The woman on the treatment-couch bent her neck and peered at us with two affronted eyes in a half-applied mud-pack. Then I turned my back because I didn't want to look any more at the face of Rauschnig. Corrosive emotions no go.
His voice was bad enough to listen to. The harder it pretended indignation the more it shook.
"I assure you that you are mistaken!" So on. "It is very harmful to the delicate facial tissues of the baroness if the treatment is interrupted!" So forth. But I caught sight of one of his hands as it gesticulated, and the corrosion set in. Because a face is not active: it is only the shape of a name. It is the hand that acts. And these soft white hands that had been tenderly ministering to this woman's vanity, touching her withered face as if it were a flower in pretence that he could restore the bloom of youth, had once been laid upon the faces and the bodies of girls in Dachau as urgently as a beast claws meat.
His soft hands flew in the perfumed air. His voice bubbled in denial, more shrilly now. The woman, alarmed, called out, and the madchen in the Grecian tunic came trotting, to stand confused.
"You will please accompany me," the captain told him.
"I must telephone my lawyer!"
"We will telephone him from the gendarmerie."
"But I have no shoes for the snow! My chauffeur is not here with the car!"
"We have a car waiting.
"You cannot just take me like this from my work! This lady -"
"Herr Rauschnig, if you'll come with me peaceably there will be no inconvenience for anyone."
He began blubbering now and I concentrated on the young receptionist's face to take my mind from the sound; but her face was horrified and the light of the lamp was reflected in her eyes; and I'd noticed the lamp before I had turned my back. It had a small pink shade and I remembered the white shade of the lamp that had been in Haptsturmfiihrer Rauschnig's private quarters at the camp. The white shade, and a pair of gloves, and a book-cover had been made by the deft fingers of his mistress who lived with him; by grace of a technique he had perfected, they were made of human skin.
"You cannot take me like this!" And the woman screamed as he lurched past the girl. The sergeant tripped him automatically and he grabbed at the pink curtain, his shoulder smashing the thin partition of the cubicle as he fell and lay awkwardly, swathed in gossamer. The jar of mud-pack mousse toppled from the treatment-table and spattered his legs. He lay babbling. I stepped over him and went out through the waiting-room and into the street and the sudden burst of a flashlight.
"Wait," I told them. "They're bringing him out." I'd phoned Federal Associated Press from the offices of the Z-polizei, tipping them off.
When Rauschnig was led out I moved to stand beside him as the flashes came again. By this evening my picture would be in several papers where Phoenix could see it.
7: RED SECTOR
The bullet from a small 8 mm. short-trigger Pelmann and Rosenthal Mk. IV spins in the region of two thousand revolutions per second and at very close range the flesh laceration is severe, due to heavy scoring by the large number of lands in the rifling. Carbon monoxide discharge is high and the flesh tattooing is consequently vivid. The bullet enters the body with the effects of an ultra-high-speed drill combined with a blowlamp.
In the case of Schrader the skull had shattered badly and only one side of his face was recognisable. The police-captain compared it with the profile photograph, took a statement from the secretary in the outer office and then telephoned the Selbstmord department at Kriminalpolizei H.Q., since a suicide was more their job than his. Schrader would never go to trial and our interest in him was at an end.
I asked to be present at the summary search for papers and diaries but we turned up nothing that would lead me to Zossen. A phone-call had been made not long before the shot was heard, from a man whose voice and name were unknown to the secretary. It was an hour since we had handed over Rauschnig and started out for Schrader, so someone must have sprung a big leak about Rauschnig's arrest and Schrader had decided not to face the music. It was because of this sort of thing that the Z-polizei liked to be quick when they could.
The captain was again annoyed to find the two energetic Federal Associated Press cameramen on the pavement outside the offices of Schrader-Fahben Shipping Components and I didn't tell him I'd telephoned. It was usually relatives or friends who tipped off the next along the line when the Z went in and made a snatch, and the whole staff of the F.A.P. could buzz with news that wouldn't reach the close associates of arrested men until they printed it.
I made sure they got my picture and then went to find the car. It was a grey Volkswagen hired from Hertz on my sudden decision that morning: I wasn't a free agent, stuck in the back of the police-car all the time, and it irked me. The VW was ubiquitous in shape and colour and would make a useful mobile base if I had to stay away from the Hotel Prinz Johan for more than a day.
The black Mercedes followed me out of the city and through the snowscape. The sky at noon was dark against the white hills. The autobahn through the Corridor was treacherous with stretches of black ice where last night the snow had turned to rain and the rain had frozen. There were few other cars on the route and we were held up less than fifteen minutes at the Helmstedt checkpoint. I showed my second set of papers to avoid delay.
The Star of David School stood in a hollow of the land a few kilometres before Duisbach. The snow on the courtyard was churned by children's feet and they had built a snowman right in the centre, with three faces so that he looked everywhere at once; two were non-smokers and one had a pipe.
There was singing on the sharp air as we left the cars and made for the doors. The porch was stacked with galoshes and gumboots. The singing floated out across the soft white land, so that it seemed Christmas.
It was agreed that to avoid any scene that might worry the children I should locate Professor Foegl alone and get him into the superintendent's quarters before Captain Stettner made the charge. The only person in view was a boy standing glumly outside a classroom in some kind of penance; he was cheered by the apparition of a stranger ignorant of his sins, and told me that Professor Foegl was in the hall where the singing came from. I went in quietly and stood for a while below the rostrum. The choir went a bit ragged and then forgot me, steadying. I watched the children and the man on the rostrum. His head was narrow and the face long and gentle; he closed his eyes now and then and his hands sketched slow rhythms in the air for the singers to follow; they sang almost faultlessly now, the full sweetness of their song drawn from them by the mesmeric hands; they sang as if they loved him.
When the canticle was ended I clapped for the children and caused a total and embarrassed silence. I am no good with children, though I'd meant well. Forced to speak in a whisper I told Professor Foegl that I was the representative of a music publisher and the superintendent would be glad if he could spare a few minutes in his office.