never heard him really laugh before. His laugh was a curiosity, an heirloom; something handed down from the dinner-tables of the last century; aristocratic, manly and sham, scarcely to be heard nowadays except on the legitimate stage. He seemed a little ashamed of it himself, for, recovering, he added, in a tone of apology:

“You see, excuse me, I can remember them very well.”

“I’m reminded,” Arthur leaned forward across the table; his tone became spicy, “of a story which used to be told about a certain peer of the realm … let’s call him Lord X. I can vouch for it, because I met him once in Cairo, a most eccentric man… .”

There was no doubt about it, the party had been saved. I began to breathe more freely. Kuno relaxed by imperceptible stages, from polite suspicion to positive jollity. Arthur, recovering his nerve, was naughty and funny. We drank a good deal of brandy and three whole bottles of Pommard. I told an extremely stupid stoiy about the two Scotsmen who went into a synagogue. Kuno started to nudge me with his foot. In an absurdly short space of time I looked at the clock and saw it was eleven.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Arthur. “If you’ll forgive me, I must fly. A little engagement …”

I looked at Arthur questioningly. I had never known him to make appointments at this hour of the night; besides, it

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wasn’t Anni’s evening. Kuno didn’t seem at all put out, however. He was most gracious.

“Don’t mention it, my dear fellow… . We quite understand.” His foot pressed mine under the table.

“You know,” I said, when Arthur had left us, “I really ought to be getting home, too.”

“Oh, surely not.”

“I think so,” I said firmly, smiling and moving my foot away. He was squeezing a corn.

“You see, I should like so very much to show you my new flat. We can be there in the car in ten minutes.”

“I should love to see it; some other time.”

He smiled faintly.

“Then may I, perhaps, give you a lift home?”

“Thank you very much.”

The remarkably handsome chauffeur saluted pertly, tucked us into the depths of the vast black limousine. As we slid forward along the Kurfürstendamm, Kuno took my hand under the fur rug.

“You’re still angry with me,” he murmured reproachfully.

“Why should I be?”

“Oh yes, excuse me, you are.”

“Really, I’m not.”

Kuno gave my hand a limp squeeze.

“May I ask you something?”

“Ask away.”

“You see, I don’t wish to be personal. Do you believe in Platonic friendship?”

“I expect so,” 1 said, guardedly.

The answer seemed to satisfy him. His tone became more confidential: “You’re sure you won’t come up and see my flat? Not for five minutes?”

“Not tonight.”

“Quite sure?” He squeezed.

“Quite, quite sure.”

“Some other evening?” Another squeeze.

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I laughed: “I think I should see it better in the daytime, shouldn’t I?”

Kuno sighed gently, but did not pursue the subject. A few moments later, the limousine stopped outside my door. Glancing up at Arthur’s window, I saw that the light was burning. I didn’t remark on this to Kuno, however.

“Well, good night, and thank you for the lift.”

“Do not mention it, please.” <

I nodded towards the chauffeur: “Shall I tell him to take you home?”

“No, thank you,” Kuno spoke rather sadly, but with an attempt at a smile. “I’m afraid not. Not just yet.”

He sank back upon the cushions, the smile still frozen on his face, his monocle catching a ghostly glassy gleam from the street lamp as he was driven away.

As I entered the flat, Arthur appeared, in shirtsleeves, at his bedroom doorway. He seemed rather perturbed.

“Back already, William?”

I grinned: “Aren’t you pleased to see me, Arthur?”

“Of course, dear boy. What a question! I didn’t expect you quite so soon, that’s all.”

“I know you didn’t. Your appointment doesn’t seem to have kept you very long, either “

“It—er—fell through.” Arthur yawned. He was too sleepy even to tell lies.

I laughed: “You meant well, I know. Don’t worry. We parted on the best of terms.”

He brightened at once: “You did? Oh, I’m so very glad. For the moment, I was afraid some little hitch might have occurred. Now I can go to sleep with a mind relieved. Once again, William, I must thank you for your invaluable support.”

“Always glad to oblige,” I said. “Good night.”

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The first week in November came and the traffic strike was declared. It was ghastly, sopping weather. Everything out of doors was covered with a layer of greasy, fallen dirt. A few trams were running, policemen posted fore and aft. Some of these were attacked, the windows smashed and the passengers forced to get out. The streets were deserted, wet, raw and grey. Von Papen’s Government was expected to proclaim martial law. Berlin seemed profoundly indifferent. Proclamations, shootings, arrests; they were all nothing new. Helen Pratt was putting her money on Schleicher: “He’s the foxiest of the lot,” she told me. “Look here, Bill, I’ll bet you five marks he’s in before Christmas. Like to take me on?” I declined.

Hitler’s negotiations with the Right had broken down; the Hakenkreuz was even flirting mildly with the Hammer and Sickle. Telephone conversations, so Arthur told me, had already taken place between the enemy camps. Nazi storm-troopers joined with Communists in the crowds which jeered at the black-legs and pelted them with stones. Meanwhile, on the soaked advertisement pillars, Nazi posters represented the K.P.D. as a bogy skeleton in Red Army uniform. In a few days there would be another election; our fourth this year. Political meetings were well attended; they were cheaper than going to the movies or getting drunk. Elderly people sat indoors, in the damp, shabby houses, brewing malt coffee or weak tea and talking without animation of the Smash.

On November 7th, the election results were out. The Nazis had lost two million votes. The Communists had gained eleven seats. They had a majority of over 100,000 in Berlin.

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“You see,” I told Frl. Schroeder, “it’s all your doing.” We had persuaded her to go down to the beer-shop at the corner and vote, for the first time in her life. And now she was as delighted as if she’d backed a winner: “Herr Norris! Herr Norris! Only think! I did just what you told me; and it’s all come out as you said! The porter’s wife’s ever so cross. She’s followed the elections for years, and she would have it that the Nazis were going to win another million this time. I had a good laugh at her, I can tell you. ‘Aha, Frau Schneider!’ I said to her, ‘I understand something about politics, too, you see!’ “

During the morning, Arthur and I went round to the Wilhelmstrasse, to Bayer’s office, “for a little taste,” as he put it, “of the fruits of victory.” Several hundred others seemed to have had the same idea. There was such a crowd of people coming and going on the stairs that we had difficulty in getting into the building at all. Everybody was in the best of spirits, shouting to each other, greeting, whistling, singing. As we struggled upwards, we met Otto on his way down. He nearly wrung my hand off in his excitement.

“Mensch! Willi! Jetzt geht’s los! Just let them talk about forbidding the Party now! If they do we’ll fight! The old Nazis are done for, that’s certain. In six months, Hitler won’t have any storm-troops left!”

Half a dozen of his friends were with him. They all shook my hand with the warmth of long-lost brothers. Meanwhile, Otto had flung himself upon Arthur like a young bear. “What, Arthur, you old sow, you here too? Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it grand? Why, I’m so pleased I could knock you into the middle of next week!”

He dealt Arthur an affectionate hook in the ribs which made him squirm. Several of the bystanders laughed sympathetically. “Good old Arthur!” exclaimed one of Otto’s friends loudly. The name was overheard, taken up, passed from mouth to mouth. “Arthur … who’s Arthur? Why, man, don’t you know who Arthur is?” No, they didn’t know. Equally, they didn’t care. It was a name, a focus-point for

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the enthusiasm of all these excited young people; it served its purpose. “Arthur! Arthur!” was caught up on all sides. People were shouting it on the floor above us; in the hallway below. “Arthur’s here!” “Arthur for ever!” “We want Arthur!” The storm of voices had risen in a moment. A mighty cheer, exuberant, half-humorous, burst spontaneously from a hundred throats. Another followed it, and another. The crazy old staircase shook; a tiny flake of plaster was dislodged from the ceiling. In this confined space, the reverberation was terrific; the crowd was excited to find what a noise it could make. There was a powerful, convulsive, surging movement inwards, towards the unseen object of admiration. A wave of admirers elbowed their way up the stairs, to collide with another wave, cascading down from above. Everybody wanted to touch Arthur. A rain of hand-claps descended on his wincing shoulders. An ill-timed attempt to hoist him into the air nearly resulted in his being pitched headlong over the banisters. His hat had been knocked off. I had managed to save it and was fully expecting to have to rescue his wig as well. Gasping for breath, Arthur tried, in a muddled way, to rise to the occasion: “Thank you …” he managed to articulate. “Most kind … really don’t deserve … good gracious! Oh dear!”

He might have been quite seriously injured, had not Otto and his friends forced a way for him to the top of the staircase. We scrambled in the wake of their powerful, barging bodies. Arthur clutched my arm, half scared, half shyly pleased. “Fancy their knowing me, William,” he panted into my ear.

But the crowd hadn’t done with him yet. Now that we had reached the office door, we occupied a position of vantage and could be seen by the mass of struggling people wedged in the staircase below. At the sight of Arthur, another terrific cheer shook the building. “Speech!” yelled somebody. And the cry was echoed: “Speech! Speech! Speech!” Those on the stairs began a rhythmical stamping and shouting; the heavy tread of their boots was as formidable as the stroke of

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a giant piston. If Arthur didn’t do something to stop it, it seemed probable that the entire staircase would collapse.

At this critical moment, the door of the office opened. It was Bayer himself, come out to see what all the noise was about. His smiling eyes took in the scene with the amusement of a tolerant schoolmaster. The uproar did not disconcert him in the least; he was used to it. Smiling, he shook hands with the scared and embarrassed Arthur, laying a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. “Ludwig!” roared the onlookers. “Ludwig! Arthur! Speech!” Bayer laughed at them and made a good-humoured gesture of salute and dismissal. Then he turned, escorting Arthur and myself into the office. The noise outside gradually subsided into singing and shouted jokes. In the outer office the typists were doing their best to carry on work amidst groups of eagerly arguing men and women. The walls were plastered with news-sheets displaying the election results. We elbowed our way into Bayer’s little room. Arthur sank at once into a chair and began fanning himself with his recovered hat.

“Well, well … dear me! I feel quite carried away, as it were, in the whirl of history; distinctly battered. This is indeed a red-letter day for the Cause.”

Bayer’s eyes regarded him with vivid, faintly amused interest.

“It surprises you, eh?”

“Well—er—I must admit that hardly, in my most sanguine dreams, had I dared to expect such a very decisive—er— victory.”

Bayer nodded encouragingly.

“It is good, yes. But it will be unwise, I think, to exaggerate the importances of this success. Many factors have contributed to it. It is, how do you call, symptomic?”

“Symptomatic,” Arthur corrected, with a little cough. His blue eyes shifted uneasily over the litter of papers on Bayer’s writing-table. Bayer gave him a brilliant smile.

“Ah, yes. Symptomatic. It is symptomatic of the phase through which we are at present passing. We are not yet

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ready to cross the Wilhelmstrasse.” He made a humorous gesture of his hand, indicating, through the window, the direction of the Foreign Office and Hindenburg’s residence. “No. Not quite yet.”

“Do you think,” I asked, “that this means the Nazis are done for?”

He shook his head with decision. “Unfortunately, no. We may not be so optimistic. This reverse is for them of a temporary character only. You see, Mr. Bradshaw, the economic situation is in their favour. We shall hear much more of our friends, I think.”

“Oh, please don’t say anything so unpleasant,” murmured Arthur, fidgeting with his hat. His eyes continued furtively to explore the writing-table. Bayer’s glance followed them.

“You do not like the Nazis, eh, Norris?”

His tone was rich with amusement. He appeared to find Arthur extremely funny at this precise moment. I was at a loss to understand why. Moving over to the table, he began, as if abstractedly, to handle the papers which lay there.

“Really!” protested Arthur, in shocked tones. “How can you ask? Naturally, I dislike them. Odious creatures… .”

“Ah, but you should not!” With great deliberation, Bayer took a key from his pocket, unlocked a drawer in the writing-table, and drew from it a heavy sealed packet. His red-brown eyes sparkled teasingly. “This outlook is quite false. The Nazi of to-day can be the communist of tomorrow. When they have seen where their leaders’ programme has brought them, they may not be so very difficult to convince. I wish all opposition could be thus overcome. There are others, you see, who will not listen to such arguments.”

Smiling, he turned the packet in his hands. Arthur’s eyes were fastened upon it, as if in unwilling fascination; Bayer seemed to be amusing himself by exerting his hypnotic powers. At all events, Arthur was plainly most uncomfortable.

“Er—yes. Well … you may be right… ,”

There was a curious silence. Bayer was smiling to himself,

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subtly, with the corners of his lips. I had never seen him in this mood before. Suddenly, he appeared to become aware of what he was holding.

“Why, of course, my dear Norris … These are the documents I had promised to show you. Can you be so kind as to let me have them tomorrow again? We have to forward them, you know, as quickly as possible.”

“Certainly. Of course… .” Arthur had fairly jumped out of his seat to receive the packet. He was like a dog which has been put on trust for a lump of sugar. “I’ll take the greatest care of them, I assure you.”

Bayer smiled, but said nothing.

Some minutes later, he escorted us affably out of the premises by the back staircase which led down into the courtyard. Arthur thus avoided another encounter with his admirers.

As we walked away along the street, he seemed thoughtful and vaguely unhappy. Twice he sighed.

“Feeling tired?” I asked.

“Not tired, dear boy. No … I was merely indulging in my favourite vice of philosophizing. When you get to my age you’ll see more and more clearly how very strange and complex life is. Take this morning, for instance. The simple enthusiasm of all those young people; it touched me very deeply. On such occasions, one feels oneself so unworthy. I suppose there are individuals who do not suffer from a conscience. But I am not one of them.”

The strangest thing about this odd outburst was that Arthur obviously meant what he said. It was a genuine fragment of a confession, but I could make nothing of it.

“Yes,” I encouraged experimentally, “I sometimes feel like that myself.”

Arthur didn’t respond. He merely sighed for the third time. A sudden shadow of anxiety passed over his face; hastily he fingered the bulge in his pocket made by the papers which Bayer had given him. They were still there. He breathed relief.

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November passed without much event. I had more pupils again, and was busy. Bayer gave me two long manuscripts to translate.

There were rumours that the K.P.D. would be forbidden; soon, in a few weeks. Otto was scornful. The Government would never dare, he said. The Party would fight. All the members of his cell had revolvers. They hung them, he told me, by strings from the bars of a cellar-grating in their Lokal, so that the police shouldn’t find them. The police were very active these days. Berlin, we heard, was to be cleaned up. Plain-clothes men had paid several unexpected calls on Olga, but had failed, so far, to find anything. She was being very careful.

We dined with Kuno several times and had tea at his flat. He was sentimental and preoccupied by turns. The intrigues which were going on within the Cabinet probably caused him a good deal of worry. And he regretted the freedom of his earlier bohemian existence. His public responsibilities debarred him from the society of the young men I had met at his Mecklenburg villa. Only their photographs remained to console him now, bound in a sumptuous album which he kept locked away in an obscure cupboard. Kuno showed it to me one day when we were alone.

“Sometimes, in the evenings, I like to look at them, you see? And then I make up a story to myself that we are all living on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. Excuse me, you don’t think this very silly, I hope?”

“Not at all,” I assured him.

“You see, I knew you’d understand.” Encouraged, he proceeded shyly to further confessions. The desert island fantasy was nothing new. He had been cherishing it for months already; it had developed gradually into a private cult. Under its influence he had acquired a small library of stories for boys, most of them in English, which dealt with this particular kind of adventure. He had told his bookseller that he wanted them for a nephew in London. Kuno had found most

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of the books subtly unsatisfactory. There had been grown-ups in them, or buried treasures, or marvellous scientific inventions. He had no use for any of these. Only one story had really pleased him. It was called The Seven Who Got Lost.

“This is the work of genius, I find.” Kuno was quite in earnest. His eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. “I should be so very happy if you would care to read it, you see?”

I took the book home. It was certainly not at all bad of its kind. Seven boys, of ages ranging from sixteen to nineteen, are washed ashore on an uninhabited island, where there is water and plenty of vegetation. They have no food with them and no tools but a broken penknife. The book was a matter-of-fact account, cribbed largely from the Swiss Family Robinson, of how they hunted, fished, built a hut and finally got themselves rescued. I read it at a sitting and brought it back to Kuno next day. He was delighted when I praised it.

“You remember Jack?”

“The one who was so good at fishing? Yes.”

“Now tell me, please, is he not like Günther?”

I had no idea who Günther was, but rightly guessed him to have been one of the Mecklenburg house-party.

“Yes, he is, rather.”

“Oh, I am so glad you find this, too. And Tony?”

“The one who was such a marvellous climber?”

Kuno nodded eagerly: “Doesn’t he remind you of Heinz?”

“I see what you mean.”

In this way we worked through the other characters, Teddy, Bob, Rex, Dick: Kuno supplied a counterpart to each. I congratulated myself on having really read the book and being thus able to pass this curious examination with credit. Last of all came Jimmy, the hero, the champion swimmer, the boy who always led the others in an emergency and had a brainwave to solve every difficulty.

“You didn’t recognize him, perhaps?”

Kuno’s tone was oddly, ludicrously coy. I saw that I must

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beware of giving the wrong answer. But what on earth was I to say?

“I did have some idea …” I ventured.

“You did?” He was actually blushing.

I nodded, smiling, trying to look intelligent, waiting for a hint.

“He is myself, you see.” Kuno had the simplicity of complete conviction. “When I was a boy. But exactly … This writer is a genius. He tells things about me which nobody else can know. I am Jimmy. Jimmy is myself. It is marvellous.”

“It’s certainly very strange,” I agreed.

After this, we had several talks about the island. Kuno told me exactly how he pictured it, and dwelt in detail upon the appearance and characteristics of his various imaginary companions. He certainly had a most vivid imagination. I wished that the author of The Seven Who Got Lost could have been there to hear him. He would have been startled to behold the exotic fruit of his unambitious labours. I gathered that I was Kuno’s only confidant on the subject. I felt as embarrassed as some unfortunate person who has been forcibly made a member of a secret society. If Arthur was with us, Kuno showed only too plainly his desire to get rid of him and be alone with me. Arthur noticed this, of course, and irritated me by putting the obvious construction on our private interviews. All the same, I hadn’t the heart to give Kuno’s poor little mystery away. .

“Look here,” I said to him once, “why don’t you do it?”

“Please?”

“Why don’t you clear out to the Pacific and find an island like the one in the book, and really live there? Other people have done it. There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t.”

Kuno shook his head sadly.

“Excuse me, no. It’s impossible.”

His tone was so final and so sad that I was silent. Nor did I ever make such a suggestion to him again.

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As the month advanced, Arthur became increasingly depressed. I soon noticed that he had less money than formerly. Not that he complained. Indeed, he had become most secretive about his troubles. He made his economies as unobtrusively as possible, giving up taxis on the ground that a bus was just as quick, avoiding the expensive restaurants because, as he said, rich food disagreed with his digestion. Anni’s visits were less frequent also. Arthur had taken to going to bed early. During the day, he was out more than ever. He spent a good deal of his time, I discovered, in Bayer’s office.

It wasn’t long before another telegram arrived from Paris. I had no difficulty in persuading Frl. Schroeder, whose curiosity was as shameless as my own, to steam open the envelope before Arthur’s return for his afternoon nap. With heads pressed close together, we read:

Tea you sent no good at all cannot understand why believe you have another girl no kisses.

Margot.

“You see,” exclaimed Frl. Schroedet, in delighted horror, “she’s been trying to stop it.”

“What on earth …”

“Why, Herr Bradshaw,” in her impatience she gave my hand a little slap, “how can you be so dense! The baby, of course. He must have sent her some stuff… . Oh, these men! If he’d only come to me, I could have told him what to do. It never fails.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Frl. Schroeder, don’t say anything about this to Herr Norris.”

“Oh, Herr Bradshaw, you can trust me!”

I think, all the same, that her manner must have given Arthur some hint of what we had done. For, after this, the French telegrams ceased to arrive. Arthur, I supposed, had prudently arranged to have them delivered to some other address.

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And then one evening early in December, when Arthur was out and Frl. Schroeder was having a bath, the doorbell rang. I answered it myself. There, on the threshold, stood Schmidt.

“Good evening, Mr, Bradshaw.”

He looked shabby and unkempt. His great, greasy moon-face was unwholesomely white. At first I thought he must be drunk.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Schmidt grinned unpleasantly. “I want to see Norris.” He must have read what was in my mind, for he added: “You needn’t bother to tell me any lies, because I know he’s living here, now, see?”

“Well, you can’t see him now. He’s gone out.”

“Are you sure he’s out?” Schmidt regarded me smiling, through half-closed eyes.

“Perfectly. Otherwise I shouldn’t have told you so.”

“So … I see.”

We stood looking at each other for some moments, smiling with dislike. I was tempted to slam the door in his face.

“Mr. Norris would do better to see me,” said Schmidt, after a pause, in an offhand, casual tone, as though this were his first mention of the subject. I put the side of my foot as unostentatiously as possible against the door, in case he should suddenly turn rough.

“I think,” I said gently, “that that’s a matter for Mr. Norris himself to judge.”

“Won’t you tell him I’m here?” Schmidt glanced down at my foot and impudently grinned. Our voices were so mild and low-pitched that anybody passing up the staircase would have supposed us to be two neighbours, engaged in a friendly chat.

“I’ve told you once already that Mr. Norris isn’t at home. Don’t you understand German?”

Schmidt’s smile was extraordinarily insulting. His half-closed eyes regarded me with a certain amusement, a

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qualified disapproval, as though I were a picture badly out of drawing. He spoke slowly, with elaborate patience.

“Perhaps it wouldn’t be troubling you too much to give Mr. Norris a message from me?”

“Yes. I’ll do that.”

“Will you be so kind as to tell Mr. Norris that I’ll wait another three days, but no longer? You understand? At the end of this week, if I haven’t heard from him, I shall do what I said in my letter. He’ll know what I mean. He thinks I daren’t, perhaps. Well, he’ll soon find out what a mistake he’s made. I don’t want trouble, unless he asks for it. But I’ve got to live … I’ve got to look after myself the same as he has. I mean to have my rights. He needn’t think he can keep me down in the gutter… .”

He was actually trembling all over. Some violent emotion, rage or extreme weakness, was shaking his body like a leaf. I thought for a moment that he would fall.

“Are you ill?” I asked.

My question had an extraordinary effect on Schmidt. His oily, smiling sneer stiffened into a tense mask of hatred. He had utterly lost control of himself. Coming a step nearer to me, he literally shouted in my face:

“It isn’t any business of yours, do you hear? Just you tell Norris what I said. If he doesn’t do what I want, I’ll make him sorry for the day he was born! And you too, you swine!”

His hysterical fury infected me suddenly. Stepping back, I flung the door to with a violent slam, hoping to catch his thrust-forward, screaming face on the point of the jaw. But there was no impact. His voice stopped like a gramophone from which the needle is lifted. Nor did he utter another sound. As I stood there behind the closed door, my heart pounding with anger, I heard his light footsteps cross the landing and begin to descend the stairs.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

An hour later, Arthur returned home. I followed him into his room to break the news.

“Schmidt’s been here.”

If Arthur’s wig had been suddenly jerked from his head by a fisherman, he could hardly have looked more startled.

“William, please tell me the worst at once. Don’t keep me in suspense. What time was this? Did you see him yourself? What did he say?”

“He’s trying to blackmail you, isn’t he?”

Arthur looked at me quickly.

“Did he admit that?”

“He as good as told me. He says he’s written to you already, and that if you don’t do what he wants by the end of the week there’ll be trouble.”

“He actually said that? Oh dear… .”

“You should have told me he’d written,” I said reproachfully.

“I know, dear boy, I know… .” Arthur was the picture of distress. “It’s been on the tip of my tongue several tirqes this last fortnight. But I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. I kept hoping that, somehow, it might all blow over.”

“Now, look here, Arthur; the point is this: does Schmidt really know anything about you which can do you harm?”

He had been nervously pacing the room, and now sank, a disconsolate shirtsleeved figure, into a chair, forlornly regarding his button-boots.

“Yes, William.” His voice was small and apologetic. “I’m afraid he does.”

“What sort of things does he know?”

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“Really, I … I don’t think, even for you, that I can go into the details of my hideous past.”

“I don’t want details. What I want to know is, could Schmidt get you involved in any kind of criminal charge?”

Arthur considered this for some moments, thoughtfully rubbing his chin.

“I don’t think he dare try it. No.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “He seemed to me to be in a pretty bad way. Desperate enough for anything. He looked as though he wasn’t getting much to eat.”

Arthur stood up again and began walking about the room, rapidly, with small anxious steps.

“Let’s keep quite calm, William. Let’s think this out together quietly.”

“Do you think, from your experience of Schmidt, that he’d keep quiet if you paid him a lump sum down to leave you alone?”

Arthur did not hesitate:

“I’m quite sure he wouldn’t. It would merely whet his appetite for my blood… . Oh dear, oh dear!”

“Suppose you left Germany altogether? Would he be able to get at you then?”

Arthur stopped short in the middle of a gesture of extreme agitation. ť

“No, I suppose … that is, no, quite definitely not.” He regarded me with dismay. “You aren’t suggesting I should do that, I hope?”

“It seems drastic. But what’s the alternative?”

“I see none. Certainly.”

“Neither do I.”

Arthur moved his shoulders in a shrug of despair.

“Yes, yes, my dear boy. It’s easy enough to say that. But where’s the money coming from?”

“I thought you were pretty well off now?” I pretended mild surprise. Arthur’s glance slid away, evasively, from beneath my own.

“Only under certain conditions.”

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“You mean, you can only earn money here?”

“Well, chiefly …” He didn’t like this catechism, and began to fidget. I could no longer resist trying a shot in the dark.

“But you get paid from Paris?”

I had scored a bull. Arthur’s dishonest blue eyes showed a startled flicker, but no more. Perhaps he wasn’t altogether unprepared for the question.

“My dear William, I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

I grinned.

“Never mind, Arthur. It’s no business of mine. I only want to help you, if I can.”

“It’s most kind of you, dear boy, I’m sure.” Arthur sighed. “This is all most difficult; most complicated… .”

“Well, we’ve got one point clear, at any rate… . Now, the best thing you can do is to send Schmidt some money at once, to keep him quiet. How much did he ask for?”

“A hundred down,” said Arthur in a subdued voice, “and then fifty a week.”

“I must say he’s got a nerve. Could you manage a hundred and fifty, do you think?”

“At a pinch, I suppose, yes. It goes against the grain.”

“I know. But this’ll save you ten times as much in the end. Now what I suggest is, you send him the hundred and fifty, with a letter promising him the balance on the first of January… .”

“Really, William …”

“Wait a minute. And meanwhile, you’ll arrange to be out of Germany before the end of December. That gives you three weeks’ grace. If you pay up meekly now, he won’t bother you again till then. He’ll think he’s got you in his pocket.”

“Yes. I suppose you’re right. I shall have to accustom myself to the idea. AH this is so sudden.” Arthur had a momentary flare-up of resentment. “That odious serpent! If

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ever I find an opportunity of dealing with him once for all …”

“Don’t you worry. He’ll come to a sticky end sooner or later. The chief problem, at present, is to raise this money for your journey. I suppose there isn’t anybody you could borrow it from?”

But Arthur was already following another train of thought.

“I shall find a way out of this somehow.” His tone was considerably brighter. “Just let me have time to think.”

While Arthur was thinking, a week went by. The weather didn’t improve. These dismal short days affected all our spirits. Frl. Schroeder complained of pains in the back. Arthur had a touch of liver. My pupils were unpunctual and stupid. I was depressed and cross. I began to hate our dingy flat, the shabby, staring house-front opposite my window, the damp street, the stuffy, noisy restaurant where we ate an economical supper, the burnt meat, the eternal sauerkraut, the soup.

“My God!” I exclaimed one evening to Arthur, “what wouldn’t I give to get out of this hole of a town for a day or two!”

Arthur, who had been picking his teeth in melancholy abstraction, looked at me thoughtfully. Rather to my surprise he seemed prepared to take a sympathetic interest in my grumbling.

“I must say, William,. I’d noticed myself that you weren’t in your accustomed sprightly vein. You’re looking distinctly pale, you know.”

“Am I?”

“I fear you’ve been overworking yourself lately. You don’t get out of doors enough. A young man like you needs exercise and fresh air.”

I smiled, amused and slightly mystified.

“You know, Arthur, you’re getting quite the bedside manner.”

“My dear boy”—he pretended to be mildly hurt—“I’m

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sorry that you mock my genuine concern for your health. After all, I’m old enough to be your father. I think I may be excused for sometimes feeling myself in loco parentis.”

“I beg your pardon, Daddy.”

Arthur smiled, but with a certain exasperation. I wasn’t giving the right answers. He couldn’t find an opening for the topic, whatever it was, which he was thus obscurely trying to broach. After a moment’s hesitation, he tried again.

“Tell me, William, have you ever, in the course of your travels, visited Switzerland?”

“For my sins. I once spent three months trying to learn French at a pension in Geneva.”

“Ah yes, I believe you told me.” Arthur coughed uneasily. “But I was thinking more of the winter sports.”

“No. I’ve been spared those.”

Arthur appeared positively shocked.

“Really, my dear boy, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you carry your disdain of athleticism too far, I do indeed. Far be it from me to disparage the things of the mind. But, remember, you’re still young. I hate to see you depriving yourself of pleasures which you won’t, in any case, be able to indulge in later. Be quite frank; isn’t it all rather a pose?”

I grinned.

“May I ask, with all due respect, what branch of sport you indulged in yourself at the age of twenty-eight?”

“Well—er—as you know, I have always suffered from delicate health. Our cases are not at all the same. Nevertheless, I may tell you that, during one of my visits to Scotland, I became quite an ardent fisherman. In fact, I frequently succeeded in catching those small fish with pretty red and brown markings. Their name escapes me for the moment.”

I laughed and lit a cigarette.

“And now, Arthur, having given such an admirable performance as the fond parent, suppose you tell me what you’re driving at?”

He sighed, with resignation, with exasperation; partly, perhaps, with relief. He was excused from further sham—

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ming. When he spoke again, it was with a complete change of tone.

“After all, William, I don’t know why I should beat about the bush. We’ve known each other long enough now. How long is it, by the way, since we first met?”

“More than two years.”

“Is it? Is it indeed? Let me see. Yes, you’re right. As I was saying, we’ve known each other long enough now for me to be able to appreciate the fact that, although young in years, you’re already a man of the world… .”

“You put it charmingly.”

“I assure you, I’m quite serious. Now, what I have to say is simply this (and please don’t regard it as anything but the very vaguest possibility, because, quite apart from the question of your consent, a very vital question, I know, the whole thing would have to be approved by a third party, who doesn’t, at present, know anything about the scheme) …”

Arthur paused, at the end of this parenthesis, to draw breath, and to overcome his constitutional dislike of laying his cards on the table.

“What I now merely ask you is this: would you, or would you not, be prepared to spend a few days in Switzerland this Christmas, at one or other of the winter sport resorts?”

Having got it out at last, he was covered in confusion, avoided my eye and began fiddling nervously with the cruet-stand. The neural effort required to make this offer appeared to have been considerable. I stared at him for a moment; then burst out laughing in my amazement.

“Well, I’m damned! So that was what you were after, all the time!”

Arthur joined, rather shyly, in my mirth. He was watching my face, shrewdly and covertly, in its various phases of astonishment. At what he evidently considered to be the psychological moment, he added:

“All expenses would be paid, of course.”

“But what on earth …“I began.

“Never mind, William. Never mind. It’s just an idea of

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mine, that’s all. It mayn’t, it very likely won’t, come to anything. Please don’t ask me any more now. All I want to know is: would you be prepared to contemplate such a thing at all, or is it out of the question?”

“Nothing’s out of the question, of course. But there are all sorts of things I should want to know. For instance …”

Arthur held up a delicate white hand.

“Not now, William, I beg.”

“Just this: What should I …”

“I can’t discuss anything now,” interrupted Arthur, firmly. “I simply must not.”

And, as if afraid that he would nevertheless be tempted to do so, he called to the waiter for our bills.

The best part of another week passed without Arthur having made any further allusion to the mysterious Swiss project. With considerable self-control, I refrained from reminding him of it; perhaps, like so many of his other brilliant schemes, it was already forgotten. And there were more important things to be thought of. Christmas was upon us, the year would soon be over; yet he hadn’t, so far as I knew, the ghost of a prospect of raising the money for his escape. When I asked him about it, he was vague. When I urged him to take steps, evasive. He seemed to be getting into a dangerous state of inertia. Evidently he underrated Schmidt’s vindictiveness and power to harm. I did not. I couldn’t so easily forget my last unpleasant glimpse of the secretary’s face. Arthur’s indifference drove me sometimes nearly frantic.

“Don’t worry, dear boy,” he would murmur vaguely, with abstracted, butterfly fingerings of his superb wig. “Sufficient unto the day, you know … Yes.”

“A day will come,” I retorted, “when it’ll be sufficient unto two or three years’ hard.”

Next morning, something happened to confirm my fears.

I was sitting in Arthur’s room, assisting, as usual, at the ceremonies of the toilet, when the telephone bell rang.

“Will you be kind enough to see who it is, dear boy?” said

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Arthur, powder-puff in hand. He never personally answered a call if it could be avoided. I picked up the receiver.

“It’s Schmidt,” I announced, a moment later, not without a certain gloomy satisfaction, covering the mouthpiece with my hand.

“Oh dear!” Arthur could hardly have been more flustered if his persecutor had actually been standing outside the bedroom door. Indeed, his harassed glance literally swept for an instant under the bed, as though measuring the available space for hiding there:

“Tell him anything. Say I’m not at home… .”

“I think,” I said firmly, “that it’d be much better if you were to speak to him yourself. After all, he can’t bite you. He may give you some idea of what he means to do.”

“Oh, very well, if you insist… .” Arthur was quite petulant. “I must say, I should have thought it was very unnecessary.”

Gingerly, holding the powder-puff like a defensive weapon, he advanced to the instrument.

“Yes. Yes.” The dimple in his chin jerked sideways. He snarled like a nervous lion. “No … no, really… . But do please listen one moment … I can’t, I assure you … I can’t… .”

His voice trailed off into a protesting, imploring whisper. He wobbled the hook of the receiver in futile distress.

“William, he’s rung off.”

Arthur’s dismay was so comic that I had to smile.

“What did he teliyou?”

Arthur crossed the room and sat down heavily on the bed. He seemed quite exhausted. The powder-puff fell to the floor from between his limp fingers.

“I’m reminded of the deaf adder, who heareth not the voice of the charmer … What a monster, William! May your life never be burdened by such a fiend… .”

“Do tell me what he said.”

“He confined himself to threats, dear boy. Mostly incoherent. He wanted merely to remind me of his existence, I

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think. And that he’ll need some more money soon. It was very cruel of you to make me speak to him. Now I shall be upset for the rest of the day. Just feel my hand; it’s shaking like a leaf.”

“But, Arthur.” I picked up the powder-puff and put it on the dressing-table. “It’s no good just being upset. This must be a warning to you. You see, he really does mean business. We must do something about it. Haven’t you any plan? Are there no steps you can take?”

Arthur roused himself with an effort.

“Yes, yes. You’re right, of course. The die is cast. Steps shall be taken. In fact, not a moment shall be lost. I wonder if you’d be so good as to get me the Fernamt on the telephone and say I wish to put through a call to Paris? I don’t think it’s too early? No… .”

I asked for the number Arthur gave me and tactfully left him alone. I didn’t see him again until the evening, when, as usual, we met by appointment at the restaurant for our supper. I noticed at once that he was brighter. He even insisted that we should drink wine, and when I demurred offered to pay my share of the bottle.

“It’s so strengthening,” he added persuasively.

I grinned. “Still worried about my health?”

“You’re very unkind,” said Arthur, smiling. But he refused to be drawn. When, a minute or two later, I asked pointblank how things were going, he replied:

“Let’s have supper first, dear boy. Be patient with me, please.”

But even when supper was over and we had both ordered coffee (an additional extravagance), Arthur seemed in no hurry to give me his news. Instead, he appeared anxious to know what I had been doing, which pupils I had had, where I had lunched, and so forth.

“You haven’t seen our friend Pregnitz lately, I think?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m going to tea with him tomorrow.”

“Are you, indeed?”

I restrained a smile. I was familiar enough by this time

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with Arthur’s methods of approach. That new intonation in his voice, though suavely concealed, hadn’t escaped me. So we were coming to the point at last.

“May I give him any message?”

Arthur’s face was a comical study. We regarded each other with the amusement of two people who, night after night, cheat each other at a card game which is not played for money. Simultaneously we began to laugh.

“What, exactly,” I asked, “do you want to get out of him?”

“William, please … you put things so very crudely.”

“It saves time.”

“Yes, yes. You’re right. Time is, alas, important just now. Very well, let’s put it that I’m anxious to do a little business with him. Or shall we say to put him in the way of doing it for himself?”

“How very kind of you!”

Arthur tittered. “I am kind, aren’t I, William? That’s what so few people seem to realize.”

“And what is this business? When is it coming off?”

“That remains to be seen, I hope.”

“I suppose you get a percentage?”

“Naturally.”

“A big percentage?”

“If it succeeds. Yes.”

“Enough for you to be able to leave Germany?”

“Oh, more than enough. Quite a nice little nest-egg, in fact.”

“Then that’s splendid, isn’t it?”

Arthur snarled nervously, regarded his finger-nails with extreme care.

“Unfortunately, there are certain technical difficulties. I need, as so often, your valuable advice.”

“Very well, let’s hear them.”

Arthur considered for some moments. I could see that he was wondering how much he need tell me.

“Chiefly,” he said at length, “that this business cannot be transacted in Germany.”

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“Why not?”

“Because it would involve too much publicity. The other party to the deal is a well-known business man. As you probably know, big-business circles are comparatively small. They all watch each other. News gets round in a moment; the least hint is enough. If this man were to come to Berlin, the business people here would know about it before he’d even arrived. And secrecy is absolutely essential.”

“It all sounds very thrilling. But I’d no idea that Kuno was in business at all.”

“Strictly speaking, he isn’t.” Arthur took some trouble to avoid my eye. “This is merely a sideline.”

“I see. And where do you propose that this meeting shall take place?”

Arthur carefully selected a toothpick from the little bowl in front of him.

“That, my dear William, is where I hope to have the benefit of your valuable advice. It must be somewhere, of course, within easy reach of the German frontier. Somewhere where people can go, at this time of the year, without attracting attention, on a holiday.”

With great deliberation, Arthur broke the toothpick into two pieces and laid them side by side on the table-cloth. Without looking up at me, he added:

“Subject to your approval, I’d rather thought of Switzerland.”

There was quite a long pause. We were both smiling.

“So that’s it?” I said at last.

Arthur redivided the toothpick into quarters; raised his eyes to mine in a glance of dishonest, smiling innocence.

“That, as you rightly observe, dear boy, is it.”

“Well, well. What a foxy old thing you are.” I laughed. “I’m beginning to see daylight at last.”

“I must confess, William, I was beginning to find you a little slow in the uptake. That isn’t like you, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur. But all these riddles make me a bit

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giddy. Suppose you stop asking them and let’s have the whole yarn from the beginning?”

“I assure you, my dear boy, I’m more than ready to tell you all I know about this affair, which isn’t very much. Well, to cut a long story short, Pregnitz is interested in one of the largest glass-works in Germany. It doesn’t matter which. You wouldn’t find his name on the list of directors; nevertheless, he has a great deal of unofficial influence. Of course, I don’t pretend to understand these matters myself.”

“A glass-works? Well, that sounds harmless enough.”

“But, my dear boy,” Arthur was anxiously reassuring, “of course it’s harmless. You mustn’t allow your naturally cautious nature to upset your sense of proportion. If this proposition sounds a little odd to you at first, it’s only because you aren’t accustomed to the ways of high finance. Why, it’s the kind of thing which takes place every day. Ask anybody you like. The largest deals are almost always discussed informally.”

“All right! All right! Go on.”

“Let me see. Where was I? Ah, yes. Now, one of my most intimate friends in Paris is a certain prominent financier—”

“Who signs himself Margot?”

But this time I didn’t catch Arthur off his guard. I couldn’t even guess whether he was surprised or not. He merely smiled.

“How sharp you are, William! Well, perhaps he does. Anyhow, we’ll call him Margot for convenience. Yes … at all events, Margot is exceedingly anxious to have a chance of meeting Pregnitz. Although he doesn’t admit it in so many words, I understand that he wishes to propose some sort of combine between Pregnitz’s firm and his own. But that’s entirely unofficial; it doesn’t concern us. As for Pregnitz, he’ll have to hear Margot’s propositions for himself and decide whether they’re to the advantage of his firm or not. Quite possibly, indeed probably, they will be. If not, there’s no harm done. Margot will only have himself to blame. All

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he’s asking me to arrange is that he meets the Baron socially, on neutral ground, where they won’t be bothered by a lot of financial reporters and can talk things over quietly.”

“And as soon as you’ve brought them together, you get the cash?”

“When the meeting has taken place,” Arthur lowered his voice, “I get half. The other half will be paid only if the deal is successful. But the worst of it is, Margot insists that he must see Pregnitz at once. He’s always like that when once he gets an idea into his head. A most impatient man… .”

“And he’s really prepared to give you such a lot simply for arranging this meeting?”

“Remember, William, it seems a mere bagatelle to him. If this transaction is successful, he’ll probably make millions.”

“Well, all I can say is, I congratulate you. It ought to be easy enough to earn.”

“I’m glad you think so, my dear boy.” Arthur’s tone was guarded and doubtful.

“Why, where’s the difficulty? All you have to do is to go to Kuno and explain the whole situation.”

“William!” Arthur seemed positively horror-s(tricken. “That would be fatal!”

“I don’t see why.”

“You don’t see why? Really, dear boy, I must own I credited you with more finesse. No, that’s entirely out of the question. You don’t know Pregnitz as I do. He’s extraordinarily sensitive in these matters, as I’ve discovered to my cost. He’d regard it as an unwarrantable intrusion into his affairs. He’d withdraw at once. He has the true aristocratic outlook, which one so seldom finds in these money-grubbing days. I admit I admire him for it.”

I grinned.

“He seems to be a very peculiar sort of business man, if he’s offended when you offer him a fortune.”

But Arthur was quite heated.

“William, please, this is no time to be frivolous. Surely you must see my point. Pregnitz refuses, and I, for one, entirely

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agree with him, to mix personal with business relationships. Coming from you or from me, any suggestion that he should enter into negotiations with Margot, or with anybody else, would be an impertinence. And he’d resent it as such. Therefore, I do beg of you, don’t breathe one word about this to him, on any account.”

“No, of course I won’t. Don’t get excited. But look here, Arthur, do I understand you to mean that Kuno is to go to Switzerland without knowing that he’s there to meet Mar-got?”

“You put it in a nutshell.”

“H’m … That certainly complicates things, rather. All the same, I don’t see why you should have any special difficulty. Kuno probably goes to the winter sports, anyhow. It’s quite in his line. What I don’t altogether follow is, where do I come in? Am I to be brought along simply to swell the crowd, or to provide comic relief, or what?”

Arthur chose and divided another toothpick.

“I was just coming to that point, William.” His tone was carefully impersonal. “I’m afraid, you see, you’d have to go alone.”

“Alone with Kuno?”

“Yes.” Arthur began speaking with nervous rapidity. “There are a number of reasons which make it quite impossible for me to come with you, or to deal with this matter myself. In the first place, it would be exceedingly awkward, having once left this country, to return to it, as I should be obliged to do, even if only for a few days. Secondly, this suggestion, that we should go together to the winter sports, coming from me, would sound very odd. Pregnitz knows perfectly well that I haven’t the constitution or the taste for such things. Coming from you, on the other hand, what could be more natural? He’d probably be only too delighted to travel with such a young and lively companion.”

“Yes, I quite see all that … but how should I get into touch with Margot? I don’t even know him by sight.”

Arthur dismissed these difficulties with a wave of the hand.

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“Leave that to me, dear boy, and to him. Set your mind at rest, forget everything I’ve told you this evening, and enjoy yourself.”

“Nothing but that?”

“Nothing. Once you’ve got Pregnitz across the frontier your duties are at an end.”

“It sounds delightful.”

Arthur’s face lit up at once.

“Then you’ll go?”

“I must think it over.” )

Disappointed, he squeezed his chin. The toothpicks were divided into eighths. At the end of a long minute he said hesitantly: i

“Quite apart from your expenses, which, as I think 1 told you, will be paid in advance, I should ask you to accept a little something, you know, for your trouble.” ,

“No, thank you, Arthur.”

“I beg your pardon, William.” He sounded much relieved. “I might have known you wouldn’t.”

I grinned.

“I won’t deprive you of your honest earnings.”

Watching my face carefully, he smiled. He was uncertain how to take me. His manner changed.

“Of course, dear boy, you must do as you think best. I * don’t want to influence you in any way. If you decide against this scheme, I shan’t allude to it again. At the same time, you know what it means to me. It’s my only chance. I hate begging for favours. Perhaps I’m asking too much of you. I can only say that if you do this for me I shall be eternally grateful. And if it’s ever in my power to repay you …”

“Stop, Arthur. Stop! You’ll make me cry.” I laughed. “Very well. I’ll do my best with Kuno. But, for Heaven’s sake, don’t build your hopes on it. I don’t suppose for a minute he’ll come. Probably he’s engaged already.”

On this understanding, the subject was closed for the evening.

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Next day, when I returned from the tea-party at Kuno’s flat, I found Arthur waiting for me in his bedroom in a state of the most extreme anxiety. He could hardly wait to shut the door before hearing my news.

“Quick, William, please. Tell me the worst. I can bear it. He won’t come? No?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll come.”

For a moment, joy seemed to have made Arthur quite speechless, incapable of motion. Then a spasm passed over all his limbs; he executed a kind of caper in the air.

“My dear boy! I must, I really must embrace you!” And he Kterally threw his arms round my neck and kissed me, like a French general, on both cheeks. “Tell me all about it. Did you have much difficulty? What did he say?”

“Oh, he more or less suggested the whole thing himself before I had opened my mouth. He wanted to go to the Riesengebirge, but I pointed out that the snow would be much better in the Alps.”

“You did? That was brilliant of you, William! Positively inspired… .”

I sat down in a chair. Arthur fluttered round me, admiring and delighted.

“You’re quite sure he hasn’t the least suspicion?”

“Perfectly sure.”

“And how soon shall you be able to start?”

“On Christmas Eve, I think.”

Arthur regarded me solicitously.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic, dear boy. I’d hoped this would be a pleasure to you, too. You’re not feeling ill, by any chance, I trust?”

“Not in the least, thank you.” I stood up. “Arthur, I’m going to ask you something.”

His eyelids fluttered nervously at my tone.

“Why—er—of course. Ask away, dear boy. Ask away.”

“I want you to speak the truth. Are you and Margot going to swindle Kuno? Yes or no?”

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“My dear William—er—really … I think you presume …”

“I want an answer, please, Arthur. You see, it’s important for me to know. I’m mixed up in this now. Are you or aren’t your

“Well, I must say … No. Of course not. As I’ve already explained at some length, I …”

“Do you swear that?”

“Really, William, this isn’t a court of law. Don’t look at me like that, please. All right, if it gives you any satisfaction, I swear it.”

“Thank you. That’s all I wanted. I’m sorry if I sounded rude. You know that, as a rule, I don’t meddle in your affairs. Only this is my affair too, you see.”

Arthur smiled weakly, rather shaken.

“I quite understand your anxiety, dear boy, of course. But in this case, I do assure you, it’s entirely unfounded. I’ve every reason to believe that Pregnitz will reap great benefits from this transaction, if he’s wise enough to accept it.”

As a final test, I tried to look Arthur in the eyes. But no, this time-honoured process didn’t work. Here were no windows to the soul. They were merely part of his face, light-blue jellies, like naked shell-fish in the crevices of a rock. There was nothing to hold the attention; no sparkle, no inward gleam. Try as I would, my glance wandered away to more interesting features; the soft, snout-like nose, the concertina chin. After three or four attempts, I gave it up. It was no good. There was nothing for it but to take Arthur at his word.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My journey with Kuno to Switzerland resembled the honeymoon trip which follows a marriage of convenience. We were polite, mutually considerate and rather shy. Kuno was a model of discreet attentiveness. With his own hands, he arranged my luggage in the rack, ran out at the last moment to buy me magazines, discovered by roundabout inquiries that I preferred the upper sleeping-car berth to the lower, and retired into the corridor to wait until I was undressed. When I got tired of reading, there he was, affable and informative, waiting to tell me the names of the mountains. We chatted with great animation in five-minute spasms, relapsing into sudden, abstracted silence. Both of us had plenty to think about. Kuno, I suppose, was worrying over the sinister manoeuvres of German politics or dreaming about his island of the seven boys: I had leisure to review the Margot conundrum in all its aspects. Did he really exist? Well, there above my head was a brand-new pigskin suitcase containing a dinner-jacket delivered from the tailor only the day before. Arthur had been positively lordly with our employer’s money. “Get whatever you want, dear boy. It would never do for you to be shabby. Besides, what a chance …” After some hesitation, I had doubtfully followed his advice, though not to the reckless extent which he urged. Arthur even went so far in his interpretation of “travelling expenses” as to press upon me a set of gold cufflinks, a wrist-watch, and a fountain-pen. “After all, William, business is business. You don’t know these people as I do.” His tone, when speaking of Margot, had become remarkably

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bitter: “If you asked him to do anything for you he wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze you to the last penny.”

On Boxing Day, our first morning, I awoke to the tinny jingle of sleigh-bells from the snowy street below, and a curious clicking noise, also metallic, which proceeded from the bathroom. Through the half-open door Kuno was to be seen, in a pair of gym shorts, doing exercises with a chest-expander. He was straining himself terribly; the veins in his neck bulged and his nostrils arched and stiffened with each desperate effort. He was obviously unaware that he was not alone. His eyes, bare of the monocle, were fixed in a short-sighted, visionary stare which suggested that he was engaged in a private religious rite. To speak to him would have been as intrusive as to disturb a man at his prayers. I turned over in bed and pretended to be asleep. After a few moments, I heard the bathroom door softly close.

Our rooms were on the first floor of the hotel, looking out over the houses of the village scattered along the frozen lake to the sparkling ski-ing slopes, massive and smooth as the contours of an immense body under blankets, crossed by the black spider-line of the funicular which climbed to the start of the toboggan runs. It seemed a curious background for an international business transaction. But, as Arthur had rightly said, I knew nothing of the ways of financiers. I got dressed slowly, thinking about my invisible host. Was Mar-got here already? The hotel was full up, the manager had told us. To judge from my glimpse of the guests, last night, in the huge dining-room, there must be several hundred of them staying here.

Kuno joined me for breakfast. He was dressed, with scrupulous informality, in grey flannel trousers, a blazer and the knotted silk scarf of his Oxford college colours.

“You slept well, I hope?”

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

“I, not so well.” He smiled, flushed, slightly abashed. “It doesn’t matter. In the night-time I had something to read, you see?”

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Bashfully he let me see the title of the book he was holding in his hand. It was called Billy the Castaway.

“Is it good?” I asked.

“There is one chapter which is very nice, I find . . ,”

Before I could hear the contents of the nice chapter, however, a waiter appeared with our breakfast on a little wheeled car. We reverted at once to our self-conscious honeymoon manners.

“May I give you some cream?”

“Just a little, please.”

“Is this how you like it?”

“Thank you, that’s delicious.”

Our voices sounded so absurd that I could have laughed out loud. We were like two unimportant characters in the first act of a play, put there to make conversation until it is time for the chief actor to appear.

By the time we had finished breakfast, the immense white slopes were infested already with tiny figures, some skimming and criss-crossing like dragon-flies, some faltering and collapsing like injured ants. The skaters were out in dozens on the lake. Within a roped enclosure, an inhumanly agile creature in black tights performed wonders before an attentive audience. Knapsacked, helmeted and booted, some of the more active guests were starting out on long, dangerous tours of the upper heights, like soldiers from a luxury barracks. And here and there, amidst the great army, the wounded were to be seen, limping on sticks or with their arms in slings, taking a painful convalescent promenade.

Attentive as ever, Kuno took it for granted that he was to teach me to ski. I should have much preferred to mess about alone, but my attempts at polite dissuasion were in vain. He regarded it as his duty; there was no more to be said. So we spent two perspiring hours on the beginners’ slope; I slithering and stumbling, Kuno admonishing and supporting. “No, excuse me, this is again not quite correct … you hold yourself in too stiff a manner, you see?” His patience seemed inexhaustible. I longed for lunch.

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About the middle of the morning, a young man came circling expertly among the novices in our neighbourhood. He stopped to watch us; perhaps my awkwardness amused him. His presence rather annoyed me; I didn’t want an audience. Half by accident, half by design, I made a sudden swerve at him when he least expected it and knocked him clean off his feet. Our mutual apologies were profuse. He helped me to get up and even brushed some of the snow off me with his hand.

“Allow me … van Hoorn.”

His bow, skis and all, was so marvellously stiff that he might have been challenging me to a duel.

“Bradshaw … very pleased.”

I tried to parody it and promptly fell forward on my face, to be raised this time by Kuno himself. Somewhat less formally, I introduced them.

After this, to my relief, Kuno’s interest in my instruction considerably decreased. Van Hoorn was a tall, fair boy, handsome in the severe Viking manner, though he had rather spoilt his appearance by shaving off most of his hair. The bald back of his head was sunburnt to an angry scarlet. He had studied for three semesters, he told us, at the University of Hamburg. He was furiously shy and blushed crimson whenever Kuno, with his discreetly flattering smile, addressed him.

Van Hoorn could do a turn which interested Kuno extremely. They went off for some distance to demonstrate and practise it. Presently, it was time for lunch. On our way down to the hotel, the young man introduced us to his uncle, a lively, plump little Dutchman, who was cutting figures on the ice with great skill. The elder Mr. van Hoorn was a contrast to his grave nephew. His eyes twinkled merrily, he seemed delighted to make our acquaintance. His face was brown as an old boot and he was quite bald. He wore side-whiskers and a little pointed beard.

“So you’ve made some friends already?” He addressed his nephew in German. “That’s right.” His twinkling eyes re-142

garded Kuno and myself. “I tell Piet he should get to know a nice girl, but he won’t; he’s too shy. I wasn’t like that at his age, I can tell you.”

Piet van Hoorn blushed, frowned and looked away, refusing to respond to Kuno’s discreet glance of sympathy. Mr. van Hoorn chattered away to me as he removed his skates.

“So you like it here? My word, so do I! I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for years. I bet I’ve lost a pound or two already. Why, I don’t feel a day over twenty-one, this morning.”

As we entered the dining-room, Kuno suggested that the van Hoorns should come and sit at our table; he gave a meaning glance at Piet as he spoke. I felt rather embarrassed. Kuno was certainly a bit crude in his advances. But Mr. van Hoorn agreed at once, most heartily. He appeared to find nothing odd in the proposal. Probably he was glad enough to have some extra people to talk to.

During lunch, Kuno devoted himself almost entirely to Piet. He seemed to have succeeded in thawing the ice a little, for, several times, the boy laughed. Van Hoorn, meanwhile, was pouring into my ear a succession of the oldest and most childish smoking-room stories. He related them with extraordinary gusto and enjoyment. I scarcely listened. The warmth of the dining-room made me sleepy, after the sharp air outside; behind palms, the band played dreamy music. The food was delicious; seldom had I eaten such a lunch. And, all the time, I was vaguely wondering where Margot was, when and how he would appear.

Into my coma intruded, with increasing frequency, a few sentences of French. I could understand only a word here and there: “interesting,” “suggestive,” “extremely typical.” It was the speaker’s voice which caught my attention. It proceeded from the table next to our own. Idly I turned my head.

A large, middle-aged man sat facing an exotically pretty blonde girl of the type which Paris alone produces. Both of them were looking in our direction and speaking in carefully restrained tones, obviously about us. The man seemed par—

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ticulary interested. He had a bald, egg-shaped head; bold, rudely prominent, round, solemn eyes; yellowish-white hair brushed back round the base of the skull like a pair of folded wings. His voice was vibrant and harsh. About his whole appearance there was something indescribably unpleasant and sinister. I felt a curious thrill pass through my nervous system; antagonistic, apprehensive, expectant. I glanced quickly at the others; but no, they seemed entirely unaware of the stranger’s cynical, unconcealed inspection. Kuno was bending over to speak to Piet; fishy, caressing and suave. Mr. van Hoorn had stopped talking at last and was making up for lost time on a grilled steak. He had tucked his napkin into his collar and was chewing away with the abandonment of one who need no longer fear gravy-stains on his waistcoat. I fancied I heard our French neighbour pronounce the word “dégoűtant.”

I had frequently pictured to myself what Margot would look like. I had imagined him fatter, older, more prosaic. My imagination had been altogether too timid; I hadn’t dreamed of anything so authentic, so absolutely, immediately convincing. Nobody’s intuition could be at fault here. I was as certain of his identity as if I’d known him for years.

It was a thrilling moment. My only regret was that nobody could share its excitement with me. How Arthur would have enjoyed it! I could imagine his ill-concealed, gleeful agitation; his private signals which everybody would observe; his ludicrously forced attempts to cover up the mystery with bright chat. The very thought of them made me want to laugh out loud. I didn’t dare risk another glance at our neighbours, lest they should see from my face what I knew. Long ago, I had made up my mind that never, at any stage in the proceedings, would I betray my complicity by so much as the flicker of an eyelid. Margot had kept his part of the bargain; I would show him that I, also, could be trustworthy and discreet.

How would he deliver his attack? This was a really fascinating question. I tried to put myself in his position; began

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to imagine the most extravagant subtleties. Perhaps he, or the girl, would pick Kuno’s pocket and introduce themselves later, pretending to have found his note-case on the floor. Perhaps, that night, there would be a sham alarm of fire. Margot would plant smoke-bombs in Kuno’s bedroom and then rush in to rescue him from the fumes. It seemed obvious to me that they would do something drastic. Margot didn’t look the man to be content with half measures. What were they up to now? I could no longer hear their voices. Dropping my napkin somewhat clumsily on the floor, I bent down to pick it up and get a peep, only to find to my disappointment that the two of them had left the dining-room. I was disappointed, but, on thinking it over, not particularly surprised. This had been merely a reconnoitre. Margot would probably do nothing before the evening.

After lunch, Kuno earnestly advised me to rest. As a beginner, he explained, it would be most unwise for me to exert myself too much on the first day. I agreed, not without amusement. A few moments later, I heard him arranging with Piet van Hoorn to go out to the toboggan runs. Mr. van Hoorn had already retired to his room.

At tea-time, there was dancing in the lounge. Piet and Kuno didn’t appear; neither, to my relief, did Mr. van Hoorn. I was quite happy by myself, watching the guests. Presently, Margot came in alone. He sat down on the opposite side of the big glass veranda, not more than a couple of yards from my table. Stealing a glance in his direction, I met his eyes. They were cold, prominent, rudely inquisitive as ever. My heart thumped uncomfortably. The situation was getting positively uncanny. Suppose I were to go over and speak to him now? I could save him, after all, a great deal of trouble. I had only to introduce him as an acquaintance of mine, met here by chance. There was no earthly reason why Kuno should suspect anything pre-arranged. Why should we go on performing this rather sinister charade? I hesitated, half rose to my feet, subsided again. For the second time my eyes met his. And now it seemed to me that I understood him per-145

fectly. “Don’t be a little fool,” he was saying. “Leave this to me. Don’t try to meddle in things you don’t understand.”

“All right,” I mentally told him, with a slight shrug of my shoulders. “Do as you like. It’s your funeral.”

And, feeling rather resentful, I got up and walked out of the lounge; I couldn’t stand this silent tęte-ŕ-tęte any longer.

At dinner that night both Kuno and Mr. van Hoorn, in their different ways, were in high spirits. Piet looked bored. Perhaps he found his evening clothes as stiff and uncomfortable as I did mine. If so, he had my hearty sympathy. His uncle rallied him from time to time on his silence, and I reflected how much I should dislike to travel with Mr. van Hoorn.

We were near the end of our meal when Margot and his companion came into the dining-room. I saw them at once, for I had been subconsciously keeping my eye on the door ever since we had sat down. Margot was wearing a tail-coat, with a flower in his button-hole. The girl was dressed magnificently, in some shimmering material which gleamed like silver armour. They passed down the long lane between the tables with many eyes following them.

“Look, Piet,” exclaimed Mr. van Hoorn, “there’s a pretty girl for you. Ask her for a dance this evening. Her father won’t bite you.”

To reach their table, Margot had to pass within a few inches of our chairs. As he did so, he briefly inclined his head. Kuno, ever gracious, returned the bow. For a moment, I thought Margot would follow up this opening, even if only with a conventional remark about the weather. He did not. The two of them took their places. Almost immediately, we rose to go and drink our coffee in the smoking-room.

Here, Mr. van Hoorn’s conversation took a surprising turn. It was as if he’d realized that the heartiness and the doubtful stories had been overdone. He began, quite suddenly, to talk about art. He had a house, he told us, in Paris, which was full of old furniture and etchings. Although he spoke modestly,

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it soon became clear that he was an expert. Kuno was greatly interested. Piet remained indifferent. I saw him cast more than one furtive glance at his wrist-watch, presumably to see whether it wasn’t time for bed.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.”

The harsh voice startled all of us; nobody had seen Mar-got’s approach. He towered above us, an elegant, sardonic figure, holding a cigar in his mottled, yellow hand.

“It is necessary that I ask this young man a question.”

His bulging eyes fixed upon Piet with a concentration which suggested that he was observing some minute insect, scarcely visible without the aid of a magnifying glass. The poor boy literally began to sweat with embarrassment. As for myself, I was so amazed at this new turn in Margot’s tactics that I could only stare at him, my mouth hanging open. Margot himself evidently enjoyed the effect which his dramatic appearance had created. His lips curved in a smile which was positively diabolic.

“Have you the true Aryan descent?”

And before the astounded Piet could answer, he added:

“I am Marcel Janin.”

I don’t know whether the others had really heard of him, or whether their polite interest was merely pretended. As it happened, I knew his name quite well. M. Janin was one of Fritz Wendel’s favourite authors. Fritz had once lent me a book of his—The Kiss Under the Midnight Sun. It was written in the fashionable French manner, half romance, half reportage, and gave a lurid, obviously imaginative account of the erotic life of Hammerfest. And there were half a dozen others, equally sensational and ranging in milieu from Santiago to Shanghai. M. Janin’s particular brand of pornography, if one was to judge from his clothes, appeared to have hit the public taste. He had just finished his eighth, he told us : it dealt with the amours peculiar to a winter sport hotel. Hence his presence here. After his brusque self-introduction, he proved most affable and treated us, without further request, to a discourse on his career, aims and methods of work.

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“I write very quick,” he informed us. “For me, one glance is sufficient. I do not believe in the second impression.”

A couple of days ashore from a cruising liner had furnished M. Janin with the material for most of his works. And now Switzerland was disposed of, too. Looking for fresh worlds to conquer, he had fixed on the Nazi movement. He and his secretary were leaving next day for Munich. “Within a week,” he concluded ominously, “I shall know all.”

I wondered what part M. Janin’s secretary (he insisted, several times, on this title ) played in his lightning researches. Probably she acted as a kind of rough and ready chemical reagent; in certain combinations she produced certain known results. It was she, it seemed, who had discovered Piet. M. Janin, as excited as a hunter in unfamiliar territory, had rushed, over-precipitately, to the attack. He didn’t seem much disappointed, however, to discover that this wasn’t his legitimate prey. His generalizations, formulated, to save time, in advance, were not easily disturbed. Dutchman or German, it was all grist to the mill. Piet, I suspected, would nevertheless make his appearance in the new book, dressed up in a borrowed brown shirt. A writer with M. Janin’s technique can afford to waste nothing.

One mystery was solved, the other deepened. I puzzled over it for the rest of the evening. If Margot wasn’t Janin, who was he? And where? It seemed odd that he should fritter away twenty-four hours like this, after being in such a hurry to get Kuno to come. Tomorrow, I thought, he’ll turn up for certain. My meditations were interrupted by Kuno tapping at my door to ask if I had gone to bed. He wanted to talk about Piet van Hoorn, and, sleepy as I felt, I wasn’t unkind enough to deny him.

“Tell me, please … don’t you find him a little like Tony?”

“Tony?” I was stupid this evening. “Tony who?”

Kuno regarded me with gentle reproach.

“Why, excuse me … I mean Tony in the book, you see.”

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I smiled.

“You think Tony is more like Piet than like Heinz?”

“Oh yes,” Kuno was very definite on this point. “Much more like.”

So poor Heinz was banished from the island. Having reluctantly agreed to this, we said good-night.

Next morning I decided to make some investigations for myself. While Kuno was in the lounge talking to the van Hoorns, I got into conversation with the hall porter. Oh yes, he assured me, a great many business people were here from Paris just now; some of them very important.

“M. Bernstein, for instance, the factory-owner. He’s worth millions… . Look, sir, he’s over there now, by the desk.”

I had just time to catch sight of a fat, dark man with an expression on his face like that of a sulky baby. I had never noticed him anywhere in our neighbourhood. He passed through the doors into the smoking-room, a bundle of letters in his hand.

“Do you know if he owns a glass factory?” I asked.

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir. I wouldn’t be surprised. They say he’s got his finger in nearly everything.”

The day passed without further developments. In the afternoon, Mr. van Hoorn at length succeeded in forcing his bashful nephew into the company of some lively Polish girls. They all went off ski-ing together. Kuno was not best pleased, but he accepted the situation with his usual grace. He seemed to have developed quite a taste for Mr. van Hoorn’s society. The two of them spent the afternoon indoors.

After tea, as we were leaving the lounge, we came face to face with M. Bernstein. He passed us by without the faintest interest.

As I lay in bed that night I almost reached the conclusion that Margot must be a figment of Arthur’s imagination. For what purpose he had been created I couldn’t conceive. Nor did I much care. It was very nice here. I was enjoying myself; in a day or two I should have learnt to ski. I would make

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the most of my holiday, I decided; and, following Arthur’s advice, forget the reasons for which I had come. As for Kuno, my fears had been unfounded. He hadn’t been cheated out of a farthing. So what was there to worry about?

On the afternoon of the third day of our visit, Piet suggested, of his own accord, that we two should go skating on the lake, alone. The poor boy, as I had noticed at lunch, was near bursting-point. He had had more than enough of his uncle, of Kuno and of the Polish girls; it had become necessary for him to vent his feelings on somebody, and, of a bad bunch, I seemed the least unlikely to be sympathetic. No sooner were we on the ice than he started: I was astonished to find how much and with what vehemence he could talk.

What did I think of this place? he asked. Wasn’t all this luxury sickening? And the people? Weren’t they too idiotic and revolting for words? How could they behave as they did, with Europe in its present state? Had they no decency at all? Had they no national pride, to mix with a lot of Jews who were ruining their countries? How did I feel about it, myself?

“What does your uncle say to it all?” I counter-questioned, to avoid an answer.

Piet shrugged his shoulders angrily.

“Oh, my uncle … he doesn’t take the least interest in politics. He only cares for his old pictures. He’s more of a Frenchman than a Dutchman, my father says.”

Piet’s studies in Germany had turned him into an ardent Fascist. M. Janin’s instinct hadn’t been so incorrect, after all. The young man was browner than the Browns.

“What my country needs is a man like Hitler. A real leader. A people without ambition is unworthy to exist.” He turned his handsome, humourless face and regarded me sternly. “You, with your Empire, you must understand that.”

But I refused to be drawn.

“Do you often travel with your uncle?” I asked.

“No. As a matter of fact I was surprised when he asked me

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to come with him here. At such short notice, too; only a week ago. But I love ski-ing, and I thought it would all be quite primitive and simple, like the tour I made with some students last Christmas. We went to the Riesengebirge. We used to wash ourselves every morning with snow in a bucket. One must learn to harden the body. Self-discipline is most important in these times… .”

“Which day did you arrive here?” I interrupted.

“Let’s see. It must have been the day before you did.” A thought suddenly struck Piet. He became more human. He even smiled. “By the way, that’s a funny thing I’d quite forgotten … my uncle was awfully keen to get to know you.”

“To know me?”

“Yes… .” Piet laughed and blushed. “As a matter of fact, he told me to try and find out who you were.”

“He did?”

“You see, he thought you were the son of a friend of his: an Englishman. But he’d only met the son once, a long time ago, and he wasn’t sure. He was afraid that, if you saw him and he didn’t recognize you, you’d be offended.’”

“Well, 1 certainly helped you to make my acquaintance, didn’t I?”

We both laughed.

“Yes, you did.”

“Ha, ha! How very funny!”

“Yes, isn’t it? Very funny indeed.”

When we returned to the hotel for tea, we had some trouble in finding Kuno and Mr. van Hoorn. They were sitting together in a remote corner of the smoking-room, at a distance from the other guests. Mr. van Hoorn was no longer laughing; he spoke quietly and seriously, with his eyes on Kuno’s face. And Kuno himself was as grave as a judge. I had the impression that he was profoundly disturbed and perplexed by the subject of their conversation. But this was only an impression, and a momentary one. As soon as Mr. van Hoorn became aware of my approach, he laughed loudly

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and gave Kuno’s elbow a nudge, as if reaching the climax of a funny story. Kuno laughed too, but with less enthusiasm.

“Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. van Hoorn. “Here are the boys! As hungry as hunters, I’ll be bound! And we two old fogies have been wasting the whole afternoon yarning away indoors. My goodness, is it as late as that? I say, I want my tea!”

“A telegram for you, sir,” said the voice of a page-boy, just behind me. I stepped aside, supposing that he was addressing one of the others, but no; he held the silver tray towards me. There was no mistake. On the envelope, I read my name.

“Aha!” cried Mr. van Hoorn. “Your sweetheart’s getting impatient. She wants you to go back to her.”

I tore open the envelope, unfolded the paper. The message was only three words:

Please return immediately.

I read it over several times. I smiled. “As a matter of fact,” I told Mr. van Hoorn, “you’re quite right. She does.” The telegram was signed “Ludwig.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Something had happened to Arthur. That much was obvious. Otherwise, if he’d wanted me, he’d have sent for me himself. And the mess he was in, whatever it was, must have something to do with the Party, since Bayer had signed the tele—

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gram. Here my reasoning came to an end. It was bounded by guesses and possibilities as vague and limitless as the darkness which enclosed the train. Lying in my berth, I tried to sleep and couldn’t. The swaying of the coach, the clank of the wheels kept time with the excited, anxious throbbing of my heart. Arthur, Bayer, Margot, Schmidt; I tried the puzzle backwards, sideways, all ways up. It kept me awake the whole night.

Years later it seemed, though actually only the next afternoon, I let myself into the flat with the latchkey; quickly pushed open the door of my room. In the middle of it sat Frl. Schroeder, dozing, in the best armchair. She had taken off her slippers and was resting her stockinged feet on the footstool. When one of her lodgers was away, she often did this. She was indulging in the dream of most landladies, that the whole place was hers.

If I had returned from the dead, she could hardly have uttered a more piercing scream on waking and seeing my figure in the doorway.

“Herr Bradshaw! How you startled me!”

“I’m sorry, Frl. Schroeder. No, please don’t get up. Where’s Herr Norris?”

“Herr Norris?” She was still a bit dazed. “I don’t know, I’m sure. He said he’d be back about seven.”

“He’s still living here, then?”

“Why, of course, Herr Bradshaw. What an idea!” Frl. Schroeder regarded me with astonishment and anxiety. “Is anything the matter? Why didn’t you let me know that you were coming home sooner? I was going to have given your room a thorough turn-out tomorrow.”

“That’s perfectly all right. I’m sure everything looks very nice. Herr Norris hasn’t been ill, has he?”

“Why, no.” Frl. Schroeder’s perplexity was increasing with every moment. “That is, if he has he hasn’t said a word about it to me, and he’s been up and about from morning to midnight. Did he write and tell you so?”

“Oh no, he didn’t do that … only … when I went

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away I thought he looked rather pale. Has anybody rung up for me or left any messages?”

“Nothing, Herr Bradshaw. You remember, you told all your pupils you would be away until the New Year.”

“Yes, of course.”

I walked over to the window, looked down into the dank, empty street. No, it wasn’t quite empty. Down there, on the corner, stood a small man in a buttoned-up overcoat and a felt hat. He paced quietly up and down, his hands folded behind his back, as if waiting for a girl friend.

“Shall I get you some hot water?” asked Frl. Schroeder tactfully. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked tired, dirty and unshaved

“No, thank you,” I said, smiling. “There’s something I’ve got to attend to first. I shall be back in about an hour. Perhaps you’d be so kind and heat the bath?”

‘Tes, Ludwig’s here,” the girls in the outer office at the Wilhelmstrasse told me. “Go right in.”

Bayer didn’t seem in the least surprised to see me. He looked up from his papers with a smile.

“So here you are, Mr. Bradshaw! Please sit down. You have enjoyed your holiday, I hope?”

I smiled.

“Well, I was just beginning to …”

“When you got my telegram? I am sorry, but it was necessary, you see.”

Bayer paused; regarded me thoughtfully; continued:

“I’m afraid that what I have to say may be unpleasant for you, Mr. Bradshaw. But it is not right that you are kept any longer in ignorance of the truth.”

I could hear a clock ticking somewhere in the room; everything seemed to have become very quiet. My heart was thumping uncomfortably against my ribs. I suppose that I half guessed what was coming.

“You went to Switzerland,” Bayer continued, “with a certain Baron Pregnitz?”

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Tes. That’s right.” I licked my lips with my tongue.

“Now I am going to ask you a question which may seem that I interfere very much in your private affairs. Please do not be offended. If you do not wish it, you will not answer, you understand?”

My throat had gone dry. I tried to clear it, and made an absurdly loud, grating sound.

“I’ll answer any question you like,” I said, rather huskily.

Bayer’s eyes brightened approvingly. He leant forward towards me across the writing-table.

“I am glad that you take this attitude, Mr. Bradshaw… . You wish to help us. That is good… . Now, will you tell me, please, what was the reason which Norris gave you that you should go with this Baron Pregnitz to Switzerland?”

Again I heard that clock. Bayer, his elbows resting on the table, regarded me benevolently, with encouraging attention. For the second time, I cleared my throat.

“Well,” I began, “first of all, you see …”

It was a long, silly story, which seemed to take hours to tell. I hadn’t realized how foolish, how contemptible some of it would sound. I felt horribly ashamed of myself, blushed, tried to be humorous and weakly failed, defended and then accused my motives, avoided certain passages, only to blurt them out a moment later, under the neutral inquisition of his friendly eyes. The story seemed to involve a confession of all my weaknesses to that silent, attentive man. I have never felt so humiliated in my life.

When, at last, I had finished, Bayer made a slight movement.

“Thank you, Mr. Bradshaw. All this, you see, is very much as we had supposed… . Our workers in Paris know this Mr. van Hoorn already very well. He is a clever man. He has given us much trouble.”

“You mean … that he’s a police agent?”

“Unofficially, yes. He collects information of all kinds and sells it to those who will pay him. There are many who do

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this but most of them are quite stupid and not dangerous at all.”

“I see… . And van Hoorn’s been making use of Norris to collect information?”

“That is so. Yes.”

“But how on earth did he get Norris to help him? What story did he tell him? I wonder Norris wasn’t suspicious.”

In spite of his gravity, Bayer’s eyes showed a sparkle of amusement.

“It is possible that Norris was most suspicious indeed. No. You have misunderstood me, Mr. Bradshaw. I have not said that van Hoorn deceived him. That was not necessary.”

“Not necessary?” I stupidly echoed.

“Not necessary. No … Norris was quite aware, you see, of what van Hoorn wanted. They understood each other very well. Since Norris returned to Germany, he has been receiving regularly sums of money through van Hoorn from the French Secret Service.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Nevertheless, it is true. I can prove it, if you wish. Norris has been paid to keep an eye on us, to give information about our plans and movements.” Bayer smiled and raised his hand, as if to anticipate a protest. “Oh, this is not so terrible as it sounds. The information which he had to give was of no importance. In our movement, we have not the necessity to make great plots, as are described of us in the capitalist Press and the criminal romances. We act openly. It is easy for all to know what we do. It is possible that Norris can have been able to tell his friends the names of some of our messengers who are going frequently between Berlin and Paris. And, perhaps, also, certain addresses. But this can have been only at the first.”

“You’ve known about him a long time already, then?” I hardly recognized the sound of my own voice.

Bayer smiled brilliantly.

“Quite a long time. Yes.” His tone was soothing. “Norris

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has even been very helpful to us, though he did not wish it. We were able, occasionally, to convey much false impressions to our opponents through this channel.”

With bewildering speed, the jig-saw puzzle was fitting itself together in my brain. In a flash, another piece was added. I remembered the morning after the elections; Bayer in this very room, handing Arthur the sealed packet from his writing-table drawer.

“Yes … I see now… .”

“My dear Mr. Bradshaw.” Bayer’s tone was kind, almost paternal, “Please do not distress yourself too much. Norris is your friend, I know. Mind, I have not said this against him as a man; the private life is not our concern. We are all convinced that you cannot have known of this. You have acted throughout with good faith towards us. I wish it had been possible to keep you in ignorance over this matter.”

“What I still don’t understand is, how Pregnitz …”

“Ah, I am coming to that… . Norris, you see, found himself unable any longer to satisfy his Paris friends with these reports. They were so often insufficient or false. And so he proposed to van Hoorn the idea of a meeting with Pregnitz.”

“And the glass factory?”

“It exists only in the imagination of Norris. Here he made use of your inexperience. It was not for this that van Hoorn paid your expenses to Switzerland. Baron Pregnitz is a politician, not a financier.”

“You don’t mean … ?”

“Yes, this is what I wished to tell you. Pregnitz has access to many secrets of the German Government. It is possible for him to obtain copies of maps, plans and private documents which van Hoorn’s employers will pay very much to see. Perhaps Pregnitz will be tempted. This does not concern us. We wish only to warn you personally, that you may not discover yourself innocently in a prison for the high treason.”

“My God… how on earth did you get to know all this?”

Bayer smiled.

“You think that we have also our spies? No, that is not

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necessary. All information of this sort one can obtain so easily from the police.”

“Then the police know?”

“I do not think that they know all for certain, yet. But they are very suspicious. Two of them came here to ask us questions concerning Norris, Pregnitz and yourself. From these questions one could guess a good deal. I believe we have satisfied them that you are not a dangerous conspirator,” Bayer smiled, “nevertheless, it seemed best to telegraph to you at once, that you might not be further involved.”

“It was very good of you to bother what became of me at all.”

“We try always to help those who help us; although, unfortunately, this is sometimes not possible. You have not seen Norris yet?”

“No. He was out when I arrived.”

“So? That is excellent. It is better that you should tell him these things yourself. Since a week he has not been here. Tell him, please, that we wish him no harm; but it will be better for himself if he goes away from Germany at once. And warn him, also, that the police have him under observance. They are opening all letters which he receives or writes; of this I am sure.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll tell him that.”

“You will? That is good.” Bayer rose to his feet. “And now, Mr. Bradshaw, please do not make yourself reproaches. You have been foolish, perhaps. Never mind; we are all sometimes very, very foolish. You have done nothing to be ashamed. I think that now you will be more careful with whom you make a friend, eh?”

“Yes, I shall.”

Bayer smiled. He clapped me encouragingly on the shoulder.

“Then now we will forget this unpleasant matter. You would like to do some more work for us soon? Excellent… . You tell Norris what I said, eh? Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

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I shook hands with him, I suppose, and got myself off the premises in the usual manner. I must have behaved quite normally, because nobody in the outer office stared. It was only when I was out in the street that I began to run. I was suddenly in a tremendous hurry; I wanted to get this over, quick.

A taxi passed; I was inside it before the driver had had time to slow down. “Drive as fast as you can,” I told him. We skidded in and out of the traffic; it had been raining and the roadway was slimy with mud. The lamps were lighted already; it was getting dark. I lit a cigarette and threw it away after a couple of puffs. My hands were trembling, otherwise I was perfectly calm, not angry, not even disgusted; nothing. The puzzle fitted together perfectly. I could see it all, if I wished to look at it, a compact, vivid picture, at a single glance. All I want, I thought, is to get this over. Now.

Arthur was back already. He looked out of his bedroom as I opened the front door of the flat.

“Come in, dear boy! Come in! This is indeed a pleasant surprise! When Frl. Schroeder told me you’d returned, I could hardly believe it. What was it made you come back so soon? Were you homesick for Berlin; or did you pine for my society? Please say you did! We’ve all missed you very much here. Our Christmas dinner was tasteless indeed without you. Yes … I must say, you’re not looking as well as I’d expected; perhaps you’re tired after the journey? Sit down here. Have you had tea? Let me give you a glass of something to refresh you?”

“No,- thank you, Arthur.”

“You won’t? Well, well … perhaps you’ll change your mind later. How did you leave our friend Pregnitz? Flourishing, I hope?”

“Yes. He’s all right.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Very glad. And now, William, I really must congratulate you on the admirable skill and tact with which you fulfilled your little mission. Margot was more

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than satisfied. And he’s very particular, you know; very difficult to please… .”

“You’ve heard from him, then?”

“Oh, yes. I got a long telegram this morning. The money will arrive tomorrow. I’m bound to say this for Margot: he’s most punctual and correct in these matters. One can always rely on him.”

“Do you mean to say that Kuno’s agreed?”

“No, not that, alas. Not yet. These things aren’t settled in a day. But Margot’s distinctly hopeful. It seems that Pregnitz was a little difficult to persuade at first. He didn’t quite see how this transaction would be of advantage to his firm. But now he’s become definitely interested. He wants time to think it over, of course. Meanwhile, I get half my share as we arranged. I’m thankful to say that it’s more than sufficient to cover my travelling expenses; so that’s one weight lifted from my mind. As for the rest, I’m convinced, personally, that Pregnitz will agree in the end.”

“Yes … I suppose they all do.”

“Nearly all, yes …” Arthur agreed absently; became aware, the next moment, of something strange in my tone. “I don’t think, William, I quite understand what you mean.”

“Don’t you? I’ll put it more plainly then: I suppose van Hoorn usually succeeds in getting people to sell him whatever he wants to buy?”

“Well—er—I don’t know that, in this case, one could describe it as a sale. As I think I told you …”

“Arthur,” I interrupted wearily, “you can stop lying now. I know all about it.”

“Oh,” he began, and was silent. The shock seemed to have taken away his breath. Sinking heavily into a chair, he regarded his finger-nails with unconcealed dismay.

“This is all my own fault, really, I suppose. I was a fool ever to have trusted you. To do you justice, you more or less warned me against it, often enough.”

Arthur looked up at me quickly, like a spaniel which is going to be whipped. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak.

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The deep-cleft dimple appeared for a moment in his collapsed chin. Furtively, he scratched his jowl, withdrawing his hand again immediately, as though he were afraid this gesture might annoy me.

“I ought to have known that you’d find a use for me, sooner or later; even if it was only as a decoy duck. You always find a use for everybody, don’t you? If I’d landed up in prison it’d have damn’ well served me right.”

“William, I give you my word of honour, I never …”

“I won’t pretend,” I continued, “that I care a damn what happens to Kuno. If he’s fool enough to let himself in for this, he does it with his eyes open… . But I must say this, Arthur: if anybody but Bayer had told me you’d ever do the dirty on the Party, I’d have called him a bloody liar. You think that’s very sentimental of me, I suppose?”

Arthur started visibly at the name.

“So Bayer knows, does he?”

“Of course.”

“Oh dear, oh dear… .”

He seemed to have collapsed into himself, like a scarecrow in the rain. His loose, stubbly cheeks were blotched and pallid, his lips parted in a vacant snarl of misery.

“I never really told van Hoorn anything of importance, William. I swear to you I didn’t.”

“I know. You never got the chance. It doesn’t seem to me that you’re much good, even as a crook.”

“Don’t be angry with me, dear boy. I can’t bear it.”

“I’m not angry with you; I’m angry with myself for being such an idiot. I thought you were my friend, you see.”

“I • don’t ask you to forgive me,” said Arthur, humbly. “You’ll never do that, of course. But don’t judge me too harshly. You’re young. Your standards are so severe. When you get to my age, youll see things differently, perhaps. It’s very easy to condemn when one isn’t tempted. Remember that.”

“I don’t condemn you. As for my standards, if I ever had any, you’ve muddled them up completely. I expect you’re

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right. In your place, I’d probably have done just the same.”

“You see?” Arthur eagerly followed up his advantage. “I knew you’d come to look at it in that light.”

“I don’t want to look at it in any light. I’m too utterly sick of the whole filthy business… . My God, I wish you’d go away somewhere where I’ll never see you again!”

Arthur sighed.

“How hard you are, William. I should never have expected it. You always seemed to me to have such a sympathetic nature.”

“That was what you counted on, I suppose? Well, I think you’ll find that the soft ones object to being cheated even more than the others. They mind it more because they feel that they’ve only themselves to blame.”

“You’re perfectly justified, of course. I deserve all the unkind things you say. Don’t spare me. But I promise you most solemnly, the thought that I was implicating you in any sort of crime never once entered my head. You see, everything has gone off exactly as we planned. After all, where was the risk?”

“There was more risk than you think. The police knew all about our little expedition before we’d even started.”

“The police? William, you’re not in earnest!”

“You don’t think I’m trying to be funny, do you? Bayer told me to warn you. They’ve been round to see him and make inquiries.”

“My God… .”

The last traces of stiffness had gone out of Arthur. He sat there like a crumpled paper bag, his blue eyes vivid with terror.

“But they can’t possibly …”

I went to the window.

“Come and look, if you don’t believe me. He’s still there.”

“Who’s still there?”

“The detective who’s watching this house.”

Without a word, Arthur hurried to my side at the window and took a peep at the man in the buttoned-up overcoat.

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Then he went slowly back to his chair. He seemed suddenly to have become much calmer.

“What am I to do?” He appeared to be thinking aloud rather than addressing me.

“You must clear out, of course; the moment you’ve got this money.”

“They’ll arrest me, William.”

“Oh no, they won’t. They’d have done it before this, if they were going to. Bayer says they’ve been reading all your letters… . Besides, they don’t know everything for certain yet, he thinks.”

Arthur pondered for some minutes in silence. He looked up at me in nervous appeal.

“Then you’re not going to …” He stopped.

“Not going to what?”

“To tell them, well—er—everything?”

“My God, Arthur!” I literally gasped. “What, exactly, do you take me for?”

“No, of course, dear boy … Forgive me. I might have known… .” Arthur coughed apologetically. “Only, just for the moment, I was afraid. There might be quite a large reward, you see… .”

For several seconds I was absolutely speechless. Seldom have I been so shocked. Open-mouthed, I regarded him with a mixture of indignation and amusement, curiosity and disgust. Timidly, his eyes met mine. There could be no doubt about it. He was honestly unaware of having said anything to surprise or offend. I found my voice at last.

“Well, of all the …”

But any outburst was cut short by a furious volley of knocks on the bedroom door.

“Herr Bradshaw! Herr Bradshaw!” Frl. Schroeder was in frantic agitation. “The water’s boiling and I can’t turn on the tap! Come quick this moment, or we shall all be blown to bits!”

“We’ll discuss this later,” I told Arthur, and hurried out of the room.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Three-quakters of an hour later, washed and shaved, I returned to Arthur’s room. I found him peering cautiously down into the street from behind the shelter of the lace curtain.

“There’s a different one there now, William,” he told me. “They relieved each other about five minutes ago.”

His tone was gleeful; he seemed positively to be enjoying the situation. I joined him at the window. Sure enough, a tall man in a bowler hat had taken the place of his colleague at the thankless task of waiting for the invisible girl friend.

“Poor fellow,” Arthur giggled, “he looks terribly cold, doesn’t he? Do you think he’d be offended if I sent him down a medicine bottle full of brandy, with my card?”

“He mightn’t see the joke.”

Strangely enough, it was I who felt embarrassed. With indecent ease, Arthur seemed to have forgotten all the unpleasant things I had said to him less than an hour before. His manner towards me was as natural as if nothing had happened. I felt myself harden towards him again. In my bath, I had softened, regretted some cruel words, condemned others as spiteful or priggish. I had rehearsed a partial reconciliation, on magnanimous terms. But Arthur, of course, was to make the advances. Instead of which, here he was, blandly opening his wine-cupboard with his wonted hospitable air.

“At any rate, William, you won’t refuse a glass yourself? It’ll give you an appetite for supper.”

“No, thank you.”

I tried to make my tone stern; it sounded merely sulky. Arthur’s face fell at once. His ease of manner, I saw now, had

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been only experimental. He sighed deeply, resigned to further penitence, assuming an expression which was like a funeral top-hat, lugubrious, hypocritical, discreet. It became him so ill, that in spite of myself, I had to smile.

“It’s no good, Arthur. I can’t keep it up!”

He was too cautious to reply to this, except with a shy, sly smile. This time, he wasn’t going to risk an over-hasty response.

“I suppose,” I continued reflectively, “that none of them were ever really angry with you, were they, afterwards?”

Arthur didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Demurely he inspected his finger-nails.

“Not everybody, alas, has your generous nature, William.” It was no good; we had returned to our verbal card-playing. The moment of frankness, which might have redeemed so much, had been elegantly avoided. Arthur’s orientally sensitive spirit shrank from the rough, healthy, modern catch-as-catch-can of home-truths and confessions; he offered me a compliment instead. Here we were, as so often before, at the edge of that delicate, almost invisible line which divided our two worlds. We should never cross it now. I wasn’t old or subtle enough to find the approach. There was a disappointing pause, during which he rummaged in the cupboard.

“Are you quite sure you won’t have a drop of brandy?”

I sighed. I gave him up. I smiled.

“All right. Thanks. I will.”

We drank ceremoniously, touching glasses. Arthur smacked his lips with unconcealed satisfaction. He appeared to imagine that something had been symbolized: a reconciliation, or, at any rate, a truce. But no, I couldn’t feel this. The ugly, dirty fact was still there, right under our noses, and no amount of brandy could wash it away.

Arthur appeared, for the moment, sublimely unconscious of its existence. I was glad. I felt a sudden anxiety to protect him from a realization of what he had done. Remorse is not for the elderly. When it comes to them, it is not purging or uplifting, but merely degrading and wretched, like a blad—

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der disease. Arthur must never repent. And indeed, it didn’t seem probable that he ever would.

“Let’s go out and eat,” I said, feeling that the sooner we got out of this ill-omened room the better. Arthur cast an involuntary glance in the direction of the window.

“Don’t you think, William, that Frl. Schroeder would make us some scrambled eggs? I hardly feel like venturing out of doors, just now.”

“Of course we must go out, Arthur. Don’t be silly. You must behave as normally as possible, or they’ll think you’re hatching some plot. Besides, think of that unfortunate man down there. How dull it must be for him. Perhaps, if we go out, he’ll be able to get something to eat, too.”

“Well, I must confess,” Arthur doubtfully agreed, “I hadn’t thought of it in that light. Very well, if you’re quite sure it’s wise… .”

It is a curious sensation to know that you are being followed by a detective; especially when, as in this case, you are actually anxious not to escape him. Emerging into the street, at Arthur’s side, I felt like the Home Secretary leaving the House of Commons with the Prime Minister. The man in the bowler hat was either a novice at his job or exceedingly bored with it. He made no attempt at concealment; stood staring at us from the middle of a pool of lamplight. A sort of perverted sense of courtesy prevented me from looking over my shoulder to see if he was following; as for Arthur, his embarrassment was only too painfully visible. His neck seemed to telescope into his body, so that three-quarters of his face was hidden by his coat collar; his gait was that of a murderer retreating from a corpse. I soon noticed that I was subconsciously regulating my pace; I kept hurrying forward in an instinctive desire to get away from our pursuer, then slowing down, lest we should leave him altogether behind. During the walk to the restaurant, Arthur and I didn’t exchange a word.

Barely had we taken our seats when the detective entered. Without a glance in our direction, he strode over to the bar

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and was soon morosely consuming a boiled sausage and a glass of lemonade.

“I suppose,” I said, “that they’re not allowed to drink beer when they’re on duty.”

“Ssh, William!” giggled Arthur, “he’ll hear you!”

“I don’t care if he does. He can’t arrest me for laughing at him.”

Nevertheless, such is the latent power of one’s upbringing. I lowered my voice almost to a whisper.

“I suppose they pay him his expenses. You know, we really ought to have taken him to the Montmartre, and given him a treat.”

“Or to the opera.”

“It’d be rather amusing to go to church.”

We sniggered together, like two boys poking fun at the schoolmaster. The tall man, if he was aware of our comments, bore himself with considerable dignity. His face, presented to us in profile, was gloomy, thoughtful, even philosophic; he might well have been composing a poem. Having finished the sausage, he ordered an Italian salad.

The joke, such as it was, lasted right through our meal. I prolonged it, consciously, as much as I could. So, I think, did Arthur. Tacitly, we helped each other. We were both afraid of a pause. Silence would be too eloquent. And there was so little left for us to talk about. We left the restaurant as soon as was decently possible, accompanied by our attendant, who followed us home, like a nurse, to see us into bed. Through the window of Arthur’s room, we watched him take up his former position, under the lamp-post opposite the house.

“How long will he stay there, do you think?” Arthur asked me anxiously.

“The whole night, probably.”

“Oh dear, I do hope not. If he does, I shan’t be able to sleep a wink.”

“Perhaps if you appear at your window in pyjamas, he’ll go away.”

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“Really, William, I hardly think I could do anything so immodest.” Arthur stifled a yawn.

“Well,” I said, a bit awkwardly, “I think I’ll go to bed now.”

“Just what I was going to suggest myself, dear boy.” Holding his chin absently between his finger and thumb, Arthur looked vaguely round the room; added, with a simplicity which excluded all hint of irony:

“We’ve both had a tiring day.”

Next morning, at any rate, there was no time to feel embarrassed. We had too much to do. No sooner was Arthur’s head free from the barber’s hands than I came into his room, in my dressing-gown, to hold a conference. The smaller detective in the overcoat was now on duty. Arthur had to admit that he had no idea if either of them had spent the night outside the house. Compassion hadn’t, after all, disturbed his sleep.

The first problem was, of course, to decide on Arthur’s destination. Inquiries must be made at the nearest travel bureau as to possible ships and routes. Arthur had already decided finally against Europe.

“I feel I need a complete change of scene, hard as it is to tear oneself away. One’s so confined here, so restricted. As you get older, William, you’ll feel that the world gets smaller. The frontiers seem to close in, until there’s scarcely room to breathe.”

“What an unpleasant sensation that must be.”

“It is.” Arthur sighed. “It is indeed. I may be a little overwrought at the present moment, but I must confess that, to me, the countries of Europe are nothing more or less than a collection of mouse-traps. In some of them, the cheese is of a superior quality, that is the only difference.”

We next discussed which of us should go out and make the inquiries. Arthur was most unwilling to do this.

“But, William, if I go myself, our friend below will most certainly follow me.”

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“Of course he will. That’s just what we want. As soon as you’ve let the authorities know that you mean to clear out, you’ll have set their minds at rest. I’m sure they ask nothing better than to see your back.”

“Well, you may be right… .”

But Arthur didn’t like it. Such tactics revolted all his secretive instincts. “It seems positively indecent,” he added.

“Look here,” I said, cunningly. “I’ll go if you really want me to. But only on condition that you break the news to Frl. Schroeder yourself while I’m away.”

“Really, dear boy … No. I couldn’t possibly do that. Very well, have it your own way… .”

From my window, half an hour later, I watched him emerge into the street. The detective took, apparently, not the faintest notice of his exit; he was engaged in reading the nameplates within the doorway of the opposite house. Arthur set off briskly, looking neither to left nor right. He reminded me of the man in the poem who fears to catch a glimpse of the demon which is treading in his footsteps. The detective continued to study the nameplates with extreme interest. Then at last, when I had begun to get positively exasperated at his apparent blindness, he straightened himself, pulled out his watch, regarded it with evident surprise, hesitated, appeared to consider, and finally walked away with quick, impatient strides, like a man who has been kept waiting too long. I watched his small figure out of sight in amused admiration. He was an artist.

Meanwhile, I had my own, unpleasant task. I found Frl. Schroeder in the living-room, laying cards, as she did every morning of her life, to discover what would happen during the day. It was no use beating about the bush.

“Frl. Schroeder, Herr Morris has just had some bad news. He’ll have to leave Berlin at once. He asked me to tell you …”

I stopped, feeling horribly uncomfortable, swallowed, blurted out:

“He asked me to tell you that … he’d like to pay for his

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room for January and the whole of February as well …”

Frl. Schroeder was silent. I concluded, lamely—

“Because of his having to go off at such short notice, you see …”

She didn’t look up. There was a muffled sound, and a large tear fell on to the face of a card on the table before her. I felt like crying, too.

“Perhaps …” I was cowardly. “It’ll only be for a few months. He may be coming back… .”

But Frl. Schroeder either didn’t hear or didn’t believe this. Her sobs redoubled; she did not attempt to restrain them. Perhaps Arthur’s departure was merely the last straw; once started, she had plenty to cry about. The rent and taxes in arrears, the bills she couldn’t pay, the rudeness of the coalman, her pains in the back, her boils, her poverty, her loneliness, her gradually approaching death. It was dreadful to hear her. I began wandering about the room, nervously touching the furniture, in an ecstasy of discomfort.

“Frl. Schroeder … it’s all right, really, it is … don’t … please… .”

She got over it at last. Mopping her eyes on a corner of the table-cloth, she deeply sighed. Sadly, her inflamed glance moved over the array of cards. She exclaimed, with a kind of mournful triumph:

“Well, I never! Just look at that, Herr Bradshaw. The ace of spades … upside downl I might have known something like this would happen. The cards are never wrong.”

Arthur arrived back from the travel bureau in a taxi, about an hour later. His hands were full of papers and illustrated brochures. He seemed tired and depressed.

“How did you get on?” I asked.

“Give me time, William. Give me time … I’m a little out of breath… .”

Collapsing heavily into a chair, he fanned himself with his hat. I strolled over to the window. The detective wasn’t at his usual post. Turning my head to the left, I saw him,

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however, some way farther down the street, examining the contents of the grocer’s shop.

“Is he back already?” Arthur inquired.

I nodded.

“Really? To give the devil his due, that young man will go far in his unsavoury profession… . Do you know, William, he had the effrontery to come right into the office and stand beside me at the counter? I even heard him making inquiries about a trip to the Harz.”

“Perhaps he really wanted to go there; you never know. He may be having his holidays soon.”

“Well, well … at all events, it was most upsetting … I had the greatest difficulty in arriving at the extremely grave decision I had to make.”

“And what’s the verdict?”

“I much regret to say,” Arthur regarded the buttons on his boot despondently, “that it will have to be Mexico.”

“Good God!”

“You see, dear boy, the possibilities, at such short notice, are very limited … I should have greatly preferred Rio, of course, or the Argentine. I even toyed with China. But everywhere, nowadays, there are such absurd formalities. All kinds of stupid and impertinent questions are asked. When I was young, it was very different… . An English gentleman was welcome everywhere, especially with a first-class ticket.”

“And when do you leave?”

“There’s a boat at midday tomorrow. I think I shall go to Hamburg to-day, on the evening train. It’s more comfortable, and, perhaps, on the whole, wiser; don’t you agree?”

“I daire say. Yes… . This seems a tremendous step to take, all of a sudden. Have you any friends in Mexico?”

Arthur giggled. “I have friends everywhere, William, or shall I say accomplices?”

“And what shall you do, when you arrive?”

“I shall go straight to Mexico City (a most depressing spot; although I expect it’s altered a great deal since I was

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there in nineteen-eleven). I shall then take rooms in the best hotel and await a moment of inspiration. … I don’t suppose I shall starve.”

“No, Arthur,” I laughed, “I certainly don’t see you starving!”

We brightened. We had several drinks. We became quite lively.

Frl. Schroeder was called in, for a start had to be made with Arthur’s packing. She was melancholy at first, and inclined to be reproachful, but a glass of cognac worked wonders. She had her own explanation of the reasons for Arthur’s sudden departure.

“Ah, Herr Norris, Herr Norris! You should have been more careful. A gentleman at your time of life ought to have experience enough of these things …” She winked tipsily at me, behind his back. “Why didn’t you stay faithful to your old Schroeder? She would have helped you, she knew about it all the time!”

Arthur, perplexed and vaguely embarrassed, looked questioningly to me for an explanation. I pretended complete ignorance. And now the trunks arrived, fetched down by the porter and his son from the attics at the top of the house. Frl. Schroeder exclaimed, as she packed, over the magnificence of Arthur’s clothes. Arthur himself, generous and gay, began distributing largess. The porter got a suit, the porter’s wife a bottle of sherry, their son a pair of snakeskin shoes which were much too small for him, but which he insisted he would squeeze into somehow. The piles of newspapers and periodicals were to be sent to a hospital. Arthur certainly gave things away with an air; he knew how to play the Grand Seigneur. The porter’s family went away grateful and deeply impressed. I saw that the beginnings of a legend had been created.

As for Frl. Schroeder herself, she was positively loaded with gifts. In addition to the etchings and the Japanese screen, Arthur gave her three flasks of perfume, some hair-lotion, a powder-puff, the entire contents of his wine—

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cupboard, two beautiful scarves, and, amidst much blushing, a pair of his coveted silk combinations.

“I do wish, William, you’d take something, too. Just some little trifle… .”

“All right, Arthur, thank you very much. … I tell you what, have you still got Miss Smith’s Torture Chamber? I always liked it the best of those books of yours.”

“You did? Really?” Arthur flushed with pleasure. “How charming of you to say so! You know, William, I really think I must tell you a secret. The last of my secrets. … I wrote that book myself!”

“Arthur, you didn’t!”

“I did, I assure you!” Arthur giggled, delighted. “Years ago, now… . It’s a youthful indiscretion of which I’ve since felt rather ashamed … It was printed privately in Paris. I’m told that some of the best-known collectors in Europe have copies in their libraries. It’s exceedingly rare.”

“And you never wrote anything else?”

“Never, alas. … I put my genius into my life, not into my art. That remark is not original. Never mind. By the way, since we are on this topic, do you know that I’ve never said goodbye to my dear Anni? I really think I might ask her to come here this afternoon, don’t you? After all, I’m not leaving until after tea.”

“Better not, Arthur. You’ll need all your strength for the journey.”

“Well, ha, ha! You may be right. The pain of parting would no doubt be most severe… .

After lunch, Arthur lay down to rest. I took his trunks in a taxi to the Lehrter Station and deposited them in the cloakroom. Arthur was anxious to avoid a lengthy ceremony of departure from the house. The tall detective was on duty now. He watched the loading of the taxi with interest, but made no move to follow.

At tea, Arthur was nervous and depressed. We sat together in the disordered bedroom, with the doors of the

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empty cupboards standing open and the mattress rolled up at the foot of the bed. I felt apprehensive, for no reason. Arthur rubbed his chin wearily, and sighed:

“I feel like the Old Year, William. I shall soon be gone.”

I smiled. “A week from now, you’ll be sitting on the deck in the sun, while we’re still freezing or soaking in this wretched town. I envy you, I can tell you.”

“Do you, dear boy? I sometimes wish I didn’t have to do so much travelling. Mine is essentially a domestic nature. I ask nothing better than to settle down.”

“Well, why don’t you, then?”

“That’s what I so often ask myself … Something always seems to prevent it.”

At last it was time to go.

With infinite fuss, Arthur put on his coat, lost and found his gloves, gave a last touch to his wig. I picked up his suitcase and we went out into the hall. Nothing was left but the worst, the ordeal of saying goodbye to Frl. Schroeder. She emerged from the living-room, moist-eyed.

“Well, Herr Norris …”

The doorbell rang loudly, and there was a double knock on the door. The interruption made Arthur jump.

“Good gracious! Whoever can that be?”

“It’s the postman, I expect,” said Frl. Schroeder. “Excuse me, Herr Bradshaw… .”

Barely had she opened the door when the man outside it pushed past her into the hall. It was Schmidt.

That he was drunk was obvious, even before he opened his mouth. He stood swaying uncertainly, hatless, his tie over one shoulder, his collar awry. His huge face was inflamed and swollen so that his eyes were mere slits. The hall was a small place for four people. We were standing so close together that I could smell his breath. It stank vilely.

Arthur, at my side, uttered an incoherent sound of dismay, and I myself could only gape. Strange as it may seem, I was entirely unprepared for this apparition. During the last

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twenty-four hours, I had forgotten Schmidt’s existence altogether.

He was the master of the situation, and he knew it. His face fairly beamed with malice. Kicking the front door shut behind him with his foot, he surveyed the two of us; Arthur’s coat, the suitcase in my hand.

“Doing a bunk, eh?” He spoke loudly, as if addressing a large audience in the middle distance. “I see … thought you’d give me the slip, did you?” He advanced a pace; he confronted the trembling and dismayed Arthur. “Lucky I came, wasn’t it? Unlucky for you …”

Arthur emitted another sound, this time a kind of squeak of terror. It seemed to excite Schmidt to a positive frenzy of rage. He clenched his fists, he shouted with astonishing violence:

“You dirty tyke!”

He raised his arm. He may actually have been going to strike Arthur; if so, I shouldn’t have had time to prevent it. All I could do, within the instant, was to drop the suitcase to the ground. But Frl. Schroeder’s reactions were quicker and more effective. She hadn’t the ghost of an idea what the fuss was all about. That didn’t worry her. Enough that Herr Norris was being insulted by an unknown, drunken man. With a shrill battle-cry of indignation, she charged. Her outstretched palms caught Schmidt in the small of the back, propelled him forwards, like an engine shunting trucks. Unsteady on his feet and taken completely by surprise, he blundered headlong through the open doorway into the living-room and fell sprawling, face downwards, on the carpet. Frl. Schroeder promptly turned the key in the lock. The whole manœuvre was the work of about five seconds.

“Such cheek!” exclaimed Frl. Schroeder. Her cheeks were bright red with the exertion. “He comes barging in here as if the place belonged to him. And intoxicated … pfui! … the disgusting pig!”

She seemed to find nothing particularly mysterious in the

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incident. Perhaps she connected Schmidt somehow with Margot and the ill-fated baby. If so she was too tactful to say so. A tremendous rattle of knocks on the living-room door excused me from any attempt at inventing explanations.

“Won’t he be able to get out at the back?” Arthur inquired nervously.

“You can set your mind at rest, Herr Norris. The kitchen door’s locked.” Frl. Schroeder turned menacingly upon the invisible Schmidt. “Be quiet, you scoundrel! I’ll attend to you in a minute!”

“All the same …” Arthur was on pins and needles, “I think we ought to be going …”

“How are you going to get rid of him?” I asked Frl. Schroeder.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Herr Bradshaw. As soon as you’re gone, I’ll get the porter’s son up. Hell go quietly enough, I promise you. If he doesn’t, he’ll be sorry… .”

We said goodbye hurriedly. Frl. Schroeder was too excited and triumphant to be emotional. Arthur kissed her on both cheeks. She stood waving to us from the top of the stairs. A fresh outburst of muffled knocking was audible behind her.

We were in the taxi, and half-way to the station before Arthur recovered his composure sufficiently to be able to talk.

“Dear me … I’ve seldom made such an exceedingly unpleasant exit from any town, I think …”

“What you might call a rousing send-off ” I glanced behind me to make sure that the other taxi, with the tall detective, was still following us.

“What do you think he’ll do, William? Perhaps he’ll go straight to the police?”

“I’m pretty sure he won’t. As long as he’s drunk, they won’t listen to him, and by the time he’s sober, he’il see himself that it’s no good. He hasn’t the least idea where you’re going, either. For all he knows, you’ll be out of the country tonight.”

“You may be right, dear boy. I hope so, I’m sure. I must

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say I hate to leave you exposed to his malice. You will be most careful, won’t you?”

“Oh, Schmidt won’t bother me. I’m not worth it, from his point of view. He’ll probably find another victim easily enough. I dare say he’s got plenty on his books.”

“While he was in my employ he certainly had opportunities,” Arthur agreed thoughtfully. “And I’ve no doubt he made full use of them. The creature had talents—of a perverted kind … Oh, unquestionably … Yes… .”

At length it was all over. The misunderstanding with the cloakroom official, the fuss about the luggage, the finding of a corner seat, the giving of the tip. Arthur leant out of the carriage window; I stood on the platform. We had five minutes to spare.

“You’ll remember me to Otto, won’t you?”

“I will.”

“And give my love to Anni?”

“Of course.”

“I wish they could have been here.”

“It’s a pity, isn’t it?”

“But it would have been unwise, under the circumstances. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

I longed for the train to start. There was nothing more to say, it seemed, except the things which must never be said now, because it was too late. Arthur seemed aware of the vacuum. He groped about uneasily in his stock of phrases.

“I wish you were coming with me, William … I shall miss you terribly, you know.”

“Shall you?” I smiled awkwardly, feeling exquisitely uncomfortable.

“I shall, indeed… . You’ve always been such a support to me. From the first moment we met… .”

I blushed. It was astonishing what a cad he could make me feel. Hadn’t I, after all, misunderstood him? Hadn’t I misjudged him? Hadn’t I, in some obscure way, behaved very badly? To change the subject, I asked:

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“You remember that journey? I simply couldn’t understand why they made such a fuss at the frontier. I suppose they’d got their eye on you already?”

Arthur didn’t care much for this reminiscence.

“I suppose they had… . Yes.”

Another silence. I glanced at the clock, despairingly. One more minute to go. Fumblingly, he began again.

“Try not to think too hardly of me, William. … I should hate that… .”

“What nonsense, Arthur. …” I did my best to pass it off lightly. “How absurd you are!”

“This life is so very complex. If my behaviour hasn’t always been quite consistent, I can truly say that I am and always shall be loyal to the Party, at heart… . Say you believe that, please?”

He was outrageous, grotesque, entirely without shame. But what was I to answer? At that moment, had he demanded it, I’d have sworn that two and two make five.

“Yes, Arthur, I do believe it.”

“Thank you, William… . Oh dear, now we really are off. I do hope all my trunks are in the van. God bless you, dear boy. I shall think of you always. Where’s my mackintosh? Ah, that’s all right. Is my hat on straight? Goodbye. Write often, won’t you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Arthur.”

The train, gathering speed, drew his manicured hand from mine. I walked a little way down the platform and stood waving until the last coach was out of sight.

As I turned to leave the station, I nearly collided with a man who had been standing just behind me. It was the detective.

“Excuse me, Herr Kommissar” I murmured.

But he did not even smile.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Early in March, after the elections, it turned suddenly mild and warm. “Hitler’s weather,” said the porter’s wife; and her son remarked jokingly that we ought to be grateful to van der Lubbe, because the burning of the Reichstag had melted the snow. “Such a nice-looking boy,” observed Frl. Schroeder, with a sigh. “However could he go and do a dreadful thing like that?” The porter’s wife snorted.

Our street looked quite gay when you turned into it and saw the black-white-red flags hanging motionless from windows against the blue spring sky. On the Nollendorfplatz people were sitting out of doors before the café in their overcoats, reading about the coup d’état in Bavaria. Goring spoke from the radio horn at the corner. Germany is awake, he said. An ice-cream shop was open. Uniformed Nazis strode hither and thither, with serious, set faces, as though on weighty errands. The newspaper readers by the café turned their heads to watch them pass and smiled and seemed pleased.

They smiled approvingly at these youngsters in their big, swaggering boots who were going to upset the Treaty of Versailles. They were pleased because it would soon be summer, because Hitler had promised to protect the small tradesmen,‘because their newspapers told them that the good times were coming. They were suddenly proud of being blond. And they thrilled with a furtive, sensual pleasure, like schoolboys, because the Jews, their business rivals, and the Marxists, a vaguely defined minority of people who didn’t concern them, had been satisfactorily found guilty of the defeat and the inflation, and were going to catch it.

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The town was full of whispers. They told of illegal midnight arrests, of prisoners tortured in the S.A. barracks, made to spit on Lenin s picture, swallow castor-oil, eat old socks. They were drowned by the loud, angry voice of the Government, contradicting through its thousand mouths. But not even Goring could silence Helen Pratt. She had decided to investigate the atrocities on her own account. Morning, noon and night, she nosed round the city, ferreting out the victims or their relations, crossexamining them for details. These unfortunate people were reticent, of course, and deadly scared. They didn’t want a second dose. But Helen was as relentless as their torturers. She bribed, cajoled, pestered. Sometimes, losing her patience, she threatened. What would happen to them afterwards frankly didn’t interest her. She was out to get facts.

It was Helen who first told me that Bayer was dead. She had absolutely reliable evidence. One of the office staff, since released, had seen his corpse in the Spandau barracks. “It’s a funny thing,” she added, “his left ear was torn right off … God knows why. It’s my belief that some of this gang are simply loonies. Why, Bill, what’s the matter? You’re going green round the gills.”

“That’s how I feel,” I said.

An awkward thing had happened to Fritz Wendel. A few days before, he had had a motor accident; he had sprained his wrist and scratched the skin off his cheek. The injuries weren’t at all serious, but he had to wear a big piece of sticking-plaster and carry his arm in a sling. And now, in spite of the lovely weather, he wouldn’t venture out of doors. Bandages of any kind gave rise to misunderstandings, especially when, like Fritz, you had a dark complexion and coal-black hair. Passers-by made unpleasant and threatening remarks. Fritz wouldn’t admit this, of course. “Hell, what I mean, one feels such a darn’ fool.” He had become exceedingly cautious. He wouldn’t refer to politics at all, even when

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we were alone together. “Eventually it had to happen,” was his only comment on the new régime. As he said this, he avoided my eyes.

The whole city lay under an epidemic of discreet, infectious fear. I could feel it, like influenza, in my bones. When the first news of the house-searchings began to come in, I had consulted with Frl. Schroeder about the papers which Bayer had given me. We hid them and my copy of the Communist Manifesto under the wood-pile in the kitchen. Unbuilding and rebuilding the wood-pile took half an hour, and before it was finished our precautions had begun to seem rather childish. I felt a bit ashamed of myself, and consequently exaggerated the importance and danger of my position to Frl. Schroeder, who listened respectfully, with rising indignation. “You mean to say they’d come into my flat, Herr Bradshaw? Well, of all the cheek. But just let them try it! Why, I’d box their ears for them; I declare I would!”

A night or two after this, I was woken by a tremendous banging on the outside door. I sat up in bed and switched on the light. It was just three o’clock. Now I’m for it, I thought. I wondered if they’d allow me to ring up the Embassy. Smoothing my hair tidy with my hand, I tried, not very successfully, to assume an expression of haughty contempt. But when, at last, Frl. Schroeder had shuffled out to see what was the matter, it was only a lodger from next door who’d come to the wrong flat because he was drunk.

After this scare, I suffered from sleeplessness. I kept fancying I heard heavy wagons drawing up outside our house. I lay waiting in the dark for the ringing of the doorbell. A minute. Five minutes. Ten. One morning, as I stared, half asleep, at the wallpaper above my bed, the pattern suddenly formed itself into a chain of little hooked crosses. What was worse, I noticed that everything in the room was really a kind of brown: either green-brown, black-brown, yellow-brown, or red-brown; but all brown, unmistakably. When I had had breakfast and taken a purgative, I felt better.

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One morning, I had a visit from Otto.

It must have been about half-past six when he rang our bell. Frl. Schroeder wasn’t up yet; I let him in myself. He was in a filthy state, his hair tousled and matted, a stain of dirty blood down the side of his face from a scratch on the temples.

“Servus, Willi,” he muttered. He put out his hand suddenly and clutched my arm. With difficulty, I saved him from falling. But he wasn’t drunk, as I at first imagined; simply exhausted. He flopped down into a chair in my room. When I returned from shutting the outside door, he was already asleep.

It was rather a problem to know what to do with him. I had a pupil coming early. Finally, Frl. Schroeder and I managed, between us, to lug him, still half asleep, into Arthur’s old bedroom and lay him on the bed. He was incredibly heavy. No sooner was he laid on his back than he began to snore. His snores were so loud that you could hear them in my room, even when the door was shut; they continued, audibly, throughout the lesson. Meanwhile, my pupil, a very nice young man who hoped soon to become a schoolmaster, was eagerly adjuring me not to believe the stories, “invented by Jewish emigrants,” about the political persecution.

“Actually,” he assured me, “these so-called communists are merely a handful of criminals, the scum of the streets. And most of them are not Germans at all.”

“I thought,” I said politely, “that you were telling me just now that they drew up the Weimar Constitution?”

This rather staggered him for the moment; but he made a good recovery.

“No, pardon me, the Weimar Constitution was the work of Marxist Jews.”

“Ah, the Jews … to be sure.”

My pupil smiled. My stupidity made him feel a bit superior. I think he even liked me for it. A particularly loud snore came from the next room.

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“For a foreigner,” he politely conceded, “German politics are very complicated.”

“Very,” I agreed.

Otto woke about tea-time, ravenously hungry. I went out and bought sausages and eggs and Frl. Schroeder cooked him a meal while he washed. Afterwards we sat together in my room. Otto smoked one cigarette after another; he was very nervy and couldn’t sit still. His clothes were getting ragged and the collar of his sweater was frayed. His face was full of hollows. He looked like a grown man now, at least five years older.

Frl. Schroeder made him take off his jacket. She mended it while we talked, interjecting, at intervals: “Is it possible? The idea … how dare they do such a thing! That’s what I’d like to know!”

Otto had been on the run for a fortnight, now, he told us. Two nights after the Reichstag fire, his old enemy, Werner Baldow, had come round, with six others of his storm-troop, to “arrest” him. Otto used the word without irony; he seemed to find it quite natural. “There’s lots of old scores being paid off nowadays,” he added, simply.

Nevertheless, Otto had escaped, through a skylight, after kicking one of the Nazis in the face. They had shot at him twice, but missed. Since then he’d been wandering about Berlin, sleeping only in the daytime, walking the streets at night, for fear of house-raids. The first week hadn’t been so bad; comrades had put him up, one passing him on to another. But that was getting too risky now. So many of them were dead or in the concentration camps. He’d been sleeping when he could, taking short naps on benches in parks. But he could never rest properly. He had always to be on the watch. He couldn’t stick it any longer. Tomorrow he was going to leave Berlin. He’d try to work his way down to the Saar. Somebody had told him that was the easiest frontier to cross. It was dangerous, of course, but better than being cooped up here.

I asked what had become of Anni. Otto didn’t know. He’d

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heard she was with Werner Baldow again. What else could you expect? He wasn’t even bitter; he just didn’t care. And Olga? Oh, Olga was doing finely. That remarkable business woman had escaped the clean-up through the influence of one of her customers, an important Nazi official. Others had begun to go there, now. Her future was assured.

Otto had heard about Bayer.

“They say Thälmann’s dead, too. And Renn. Junge, Junge… .”

We exchanged rumours about other well-known names. Frl. Schroeder shook her head and murmured over each. She was so genuinely upset that nobody would have dreamed she was hearing most of them for the first time in her life.

The talk turned naturally to Arthur. We showed Otto the postcards of Tampico which had arrived, for both of us, only a week ago. He examined them with admiration.

“I suppose he’s carrying on the work there?”

“What work?”

“The Party work, of course!”

“Oh, yes,” I hastily agreed. “Of course he is.”

“It was a bit of luck that he went away when he did, wasn’t

it?r

“Yes … it certainly was.”

Otto’s eyes shone.

“We needed more men like old Arthur in the Party. He was a speaker, if you like!”

His enthusiasm warmed Frl. Schroeder’s heart. The tears stood in her eyes.

“I always shall say Herr Norris was one of the best and finest and straightest gentlemen I ever knew.”

We were all silent. In the twilit room we dedicated a grateful, reverent moment to Arthur’s memory. Then Otto continued in a tone of profound conviction:

“Do you know what I think? He’s working for us out there, making propaganda and raising money; and one day, you’ll see, he’ll come back. Hitler and the rest of them will have to look out for themselves then… .”

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It was getting dark outside. Frl. Schroeder rose to turn on the light. Otto said he must be going. He’d decided to make a start this evening now that he was feeling rested. By daybreak, he’d be clear of Berlin altogether. Frl. Schroeder protested vigorously. She had taken a great fancy to him.

“Nonsense, Herr Otto. You’ll sleep here tonight. You need a thorough rest. Those Nazis will never find you here. They’d have to cut me into little pieces first.”

Otto smiled and thanked her warmly, but he wasn’t to be persuaded. We had to let him go. Frl. Schroeder filled his pockets with sandwiches. I gave him three handkerchiefs, an old penknife, and a map of Germany printed on a postcard which had been slipped in through our letter-box to advertise a firm of bicycle makers. Even this would be better than nothing, for Otto’s geography was alarmingly weak. Un-guided, he would probably have found himself heading for Poland. I wanted to give him some money, too. At first he wouldn’t hear of it, and I had to resort to the disingenuous argument that we were brother communists. “Besides,” I added craftily, “you can pay me back.” We shook hands solemnly on this.

He was astonishingly cheerful at parting. From his manner you would have supposed that it was we who needed encouragement, not he.

“Cheer up, Willi. Don’t you worry … Our time will come.”

“Of course it will. Goodbye, Otto. Good luck.”

“Goodbye.”

We watched him set off, from my window. Frl. Schroeder had begun to sniff.

Toor boy … Do you think he’s got a chance, Herr Bradshaw? I declare I shan’t sleep the whole night, thinking about him. It’s as if he were my own son.”

Otto turned once to look back; he waved his hand jauntily and smiled. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and strode rapidly away, with the heavy, agile gait of a boxer, down the long dark street and

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into the lighted square, to be lost amidst the sauntering crowds of his enemies.

I never saw or heard of him again.

Three weeks later I returned to England.

I had been in London nearly a month, when Helen Pratt came round to see me. She had arrived back from Berlin the day before, having triumphantly succeeded, with a series of scalding articles, in getting the sale of her periodical forbidden throughout Germany. Already she’d been offered a much better job in America. She was sailing within a fortnight to attack New York.

She exuded vitality, success and news. The Nazi Revolution had positively given her a new lease of life. To hear her talk, you might have thought she had spent the last two months hiding in Dr. Goebbels’ writing-desk or under Hitler’s bed. She had the details of every private conversation and the low-down on every scandal. She knew what Schacht had said to Norman, what von Papen had said to Meissner, what Schleicher might shortly be expected to say to the Crown Prince. She knew the amounts of Thyssen’s cheques. She had new stories about Roehm, about Heines, about Goring and his uniforms. “My God, Bill, what a racket!” She talked for hours.

Exhausted at last of all the misdeeds of the great, she started on the lesser fry.

“I suppose you heard all about the Pregnitz affair, didn’t you?”

“No. Not a word.”

“Gosh, you are behind the times!” Helen brightened at the prospect of yet another story. “Why, that can’t have been more than a week after you left. They kept it fairly quiet, of course, in the papers. A pal of mine on the New York Herald gave me all the dope.”

But, on this occasion, the dope wasn’t all on Helen’s side. Naturally, she didn’t know everything about van Hoorn. The temptation to fill out the gaps in her story, or, at least, to be—

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tray my knowledge of them, was considerable. Thank goodness, I didn’t yield to it. She was no more to be trusted with news than a cat with a saucer of milk. And, indeed, I was astonished how much her resourceful colleague had found out on his own account.

The police must have been keeping Kuno under observation ever since our Swiss visit. Their patience had certainly been remarkable, because, for three whole months, he had done absolutely nothing to arouse their suspicions. Then, quite suddenly, at the beginning of April, he had got into communication with Paris. He was ready, he said, to reconsider the business they had discussed. His first letter was short and carefully vague; a week later, under pressure from van Hoorn, he wrote a much longer one, giving explicit details of what he proposed to sell. He sent it by special messenger, taking all due precautions and employing a code. Within a few hours, the police had deciphered every word.

They went round to arrest him that afternoon at his flat. Kuno was out, having tea with a friend. His manservant had just time to telephone to him a guarded warning, before the detectives took possession. Kuno seems to have lost his head completely. He did the worst thing possible: jumped into a taxi and drove straight to the Zoo Station. The plain-clothes men there recognized him at once. They’d been supplied with his description that very morning, and who could mistake Kuno? Cruelly enough, they let him buy a ticket for the next available train; it happened to be going to Frankfurt-on-the-Oder. As he went up the steps to the platform, two detectives came forward to arrest him; but he was ready for that, and bolted down again. The exits were all guarded, of course. Kuno’s pursuers Tost him in the crowd; caught sight of him again as he ran through the swing doors into the lavatory. By the time they had elbowed their way through the people, he had already locked himself into one of the closets. (“The newspapers,” said Helen, scornfully, “called it a telephone-box.”) The detectives ordered him to come out. He wouldn’t answer. Finally, they had to clear the

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whole place and get ready to break down the door. It was then that Kuno shot himself.

“And he couldn’t even make a decent job of that,” Helen added. “Fired crooked. Nearly blew his eye out; bled like a pig. They had to take him to hospital to finish him off.”

“Poor devil.”

Helen looked at me curiously.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I should have said.”

“You see,” I apologetically confessed, “I knew him, slightly …”

“Well, I’m blowed! Did you? Sorry. I must say, Bill, you’re a nice little chap, but you do have some queer friends. Well, this ought to interest you, then. You knew Pregnitz was a fairy, of course?”

“I rather guessed something of the kind.”

“Well, my pal got on to the inside story of why Pregnitz went in for this treason racket at all. He needed cash quickly, you see, because he was being blackmailed. And who, do you think, was doing the blackmailing? None other than the secretary of another dear old friend of yours, Harris.”

“Norris?”

“That’s right. Well, it seems that this precious secretary … what was his name, by the way?”

“Schmidt.”

“Was it? I dare say. Just suits him… . Schmidt had got hold of a lot of letters Pregnitz had written to some youth. God alone knows how. Pretty hot stuff they must have been, if Pregnitz was prepared to risk his skin to pay for them. Shouldn’t have thought it was worth it myself. Rather face the music. But these people never have any guts… .”

“Did your friend find out what happened to Schmidt afterwards?” I asked.

“Don’t suppose so, no. Why should he? What does happen to these creatures? He’s probably abroad, somewhere, blowing the cash. He’d got quite a lot out of Pregnitz, already, it seems. As far as I’m concerned, he’s welcome to it. Who cares?”

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“I know one person,” I said, “who might be interested.” A few days after this, I got a letter from Arthur. He was in Mexico City now, and hating it.

Let me advise you, my dear boy, with all the solemnity of which I am capable, never to set foot in this odious town. On the material plane, it is true, I manage to provide myself with most of my accustomed comforts. But the complete lack of intelligent society, at least, as I understand the term, afflicts me deeply …

Arthur didn’t say much about his business affairs; he was more guarded than of old.

“Times are very bad, but, on the whole, I can’t complain,” was his only admission. On the subject of Germany, he let himself go, however:

It makes me positively tremble with indignation to think of the workers delivered over to these men, who, whatever you may say, are nothing more or less than criminals.

And, a little farther down the page:

It is indeed tragic to see how, even in these days, a clever and unscrupulous liar can deceive millions.

In conclusion, he paid a handsome tribute to Bayer:

A man I always admired and respected. I feel proud to be able to say that I was his friend.

I next heard of Arthur in June, on a postcard from California.

I am basking here in the sunshine of Santa Monica. After Mexico, this is indeed a Paradise. I have a little venture on foot, not unconnected with the film industry. I think and hope it may turn out quite profitably. Will write again soon.

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He did write, and sooner, no doubt, than he had originally intended. By the next mail, I got another postcard, dated a day later.

The very worst has happened. Am leaving for Costa Rica tonight. All details from there.

This time I got a short letter.

If Mexico was Purgatory, this is the Inferno itself.

My Californian idyll was rudely cut short by the appearance of Schmidt!!! The creature’s ingenuity is positively superhuman. Not only had he followed me there, but he had succeeded in finding out the exact nature of the little deal I was hoping to put through. I was entirely at his mercy. I was compelled to give him most of my hard-earned savings and depart at once.

Just imagine, he even had the insolence to suggest that I should employ him, as before!!

I don’t know yet whether I have succeeded in throwing him off my track. I hardly dare to hope.

At least, Arthur wasn’t left long in doubt. A postcard soon followed the letter.

The Monster has arrived!!! May try Peru.

Other glimpses of this queer journey reached me from time to time. Arthur had no luck in Lima. Schmidt turned up within the week. From there, the chase proceeded to Chile.

“An attempt to exterminate the reptile failed miserably,” he wrote from Valparaiso. “I succeeded only in arousing its venom.”

I suppose this is Arthur’s ornate way of saying that he had tried to get Schmidt murdered.

In Valparaiso, a truce seems, however, to have been at last declared. For the next postcard, announcing a train journey to the Argentine, indicated a new state of affairs.

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We leave this afternoon, together, for Buenos Aires. Am too depressed to write more now.

At present, they are in Rio. Or were when I last heard. It is impossible to predict their movements. Any day Schmidt may set off for fresh hunting-grounds, dragging Arthur after him, a protesting employer-prisoner. Their new partnership won’t be so easy to dissolve as their old one. Henceforward, they are doomed to walk the Earth together. I often think about them and wonder what I should do if, by any unlucky chance, we were to meet. I am not particularly sorry for Arthur. After all, he no doubt gets his hands on a good deal of money. But he is very sorry for himself.

“Tell me, William,” his last letter concluded, “what have I done to deserve all this?”

THE END

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GOODBYE TO BERLIN

to

John & Beatrix Lehmann

A BERLIN DIARY

(Autumn 1930)

From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied façades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class. 1^ lama camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.

At eight o’clock in the evening the house-doors will be locked. The children are having supper. The shops are shut. The electric-sign is switched on over the night-bell of the little hotel on the corner, where you can hire a room by the hour. And soon the whistling will begin. Young men are calling their girls. Standing down there in the cold, they whistle up at the lighted windows of warm rooms where the beds are already turned down for the night. They want to be let in. Their signals echo down the deep hollow street, lascivious and private and sad. Because of the whistling, I do not care to stay here in the evenings. It reminds me that I am in a foreign city, alone, far from home. Sometimes I determine not to listen to it, pick up a book, try to read. But soon a call is sure to sound, so piercing, so insistent, so despairingly human, that at last I have to get up and peep through the slats of the Venetian blind to make quite sure

1

that it is not—as I know very well it could not possibly be— for me.

The extraordinary smell in this room when the stove is lighted and the window shut; not altogether unpleasant, a mixture of incense and stale buns. The tall tiled stove, gorgeously coloured, like an altar. The washstand like a Gothic shrine. The cupboard also is Gothic, with carved cathedral windows: Bismarck faces the King of Prussia in stained glass. My best chair would do for a bishop’s throne. In the corner, three sham mediaeval halberds (from a theatrical touring company?) are fastened together to form a hatstand. Frl. Schroeder unscrews the heads of the halberds and polishes them from time to time. They are heavy and sharp enough to kill.

Everything in the room is like that: unnecessarily solid, abnormally heavy and dangerously sharp. Here, at the writing-table, I am confronted by a phalanx of metal objects—a pair of candlesticks shaped like entwined serpents, an ashtray from which emerges die head of a crocodile, a paper-knife copied from a Florentine dagger, a brass dolphin holding on the end of its tail a small broken clock. What becomes of such things? How could they ever be destroyed? They will probably remain intact for thousands of years: people will treasure them in museums. Or perhaps they will merely be melted down for munitions in a war. Every morning, Frl. Schroeder arranges them very carefully in certain unvarying positions : there they stand, like an uncompromising statement of her views on Capital and Society, Religion and Sex.

All day long she goes padding about the large dingy flat. Shapeless but alert, she waddles from room to room, in carpet slippers and a flowered dressing-gown pinned ingeniously together, so that not an inch of petticoat or bodice is to be seen, flicking with her duster, peeping, spying, poking her short pointed nose into the cupboards and luggage of her

2

lodgers. She has dark, bright, inquisitive eyes and pretty waved brown hair of which she is proud. She must be about fifty-five years old.

Long ago, before the War and the Inflation, she used to be comparatively well off. She went to the Baltic for her summer holidays and kept a maid to do the housework. For the last thirty years she has lived here and taken in lodgers. She started doing it because she liked to have company.

” ‘Lina,’ my friends used to say to me, ‘however can you? How can you bear to have strange people living in your rooms and spoiling your furniture, especially when you’ve got the money to be independent?’ And I’d always give them the same answer. ‘My lodgers aren’t lodgers,’ I used to say. They’re my guests.’

“You see, Herr Issyvoo, in those days I could afford to be very particular about the sort of people who came to live here. I could pick and choose. I only took them really well connected and well educated—proper gentlefolk ( like yourself, Herr Issyvoo ). I had a Freiherr once, and a Rittmeister and a Professor. They often gave me presents—a bottle of cognac or a box of chocolates or some flowers. And when one of them went away for his holidays he’d always send me a card—from London, it might be, or Paris, or Baden-Baden. Ever such pretty cards I used to get… ,”

And now Frl. Schroeder has not even got a room of her own. She has to sleep in the living-room, behind a screen, on a small sofa with broken springs. As in so many of the older Berlin flats, our living-room connects the front part of the house with the back. The lodgers who live on the front have to pass through the living-room on their way to the bathroom,’ so that Frl. Schroeder is often disturbed during the night. “But I drop off again at once. It doesn’t worry me. I’m much too tired.” She has to do all the housework herself and it takes up most of her day. “Twenty years ago, if anybody had told me to scrub my own floors, I’d have slapped his face for him. But you get used to it. You can get used to anything. Why, I remember the time when I’d have sooner