Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  “Get out of the car,” commanded the S.S. man.

  Lanny’s heart was hitting hard blows underneath his throat; his knees were trembling so violently he wasn’t sure they would hold him up. It appeared that he was being ordered out so that his blood and brains might not spoil a good car. “I tell you, you will regret it if you shoot me. I am an intimate friend of Minister-Präsident General Göring. I was on a hunting trip with him last fall. You can ask Oberleutnant Furtwaengler of Seine Exzellenz’s staff. You can ask Reichsminister Goebbels about me—or his wife, Frau Magda Goebbels—I have visited their home. You can read articles about me in the Munich newspapers of last November when I conducted an exhibition of paintings here and took one of them to the Führer. My picture was in all the papers—”

  “I am not going to shoot you,” announced the S.S. man. His tone indicated abysmal contempt of anybody who objected to being shot.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Take you to Stadelheim until your story is investigated. Get out of the car.”

  Stadelheim was a name of terror; one of those dreadful prisons about which the refugees talked. But it was better than being shot on the sidewalk, so Lanny managed to control his nerves, and obeyed. The other man passed his hands over him to see if he was armed. Then the leader commanded him to search the body of Hugo, and he collected a capful of belongings including a wad of bills which Lanny knew amounted to some fifteen thousand marks. Apparently they meant to leave the corpse right there, and Lanny wondered, did they have a corpse-collecting authority, or did they leave it to the neighborhood?

  However, he didn’t have much time for speculation. “Get into the back seat,” commanded the leader and climbed in beside him, still holding the gun on him. The man who had got out on Lanny’s side of the car now slipped into the driver’s seat, and the car sprang to life and sped down the street.

  IV

  Lanny had seen Stadelheim from the outside; a great mass of buildings on a tree-lined avenue, the Tegernsee road upon which he had driven Hugo Behr. Now the walls of the place loomed enormous and forbidding in the darkness. Lanny was ordered out of the car, and two of his captors escorted him through the doorway, straight past the reception room, and down a stone corridor into a small room. He had expected to be “booked” and fingerprinted; but apparently this was to be dispensed with. They ordered him to take off his coat, trousers, and shoes, and proceeded to search him. “There is considerable money in that wallet,” he said, and the leader replied, grimly: “We will take care of it.” They took his watch, keys, fountain-pen, necktie, everything but his handkerchief. They searched the linings of his clothing, and looked carefully to see if there were any signs that the heels of his shoes might be removable.

  Finally they told him to put his clothes on again. Lanny said: “Would you mind telling me what I am suspected of?” The reply of the leader was: “Maul halten!” Apparently they didn’t believe his wonder-tales about being the intimate friend of the three leading Nazis. Not wishing to get a knock over the head with a revolver butt, Lanny held his mouth, as ordered, and was escorted out of the room and down the corridor to a guarded steel door.

  The head S.S. man appeared to have the run of the place; all he had to do was to salute and say: “Heil Hitler!” and all doors were swung open for him. He led the prisoner down a narrow flight of stone stairs, into a passage dimly lighted and lined with steel doors. Old prisons have such places of darkness and silence, where deeds without a name have been done. A warder who accompanied the trio opened one of these doors, and Lanny was shoved in without a word. The door clanged behind him; and that, as he had learned to say in the land of his fathers, was that.

  V

  In the darkness he could only explore the place by groping. The cell was narrow and had an iron cot built into the stone wall. On the cot were two sacks of straw and a blanket. In the far corner was a stinking pail without a cover; and that was all. There was a vile, age-old odor, and no window; ventilation was provided by two openings in the solid door, one high and one low; they could be closed by sliding covers on the outside, but perhaps this would be done only if Lanny misbehaved. He didn’t.

  He was permitted to sit on the straw sacks and think, and he did his best to quiet the tumult of his heart and use his reasoning powers. What had happened? It seemed obvious that his plot had been discovered. Had the would-be conspirators been caught, or had they taken the money and then reported the plot to their superiors? And if so, would they shoot Freddi? No use worrying about that now. Lanny couldn’t be of any use to Freddi unless he himself got out, so he had to put his mind on his own plight, and prepare for the examination which was bound sooner or later to come.

  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 t
heir 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 Röhm 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 “élite 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.

  VII

  Footsteps in the corridor; a slot at the bottom of Lanny’s door was widened, and something was set inside. He said, quickly: “Will you please tell me how long I am to be kept here?” When there was no reply, he said: “I am an American citizen and I demand the right to communicate with my consul.” The slot was made smaller again and the footsteps went on.

  Lanny felt with his hands and found a metal pitcher of water, a cup of warm liquid, presumably coffee, and a chunk of rather stale bread. He wasn’t hungry, but drank some of the water. Presumably that was breakfast, and it was morning. He lay and listened to more shooting off and on; and after what seemed a very long time the slot was opened and more food put in. Out of curiosity he investigated, and found that he had a plate of what appeared to be cold potatoes mashed up with some sort of grease. The grease must have been rancid, for the smell was revolting, and Lanny came near to vomiting at the thought of eating it. He had been near to vomiting several times at the thought of people being shot in this dungeon of horrors.

  A bowl of cabbage soup and more bread were brought in what he assumed was the evening; and this time the warder spoke. He said: “Pass out your slop-pail.” Lanny did so, and it was emptied and passed back to him without washing. This sign of humanity caused him to make a little speech about his troubles. He said that he had done nothing, that he had no idea what he was accused of, that it was very inhuman to keep a man in a dark hole, that he had always been a lover of Germany and a sympathizer with its struggle against the Versailles Diktat. Finally, he was an American citizen, and had a right to notify his consul of his arrest.

  This time he managed to get one sentence of reply: “Sprechen verboten, mein Herr.” It sounded like a kind voice, and Lanny recalled what he had heard, that many of the permanent staff of these prisons were men of the former regime, well disciplined and humane. He took a chance and ventured in a low voice: “I am a rich man, and if you will telephone the American consul for me, I will pay you well when I get out.”

  “Sprechen verboten, mein Herr,” replied the voice; and then, much lower: “Sprechen Sie leise.” Speaking is forbidden, sir; speak softly! So the prisoner whispered: “My name is Lanny Budd.” He repeated it several times: “Lanny Budd, Lanny Budd.” It became a little song. Would that it might have wings, and fly to the American consulate!

  VIII

  For three days and four nights Lanny Budd stayed in that narrow cell. He could estimate the number of cubic feet of air inside, but he didn’t know what percentage of that air was oxygen, or how much he needed per hour in order to maintain his life. His scientific education had been neglected, but it seemed a wise precaution to put his straw sacks on the floor and lie on them with his mouth near the breathing hole.

  Saturday, Sunday, Monday—he could tell them by the meal hours—and during a total of some eighty-two hours there were not a dozen without sounds of shooting. He never got over his dismay. God Almighty, did they do this all the time? Had this been going on ever since the National Socialist revolution, one year and five months ago? Did they bring all the political suspects of Bavaria to this one place? Or was this some special occasion, a Nazi St. Bartholomew’s Eve? “Kill them all; God will be able to pick out His Christians!”

  Lanny, having nothing to do but think, had many and varied ideas. One was: “Well, they are all Nazis, and if they exterminate one another, that will save the world a lot of trouble.” But then: “Suppose they should open the wrong cell door?” An embarrassing thought indeed! What would he say? How would he convince them? As time passed he decided: “They have forgotten me. Those fellows didn’t book me, and maybe they just went off without a word.” And then, a still more confusing possibility: “Suppose they get shot somewhere and nobody remembers me!” He had a vague memory of having read about a forgotten prisoner in the Bastille; when the place was opened up, nobody knew why he had been put there. He had had a long gray beard. Lanny felt the beginnings of his beard and wondered if
it was gray.

  He gave serious study to his jailers and their probable psychology. It seemed difficult to believe that men who had followed such an occupation for many years could have any human kindness left in their systems; but it could do no harm to make sure. So at every meal hour he was lying on the floor close to the hole, delivering a carefully planned speech in a quiet, friendly tone, explaining who he was, and how much he loved the German people, and why he had come to Munich, and by what evil accident he had fallen under suspicion. All he wanted was a chance to explain himself to somebody. He figured that if he didn’t touch the heart of any of the keepers, he might at least get them to gossiping, and the gossip might spread.

  IX

  He didn’t know how long a person could live without food. It wasn’t until the second day that he began to suffer from hunger, and he gnawed some of the soggy dark bread, wondering what was in it. He couldn’t bring himself to eat the foul-smelling mash or the lukewarm boiled cabbage with grease on top. As for the bitter-tasting drink that passed for coffee, he had been told that they put sal soda into it in order to reduce the sexual cravings of the prisoners. He didn’t feel any craving except to get out of this black hole. He whispered to his keepers: “I had about six thousand marks on me when I was brought in here, and I would be glad to pay for some decent food.” The second time he said this he heard the kind voice, which he imagined coming from an elderly man with a wrinkled face and gray mustaches. “Alles geht d’runter und d’rüber, mein Herr.” … “Everything topsy-turvy, sir; and you will be safer if you stay quiet.”

  It was a tip; and Lanny thought it over and decided that he had better take it. There was a civil war going on. Was the “Second Revolution” succeeding, or was it being put down? In either case, an American art lover, trapped between the firing lines, was lucky to have found a shell-hole in which to hide! Had the warder been a Cockney, he would have said: “If you knows of a better ’ole, go to it!”