”It is inevitable that Uncle Rudolf and Uncle Ulrich will take offence if Mrs. Klein is asked to our Reunion; but that need not give us any immediate concern, because Uncle Rudolf is so far removed from the family sphere and Uncle Ulrich has been so ill recently that it is very doubtful if either of them will appear at least until the end of the week during which the party is held and they need know nothing of any overtures which we may make to Mrs. Klein until the whole matter is settled. They will be very annoyed when we have to inform them of it, but if we get satisfactory results from Mrs. Klein's attendance they will realize that we had good reason for our decision to ask her and, in any case, their interests are too closely allied to ours for there to be any danger of their going in with Jacob.'"
"Is there much more of it?" Angela asked, stifling a yawn. "Reams of it, my dear," Erika replied. "Would you like me to stop?"
"No, no," said Freddie. "Go on, do."
"All right, then."
" Mother is the remaining difficulty, and by far the greatest; but, whereas it would be a major triumph to get Mrs. Klein to appear early in our Reunion Week, we have no intention of asking Mother to join us until the party is properly under way. Her function will be to gather in the Müller family in secret and to allow Jacob to believe, until the very last moment, that he still has her under his thumb. Her appearance will then be all the greater triumph for us, and by the time we wish her to arrive we shall have had an opportunity to explain to her how wise we were in our decision to amalgamate; and that she will participate, just as much as any other member of the family, in the benefits to be derived from Mrs. Klein's chain of stores.
" It is of the first importance that as much work as possible should be put in before the invitations are issued, in order to ensure as great a number of acceptances to the Reunion as possible. Our first concern should be to link up with Cousin Vicki; our next to rope in those members of the family, such as Greta and Paula, who own small firms which were originally part of our business but were severed from us by Grandmother's iniquitous Will.
" It is also of the first importance that we should absorb as many of these small firms as possible on plausible excuses such as our excellent case for being granted the legal guardianship of Little August and Little Paul so as to postpone arousing Jacob's open antagonism as long as we can. At any stage of our arrangements he may realize that our firm is once more becoming a serious threat to his and he may decide to take active counter measures against us; but Mother must be used to quiet his suspicions… The longer we can prevent his endeavouring to wreck us by an open price cutting campaign the more likely we are to succeed in undermining his business to such an extent that when he wakes up to what we have been doing it will be too late to save himself from bankruptcy.
" The following are the stages in which it is proposed eventually to bring about a complete Reunion with all interests amalgamated under the head of the family.' "
"Erika darling," Angela interrupted, "must we really hear the stages by which this awful man proposes to blackmail all his relatives into letting him make a combine of their businesses?"
"Not if you don't wish to," Erika smiled, "As we don't know any of these people his schemes aren't of the least interest to us. I must say, though, that I should like to know how the thing came into Gregory's possession."
Freddie frowned. "Yes, it's hardly likely that you would have kept a thing like this in a secret hiding place on your person if it wasn't of some importance. Perhaps we can help you recall where you got it if we go back over the last few times you've taken money out of your shoes."
"I don't even remember when I took out the money last," said Gregory despondently, "let alone ever having seen these sheets of flimsy before."
"Well, you changed some German money into Finnish the day we arrived in Helsinki."
"That's right with that fair haired, half German chap in the hotel who did us down; but that was part of the money that Goering gave me and I was carrying it in my pocket."
"Right, then. Did you take off your shoes for any purpose while we were at Karinhall? Didn't you have a bath in the morning?"
"I've got it!” Gregory suddenly snapped his fingers. "That's when I put the papers with the money. Those bits of typescript came out of Goering's safe."
"Out of Goering's safe?" echoed Erika. "Then they must be something important."
"I remember now" Gregory stood up and began to pace quickly up and down; "I did have one look at them in Helsinki; when I was up in that room we took at the hotel, Freddie, just before you came in with the invitation to lunch with Angela and her father. I read the first few paragraphs, and as I couldn't make head or tail of them I put the sheets back to study when I had more leisure."
"But how on earth did you get hold of them?" Erika asked.
"I stole them," Gregory replied promptly. "It was while Goering was getting me the money. He had just taken a big packet of bank notes out of his safe when the telephone rang. Thrusting the bundle into my hand he said: 'Here l Count yourself out three thousand marks,' then he turned his back on me to answer the call.
"They were one hundred mark notes so I peeled off thirty, then I noticed that those flimsies had got wedged underneath the packet, in the rubber band that held the notes together. I suppose it was a crazy risk to take but it seemed to me at the time that any typescript out of Goering's private safe might contain some terrific secret; so I acted on impulse, pulled the sheets from under the rubber band and slipped them in my pocket. Later, when I undressed to have a bath, I took the opportunity to transfer the flimsies to my boot. It looks now, though, as if I risked my neck for an extract from his family album."
Erika glanced at a few further passages in the closely typed sheets. "Goodness knows l I've met most of Hermann's relatives at one time or another but I don't recognize any of these surnames and the Christian names don't seem to fit, either. It looks to me as though this has been sent to Goering because he is the commercial dictator of Germany and would naturally be interested in any amalgamation of big business interests that was projected; but how he could be expected to know all the ramifications of somebody else's family, I can't think."
"Perhaps it isn't what it appears to be at all," Freddie suggested, "but particulars of something quite different, set out in secret code. I'm jolly good at crossword puzzles; let me have a look at it."
"What is a crossword puzzle?" Gregory asked.
While the girls explained to him Freddie studied the latter part of the document; his German was just good enough to make out the general sense. At last he looked up and said:
"The chap who compiled this seems a most awful thug and means to go to any lengths. In one place he suggests that his mother should forcibly remove a girl named Marlene from the Schwartz's because they didn’t look after her properly; and in another that they should get Mrs. Klein's daughter, Paula, certified as insane if she refuses to come into the ring. There's a lot, too, about the careful preparation of cases for the courts by which it's proposed to try to secure the custody of several children with a view, apparently, to influencing the parents through them afterwards."