"Of course not. Do you suppose you could get leave to go?"
"I might be able to think up some party matter."
"I would be very glad to pay your expenses, and another thousand marks for your trouble. Everything that I told you about the case applies even more now. The longer Freddi is missing, the more unhappy the father grows, and the more pressure on me to do something. If the Detaze show should prove a success in Berlin, I may take it to Munich; meantime, if you could get the information, I could be making plans."
"Have you any reason to think about Dachau, especially?"
"I’ll tell you frankly. It may sound foolish, but during the World War I had an English friend who was a flyer in France, and I was at my father’s home in Connecticut, and just at dawn I was awakened by a strange feeling and saw my friend standing at the foot of the bed, a shadowy figure with a gash across his forehead. It turned out that this was just after the man had crashed and was lying wounded in a field."
"One hears such stories," commented the other, "but one never knows whether to believe them."
"Naturally, I believed this. I’ve never had another such experience until the other night. I was awakened, I don’t know how, and lying in the dark I distinctly heard a voice saying: Freddi is in Dachau. I waited a long time, thinking he might appear, or that I might hear more, but nothing happened. I had no reason to think of Dachau-it seems a very unlikely place—so naturally I am interested to follow it up and see if I am what they call psychic "
Hugo agreed that he, too, would be interested; his interest increased when Lanny slipped several hundred-mark notes into his pocket, saying, with a laugh: "My mother and stepfather have paid much more than this to spiritualist mediums to see if they could get any news of our friend."
IV
Hugo also had been to the Parteitag. To him it was not merely a marvelous demonstration of loyalty, but a call to every Parteigenosse to see that the loyalty was not wasted. Those million devoted workers gave their services without pay, because they had been promised a great collective reward, the betterment of the lot of the common man in Germany. But so far they had got nothing; not one of the promised economic reforms had been carried out, and indeed many of the measures which had been taken were reactionary, making the reforms more remote and difficult. The big employers had got a commanding voice in the control of the new shop councils—which meant simply that wages would be frozen where they were, and the workers deprived of all means of influencing them. The same was true of the peasants, because prices were being fixed. "If this continues," said Hugo, "it will mean a slave system, just that and nothing else."
To Lanny it appeared that the young sports director talked exactly like a Social-Democrat; he had changed nothing but his label. He insisted that the rank and file were of his way of thinking, and that what he called the "Second Revolution" could not be more than a few weeks off. He pinned his hopes upon Ernst Rohm, Chief of Staff and highest commander of the S.A., who had been one of the ten men tried for treason and imprisoned after the Beer-hall Putsch; a soldier and fighter all his life, he had become the hero of those who wanted the N.S.D.A.P. to remain what it had been and to do what it had promised to do. The Führer must be persuaded, if necessary he must be pushed; that was the way it was in politics—it was no drawing-room affair, but a war of words and ideas, and if need be of street demonstrations, marching, threats. None knew this better than Hitler himself.
Lanny thought: "Hugo is fooling himself with the Chief of Staff, as earlier he fooled himself with the Führer." Ernst Rohm was a homosexual who had publicly admitted his habits; an ignorant rough fellow who rarely even pretended to social idealism. When he denounced the reactionaries who were still in the Cabinet, it was because he wanted more power for his Brownshirts and their commander. But it wasn’t Lanny’s business to hint at this; he must find out who the malcontents were—and especially whether any of them were in power at Dachau. Such men want money for their pleasures, and if they are carrying on a struggle for power they want money for that. There might be a good chance of finding one who could be paid to let a prisoner slip through the bars.
Their conference was a long one, and their drive took them into the country; beautiful level country, every square foot of it tended like somebody’s parlor. No room for a weed in the whole of the Fatherland, and the forests planted in rows like orchards and tended the same way. It happened to be Saturday afternoon, and the innumerable lakes around Berlin were gay with tiny sailboats, the shores lined with cottages and bathhouses. The tree-lined paths by the roads were full of Wandervogel, young people hiking—but it was all military now, they wore S.A. uniforms and their songs were of defiance. Drill-grounds everywhere, and the air full of sharp cries of command and dust of tramping feet. Germany was getting ready for something. If you asked what, they would say "defense," but they were never clear as to who wished to attack them—right after signing a solemn pact against the use of force in Europe.
Another way in which Hugo resembled the Social-Democrats rather than the Nazis—he hated militarism. He said: "There are two ways the Führer can solve the problem of unemployment; one is to put the idle to work arid make plenty for all, including themselves; the other is to turn them over to the army, to be drilled and sent out to take the land and resources of other peoples. That is the question which is being decided in the inner circles right now."
"Too bad you can’t be there!" remarked Lanny; and his young friend revealed what was in the depths of his mind. "Maybe I will be some day."
V
Seine Exzellenz, Minister-Präsident General Göring, was pleased to invite Mr. and Mrs. Lanny Budd to lunch at his official residence. He didn’t ask them to bring their paintings, and Lanny wasn’t sorry about it, for somehow he couldn’t see the Sister of Mercy in company with a lion cub. He doubted very much if Seine Exzellenz was being deceived as to the real reason for Lanny’s coming to Berlin; and anyhow, the' Commander of the German Air Force was having his own art made to his own order—a nude statue of his deceased wife, made from photographs and cast in solid gold!
At least that was what the Fürstin Donnerstein had told Irma. There was no stopping the tongues of these fashionable ladies; the Fürstin had poured out the "dirt," and Irma had collected it and brought it home. The good-looking blond aviator named Göring, after being wounded in the Beerhall Putsch, had fled abroad and married a Swedish baroness; the lady was an epileptic and her spouse a morphia addict. There could be no doubt about either of these facts, for they had been proved in court when the baroness was refused custody of her son by a former marriage. Later on, the lady had died of tuberculosis, and Göring, returning to Germany, had chosen Thyssen and the former Crown Prince for his cronies, and the steel king’s sister for his "secretary"; the quotation marks were indicated by the Fürstin’s tone as she said the last word. It had been assumed that he would marry this Anita Thyssen, but it hadn’t come off; perhaps he had become too great—or too fat! At the moment Anita was "out," and the "in" was Emmy Sonnemann, a blond Nordic Valkyrie who acted at the State Theater and could have any role she chose. "But that doesn’t exclude other "Damen" added the serpent’s tongue of Fürstin Donnerstein. "Vorsicht, Frau Budd!"