o 3b3e7475144cf77c

and bowl him over and trample him. When the first movement came to its tremendous climax

Lanny's hands were tightly clenched and perspiration stood on his forehead.

The poignant, majestic march was Beethoven walking through the Nazi concentration camps

—as Lanny had walked so many times in imagination. It was the grief and suffering of fifty or a

hundred thousand of the finest and best-trained minds of Germany. It was Beethoven mourning

with them, telling them that the blackest tragedy can be turned to beauty by the infinite powers

of the soul. The finale of the symphony was a victory—but that was a long way off, and Lanny

couldn't imagine how it would come; he could only cling to the hand of the great master like a

little child to its father. After hearing this concert Lanny had to face the fact that his love for

Kurt and Heinrich had come to an end. He found it hard to be polite to his old friends; and he

decided that being a spy, or secret agent, or whatever you chose to call it, was first and foremost

a damnable bore. The greatest of all privileges in this life is saying what you think; and your

friends have to be people who can at least give decent consideration to your ideas. Lanny was

glad when he got Kurt and Heinrich on their separate trains for home. He thanked them for

what they had done, assured them that it had been worth while, and thought: "I am going to

get Freddi out of this hell, andthen get myself out andstay out."

X

For a week Lanny had been living in close proximity to that mass of human misery known as

Dachau; he had pretended to be indifferent to it, and had spoken of it only when he and Irma

were alone in their car. Dachau is a small market-town nine miles northwest of the city, and a

well-paved highway leads to it. Inevitably their thoughts had turned there, and the car had

taken them at the first opportunity. They didn't, like most tourists, inspect the castle on the

height; they looked for the concentration camp, which wasn't hard to find, as it occupied a

square mile of ground. It had been a World War barracks and training camp, disused since the

peace. A concrete wall seven feet high ran around it, having on top a tangle of barbed wire, no

doubt electrically charged. Lanny thought about somebody trying to climb that wall; it seemed

less possible when he came at night, and saw a blaze of white searchlights mounted in towers,

moving continually along the walls.

The report, published in the newspapers, that the Führer had seen the Sister of Mercy,

filled thousands of Bavarians with a desire to see it, and accordingly it was decided to

continue the exhibition another week. But Lanny was tired of telling people about it, and tired

of what they said; in fact, he was tired of what everybody said in Nazi Germany. If they said it

because they wanted to, he hated them; if they said it because they had to, he was sorry for

them; but in neither case could he be interested.

Deciding to take the bull by the horns, he picked out a sunshiny morning when the inmates of

Dachau might be outdoors—those who were allowed out. He put in his pocket a newspaper

clipping about the Führer having viewed and approved the Detaze painting; also a few of the

interviews with himself and Irma, containing his portrait, and mention of his having been a

guest of Göring. These ought to be equivalent to a ticket of admission to any place in Naziland.

Leaving Irma to do some shopping, he drove out the Dachau road, and instead of parking his

car like a humble nobody, drove to the main gates and announced his desire to see the

Kommandant.

They looked at his car, they looked at his clothes and his Aryan face, and at the engraved card

which he gave them. "Mr. Lanning Prescott Budd" might be somebody so important that he

didn't bother to put his titles and honors on his card, as was the German custom. They let him

through the steel gates, and two Stormtroopers stood guard while a third took his card to the

office. In front of him was a drill ground, and at one side a clatter of hammers; they were putting

up new buildings, doubtless with the labor of prisoners. Stormtroopers were everywhere, all

with their rubber truncheons and automatics; there were now half a million of these fighting men

for whom jobs had to be provided.

XI

The Kommandant consented to see Herr Budd, and he was escorted to the private office of a

tough young Süddeutscher with a scarred face and a round head with black hair close cropped.

Having met Göring, Lanny thought he had no more to learn about toughness. He sat down and

came straight to the point:

"Herr Kommandant, I am an American sympathizer who happens to be in Munich because I

am interested in an art exhibition. You may have read about it, and possibly about me. I had

the honor of spending a morning with the Führer at the Braune Haus a few days ago. I am a

friend of Minister-Präsident General Göring, and had the pleasure of accompanying him on a