The Case of the Nazi Canary

CHAPTER EIGHT

As Taffy Sinclair enjoyed the strange mixture of black Russia tea and a plate of small weisswьrst, he relaxed to the strains of Ketalby's "In a Persian Market," played by the group of musicians on the stand. It was their last performance of the evening. All the players were seated save for their leader, a tall man with close-cropped hair and wearing impeccable evening dress. He stood in the shadows of the curtain and played the violin with extraordinary beauty and skill. When Begg tipped the waiter heavily and put a folded note on the plate, Sinclair thought his friend was asking for one of his favorite sentimental tunes, such as "The Gypsy" or "The Merry Widow Waltz," but neither of these was played before the musicians brought their performance to an end.

Sinclair was surprised when the tall violinist, having replaced his instrument in its case, strolled over to their table. Then, when the albino removed his dark glasses, Sinclair realized with a shock that he sat across the table from Sir Seaton Begg's cousin and archenemy, the notorious Count Zodiac, wanted for countless daring crimes throughout the Empire. More than once the two had crossed swords on the

Continent and only a few months earlier Count Zodiac had been thwarted by Begg in his daring attempt to rob the New York-bound aerial express. In London, where Zodiac commanded an almost fanatical loyalty from the crooks of Smith's Kitchen, the most notorious den of thieves in Christendom, they had fought many times. A year earlier Zodiac had succeeded in stealing the British Crown Jewels, only to have them snatched back by Begg as he tried to make his underwater escape from the city.

The red-eyed albino had a charming, crooked smile. "So, gentlemen, you have discovered how I earn my living, these days…"

Begg grinned almost boyishly at this. "Good evening, Count Zodiac. Perhaps I am too familiar with your aliases. The Tarot Tea Orchestra rather betrayed you? But I hear you work for Heinrich Himmler now…"

For a split second Zodiac's expression changed to one of anger. Then again he was all urbane affability. "Is Himmler claiming that? Scum like him can't employ me, Sir Seaton." He sat back in his chair, lighting a pungent, black cigarette. "However, you might find that Himmler and the others have all been playing my game…" He chuckled with deep pleasure.

Sinclair, who had been up for too long and drunk too much schnapps, lost his usual discretion then. He leaned across the table. "Look here, Count von Bek, did you kill Geli Raubal? You seem to be the only one who had the opportunity, if not the motive! You are the mysterious SS man, eh?"

"Captain Zeiss," said Begg.

Zodiac drew a deep, ennui-ridden sigh. Ignoring Sinclair, he addressed Begg directly, reaching across the table and handing him a pasteboard card. "I was at this address until yesterday. You might find it interesting. Even useful." He turned, bowing, to Sinclair. "We all work in the ways which best suit our temperaments, I think, Mr. Sinclair? Who is to say in our good or our evil intentions we unknowingly serve the causes of law or chaos?"

With that, the albino turned on his heel, picked up his violin case, and disappeared into the night.

Sinclair, stunned for a moment, leapt to his feet and pursued the albino, but he soon returned, shaking his head: lost him. Begg continued to sip his tea, studying the card. "We don't need to follow him. Taffy. He has left us his most recent address."

Begg frowned down at the card in his hand. "Do you feel like making a visit to the Hotel Rembrandt? It's just around the corner. We can walk."

"Oh, good heavens, Begg! This is unbelievable!" Taffy Sinclair was staring aghast at a handful of papers and photographs. He had just opened the writing bureau in Room 25. Count Zodiac's room at the Hotel Rembrandt looked as if it had been hastily vacated.

Sir Seaton Begg was inspecting the wardrobe. He picked up and put back a black Mauser rifle with a telescopic sight. "There's our red herring. Zodiac was no doubt trying to sow further suspicion amongst the Nazis. And look at this!" On hangers hung a complete SS captain's uniform. The metatemporal detective offered it to his friend. "And look here, Taffy. Bloodstains. They fit perfectly with the suspected shooting."

"And these-these-letters from Himmler to Captain Zeiss, asking him to seduce that poor girl, compromise her, then kill her, so that Himmler could continue his blackmailing of Hitler through a third party. There's a note here that even suggests Himmler was responsible for the initial blackmail a couple of years ago! The most damning evidence! So your cousin, von Bek, is a common murderer, after all! And in Captain Himmler's employ?"

"It certainly appears so." Begg looked around for a bag. "Come on, Taffy. We'd better take these togs to Hitler."

"Surely we should get them to Inspector Hoffmann as soon as possible? Zodiac must be captured!"

"I remind you again, Taffy, that Herr Hitler is our paying client and it is our duty to show him the evidence before it is presented to the police."

"But Great Jehovah, Begg, this overrides any client loyalty!"

"I'm afraid not, Taffy I remember the way to Berchtesgaden. You'd better come with me, old man, whatever your scruples. I need a witness and someone at my shoulder if the client decides to kill the messenger."

Only this persuaded the pathologist to accompany his friend, but he did so in brooding silence. Begg seemed completely insouciant, whistling fragments from musical comedies as the great car bore them relentlessly up toward Hitler's retreat.

Only because Rudolf Hess was convinced they had good news for Hitler were the Englishmen allowed into the fusty stench of the Nazi leader's lair. Again he greeted them in nothing but his mackintosh, his eyes as mad as ever. He moved between gross self-pity and rage against his niece's killers, sometimes in seconds. But when he at last looked at the evidence Begg and Sinclair had brought with them, he was stunned into a cold, sudden pseudo-sanity.

"Himmler! He was behind the assassination attempts. Failing to kill any of us, he made his victim an innocent young girl! He always hated her. He has grown closer and closer to me, building up the SS on my behalf, he says. They warned me he had Jewish blood, but I laughed at them. And all the time he plotted against me in this subtle way, getting at me through Geli, using one of his own men to- ugh!" He stood up suddenly, bowing with both hands at his sides, and brought his bare heels together. "I am most grateful to you gentlemen. You have done everything Hess promised. Naturally you will receive your fee. Herr Hess will take you to the Brown House at once."

Even Hess seemed surprised by this sudden volte-face.

"No need, old boy." Sir Seaton Begg lifted his hat. "Have this one on me. I am happy to serve the cause of justice."

Though dressed only in a mackintosh, Hitler visibly grew an inch or two. "You have served not only my interests and those of my great party, Sir Seaton. You have served the interests of the entire free world. Hess. We shall need the Mercedes. There is something I must take care of at once. Thank you again." He lifted his arm in his familiar salute.

"Only too happy to oblige, old chap." And with that Begg steered an open-mouthed Sinclair into the fir-rich air of the sub-Alpine forests.

"Take a good gulp, Taffy," he murmured.

"Are you out of your mind, Begg? That chap's about as unbalanced as it's possible to be without falling off the planet. You've no idea what notions you've given him."

"Oh, I think the ones he was meant to be given, Taffy. Perhaps you already suspect the truth? In this case we served a client other than we thought!"

By now Dolly's headlights were piercing the dark shadows of the German night. Taffy, still deprived of his usual amount of sleep, began to doze in the seat beside his friend. He was awakened to realize that Begg was driving far slower than usual and that the head-lamps of another car were coming from behind. He watched in some astonishment, as if dreaming. The great Mercedes swept past them, overtaking at almost one hundred miles an hour. Sinclair made out Herr Hitler in the backseat. Hess was with him. Strasser appeared to fee driving. Before he began to fall back to sleep, he remembered noticing that Hitler appeared to be wearing a suit and a tie and ask-ing Begg where Hitler was going at this time of night.

"Berlin, I'd guess." Sir Seaton kept Dolly at a steady pace.

"We're going to Berlin?"

"Good Lord no, old boy. Our work's done here. We're going home. If I put on a little speed at the crossroads, we should be just in time to catch the dawn zeppelin for London."

Without Sinclair's knowledge, Begg had already stowed the luggage. There had been no hotel bill to settle. By dawn they reached the great Munich Aerodrome and were soon installed in a comfortable suite. Through the portholes came floods of intermittent sunshine caused by the movement of the ship in her cables. A radio bulletin playing on the State Radio took on a rather excited air, and as soon as he had disrobed, washed, and settled in his seat, Begg turned the volume up.

He listened in some amusement, but Sinclair was aghast at the news. He even failed to notice the almost effortless lifting of the huge liner as she uncoupled from her masts and began her journey to London.

There had effectively been a complete disintegration of the Nazis. Already the Reichstag party seemed divided into opposing camps headed by Strasser and Goring. Nazi officials were issuing contradictory statements since the arrest earlier that morning of Adolf Hitler, self-confessed murderer of the man he termed the "Jew Fifth Columnist Himmler," hitherto his trusted aide and an ex-chicken farmer. Hitler understood that he could no longer hope to be vice-chancellor, but now it scarcely mattered, since he had in his own words "torn out the heart of the hydra sucking the life from Germany, keeping the nation safe against injustice and horror for a thousand years."

"You effectively put the gun into Hitler's hand and killed Himmler!" cried Sinclair. "Really, Begg, sometimes…"

"I told you, Taffy, that I did what I was supposed to do. Zodiac knew only too well that there are few better and more trustworthy messengers than you and me. So he sent us to Hitler with the evidence he had carefully manufactured over months. Those papers were enough to convince almost anyone and in a bad light they were even harder to detect. But they were forgeries, old man. Planted for someone to find. Just as those apparent sniper shots which always missed their targets were intended to distract attention from what was actually being accomplished. Zodiac had been looking for a good way to make the Nazi leadership fall out. When he knew we were on to him, he simply made us his cat's-paws. Pretty audacious, eh."

"But Zodiac killed that poor creature, Frдulein Raubal," insisted Taffy.

"Not at all, Taffy, though you could argue Hitler effectively drove her to her death. She killed herself, as everyone insisted. She tested the poison first. You smelled that distinctive odor as readily as I did."

"Cyanide!"

"Exactly. The smell of cyanide, if taken by mouth, lingers on the lips long after the taker has gone to the hereafter. That dead canary the young lady carried around all day. She had already tried the stuff on the bird and saw that it worked. She took a pretty heavy dosage, I'd say. The police remained deceived by the gunshot. The way she lay on the floor made it seem to others that she had died in the throes of passion. But I believe she died in the throes of death."

"But she was shot, Begg. Shot by Zodiac!"

"True."

"So Zodiac is the real murderer…"

"No."

There was a knock at their door and Begg called, "Come in!" A busboy with a salver presented him with a card which he glanced at; then he smiled and tucked it into his upper waistcoat pocket. He offered the boy a silver coin. "Ask Countess von Bek to join us at her pleasure." He beamed across at a bewildered Taffy.

"No?"

"No. Zodiac was, of course, Frдulein Raubal's lover. He played the violin by night and courted her by day. By whatever clever devices, he had provided himself with the assignment of keeping guard on her, knowing that he planned to seduce her. But I think he also planned to save her. He took some conventional 'glamour' pictures of her. He made those Himmler forgeries we showed Hitler. I don't think he had any plan to kill the girl. But he did want her to run away with him. So he suggested they go to Vienna together. He told her to demand of Hitler that she be allowed to stay with her relatives and study singing there. It was a plan she had already toyed with. So she did as she was told. But Hitler, as we know, had reached the end of his tolerance." Begg rose to his feet to open their door, bowing Countess Rose into their rather cramped quarters. Offering her his chair, he brought her rapidly up-to-date and then, leaning beside the porthole, continued.

"Someone, probably an SA spy, had reported the 'secret lover,' even if they had not been able to say who it was. So Hitler refused. Under no circumstances could she go to Vienna. She again threatened suicide. He did not believe her. Neither, I suspect, would 'Captain Zeiss' have believed her. But when he let himself into the apartment late that night, he found poor Geli Raubal on the floor, having tasted the torments of cyanide. She had left a note, no doubt. This went against his plans, but he had to go through with the rest of it. He pocketed the note. He found Hitler's gun, shot the already dead Geli through the heart in a way deliberately to draw suspicion on someone, placed the gun in her hand with equally deliberate clumsiness, then left the police and investigators, like ourselves, to conclude that the young woman had been murdered, either by Hitler or one of his lieutenants."

The Countess Rose sat back in her seat, her eyes gleaming with admiration. "So Hoffmann and myself were completely fooled. Only the fact that Hitler had an ironclad alibi stopped us from arresting him."

"Zodiac already had his original plan, which he modified. He knew that Hitler could not be 'framed.' So he planned to let his men discover the clothing and documents at the Hotel Rembrandt. Since I caught up with him so much sooner than he expected, he merely decided to use me as his messenger! He was always a clever customer. Even those pictures, released to the press, would be enough to threaten the fortunes of Hitler and his party. But Zodiac wanted to be dead certain. That was why he had forged some Himmler documents to make sure all in the party were suspect. He hoped they would find their way to Hitler. I made sure that they did. The consequences then followed like clockwork. Leading to a satisfactory resolution, I think you'll agree, Taffy. Sometimes it is just about possible for two wrongs to make a right."

Rose von Bek clapped her hands together as another knock came at the door. "Ah. That will be our breakfast champagne!"

But Sinclair's Presbyterian soul was not yet ready to accept the full burden of these unwelcome demonstrations. He rose gracefully, so that Begg might have his chair.

"If you'll forgive me, I'll take a stroll up to the dining hall and avail myself of the full English breakfast. I think an occasion like this calls for some honest fried bread, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, and black pudding. Traditional fortification."

"Very well, old boy. To each his own poison. I trust you'll rejoin us as soon as you can." Begg lifted a victorious glass.

Declaring that he would probably take a turn or two about the observation deck before he rejoined them, Sinclair stepped into the corridor and closed the door on his colleagues.

Once in the corridor, the pathologist stared thoughtfully at the tranquil, dreaming German fields and villages passing below. A man trained to follow the law and to play the game by the regular rules, Sinclair mused that this was not the first time that his association with his friend Seaton Begg troubled him.

He shook his head, the delicious scent of frying bacon drawing his attention back to breakfast. He put the problem behind him. For all his moral dilemma, Taffy Sinclair was forced to admit that his friend had assured, by the most unconventional, even cynical methods, by the most circuitous path, that justice had again been done.

NOTE: While originally scheduled for the May 1932 issue of The Thriller Library, Amalgamated Press, London, this story is said to have been withdrawn from publication at the request of Buckingham Palace and Downing Street. The author and high-ranking civil servant John Buchan is said to have been involved. It is published here for the first time.