o 3b3e7475144cf77c

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 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 suddeutsch-gemütlich. In the first place, he was put in a cell with

two other men, and never 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 this 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 and four nights

had made him something of a distinguished person, a sort of Edmond Dantes, 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 had 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 this 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 warder 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