Hugo’s part in the jailbreak had evidently been betrayed; but Hugo had never named Lanny, so he had said. Of course this might or might not have been true. They had found a bunch of thousand-mark notes on Hugo, and they had found some on Lanny; suddenly the prisoner realized, with a near collapse of his insides, what a stupid thing he had done. The clue which a criminal always leaves! He had gone to the bank and got thirty new thousand-mark bills, doubtless having consecutive serial numbers, and had given some of these to Hugo and kept some in his own wallet!
So they would be sure that he had tried to buy a prisoner out of Dachau. What would the penalty be for that crime? What it would have been under the old regime was one thing, and under the Nazis something else again. As if to answer his question there came terrifying sounds, muffled yet unmistakable; first, a roll of drums, and then shooting somewhere in those dungeon depths or else outside the walls. Not a single shot, not a series of shots, but a volley, a closely-packed bunch of shots. They were executing somebody, or perhaps several bodies. Lanny, who had started to his feet, had to sit down again because his legs were giving way.
Who would that be? The S.A. man in Dachau with whom Hugo had been dealing? The man higher up who had demanded more money? The plot must have been betrayed early, for it couldn’t be much after ten o’clock, and there had hardly been time for the jailbreak to have been attempted and the guilty parties brought from Dachau to this prison. Of course it might be that this was some execution that had nothing to do with Dachau. Shootings were frequent in Nazi prisons, all refugees agreed. Perhaps they shot people every night at twenty-two o’clock, German time!
After the most careful thought, Lanny decided that the Nazis had him nailed down; no chance of wriggling out. He had come to Germany to get Freddi Robin, and the picture-dealing had been only a blind. He had had a truck brought from France—they would be sure he had meant to take Freddi out in that truck! And there was Jerry—with two one-thousand-mark bills which Lanny had handed him! Also with the passport of Cyprien Santoze, having the picture of Freddi Robin substituted! Would they catch the meaning of that?
Or would Jerry perhaps get away? He would be walking about, passing the appointed spot, waiting for the prisoner and for Lanny to appear. Would the Nazis be watching and arrest anybody who passed? It was an important question, for if Jerry escaped he’d surely go to the American consul and report Lanny as missing. Would he tell the consul the whole truth? He might or he might not; but anyhow the consul would be making inquiries as to the son of Budd Gunmakers.
VI
More drum-rolls and more shooting! Good God, were they killing people all night in German prisons? Apparently so; for that was the way Lanny spent the night, listening to volleys, long or short, loud or dim. He couldn’t tell whether they were inside or out. Did they have a special execution chamber, or did they just shoot you anywhere you happened to be? And what did they do with all the blood? Lanny imagined that he smelled it, and the fumes of gunpowder; but maybe he was mistaken, for the stink of a rusty old slop-pail can be extremely pungent in a small cell. An art expert had seen many pictures of executions, ancient and modern, so he knew what to imagine. Sometimes they blindfolded the victims, sometimes they made them turn their backs, sometimes they just put an, automatic to the base of their skulls, the medulla; that was said to be merciful, and certainly it was quick. The Nazis cared nothing about mercy, but they surely did about speed.
Every now and then a door clanged, and Lanny thought: "They are taking somebody to his doom." Now and then he heard footsteps, and thought: "Are they coming or going?" He wondered about the bodies. Did they have stretchers? Or did they just drag them? He imagined that he heard dragging. Several times there were screams; and once a man going by his door, arguing, shouting protests. What was the matter with them? He was as good a Nazi as anyone in Germany. They were making a mistake. It was eine gottverdammte Schande—and so on. That gave Lanny something new to think about, and he sat for a long time motionless on his straw pallet, with his brain in a whirl.
Maybe all this hadn’t anything to do with Freddi and a jailbreak! Maybe nothing had been discovered at all! It was that "Second Revolution" that Hugo had been so freely predicting! Hugo had been shot, not because he had tried to bribe a Dachau guard, but because he was on the list of those who were actively working on behalf of Ernst Rohm and the other malcontents of the Sturmabteilung! In that case the shootings might be part of the putting down of that movement. It was significant that Lanny’s captors had been men of the Schutzstaffel, the "elite guard," Hitler’s own chosen ones. They were putting their rivals out of business; "liquidating" those who had been demanding more power for the S.A. Chief of Staff!
But then, a still more startling possibility—the executions might mean the success of the rebels. The fact that Hugo Behr had been killed didn’t mean that the S.S. had had their way everywhere. Perhaps the S.A. were defending themselves successfully! Perhaps Stadelheim had been taken, as the Bastille had been taken in the French revolution, and the persons now being shot were those who had put Lanny in here! At any moment the doors of his cell might be thrown open and he might be welcomed with comradely rejoicing!
Delirious imaginings; but then the whole thing was a delirium. To lie there in the darkness with no way to count the hours and nothing to do but speculate about a world full of maniacal murderers. Somebody was killing somebody, that alone was certain, and it went on at intervals without any sign of ending. Lanny remembered the French revolution, and the unhappy aristocrats who had lain in their cells awaiting their turn to be loaded into the tumbrils and carted to the guillotine. This kind of thing was said to turn people’s hair gray over night; Lanny wondered if it was happening to him. Every time he heard footsteps he hoped it was somebody coming to let him out; but then he was afraid to have the footsteps halt, because it might be a summons to the execution chamber!
He tried to comfort himself. He had had no part in any conspiracy of the S.A. and surely they wouldn’t shoot him just because he had met a friend on the street. But then he thought: "Those banknotes!" They would attach a still more sinister meaning to them now. They would say: "What were you paying Hugo Behr to do?" And what should he answer? He had said that he hadn’t known what Hugo wanted of him. They would know that was a lie. They would say: "You were helping to promote a revolution against the N.S.D.A.P." And that was surely a shooting offense-even though you had come from the sweet land of liberty to do it!
Lanny thought up the best way to meet this very bad situation.
When he was questioned, he would talk about his friendship with the great and powerful, and wait to pick up any hint that the questioner had made note of the bills, or had found out about Freddi Robin. If these discoveries had been made, Lanny would laugh—at least he would try to laugh—and say: "Yes, of course I lied to those S.S. men on the street. I thought they were crazy and were going to shoot me. The truth is that Hugo Behr came to me and asked for money and offered to use his influence with the S.A. in Dachau to get my friend released. There was no question of any bribe, he said he would put the money into the party funds and it would go for the winter relief." One thing Lanny could be sure of in this matter—nothing that he said about Hugo could do the slightest harm to the young sports director.