Читать книгу A Toast to Tomorrow - Cyril Henry Coles - Страница 7

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During the next ten years Klaus Lehmann worked for the National Socialists and was rewarded by seeing Germany rise from the dust and stand again among nations as an equal among equals. Prosperity returned, though slowly, step by step, wages meant something again, food was a thing one had every day, and once more the children laughed in the streets. Lehmann was not altogether happy, he disliked heartily many of his colleagues and distrusted their methods and their motives. Hitler he regarded not so much as a leader but as a useful tool for the regeneration of the country; it did not matter who led so long as the right road was taken and the people followed. Lehmann was trusted and relied upon, but not always confided in, not when the action proposed was morally dubious, for there was a sturdy uprightness in him which abashed villainy. He looked with cold distaste upon Goebbels’ poisonous invective, Goering’s unscrupulous violence and Rosenberg’s sham mythology; at present these men served their turn, if they became too much of a good thing steps would have to be taken in the matter and he, Klaus Lehmann, would attend to it in person. He was still a sufferer from headaches and still could not remember who he had been, but he had acquired another personality long ago, and was much too busy to bother.

By 1933 he was a deputy of the Reichstag, high in the more reputable councils of the Party, and living in a flat in Berlin with Fräulein Rademeyer to look after him. She had been greatly aged by the hard years, but was now comfortably stout, increasingly forgetful, and completely wrapped up in Klaus. They sat over the fire one night in late February, and Ludmilla told him the news of the day.

“I saw Christine this morning,” she said. “She has been staying with her daughter in Mainz, and who do you think she met?”

“Heaven knows,” said Klaus sleepily. “Von Hindenburg?”

“Mathilde. My excellent sister-in-law.”

“What, the lady who examined me for birth-marks or something at Haspe? Still as incisive as ever?”

“More so. Christine says she is more like a weasel than ever. She asked after me, it appears.”

“Nice of her. I hope Frau Christine told her you are getting younger every day and dance at the Adlon every night?”

“She told her I was living with you in Berlin, and Mathilde was most indignant.”

“Why?”

“She said it wasn’t respectable.”

“The foul-minded old harridan!” exploded Klaus. “How dare she?”

“My dear, if you lose your temper like that you will make your head ache.”

“I won’t have you insulted,” stormed Klaus. “Why—what are you laughing at?”

“It is very depraved of me, Klaus, but—oh, dear—it is such a long time since I was considered a danger to morality!”

“You awful woman,” began the horrified Klaus, but at that moment the door opened and the servant Franz came hurriedly in.

“Fräulein—mein Herr—the Reichstag——”

“What about it?”

“It is all in flames. They say the Communists have fired it.”

“Great heavens, I must go. My coat, Franz. Don’t worry, Aunt Ludmilla, there is no danger. Go to bed, I shall not be out long. Yes, I will come and speak to you when I come in. Yes, Franz, you may go out provided Agathe does not, I will not have the Fräulein left alone.”

He found the trams were not working, so he ran through the streets till he was stopped by the police cordon in Behren Strasse, and had to show his card. Even from there the glare of the burning building lit up the sky, he ran down the Wilhelmstrasse to avoid the crowds he expected to find in the Konigsgratzer Strasse and turned into the Dorotheen Strasse. Here the press was so great that it was not until he had passed the President’s house that he was able to force his way to the front of the excited crowd, and for the first time the great fire became a visible reality. He could feel the heat upon his face. He turned suddenly faint, staggered, and clutched at the arm of the man standing next to him.

“Lean on me,” said the man, who recognized him. “You have hurried too much, Herr Deputy Lehmann.”

“I—this is a frightful sight,” gasped Klaus, but in his mind he was seeing another fearful blaze, a country house burning among trees, and a dead man on the floor of a laboratory reeking with paraffin.

“Then I am a murderer,” he thought, but had enough self-control even in that moment not to say it aloud. “I have killed somebody, who was it?”

He closed his eyes and did not hear the man suggesting that if His Excellency would but sit down on the pavement a moment——

“Hendrik Brandt,” thought Lehmann. “I remember now, I am Hendrik Brandt from Utrecht, with an office in the Höhe Strasse in Köln.”

His knees trembled so much that he sat down upon the ground regardless of kind people, glad to be doing something, who passed the word back for a glass of water, a deputy was taken ill—a judge of the Supreme Court had fainted—the President of the Reichstag was dying. His mind raced on.

“I am not really Hendrik Brandt either, I am Hambledon, an agent of British Intelligence. Bill, where is Bill?”

There was a crash and a roar of flame as one of the floors fell in, and Hambledon looked up. That was the Reichstag burning. “Good God,” he thought, “and now I am a member of the Reichstag. It’s enough to make anybody feel faint, it is indeed.”

Somebody handed him a glass of water, he sipped it and began to feel better, which was as well since in a few moments he was pulled to his feet and dragged back with the recoiling crowds as more fire-engines came rocketing down the Dorotheen Strasse and swung into the Reichstag entrance.

“If the Herr Deputy is feeling better,” suggested his anonymous friend, “perhaps Your Excellency could manage to pass back through the crowd and a cab could be summoned——”

“You are too kind,” said Hambledon, pulling himself together, “but there is no need. It was a momentary weakness—I ran all the way here. I will rest a few minutes longer and then I must go in and see the President.”

“I wonder who could possibly have done such a wicked thing,” said the man.

“They say it was the Communists,” said another voice.

“They will be found out and punished whoever they are,” said Hambledon authoritatively, wondering, as he spoke, whether perhaps Bill had done it himself, Bill Saunders, who fired the Zeppelin sheds at Ahlhorn. He thrust the idea from him, mustn’t think of things like that just now, he was Klaus Lehmann, a member of the Reichstag, and he had to go and see Goering, the President.

Brown-shirt guards at the gate directed him to a spot near the President’s house, where stood a group of men which included Franz von Papen, Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, and the new Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, talking earnestly together; they looked round as Lehmann came up and greeted them.

“This is a frightful thing,” he said.

“It is indeed a monstrous crime,” said the leader solemnly.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said von Papen cheerfully. “The same thought occurred to me as soon as I saw it,” and Goering burst out laughing.

“Is it known who did it?”

“The Communists did it, of course,” said Goering. “One of them has been caught—a Dutchman, I believe.”

Lehmann’s heart almost stopped. A Dutchman—Bill Saunders had passed for a Dutchman when they were working together for British Intelligence in Cologne during the war. Klaus had been Hendrik Brandt, the Dutch importer, and Bill his young nephew Dirk Brandt from South Africa.

“Who is he—is anything known about him?”

“His name is Van der Lubbe, I understand,” said Goering, indifferently. “A member of some Communist gang in Holland, according to his papers. I don’t know any more about him.”

“Lubbe,” said von Papen in his light way. “A stupid name, it means ‘fat stupid’ in English, you know.”

“Perhaps the English sent him,” suggested the Chancellor.

Hambledon felt that if he had just a little more of this he would be uncontrollably sick, yet he must hear more. “He must have been rather stupid to be caught,” he said casually. “What was he doing?”

“Oh, running about with a torch,” said Goering. “The police saw him through one of the windows and collared him as he came out.”

That didn’t sound like Bill, who was never seen if he didn’t want to be, and would certainly not walk out straight into the arms of the police, unless he had lost his cunning and taken to drink or something, men did who had lived his life, and he had a slight tendency that way ...

“Lehmann,” said the Chancellor in a tone of authority.

Hambledon looked at him in the light of the fire and noticed as though for the first time his insignificant form, his nervous awkward gestures, and his mean little mouth set with obstinacy. “You moth-eaten little squirt,” he thought, but all he said was, “Yes, Herr Reichkanzler?”

“I expect a large majority in the elections at the end of this week, there is no doubt of it whatever, and the natural indignation of the people against the Communists on account of this horrible outrage will only serve to augment it. I am, therefore, making arrangements already to fill the principal posts in my Government. You will, I hope, accept the office of Deputy Chief of Police.”

Police—the ideal post. If this fellow Van der Lubbe was Bill——

“I am honoured, Herr Reichkanzler,” he said with a bow.

“That is well, you may regard the appointment as settled and you will take office to-morrow. I am anxious to reward my faithful friends as they deserve, and to surround myself with men I can trust. I know no one upon whom I place more reliance than I do upon you, my dear Lehmann.”

“I shall continue to deserve it,” said Lehmann untruthfully, “and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“We are all sure you will know how to deal with the Communists,” said von Papen. “Rout out the rats’ nests, what?”

Goering broke into another of his uproarious peals of laughter, and Klaus Lehmann took his leave.

He walked slowly home, thinking deeply, and indeed he had so much to think about that six minds at once would not have seemed enough to deal with the whole matter. As soon as he started one train of thought, another would present itself and confuse him again. His reawakened memory presented him with innumerable disconnected pictures from his past, von Bodenheim at the Café Palant, the guilty faces of four small boys caught smoking behind the fives court at Chappell’s School, Elsa Schwiss saying, “We love each other,” Bill in the antique dealer’s house in Rotterdam saying, “Must I wear these boots?” and a free fight on the station platform at Mainz between a drunken German private and an official courier. He stood still in the deserted Unter den Linden and said sternly to himself, “Think of the future, you fool, not the past. If Van der Lubbe is Bill——” He shook himself impatiently and remembered that he himself would be dealing with Van der Lubbe in the morning and nothing could be done before then, so there was no object in thinking about it now. Hitler’s plans, which he had so often heard discussed, the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the Saar, the push to the East, Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, the Ukraine, the Balkan States, one foot on the Black Sea and the other on the Baltic; then turning West again, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, the subjugation of France and finally the conquest of the British Empire—Lehmann had often thought the plans too grandiose to be practical, but as a German they had seemed more than admirable. As an Englishman—he walked on again—as an Englishman they were definitely out of the question and must be stopped at the earliest possible moment.

He admitted quite frankly to himself that he had immense sympathy with Germany, he had lived there for years and had shared in the piteous unmerited suffering of millions of quiet, decent people. He had worked for ten years to rehabilitate Germany and had succeeded, and he told himself defiantly that if he had known all the time that he was a British agent, he would have worked to that end just the same. The people were all right, they were fine, it was only their rulers who were so impossible to live with internationally, first the Kaiser and now this fellow Hitler. Someone had said that nations got the governments they deserved; if that were true there was something the matter with a race which could throw up and support a succession of fanatical megalomaniacs.

At this point he stopped again and actually blushed, for he suddenly remembered that few men had had more to do with promoting the rise of this fellow Hitler than he himself.

“The trouble is,” he said, “that I’m thinking like an Englishman with half my mind and like a German with the other half.”

He regarded this unpleasant predicament for a moment, and came to a decision.

“Since this is largely your fault, you interfering chump, it’s up to you to put a spoke in their wheel. And I will.”

After which the British agent went home, reassured his adoptive aunt and went to bed. The last thought that occurred to him as his head touched the pillow was a comforting one.

“But oh, what a marvellous, incredibly heaven-sent position I’m in. And to think Hitler’s paying me for this! Money for old rope——”

He slept peacefully.

In the morning it was his first care to interview Van der Lubbe at the earliest possible moment, an enthusiastic newly appointed Deputy Chief of Police naturally would, anyway. Van der Lubbe turned out to be about as different from Bill Saunders as was possible within the limits of humanity. The prisoner was a fat, unhealthy, over-grown oaf, practically sub-human in intelligence. Hambledon sighed with relief. On the other hand, it was obvious at sight that this moron could never have thought out a scheme for firing the Reichstag; he did not look capable of lighting a domestic gas-ring without burning his fingers. Then the question arose, if Van der Lubbe wasn’t responsible, who was?

At the time of the fire, the police had thrown a cordon round the Reichstag and its environs, and arrested everyone who might conceivably either have had a hand in the crime or have seen something significant which they could be induced to tell. These unlucky ones numbered some hundreds, and Lehmann spent many days in his new office examining suspects. Among their number was a frowsty old man who sold newspapers on the streets; he was well known to the police in that capacity and would not have been the object of the slightest suspicion had it not been for his state of almost uncontrollable nervousness. Why should he be so frightened if he had a perfectly clear conscience?

The old man stood before the desk at which Lehmann was sitting and replied unwillingly to the questions which were fired at him. An S.S. man in the famous brown uniform, who had brought in the prisoner, now stood by the door, and the news-vendor shot agitated glances over his shoulder at the man from time to time.

“What is your name?” asked Lehmann.

“Johann.”

“Surname?”

The man hesitated, and said, “Schaffer.”

“Johann Schaffer. Address?”

“Haven’t got one.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“Anywhere.”

“No fixed abode. What were you doing on the night of the Reichstag fire?”

“Nothing. Only walking along selling papers.”

“Walking along where?”

“Konigsgratzer Strasse.”

“At what time?”

“Just before ten.”

“Very late, wasn’t it, to be selling papers? Surely the last edition is much earlier than that?”

“I had some left,” said Johann Schaffer, and looked for the first time straight at the questioner. What he saw in Lehmann’s face did not appear to reassure him. He looked first puzzled, then incredulous, turned even a more unpleasant colour than he had been before, swayed forward against Lehmann’s big desk and placed his hands on it for support. He continued to stare and Lehmann, mildly surprised, stared back.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Nothing whatever.”

Johann began to drum nervously with his first finger on Lehmann’s desk.

“What did you see of the fire?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be absurd, man! You were within a few hundred yards of one of the most spectacular fires in history, and you saw nothing of it! Why not?”

“No business of mine. I always mind my own business. Don’t like being dragged into things.”

The irritating drumming on the desk continued, rhythmic but irregular, dactylic. Lehmann, who had not noticed it at first, suddenly found himself listening to it with interest.

“What was your profession before you sold newspapers?”

“I—have seen better days.”

“Heaven help us, I should hope so. I said, what was your profession?”

“I was a schoolmaster,” said the old man, slowly and reluctantly.

Lehmann leaned forward across the desk till his face was near the other’s, stared into his eyes, and said, in a low tone that could not reach the ears of the S.S. man by the door, “Not a wireless operator?”

Johann Schaffer gasped, closed his eyes and slid to the floor in a dead faint.

“Take him away,” said Lehmann as the guard sprang forward. “Tidy him up. Wash him—de-louse him if necessary, and I expect it is—and bring him back here at ten o’clock to-morrow.”

At the appointed hour a clean, tidy old man, with his scrubby whiskers shaved off, was brought into Lehmann’s room. Klaus looked him up and down, and said to the guard, “Are you sure this is the same man?”

“Quite sure, Excellency,” said the man with a grin.

“Merciful heavens, what a little soap and water will do.”

“You should have seen what we took off him,” began the man, but Lehmann said with a shudder, “Thank you, I would so very much rather not. You may go, I don’t think this prisoner is dangerous.”

The man saluted and went. Lehmann beckoned the old man up to his desk, and said, “Next time you are asked for your name, think up a nice one, don’t just read one off an advertisement calendar on the wall. It arouses suspicion in the most credulous breast.”

“I—my name is Schaffer——”

“It is not. It is Reck. If you are going to wilt like that you had better sit down, there’s nothing to be afraid of. You know me, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Reck, clutching at a chair and dropping into it. “Never seen you before.”

“So? Perhaps I can help you to remember. Your name is Reck, before and during the last war you were science master at a school at Mülheim, near Köln. There was a tower to the school buildings with a lightning conductor on it, do you remember now? You were something of an amateur wireless enthusiast in those days, and you had a small wireless transmitter, you used the lightning conductor as an aerial. You knew enough morse to send out messages in code, I will say for you that you were pretty hot stuff at coding messages. Does it begin to come back to you now? No, don’t faint again, because if you do I shall empty this jug over you, and it’s full of cold water. You remember on whose behalf you sent the messages, don’t you? British Intelligence.”

Lehmann paused, largely because poor old Reck looked so dreadfully ill that it was doubtful whether he could take in what was said to him without a short respite.

“Well, I think after that a drink would do us both good,” said the Deputy Chief, and rang the bell.

“Bring some beer, Hagen, will you, and a bottle of schnapps and glasses.”

“Drink this,” he said, when his orders had been carried out, “it will do you good. You always liked schnapps, didn’t you? I’m sorry I’m not the red-haired waitress from the Germania in Köln, but I——”

“Stop!” shrieked Reck. “I can’t stand it—who the devil are you?”

“I think you know,” said Tommy Hambledon. “I think you knew yesterday when you tapped out T-L-T on the table. What sent your mind back to that if you did not recognize me? Incidentally, that’s what gave you away, for I certainly didn’t recognize you. It’s true we have both changed a good deal in fifteen years, but—who am I?”

“I thought you were Tommy Hambledon,” said Reck, with the empty glass shaking in his hand, “but you can’t be, because he’s dead. If you are Hambledon, you’re dead and I’m mad again, that’s all. I was mad at one time, you know, they shut me up in one of those places where they keep them, at Mainz, that was. Not a bad place, though some of the other people were a little uncomfortable to live with. I was all right, of course,” went on Reck, talking faster and faster. “It was only the things one saw at night sometimes, but they weren’t so bad, one knew they weren’t real, only tiresome, but you look so horribly real and ordinary, and how can you when you’ve been in the sea for fifteen years? Perhaps you don’t really look ordinary at all, it’s only my fancy, and if I look again,” said Reck, scrabbling round in his chair, “I shall see you as you really are and I can’t bear it, I tell you! Go away and get somebody to bury you——”

“Reck, old chap,” said Hambledon, seriously distressed, “don’t be a fool. I wasn’t drowned, of course I wasn’t. I got a clout on the head which made me lose my memory, but I got ashore all right. Here, give me your glass and have another drink. I’m sorry I upset you like that, I never meant to, look at me and see, I’m perfectly wholesome. Drink this up, there’s a good fellow.”

Reck drank and a little colour returned to his ghastly face. After a moment a fresh thought came to alarm him and he struggled to his feet.

“Here, let’s go,” he said, “before he comes back and finds us in his office. I don’t want to face a firing-squad.”

“He? Who d’you mean?”

“The Deputy Chief of Police,” said Reck. “They told me I was to be taken to him.”

“I am the Deputy Chief of the German Police,” said the British Intelligence agent.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Reck testily. “The thing is simply impossible.”

“It isn’t impossible, because it’s happened. Here I am.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why not? There was one of our fellows on the German General Staff all through the last war, you know. This is comparatively simple.”

“Let me go back to the asylum,” pleaded Reck. “Life is simpler in there. More reasonable, if you see what I mean.”