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CHAPTER XIII

ILLEGAL

FANZ HELLING was at Aschinger's before me, busy eating a dish of his favorite pork and beans. He greeted me with a "Heil Hitler!" and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

"Hello, Franz."

He shook his head reproachfully.

"I thought they'd got that much at least through your skull. I see I'll have to start you all over from the very beginning. Sit down. The German greeting is 'Heil Hitler!' If somebody asks you what time is it, you say, ‘Five-thirty. Heil Hitler!' When you're in uniform, you accompany this statement with an outstretched arm, fingers close together. When you're out of uniform-- that is, if you're a Brown Shirt, in bed; if you're a Black Shirt, never--you fling your arm-as far back as possible over your shoulder. The little finger sticks out a trifle, like Frau Goebbels' little finger when she embraces her tootsy-wootsy."

"Shut up."

"Moreover," he continued in the same tone, "it was unpardonable of me to ask you to come here. The zone in which this cafe is located has been banned by our club. Too many of our friends have been lost in this part of town. But, I ask myself, where are you safest? Where your colleagues are not swarming about. And that's why I always make straight for the proscribed area, as a matter of principle. But I don't advise you to do likewise for, contrary to police regulations, you’ve grown extraordinarily stupid-looking."

He surveyed me from head to foot.

"Or did you always look like this? I suppose I've been idealizing you since I heard that the Hubertshof halo was shining round your head. Let me do the talking now, and don't interrupt. My wife stopped listening to my chatter long ago, and when I meet that friend of mine whose office used to be near the Volksbuehne, ¹ he shows no interest in anything but my papers. The minute he gets hold of them he's up and away, leaving me to pay for his coffee. If it weren't for my Brown Shirts I'd have forgotten how to talk long ago. That bunch'll listen to me for hours, especially when I tell them about the Dinaric influence on the formation of the German skull.

"Where was I? Oh, yes--Hubertshof. All the decent fellows are being arrested, and I'm still running around loose. I can't get to sleep nights for thinking of that first Party cleansing after the revolution. What am I going to say when the head of the commission taps me on the chest and asks, 'What were you doing in the fight against Hitler fascism on the night of Decembcr 29, 1933?' Eating pork and beans at Aschinger's. People like you have an alibi. But me?

"Listen, I know you're a blockhead, but God knows I didn't expect you to be coy with Julius for that length of time. The poor fellow wrote me the most melancholy letters about how little Karola refused to have anything to do with him, and how he couldn't very well rape her under the circumstances. We spend weeks sniffing around you--and just when you wake up you go and get released, and all love's labor is lost."

I pacified him with the assurance that I had provided for another contact. He was not especially enthusiastic, however, over the plans for the Schieber's escape.

"With all due respect to your noble heart, it's more important to establish contact with the thousands inside than to help a handful get out. But since you've gone so far with it we'll have to see what can be done. Only don't take the law into your own hands that way again. Now come with me, and don't ask any more questions than you have to."

We hopped on a bus, rode for about ten minutes, waited at the next stop for the bus to take on passengers, jumped out after it had got under way again, looked back to see whether anyone had left the bus after us, and took a taxi to the nearest subway station, repeated the maneuver, then walked half a block to our destination.

"Here we are," said Helling, and rang the bell.

A maid opened the door.

"Heil Hitler!" said Franz, kicking me in the shins.

"Heil Hitler!" I repeated.

"Is the doctor at home?"

"He’s expecting you, sir."

We followed her into a room, where a well-dressed man came forward and greeted Helling cordially.

"Dr. Armhofer," said Helling, presenting me. "Dr. Weigand."

The maid brought in a tea tray. "Well, Marie," said Dr. Weigand, "I suppose you have your own plans for tonight, since my wife's not in. We won't need you any longer." The girl said thank you and went out.

"Now," said Franz to me, "you march yourself into the next room and write your report. Names of all SS officers, exhaustive description of the Police Department, morale of the comrades, names and addresses of spies, frame of mind among the Black Shirts, relations between Black Shirts and prisoners, special prisoners, reasons for their arrest, and so on."

I glanced at Weigand.

"Go ahead," Franz reassured me. "You don't have to worry about etiquette here." He turned to Weigand. "They got him so used to good manners that he finds it hard to behave like a normal European again."

Weigand led the way to the study, opened the type writer for me, and left me to my own devices. I looked around, envying the doctor his splendid library. Several new books which had come out since my arrest were lying on the desk. But I suppressed my evil tendency to regard all books as common property and refrained from sticking any of them into my pocket. You could barely hear the typewriter, a noiseless of American make. From force of habit I covered the carbon with six sheets of paper to prevent the Secret Police from tracing the machine should the report ever fall into their hands.

I reentered the room an hour later, just as Weigand was asking, "But with the Reichswehr and two million trained Brown Shirts and Black Shirts, couldn't Hitler crush any internal resistance?"

"That would mean that the Hitler dictatorship had entered its second phase," Franz replied. "Hitler could arm the Black Shirts to the teeth, but without the support of the masses he wouldn't have the same value to the bourgeoisie as the Hitler of 1933, who was followed blindly by millions of peasants and petty bourgeois, and even by some of the workers. The Nazi dictatorship would inevitably develop into a military dictatorship. Of course they'll use Hitler as a stalking horse as long as he has a mass following, but with every measure he's forced to put through he reveals himself more and more clearly as the tool of big business."

"We're discussing a topic that's on everyone's tongue in Berlin today," Weigand explained to me. "The com ing military dictatorship. Polite society's full of it at thc moment--the German Nationals, mostly, of course--but the Nazis too, when they're safely by themselves. What I don't understand, though," he resumed, turning back to Helling, "is your contention that a military dictatorship would be a sign of weakness--that it would be easier to overthrow than the Nazi regime in its present form."

"Weigand," said Franz gloomily, "you have no political sense."

Weigand smiled at me. "Herr Helling never tires of giving me political instruction--with little effect, however."

"With a military dictatorship," Franz went on imperturbably, "the bourgeoisie would have to expose their political machinery to the light of day, and that they couldn't afford to do for long. Unless you can serve oppression and exploitation up with some fine sauce--democracy, let us say, or the national community-- even a Weimar Coalitionist² is bound to see through it in the end."

"That's a dig at me," Weigand explained for my benefit. "All right. Then what's to prevent them from draping the military dictatorship in some nice new little cloak? They know that the monarchists are active. Why not once more: 'Mit Gott fur Kaiser und Vaterland'?"

"You can't take people in with that kind of tripe any longer. Apart from Herr von Gayl, ³ God rest his soul, and his friends at the Herrenklub, who do you think's going to fall for that mummery? No, the divine right of kings went out forever in 1918 even Ebert and Scheidemann couldn't save it. Besides, if only on competitive grounds, the Nazis are bound to suppress all monarchist propaganda."

"I'm not so sure that there mightn't still be an excellent chance for a 'people's kaiser.' But assuming you’re right, I still don't see how the bourgeoisie--with or without Hitler, with or without a kaiser--could rule at all under a military dictatorship. What would their program be?"

"They'd do away with all the idiotic measures sponsored by the Nazis--the measures, I mean, that they considered harmful or unnecessary to themselves, anti-Semitism first of all--thus improving their relations with capital abroad and getting themselves more economic credits. The international financiers--the Jewish ones included--are just waiting for some such evidence .of Germany's return to civilization to rush to her aid. Bendlerstrasse ⁴ will certainly adopt a more elastic foreign policy--return to Geneva, probably, and get official sanction from France, England and Italy for re-armament. It would be vitally important to them to stave off war as long as they weren't prepared for it, just as a successful war must remain the goal of all their policies. A military dictatorship could afford to adopt a flexible foreign policy but that would make its internal policies seem all the more worm-eaten by comparison. Two essentials would be lacking--the support of the masses and stirring slogans. Nationalism, "socialism," the national community--all three have been thoroughly discredited within a year. Herr Schleicher may emerge from oblivion for a while. The old wire puller's still on the job, and he hasn't yet abandoned his favorite notion of establishing his social empire. Wels and Leipart haven’t abandoned it either."

The doorbell rang, and Weigand caught my involuntary start.

"My wife," he said reassuringly, and went to open the door. "You mustn't go yet. She'll have dozens of questions to ask you."

"Simply odious," we heard Frau Weigand saying to her husband in the hall. "That fat George ⁵ is a diamond in the rough. I couldn't sit it through."

She was a handsome, well-groomed woman, of evident culture, who greeted us with the artfully assumed simplicity of the lady of fashion.

"I keep telling myself that I'll never go to a German film again. Yet I can't keep away, for I simply refuse to believe that we've gone so hopelessly to the dogs."

"To the dogs is right," commented Franz dryly.

"No, but really, Herr Helling, isn't it frightful? Everything that made life worth living--art, music, literature, the theater--it's all dead now. Would you have believed that our culture could be so utterly destroyed?"

"It's not much of a loss."

"How can you talk like that, Herr Helling! Think of such names as Thomas Mann and Max Reinhardt, think of our Philharmonic concerts, think of—of--"

"Well, they've given you a Rosalinde von Schirach ⁶ in exchange, and we still have a good many of your old friends left--Heinrich George, Gottfried Benn--"

"Stop it!" she interrupted imperiously. "Do you know, I never expected anything better of that puffy George, even though he did once appear in revolutionary plays. But Benn's a real tragedy, as far as I'm concerned. A man like that, who rose so magnificently superior to the greedy grubbers around him! And now to be the poet laureate of these parvenus, content to add his voice to that chorus of lickspittles and bombastic mediocrities! What a downfall for a man who once held that the groundwork of all our culture was intellectual integrity!"

"The groundwork of our culture," said Franz with the provocative bluntness which had marked his manner throughout the evening, "is the exploitation of the masses. And that groundwork we've still got solidly under us, don't worry."

"You know," she defended herself, "that I have no social prejudices. But what we're going through now simpply strengthens me in my belief that true art can't be decreed or regulated. And that goes for your art, too."

"Yes," said Franz, "you're right. It's one and the same thing--whether you're trying to galvanize corpse or create a new society. One group decrees Potemkin, the other the Horst Wessel film."

"Why make fun of me? I'm honest in saying that the Germany I loved is dead for me. And dead for plenty of others, too, who aren't willing to give up the ancient German culture for the cheap tastes of an Austrian house painter."

"But you could resign yourself to all the other things that are happening to Germany under that man's leadership?"

"I must really come to my wife's rescue," Weigand interposed. "You don't seriously believe that the fate of men like Erich Muehsam and Karl von Ossietzky means nothing to us, or that we don't give a thought to the thousands who are suffering in the prisons and concentration camps." Frau Weigand dabbed at her eyes.

"Hertha," he went on, "Dr. Armhofer has just been released from a concentration camp. Now you've got an eyewitness who can give you an accurate picture of conditions."

"Tell me one thing, Dr. Armhofer," said Frau Weigand, turning to me. "Is it true that they beat the prisoners?"

"Very decent people," Helling said, once we were out in thc street again. "Trustworthy, and not such cowards as most of our former sympathizers. But even they, as you see, have no inkling of what's going on."

I gave him my report on Hubertshof, and the name and address of the Schieber. Franz wanted to investigate the Schieber's Party record and then talk to Julius Stetten himself. He decided that there was no need of our meeting within the next few days, and we made an appointment for the day after New Year's.

The following evening I met our district representative, to make arrangements for my future work. He was a stranger to me, having been transferred only recently from central Germany to the Berlin-Brandenburg district.

"There are two aspects," he told me, "to this matter of you resuming your old work. If you're caught it's going to be doubly unpleasant for you. On the other hand, you know the ropes and we've got no one else just now."

I took over my former work. I found that Otto had

made considerable progress during the months of my imprisonment and saw many indications of improvement in our underground work--an impression confirmed by the comrades I met. It was true that the Secrct Police, better organized now, had abandoned the crude methods which had characterized the first phase of their activity. On the other hand, the widespread voluntary espionage was decreasing. Disillusionment had followed with amazing rapidity upon the enthusiasm of the first months. Goebbels' winter relief program and the "one-pot" ⁷ campaign were provoking ironic comment at the Nazi relief stations. A parody of the Horst Wessel song was going the rounds. Its opening line, "Banners high! Ranks tight!" had been transformed by popular waggery into "Prices high! Trusts tight!"

It was within the Party, however, that the greatest strides had been made. The comrades had learned how to work illegally. Gone were the carelessness and heedlessness of the early days, which had claimed so many victims. Words like "comrade," "subdistrict," "district leadership," were no longer heard; the telephone was used with the utmost caution; and orders, wherever possible, were conveyed by word of mouth. Party leadership had been still further decentralized, which did away with the crippling effect produced by the murders and arrests of leading functionaries and considerably complicated the activity of agents and spies. I was particularly impressed by the reticence of comrades with regard to their work. It was taken for granted that no one should question his neighbor as to his Party function or current activity. More—to safeguard themselves against the risk of divulging information under torture, the comrades were loath to be burdened with any details that weren’t absolutely essential to their work.

The Rote Fahne appeared regularly, and the Party’s courage and devotion made a profound impression even on those workers who had hitherto held aloof. The comrades told me that more and more SPG workers and local groups were presenting themselves to the Party and expressing their willingness to distribute literature and aid in its output.

We met at Anna’s on New Year’s Eve. Hans had conquered the depression of his first few days of "freedom" and made even Anna laugh with his account of an evening among the Brown shirts, to whose quarters he had been dragged by his former friend, the SA-man.

"And guess whom I met today," he remarked incidentally. "Daniel—Daniel from the lion;s den."

We plied him with questions and gave him no peace til he finally agreed to go and fetch Daniel.

"But on two conditions only," he insisted. "First, you’ve got to treat us to a bottle of wine, because after all, it is New Year’s. And second, Elisabeth’s got to go with me."

After some haggling his demands were met. The resistance of Anna’s young sister did not strike me as altogether convincing.

"Karl," said Anna after they had left, "I’m being haunted these days with all sorts of premonitions of death. Suppose I should die in childbirth—what’s to become of the baby? I tried to talk her out of her gloomy state. The trouble was that she was shut up at home all day with her thoughts of Erich—she ought to be given some easy but responsible work to do. She agreed with me in that and told me that once recovered from her confinement, she was planning to work with the International Workers Aid, devoting herself particularly to the problems of the wives of prisoner. But if anything did go wrong with her, wouldn’t I please see that her child was taken care of? She dreaded the thought of its being brought up in some Nazi orphan asylum.

"Do you think we’ll live to see our Germany?" she asked me. "I’m only twenty-eight, but I’m so tired, Karl. So often I find myself thinking, ‘If only it were over!’ Erich and I were together four years, but how much did we really see of each other? He was out every night after work on some Party errand, and so was I four nights out of the seven. If only we’d had a child sooner…But he didn’t want one. ’It’ll take too much of our time,’ he kept saying. ‘Let’s wait until we can have free children.’ And now I’ve got to bring up my child alone; and in the Third Reich, at that."

Life flowed back into the kitchen with the return of the others. Daniel greeted us with a loud "Hello!" Despite his emaciation and the fact that they had knocked out his teeth in Sonnenburg, he was still the same.

"Have you heard the song Bert Brecht composed especially for us?" he asked, the moment he came in, and began singing in an undertone:

Es steht zu Sonnenburg

Ein deutsche Lager--

Insassen und Posten

Sind beide mager. ⁸

"Stop showing off," I protested. "We've formed a club of ex-Hubertshof men."

"What are you talking about, Karlo!" Daniel cried, embracing us all again. "You and your five months!"

"Listen, Daniel," Hans broke in. "Tell us the truth. How were you really caught. We've been hearing the wildest rumors about your arrest. Was it honestly the scooter?

Daniel eyed him suspiciously, but Hans returned his gaze without twitching a muscle, till at length he exploded. We coaxed him to tell us the story which, with frequent interruptions from Daniel, he proceeded to do.

Daniel was a many-sided genius. He could write brilliant articles and pamphlets, but he was chiefly interested in the technical problems of underground agitation--the construction of mimeograph machines, the painting of revolutionary slogans on housetops, the combination of indelible colors. Shortly before his arrest he had concocted a scheme which he believed would revolutionize the primitive methods employed by our paste and paint squads. He circulated the news of his invention among the comrades by a small pamphlet which he mimeographed himself, entitled:

"Brushless painting,

Potless pasting."

The idea was to reduce all necessary apparatus to a minimum-- to do away with such things as paste-pots, paint-pots, brushes, posters, etc., which might so easily become the instruments of doom. To replace these objects he had contrived a species of salt shaker which was to hold mixture of paint and chemicals to be used in street writing His trump card, however, was a huge die to be attached underneath an automobile and released by the driver through a foot lever. With this device, Daniel contended, we could cover rows of streets with our slogans in less than no time.

"But," explained Hans, "the devil of it was that Daniel didn't have a car. So one night he showed up with a scooter under his arm--a child's scooter--and underneath this child's scooter he had built his printing machine. And he wanted me to go out painting with him on the scooter." Tears rolled down our cheeks as Hans described ho r Daniel had proposed that they go scooting down the Kurfuerstendamm, stamping "DOWN WITH HITLER" along its length.

"Gross misrepresentation of facts," commented Daniel gravely, and drew from his pocket a copy of the Rote Fahne, from which he read an account of the method employed by some comrades in the Wedding district to distribute their pamphlets. They made their way to a roof, balanced a plank over its edge, weighted the street end with a package of leaflets and the other end with a leaky pail of water. As the water leaked out the plank teetered toward the street, till the leaflets began slipping off and fluttering down to the ground. Meanwhile, sufficient time had elapsed to permit the com rades to reach safety.

"There you see?" crowed Daniel. "The Party wants us to think out new methods. It's your head you've got to put to work--your head."

The unaccustomed wine had exhilarated us all, and it was midnight before we separated. I walked to the subway with Hans and Daniel. Despite the lateness of the hour the smart amusement places were still absorbing streams of people to celebrate the New Year.

On the way to the station Daniel gave me the first accurate account I had heard of the shooting of Alfred Kattner, the police spy, and the murder--ordered in reprisal by the Secret Police--of our four comrades, Scheer, Schoenhaar, Steinfurt, and Schwarz. Schwarz was the comrade who, a few months earlier, had thrown himself under a truck to save one of the comrades working within the ranks of the police. The authorities had placed him under medical care till his injuries healed, that he might be in a state of perfect health when they killed him. Daniel told us, too, that during the Reichstag Fire trial the Party had printed its own reports of the proceedings of that travesty of justice and sent them daily to the foreign correspondents. Despite its far-flung machinery the Secret Police had failed to track down the offenders. "We could teach them a thing or two in that line," growled Daniel.

His experience at Sonnenburg corresponded with Hans' at Columbia and mine at Hubertshof. The number of comrades who had deserted to the Nazis during captivity was negligible. The spirit of others had been crushed by torture and they could no longer be counted .on for the illegal struggle. Even those, however, did not average more than fifteen to twenty per cent. Nor were they lost for good. A new revolutionary wave would sweep most of them back to us again. The effect on the majority of the prisoners in all camps had been only to make them better and more steadfast comrades.

"Thy thought they could exterminate us," said Daniel. "Instead of which they made good Bolsheviks out of us."

When we took leave he promised to let us hear from him soon again.

Helling had seen Julius Stetten over the New Year and discussed with him the possibilities of the projected flight of thc Schieber. Stetten had already heard the details from the Schieber himself. On receiving the reports the Party decided to aid the Schieber's escape, since his imminent trial might mean death to other comrades as well. I was told to make ready to accompany the driver of a delivery truck to Hubertshof on Thursday night and point out to him the peculiarities of the region.

At eleven o'clock Thursday night I took my stand in Grosse Frankfurterstrasse. One of those huge trucks used for long-distance deliveries came to an abrupt halt at my corner. A man clambered down from beside the driver and joined a truckman in the trailer behind. I took his place. The driver gave me a sheepskin coat whose collar reached above my head. He explained the route he took every Thursday, and I told him that a twenty-five mile detour would be necessary to get us in the neighborhood of Hubertshof. That would be all right, he said; he could easily make it by morning.

The roads were poor and the truck sped along at such a rate that I was jounced and jolted violently.

"We're going to have good roads soon," I said.

"Let 'em go to it," the driver replied. "What they build now we won't have to spend money on later."

I was curious to know whether he was a Party com rade but hesitated to ask. Once, when we were held up at a railway crossing, the two men in the trailer jumped down and called to the driver, "How about it, Max?"

"Not today," he called back.

Without a word they resumed their places.

"We generally stop here for a drink to warm ourselves," the driver explained to me.

It was about three in the morning when we found ourselves nearing Hubertshof. We drove along the high way which I had tramped so often with the old Dyke Squad Number Two. The place looked different under the glare of the headlights. I showed the driver where the footpath met the highway. About six hundred yards beyond, the fir forest, unusually dense at that point, grew close to the road. This was the place.

"Next Thursday," I said.

He nodded. We glanced at the clock. It was three seven. At six sharp we reached the place where the merchandise was to be delivered. The truck was to start back at seven by the same route, and to repass the spot I had pointed out at eleven.

I took the next train to Berlin and reported to Franz, who told me that I had been traveling with three Social Democrat workers.

Early Saturday morning I was awakened by a ring of doorbell. My ears had grown peculiarly sensitive to the. sound of doorbells since my arrest. I could hear Elisabeth talking to a man--then everything was quiet again. But I had grown restless and decided to get up. A telegram addressed to Anna lay on the little hall table.

"It must be for you," Anna called through the door.

I opened it and read: "Arrive Anhalter 8 PM kisses Friedl." It had been wired from the train.

"Anything important?" asked Anna.

"Kathe's coming tonight."

"Really! Marvelous!"

I had assured myself twenty times during the day that it would be sheer madness to meet Kathe myself, and arranged with Elisabeth to go to the train. Yet I fount myself standing beside the Anhalter Station shortly before eight. This was really too childish. I crossed Anhalterplatz to Anhalterstrasse and took a seat in the reading room of the Angriff, where, to punish myself for my undisciplined behavior, I made myself read a speech by Engel, leader of the Berlin Workers' Front--the "Brown Angel," ⁹ as the workers called him, who was blowing his own horn again with a vengeance. It wasn't till seven fifty that I crossed back to the station.

I decided against asking for a card of admission to the platform, and lurked instead among the shadows of the great hall. Suddenly I caught sight of Elisabeth passing through the gate with a lady whom I did not know. I followed them, overtook them at the side entrance where the taxis were stationed, and said hello. They turned, and the stranger fell on my neck. I never admitted after wards that I had not recognized her. It would have meant the utter loss of my domestic prestige. The only things about her that had kept their original color were the brown eyes. Everything else was platinum blonde.

"How do you like me, new German style?" she demanded.

"Like blood and soil," ¹⁰ I said.

We were to stay temporarily with a family of our acquaintance, from whom I had rented a room where we could live together without my having to report to the police. Kathe knew more about Germany than I did. She told me how ravenously the comrades in Paris devoured any news they could get from Germany. She told me that they were going on with the work, that our publications appeared there regularly, that they were in constant touch with the Party in the Reich. It was so long since we had seen each other, and our experiences had been so many and so varied, that we hardly knew where to begin to talk. Many comrades whom I had believed dead were safe abroad. Of others no news had been heard.

"How's this one? And that one? And the other?" And we were both anxious to hear far more about each of our friends than the other had to tell.

From Kathe I learned for the first time with what tremendous sympathy the workers of other countries had been watching our struggle. She wept with joy and pride when she told me how Dimitroff had turned the tables on the incendiaries in the Reichstag Fire trial, and from accused had become accuser. (I recalled the account in the Hubertshof Observer: "Dimitroff Insolent Again and Must Be Removed.") It was good to realize the international solidarity of the working class and to feel that we were not alone and forsaken.

Weigand had placed his car at Helling's disposal. I packed a few traveling essentials into a bag, called for the car at noon on Thursday, and parked in a side street off Alexanderplatz, near the suburban depot. Hans, rigged up in grand style and looking the complete gentleman driver, arrived at one. They could hardly get here before two. We crossed to a restaurant through whose windows we could watch the depot exit, and ordered lunch. I had described the Schieber to Hans in detail, though I wasn't sure myself that I should be able to recognize him at a glance. Heaven knows how they might have togged him out in the truck. Every few minutes a train would disgorge a crowd of people, and as they thronged through the narrow exit I tried to see how many faces I could scan before the crowd scattered on the street. We waited till two. Then we left the restaurant and Hans watched the car, while I--to give myself something to do--entered a tobacco shop and bought cigarettes, one eye always on the exit.

At two-thirty, Hans, blue with the cold, abandoned the car and joined me.

"Getting dark early," he remarked with a glance at the sky. "Looks like snow." We went to the automat for a cup of coffee.

Maybe he was in their clutches already, while we waited for him here. Maybe something had gone wrong in the forest at the very start. Senseless, to sit here brooding over all the details on which success depended. Start off on that tack, and of course you could not help realizing that it was a hundred-to-one chance. If only he hadn't left the train at some other point, if only he weren't waiting for us somewhere else! Maybe the truck had returned. We'd know at least then whether they brought him. Should I send Hans to Helling?

"There he is," Hans said casually.

I looked. There, from the depot, in a hat instead of the old cap, his sunken cheeks reddened by the cold, came the Schieber. Within half an hour we had left Berlin behind us and were speeding on our way to the border.

When darkness fell the Schieber changed his clothes completely. It was nearing eight when we stopped at a well-known health resort about thirty-five miles from the border. There was no sense in going any farther, since we were not expected at the rendezvous till the following noon. Hans, being the most elegant of the three, went to a hotel with the car, while the Schieber and I took modest tourist accommodations. We registered as Wilhelm and Rudolf Erhard, merchants from Breslau, here for the winter sports, and had supper sent up to our room. The Schieber scarcely touched his food.

"This goes against the grain--it's like deserting."

"You won't be gone long. Eat something."

"I can't. Those three fellows in the truck stuffed everything they had into me."

"Did they find you without any trouble?"

"It went like clockwork. They didn't even have to stop. I jumped on."

"And the guards?"

"I couldn't hear a sound behind me. They may not have discovered it till evening."

We were up early next morning, and walked across the mountain ridge to A., knapsacks strapped to our backs. At the first inn we met Hans. We went on to F., three miles from the border. Hans left the car in the hotel garage and, after lunching at the hotel, we continued on our way to the lodge, which was situated high in the mountains, close to the border.

We found a dozen or more guests assembled there, giving the place the gay, comradely air of a large, hap hazard family party. One of the men wore his left arm in a sling. He had sprained it while skiing. There was wonderful skiing country behind the-lodge, he told me --long, smooth slopes. You could reach R in half an hour. Had I ever been there? "No," I replied, "but my friend's anxious to go. Only he doesn't ski."

"Then well walk," he said. "Do you know Helling?"

They started out that afternoon.

The Schieber was pale.

THE END

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