o 3b3e7475144cf77c

generosity. She managed to make Irma a bit ashamed of her lack of appreciation of a sweet and

gentle Jewish clarinetist.

Meanwhile Lanny was speeding over a fine highway, due eastward toward the river Rhein. It

was in part the route over which the fleeing king and queen had driven in their heavy "berlin";

not far to the south lay Varennes, where they had been captured and driven back to Paris to

have their heads cut off. Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets

write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief

becomes a source of present pleasure—such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

The traveler had supper on the way, and reached his destination after midnight. There was

no use looking at an empty bridge, and he wasn't in the mood for cathedrals, even one of the

oldest. He went to bed and slept; in the morning he had a breakfast with fruit, and a telegram

from Jerry saying that they were at Besancon and coming straight on. No use going to the place

of appointment ahead of time, so Lanny read the morning papers in this town which had changed

hands many times, but for the present was French. He read that Adolf Hitler had called an

assembly of his tame Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, and had made them a speech of an

hour and a half, telling how he had suffered in soul over having to kill so many of his old friends

and supporters. When he was through, he sat with head bowed, completely overcome, while

Göring told the world how Hitler was the ordained Führer who was incapable of making a

mistake; to all of which they voted their unanimous assent.

With thoughts induced by this reading Lanny drove three or four miles to the Pont de Kehl,

parked his car, and walked halfway across. He was ahead of time, and standing by the railings

he gazed up and down that grand old river. No use getting himself into a state of excitement over

his own mission; if it was going to succeed it would succeed, and if it didn't, he would go to the

nearest telephone and get hold of the Oberleutnant and ask why. No use tormenting himself

with fears about what he was going to see; whatever Freddi was would still be Freddi, and they

would patch it up and make the best of it.

Meantime, look down into the depths of that fast-sliding water and remember, here was

where the Rheinmaidens had swum and teased the dwarf Alberich. Perhaps they were still

swimming; the motif of the Rheingold rang clear as a trumpet call in Lanny's ears. Somewhere on

the heights along this stream the Lorelei had sat and combed her golden hair with a golden

comb, and sung a song that had a wonderfully powerful melody, so that the boatman in the

little boat had been seized with a wild woe, and didn't see the rocky reef, but kept gazing up to the

heights, and so in the end the waves had swallowed boatman and boat; and that with her

singing the Lorelei had done. Another of those tragic events which the alchemy of the spirit had

turned into pleasure!

Every minute or two Lanny would look at his watch. They might be early; but no, that would

be as bad as being late. "Punktlich!" was the German word, and it was their pride. Just as the

minute hand of Lanny's watch was in the act of passing the topmost mark of the dial, a large

official car would approach the center line of the bridge, where a bar was stretched across, the

east side of the bar being German and the west side French. If it didn't happen exactly so, it

would be the watch that was wrong, and not deutsche Zucht und Ordnung. As a boy Lanny had

heard a story from old Mr. Hackabury, the soapman, about a farmer who had ordered a new

watch by mail-order catalogue, and had gone out in his field with watch and almanac,

announcing: "If that sun don't get up over that hill in three minutes, she's late!"

XI

Sure enough, here came the car! A Mercedes-Benz, with a little swastika flag over the

radiator-cap, and a chauffeur in S.S. uniform, including steel helmet. They came right up to

the barrier and stopped, while Lanny stood on the last foot of France, with his heart in his

mouth. Two S.S. men in the back seat got out and began helping a passenger, and Lanny got

one glimpse after another; the glimpses added up to a gray-haired, elderly man, feeble and

bowed, with hands that were deformed into claws, and that trembled and shook as if each of

them separately had gone mad. Apparently he couldn't walk, for they were half-carrying him,

and it wasn't certain that he could hold his head up—at any rate, it was hanging.

"Heil Hitler!" said one of the men, saluting. "Herr Budd?"

"Ja," said Lanny, in a voice that wasn't quite steady.

"Wohin mit ihm?" It was a problem, for you couldn't take such a package and just walk off

with it. Lanny had to ask the indulgence of the French police and customs men, who let the

unfortunate victim be carried into their office and laid on a seat. He couldn't sit up, and