Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  So Lanny lay still and occupied himself with the subject of psychology, which so far in his life he had rather neglected. The world had been too much with him; getting and spending he had laid waste his powers. But now the world had been reduced to a few hundred cubic feet, and all he had was the clothes on his back and what ideas he had stored in his head. He began to recall Parsifal Dingle, and to appreciate his point of view. Parsifal wouldn’t have minded being here; he would have taken it as a rare opportunity to meditate. Lanny thought: “What would Parsifal meditate about?” Surely not the shooting, or the fate of a hypothetical revolution! No, he would say that God was in this cell; that God was the same indoors as out, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

  Then Lanny thought about Freddi Robin. Freddi had been in places like this, and had had the same sort of food put before him, not for three days but for more than a year. What had he said to himself all that time? What had he found inside himself? What had he done and thought, to pass the time, to enable him to endure what came and the anticipation of what might come? It seemed time for Lanny to investigate his store of moral forces.

  X

  On Tuesday morning two jailers came to his cell and opened the door. “’Raus, ’raus!” they said, and he obeyed to the best of his ability; he was weak from lack of food and exercise—not having dared to use up the air in that cell. Also his heart was pounding, because all the psychology exercises had failed to remove his disinclination to be shot, or the idea that this might be his death march. Outside the cell he went dizzy, and had to lean against the wall; one of the jailers helped him up the flight of stone stairs.

  They were taking him toward an outside door. They were going to turn him loose!—so he thought, for one moment. But then he saw, below the steps, a prison van—what in America is called “Black Maria,” and in Germany “Grüne Minna.” The sunlight smote Lanny’s eyes like a blow, and he had to shut them tight. The jailers evidently were familiar with this phenomenon; they led him as if he were a blind man and helped him as if he were a cripple. They put him into the van, and he stumbled over the feet of several other men.

  The doors were closed, and then it was mercifully dim. Lanny opened his eyes; since they had been brought to the condition of an owl’s, he could see a stoutish, melancholy-looking gentleman who might be a businessman, sitting directly across the aisle. At Lanny’s side was an eager little Jew with eyeglasses, who might be a journalist out of luck. Lanny, never failing in courtesy, remarked: “Guten Morgen”; but the man across the way put his finger to his lips and nodded toward the guard who had entered the van and taken his seat by the door. Evidently “Sprechen verboten” was still the rule.

  But some men have keen wits, and do not hand them over when they enter a jail. The little Jew laid his hand on Lanny’s where it rested on the seat between them. He gave a sharp tap with his finger, and at the same time, turning his head toward Lanny and from the guard, he opened his mouth and whispered softly: “Ah!” just as if he were beginning a singing lesson, or having his throat examined for follicular tonsillitis. Then he gave two quick taps, and whispered: “Bay!” which is the second letter of the German alphabet. Then three taps: “Tsay!”—the third letter; and so on, until the other nodded his head. Lanny had heard tapping in his dungeon, but hadn’t been sure whether it was the water-pipes or some code which he didn’t know.

  This was the simplest of codes, and the Jew proceeded to tap eighteen times, and then waited until Lanny had calculated that this was the letter R. Thus slowly and carefully, he spelled out the name “R-O-E-H-M.” Lanny assumed that the little man was giving his own name, and was prepared to tap “B-U-D-D,” and be glad that it was short. But no, his new friend was going on; Lanny counted through letter after letter: “E-R-S-C-H-O-S—.” By that time the little Jew must have felt Lanny’s hand come alive beneath his gentle taps, and realized that Lanny had got his meaning. But he finished the word to make sure. It took twice as long as it would have taken in English: “Röhm shot!”

  XI

  That simple statement bore a tremendous weight of meaning for Lanny. It enabled him to begin choosing among the variety of tales which he had constructed for himself in the past three days and four nights. If Ernst Röhm, Chief of Staff of the Sturmabteilung, had been shot, it must mean that the much-talked-of “Second Revolution” had failed. And especially when the tapping continued, and Lanny counted out, letter by letter, the words “in Stadelheim.” That was a flash of lightning on a black night; it told Lanny what all the shooting had been about. The S.A. Chief of Staff and his many lieutenants who had been gathered for a conference! They must have been seized, carried from Wiessee, and shot somewhere in the grim old prison! The quick finger tapped on, and spelled the name of Heines, followed again by the dread word “erschossen.” Lanny knew that this was the police chief of Breslau, who had led the gang which had burned the Reichstag; he was one of the most notorious of the Nazi killers, and Hugo had named him as one of Röhm’s fellow-perverts, and a guest at the Wiessee villa.

  And then the name of Strasser! Lanny put his hand on top of the little Jew’s and spelled the name “Otto”; but the other wiggled away and spelled “Gr—” so Lanny understood that it was Gregor Strasser, whom he had heard getting a tongue-lashing from the Führer, and whom he and Irma had heard speaking at a Versammlung in Stuttgart. Otto Strasser was the founder of the hated “Black Front,” and was an exile with a price on his head; but his elder brother Gregor had retired from politics and become director of a chemical works. Lanny had been surprised when Hugo had mentioned him as having had conferences with Röhm.

  The little Jewish intellectual was having a delightful time breaking the rules and gossiping with a fellow-prisoner, telling him the meaning of the terrific events of the past three days. Even into a prison, news penetrates and is spread; and never in modern times had there been news such as this! The eager finger tapped the name of Schleicher; the one-time Chancellor, the self-styled “social general” who had tried so hard to keep Hitler out of power; who had thwarted von Papen, and then been thwarted in turn. Of late he had been dickering with the malcontents, hankering to taste the sweets of power again. “Schleicher erschossen!” A high officer of the Reichswehr, a leading Junker, one of the sacred ruling caste! Lanny looked at the face of the stoutish gentleman across the aisle, and understood why his eyes were wide and frightened. Could he see the little Jew’s finger resting on Lanny’s hand, and was he perhaps counting the taps? Or was he just horrified to be alive in such a world?

  Lanny had heard enough names, and began tapping vigorously in his turn. “Wohin gehen, wir?” The answer was: “Munich Police Prison.” When he asked: “What for?” the little Jew didn’t have to do any tapping. He just shrugged his shoulders and spread his two hands, the Jewish way of saying in all languages: “Who knows?”

  28

  Bloody Instructions

  I

  In the city jail of Munich Lanny was treated like anybody else, which was a great relief to him. He was duly “booked”: his name, age, nationality, residence, and occupation—he gave the latter as Kunstsachverständiger, which puzzled the man at the desk, as if he didn’t get many of that kind; with a four days’ growth of brown beard Lanny looked more like a bandit, or felt that he did. He was, it appeared, under “protective arrest”; there was a grave danger that somebody might hurt him, so the kindly Gestapo was guarding him from danger. By this device a Führer with a “legality complex” was holding a hundred thousand men and women in confinement without trial or charge. The American demanded to be allowed to notify his consul, and was told he might make that request of the “inspector”; but he wasn’t told when or how he was to see that personage. Instead he was taken to be fingerprinted, and then to be photographed.

  All things are relative; after a “black cell” in Stadelheim, this city jail in the Ettstrasse seemed homelike and friendly, echt süddeutschgemütlich. In the first place, he was put in a cell with two other men, and n
ever had human companionship been so welcome to Lanny Budd. In the next place, the cell had a window, and while it was caked with dust, it was permitted to be open at times, and for several hours the sun came through the bars. Furthermore, Lanny’s money had been credited to his account, and he could order food; for sixty pfennigs, about fifteen cents, he could have a plate of cold meat and cheese; for forty pfennigs he could have a shave by the prison barber. For half an hour in the morning while his cell was being cleaned he was permitted to walk up and down in the corridor, and for an hour at midday he was taken out into the exercise court and allowed to tramp round and round in a large circle, while from the windows of the four-story building other inmates looked down upon him. Truly a gemütlich place of confinement!

  One of his cell-mates was the large business man who had been his fellow-passenger in the Grüne Minna. It turned out that he was the director of a manufacturing concern, accused of having violated some regulation regarding the payment of his employees; the real reason, he declared, was that he had discharged an incompetent and dishonest Nazi, and now they were going to force him out and put that Nazi in charge. He would stay in prison until he had made up his mind to sign certain papers which had been put before him. The other victim was a Hungarian count, who was a sort of Nazi, but not the right sort, and he, too, had made a personal enemy, in his case his mistress. Lanny was astonished to find how large a percentage of prisoners in this place were or thought they were loyal followers of the Führer. Apparently all you had to do in order to get yourself into jail was to have a quarrel with someone who had more influence than yourself, then you would be accused of any sort of offense, and you stayed because in Naziland to be accused or even suspected was worse than being convicted.

  Lanny discovered that having been in a “black cell” of Stadelheim for three days or four nights had made him something of a distinguished person, a sort of Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte Cristo. His cell-mates fell upon him and plied him with questions about what he had seen and heard in those dreadful underground dungeons. Apparently they knew all about the killings; they could even tell him about the courtyard with a wall against which the shooting was done, and the hydrant for washing away the blood. Lanny could add nothing except the story of how he had lain and listened; how many drum-rolls and volleys he had heard, and about the man who argued and protested, and Lanny’s own frightful sensations. It was a relief to describe them, he found; his Anglo-Saxon reticence broke down in these close quarters, where human companionship was all that anybody had, and he must furnish his share of entertainment if he expected others to furnish it to him.

  II

  Newspapers had been forbidden in the prison during the crisis but you could get all sorts of things if you had the price, and the Hungarian had managed to secure the Münchner Zeitung of Monday. He permitted Lanny to have a look at it, standing against the wall alongside the door, so as to be out of sight of any warden who might happen to peer through the square opening in the door if he started to unlock the door Lanny would hear him and slip the paper under the mattress or stuff it into his trousers. Under these romantic circumstances he read the flaming headlines of a radio talk in which his friend Joseph Goebbels had told the German people the story of that dreadful Saturday of blood and terror. Juppchen had been traveling about the Rheinland with the Führer, dutifully inspecting labor-camps, and he now went into details, in that spirit of melodrama combined with religious adoration which it was his job to instill in to the German people. Said crooked little Juppchen:

  “I still see the picture of our Führer standing at midnight on Friday evening on the terrace of the Rhein Hotel in Godesberg and in the open square a band of the Western German Labor Service playing. The Führer looks seriously and meditatively into the dark sky that has followed a refreshing thunderstorm. With raised hand he returns to the enthusiastic greetings of the people of the Rheinland … In this hour he is more than ever admired by us. Not a quiver in his face reveals the slightest sign of what is going on within him. Yet we few people who stand by him in all difficult hours know how deeply he is grieved and also how determined to deal mercilessly in stamping out the reactionary rebels who are trying to plunge the country into chaos, and breaking their oath of loyalty to him under the slong of carrying out a ‘Second Revolution.’”

  Dispatches come from Berlin and Munich which convince the Führer that it is necessary to act instantly; he telephones orders for the putting down of the rebels, and so: “Half an hour later a heavy tri-motored Junkers plane leaves the aviation field near Bonn and disappears into the foggy night. The clock has just struck two. The Führer sits silently in the front seat of the cabin and gazes fixedly into the great expanse of darkness.”

  Arriving in Munich at four in the morning they find that the traitorous leaders have already been apprehended. “In two brisk sentences of indignation and contempt Herr Hitler throws their whole shame into their fearful and perplexed faces. He then steps to one of them and rips the insignia of rank from his uniform. A very hard but deserved fate awaits them in the afternoon.”

  The center of the conspiracy is known to be in the mountains, and so a troop of loyal S.S. men have been assembled, and, narrates Dr. Juppchen, “at a terrific rate the trip to Wiessee is begun.” He gives a thrilling account of the wild night ride, by which, at six in the morning “without any resistance we are able to enter the house and surprise the conspirators, who are still sleeping, and we arouse them immediately. The Führer himself makes the arrest with a courage that has no equal … I may be spared a description of the disgusting scene that lay before us. A simple S. S. man, with an air of indignation, expresses our thoughts, saying: ‘I only wish that the walls would fall down now, so that the whole German people could be a witness to this act.’”

  The radio orator went on to tell what had been happening in Berlin. “Our party comrade, General Göring, has not hesitated. With a firm hand he has cleared up a nest of reactionaries and their incorrigible supporters. He has taken steps that were hard but necessary in order to save the country from immeasurable disaster.”

  There followed two newspaper columns of denunciation in which the Reichsminister of Popular Enlightment and Propaganda used many adjectives to praise the nobility and heroism of his Führer, “who has again shown in this critical situation that he is a Real Man.” A quite different set of adjectives was required for the “small clique of professional saboteurs,” the “boils, seats of corruption, the symptoms of disease and moral deterioration that show themselves in public life,” and that now have been “burned out to the flesh.”

  “The Reich is there,” concluded Juppchen, “and above all our Führer.”

  III

  Such was the story told to the German people. Lanny noticed the curious fact that not once did the little dwarf name one of the victims of the purge; he didn’t even say directly that anybody had been killed! As a specimen of popular fiction there was something to be said for his effusion, but as history it wouldn’t rank high. Lanny could nail one falsehood, for he knew that Hugo Behr had been shot at a few minutes after nine on Friday evening, which was at least three hours before the Führer had given his orders according to the Goebbels account. The jail buzzed with stories of other persons who had been killed or arrested before midnight; in fact some had been brought to this very place. Evidently somebody had given the fatal order while the Führer was still inspecting labor camps.

  It was well known that Göring had flown to the Rheinland with his master, he had then flown back to Berlin. Hermann was the killer, the man of action, who took the “steps that were hard but necessary,” while Adi was still hesitating and arguing, screaming at his followers, threatening to commit suicide if they didn’t obey him, falling down on the floor and biting the carpet in a hysteria of bewilderment or rage. Lanny became clear in his mind that this was the true story of the “Blood Purge.” Göring had sat at Hitler’s ear in the plane and terrified him with stories of what the Gestapo had uncovere
d; then, from Berlin, he had given the orders and when it was too late to reverse them he had phoned the Führer, and the latter had flown to Munich to display “a courage that has no equal,” to show himself to the credulous German people as “a Real Man.”

  The official statement was that not more than fifty persons had been killed in the three days and nights of terror; but the gossip in the Ettstrasse was that there had been several hundred victims in Munich alone, and it turned out that the total in Germany was close to twelve hundred. This and other official falsehoods were freely discussed, and the jail buzzed like a beehive. Human curiosity broke down the barriers between jailers and jailed; they whispered news to one another, and an item once put into circulation was borne by busy tongues to every corner of the institution. In the corridors you were supposed to walk alone and not to talk; but every time you passed other prisoners you whispered something, and if it was a tidbit you might share it with one of the keepers. Down in the exercise court the inmates were supposed to walk in silence, but the man behind you mouthed the news and you passed it on to the man in front of you.

  And when you were in your cell, there were sounds of tapping; tapping on wood, on stone, and on metal; tapping by day and most of the night; quick tapping for the experts and slow tapping for the new arrivals. In the cell directly under Lanny was a certain Herr Doktor Obermeier, a former Ministerialdirektor of the Bavarian state, well known to Herr Klaussen. He shared the same water-pipes as those above him, and was a tireless tapper. Lanny learned the code, and heard the story of Herr Doktor Willi Schmitt, music critic of the Neueste Nachrichten and chairman of the Beethoven-Vereinigung; the most amiable of persons, so Herr Klaussen declared, with body, mind, and soul made wholly of music. Lanny had read his review of the Eroica performance, and other articles from his pen. The S.S. men came for him, and when he learned that they thought he was Gruppenführer Willi Schmitt, a quite different man, he was amused, and told his wife and children not to worry. He went with the Nazis, but did not return; and when his frantic wife persisted in her clamors she received from Police Headquarters a death certificate signed by the Bürgermeister of the town of Dachau; there had been “a very regrettable mistake,” and they would see that it did not happen again.