Not for export, p.8
Not For Export, page 8
"What was the address?"
"I'm not telling you. You'll take the police there."
"What was the address?"
"I've forgotten."
"Oh, don't be silly," said Hambledon sharply. "I can talk, can't I, just as well as the old man's son?"
She collapsed at once. "I can't stand it," she whimpered, "being tried and standing up in front of everybody and people coming to swear lies about what I did. I had to do it, didn't I? You can't pick and choose——"
"What was the address?"
Strictly speaking, it was not an address in the ordinary sense, but detailed directions for finding one semi-basement room among ruins in a city largely composed of ruins with basement rooms under them. Spelmann made notes.
"And if I don't find it," said Hambledon, preparing to go, "you know what will happen to you, don't you?"
"They'll hang me and I can't run away—— Don't, don't. Why are you so cruel?"
"Cruel!" said Hambledon, and laughed. "That's good, from you. Come on, Spelmann."
They walked back through the ward; Weismuller had gone about his business but Sister Francisca was in her glass-walled office. Hambledon stopped and she came to the door.
"I only wished to thank you, madame."
"It is I who should thank you for your careful tact in coming dressed as you are. It was thoughtful and kind."
"Don't thank me," said Hambledon hastily. "I should not have thought of it; it was the Herr Chirurg Weissmuller who did that. I—that is—that woman—"
The Sister's tranquil look remained unaltered.
"That woman," Hambledon blundered on, "do you know anything about her? She ought not——"
The Sister's uplifted hand stopped him. "Please do not tell me, mein Herr. This is a place to which the sick come to be healed in body and that is the extent of my duty. Further than that I do not wish to know."
"You are wise as well as good, madame. Let me first offer one suggestion—do not let her talk to your young nuns. If she became confidential they might hear what would come between them and their prayers for the rest of their lives."
"Thank you," she said. "I will be careful. Though, do you think I have worked in this hospital for thirty years without learning to recognize evil when I see it?"
Hambledon and Spelmann bowed to her and went out, leaving their white coats in Weissmuller's room on their way.
"And the next step?" asked Spelmann. "You will not visit these three men unsupported?"
"Listen," said Hambledon patiently. "Do I remind you of Siegfried or St. George or even Douglas Fairbanks? Or do you take me for 'the portrait of a blinking idiot'? We will take with us an ample supply of large policemen. We are even now making for the head police station."
"Splendid," said Spelmann, and stepped out more confidently.
The entrance was down a flight of stone steps into a narrow area of a kind common in towns to provide light to basement rooms and a means of access to a tradesmen's entrance. There even remained some part of the railings which had once fenced off the unwary or unstable passer-by from an eight-foot drop. There was a door at the foot of the steps and a window beside it—the window was closely curtained.
Hambledon, Spelmann, a police sergeant, and three constables circled round the place and came to the back. Here they found a slope leading down to a back window, but no door; there were one or two rough steps cut in the slope.
"Emergency exit only," murmured Hambledon. The police sergeant gave a quiet order to two of his constables who slithered down the slope and took up their positions on either side of the window while the rest of the party returned to the front.
"Let us enquire," said Hambledon, "whether there is anyone at home." He moved toward the head of the steps but the police sergeant, politely begging to be excused the apparent rudeness, slipped in front of him and ran down the steps with his constable at his heels. They did not knock at the door, they turned the handle; the door opened and they went straight in, revolver in hand. There was a few moments' pause and then the police sergeant reappeared in the doorway and looked up at Hambledon and Spelmann on the steps.
"Nobody at home?" said Hambledon.
The police sergeant gulped, steadied his voice, and said, yes, in a sense, there was someone there. Hambledon pushed past him and entered the room with Spelmann close behind; as he did so the constable pulled back the curtain from the window and let a flood of daylight into the room. When he had done this he sidled out of the room, keeping his face to the wall as he did so, and distressed noises were heard from the passage outside.
There was a wooden armchair in the room and there was a man sitting in it. He could not fall out of the chair although he was quite dead, because he had been bound to it; his arms along the arms of the chair, his legs separately to the front chair legs, and there were, in addition, cords round his chest and the back of the chair. He had been comprehensively and disgustingly tortured.
"Young Karas?" said Hambledon, and stooped to look into the man's face, for his head hung forward. "No. Not Karas. Who is this poor devil?"
The police sergeant heard the question as he came into the room with a wooden face and a complete lack of expression. He also stooped over the body and said he was not sure but it might be Edberg. "One of my men knows him personally. I'll get him in."
Hambledon dragged down the window curtain to cover the body, leaving only the face exposed. One of the constables on duty at the back came in and identified the body as that of Karl Edberg.
"Quite sure?"
"No doubt at all, sir. I knew him well."
"Do you want him left here, sir?" asked the sergeant.
"Heavens, no," said Hambledon with a shudder. "Take it away and bury it. Oh, ask the police surgeon how long he's been dead. Put it outside somewhere, chair and all. I want to examine this room."
The chair and its occupant moved crabwise out of the room with a slow tread of heavy feet while Hambledon went to the window; failing to open it he took his automatic—a replacement of the one Ackermann took from him—from his pocket; smashed the glass out with the butt and drew long breaths of fresh air.
"Ah, that's better. Well, Spelmann?"
"He was worked on to make him talk, obviously."
"Obviously. And I should think he did talk before he died. If young Karas did that, he must have learned something in his concentration camp. Belsen, I suppose, since you notice he knew the Zingel woman's fatal secret."
"I suppose so. And what he wanted to know," said Spelmann, "was where the rest of the jewels are."
"Of course it was. He was avenging his father too, no doubt, but plain death would have done for that. This wasn't Gruiter, but as near as no matter. This case gets more like the ten little nigger boys with every passing day, doesn't it?"
"Indeed? I have not read the paper today."
"Read the paper?" said Hambledon, staring.
"Were you not referring to some item of news about ten Negro youths?"
"Oh, let it ride," said Tommy.
The room was poorly and scantily furnished with a truckle bed along one wall, a table under the window with a round mirror hanging above it and hairbrushes and shaving kit upon it, a small oilstove and a kettle, and three wooden chairs.
"Edberg's home, I think," said Tommy. "We have here the remains of the habit of personal smartness. He even owned a clothesbrush."
"There is a cupboard in the wall here," said Spelmann, moving towards it.
"Look out something nasty doesn't pop out and say boo."
"Nothing which merely popped and booed could be half so nasty as what we've already seen." Spelmann unlocked the door and opened it, there was a slithering sound and something did fall out on the floor. Spelmann picked it up.
"Gruiter's white stick. Here, I think, is the overcoat he was wearing. I wonder whether the dark glasses—— Yes, here they are in the pocket."
The cupboard was a tall, shallow one filling one side of the chimney breast; there were other garments hanging upon hooks besides Gruiter's blind-man overcoat, and they were neatly brushed and, where necessary, mended. There was a suitcase standing upright at the bottom and Spelmann passed it over to Hambledon, who opened it.
"Edberg's clothespress, this. Shirts, vest, socks," he said, lifting the things out one at a time and examining them singly. "By the way—I meant to ask you before—I suppose the woman who kept the little newspaper shop was questioned? The kind lady who helped the blind man down the steps."
"Oh, yes. She said a blind man did come in there sometimes and that she always helped him down the steps. She asked if it was a crime to help a blind man down steps. She didn't know who he was or anything about him, so she said. She was a hard-working shopkeeper, not a warty-nosed cop. Charged with allowing him to assume a disguise on her premises, she denied it indignantly and, since there was a back door leading to a yard with other houses behind, we could not prove that he had not simply walked through and come back. Mein Herr, there is something a little funny about this walking stick. It seems to be screwed together in sections and there is a small knob here in front of the handle which does not appear to serve——"
Hambledon spun round. Spelmann was holding the stick horizontally to examine the knob. He pressed it just as Tommy struck the stick up; there was a hard "plop" which sounded loud in that quiet room, and an air-gun slug sang over Hambledon's head and broke the last remaining pane in the window.
"Herr Gott!" gasped Spelmann, turning perfectly white. "I nearly shot you. Gütig Himmel, what a devil's contrivance—— Gnadig Herr, I shall never—"
"Cheer up," said Hambledon, taking the stick from his unresisting fingers, "there's no harm done. Even the window is not much worse than it was and at least we know now how poor old Karas was shot."
"Oh," said Spelmann, dropping into a chair to wipe his agitated forehead, "if a merciful Providence had not prompted you to turn round just now—"
"It wasn't a merciful Providence," said Hambledon. "At least, Providence may have reminded me, but when you talked about screwed sections and a knob, I suddenly remembered a jumble sale in the vicarage garden when I was a lad. Somebody sent in a stick like this and there was a pumplike attachment with it. I found out how it worked and tried it out and potted the gardener, I remember. My father took reprisals. There ought to be a pump here somewhere——"
"On the floor in the cupboard," said Spelmann, diving for it like a terrier. "A brass one, very neat."
"That's it," said Hambledon. He made to unscrew the stick for a demonstration and then changed his mind. "I'll try this tonight, from my bedroom window, on the rats. In the meantime, I thought I felt something in these socks just as you——"
He unrolled a pair of socks and there slid out upon the table a gold chain bracelet with a diamond in every link.
8. FIVE RABBITS LOOSE
Spelmann replaced his beret with a regrettable cloth cap, and his shabby raincoat with a shabbier overcoat, and prowled the streets of Berlin looking for Ackermann and Gruiter. He learned to know the city as few men know it except the police. He made a number of disreputable but interesting friends and acquired a great deal of miscellaneous information; he went across into the Russian zone on several occasions and returned unmolested, which is quite easy if one looks miserable enough; he even took to following to their private haunts any man or woman who, he thought, looked tough and conscienceless enough to be their associates, whereby he ran far greater risks than ever he did from the Russians, but he found not the slightest trace of Gruiter or Ackermann.
"I think we're at a dead end here," said Hambledon. "We'd much better go back to Königswinter and ask the Fraulein Anna Knipe a few searching questions."
"There is something here, in Berlin," said Spelmann passionately. "I feel it here." And he patted his fourth waistcoat button. "When I feel it here, it is so."
"My own diaphragm," said Hambledon, "is devoid of inspiration at the moment. Besides, I'm getting bored. Besides again, this looks like being a common or garden jewel robbery, even though there is nothing either common or garden about the jewels. You don't want me, you want your own excellent, highly trained, intelligent, and incorruptible police. They will do the work not only as well as I, but far better; it's their job, it's not mine. Call up your minions and let's go home. I have a home, believe it or not, and it's in London, not Berlin. I prefer London. Let's go and have one more glass of Drachensblut at the Im Tubac at Königswinter——"
"One more day," pleaded Spelmann. "Just one more day."
"Very well," said Tommy, looking at his watch. "Another twenty-four hours, and if you haven't produced a rabbit or so out of your hat by then, I shall ring up the airport and start packing my shirts."
"That is the trouble," said Spelmann sadly. "These people are not rabbits." He rubbed the peak of his cap to encourage a little more of the stiffening to show through the worn cloth, adjusted it at a despondent angle, and went out into the sunset.
There were two young men of Berlin's underworld also setting out upon their evening prowl at about that time. They had no particular object in view that night except the one object which they had always before them, money; and any method of getting it, from calling a taxi to breaking a bank, seemed equally good to them.
Some hours later, they were strolling together along a street near the Eastern zone border and stopped at a corner to look about them; their attitude was idle enough but their eyes and ears were busy.
A tall, thin man, reasonably well dressed and carrying an obviously full brief case, came along the pavement and turned the corner at which they were standing. He glanced at them in passing and went on. The young men looked at his brief case and at each other and turned, without a word, to follow him. Before they had started, two more men came by the way the first had come and also turned the corner; they were so busy talking to each other that they took no notice at all of the young hoodlums on the pavement but merely brushed past and hurried on. Their voices were low, but audible enough for the young men to recognize the language though they could not understand the words.
"Russkis," said one out of the corner of his mouth in the approved manner. The other nodded and they fell in behind. Something profitable can occasionally be done about Russians in the Western zone. So the little company proceeded; one tall man in front, striding easily, two Russians hurrying after him, and two Berlin thugs following them.
Spelmann, who had been lounging in a doorway looking forlorn and watching the Berliners, murmured something under his breath and drifted unhurriedly behind. He had a long stride for his height and walked faster than one would think to look at him.
Further along the street, ahead of the tall man, there was a check point in operation. This consisted, informally but quite efficiently, of four or five policemen standing in a group watching the passers-by and stopping one and another with a request to see their papers. These would be given up, scanned, and returned with a word of thanks, after which the owner would go his way. Check points are put into operation in Berlin frequently as a matter of routine; they are a help in picking up people of no known address who may have something useful to say, they are useful in providing information about newcomers to the city, and sometimes a big fish swims carelessly into the net.
Spelmann crossed the road to the opposite pavement and quickened his pace, the better to see what happened. The tall man saw the police and put his hand in an inside pocket for his papers, if required, as unconcernedly as a season-ticket traveller producing his pass for the eight-fifteen every morning. The two Russians also saw the police, hesitated momentarily, and vanished into doorways. It was done so quickly that Spelmann blinked; they were and then they were not. The two young Berliners slackened their pace to a stroll and crossed the road to Spelmann's side; this time they were behind him.
The tall man came up to the check point and stopped at once when one of the police addressed him.
"Your papers, please, mein Herr."
"Certainly," said the tall man. He gave them up with a smile and stood waiting calmly for their return. The police constable who had taken them gave them to the sergeant for examination, he unfolded them and looked attentively at them. Spelmann loitered along the opposite pavement and the two Berliners stopped to light cigarettes.
The police sergeant came forward, papers in hand. What he said was inaudible, but the tall man's voice was clear and carrying and his words were plain to hear.
"What? Nonsense. How dare you stop me?"
The police sergeant was understood to say that something or other was "no use," but the tall man persisted and two constables closed on him, one on either hand.
"I am Gustav Renzow," said the tall man, "on my way to American Headquarters. You will regret this."
Spelmann, now abreast, stopped dead, and the two Berlin youths joined him on the edge of the pavement. One of the police attempted to take the tall man's brief case from his hand, he resisted energetically and there was something of a struggle. Other passers-by naturally became interested and a small crowd, including Spelmann and the youths, formed round the combatants. The struggle was too one sided to last; the brief case was handed to the sergeant, and the two constables held the prisoner firmly by both arms.
"This is an outrage. I will complain to the——"
"I merely obey my orders, mein Herr, which are to arrest and detain for questioning any person carrying the papers of Gustav Renzow. If there has been a mistake in identity, it will be corrected at the police station. Schmidt, ring through for the van."
The prisoner was hustled into an archway behind the sergeant and Constable Schmidt went into action with a walkie-talkie wireless set. The sergeant turned his back upon the crowd, opened the brief case, and plunged his hand into it. His formal gesture towards privacy was made ineffectual by the street lamp over his head; it was quite obvious that what he was pulling out were neat, fat bundles of Western zone notes.
