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industrial districts, desiring to be in touch with the workers; and this of course made them

conspicuous. He hesitated for some time, but finally drove to the place, a vast area of six-story

tenements, neater than such buildings would have been in any other land. Almost with out

exception there were flower-boxes in the windows; the German people didn't take readily to the

confinements of city life, and each wanted a bit of country.

A few months ago there had been civil war in these streets; the Brownshirts had marched and

the workers had hurled bottles and bricks from the rooftops; meetings had been raided and

party workers dragged away and slugged. But now all that was over; the promise of the Horst

Wessel Lied had been kept and the streets were free to the brown battalions. The whole

appearance of the neighborhood had changed; the people no longer lived on the streets, even in

this brightest spring weather; the children stayed in their rooms, and the women with their

market-baskets traveled no farther than they had to, and watched with furtive glances as they

went.

Lanny parked his car around the corner and walked to the house.

He looked for the name Schultz and did not find it, so he began knocking on doors and

inquiring. He couldn't find a single person who would admit having heard of Ludi and Trudi

Schultz. He was quite sure from their manner that this wasn't so; but they were afraid of him.

Whether he was a Socialist or a spy, he was dangerous, and "Weiss nichts" was all he could get.

Doubtless there were "comrades" in the building, but they had "gone underground," and you

had to know where to dig in order to find them. It was no job for "parlor Pinks," and nobody

wanted one to meddle with it.

V

Lanny went back to the hotel and continued his vigil. Sooner or later a note or a telephone

message was bound to come, and this painful business of guessing and imagining would end. He

went downstairs for a haircut, and when he came back he found his wife in a state of

excitement. "Mama called!" she whispered. "She has to buy some gloves at Wertheim's, and I'm to

meet her there in half an hour."

Irma had already ordered the car, so they went down, and while they were driving they

planned their tactics. Irma would go in alone, because the meeting of two women would be less

conspicuous. "Better not speak to her," suggested Lanny. "Let her see you and follow you out.

I'll drive round the block and pick you up."

The wife of Johannes Robin didn't need any warning as to danger; she was back in old

Russia, where fear had been bred into her bones. When Irma strolled down the aisle of the

great department store, Mama was asking prices, a natural occupation for an elderly Jewish

lady. She followed at a distance, and when Irma went out onto the street and Lanny came

along they both stepped into the car. "Where is Freddi?" she whispered with her first breath.

"We have not heard from him," said Lanny, and she cried: "Ach, Gott der Gerechte!" and hid

her face in her hands and began to sob.

Lanny hastened to say: "We have got things fixed up about Papa. He's all right, and is to be

allowed to leave Germany, with you and the others." That comforted her, but only for a

minute. She was like the man who has an hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray,

and he leaves the ninety and nine and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is

gone astray. "Oh, my poor lamb, what have they done to him?"

The mother hadn't heard a word from her son since he had called Lanny, and then written

her a comforting note. She had been doing just what Lanny had been doing, waiting, numb

with fear, imagining calamities. Freddi had forbidden her to call the Budds or to go near them,

and she had obeyed for as long as she could stand it. "Oh, my poor darling, my poor baby!"

It was a painful hour they spent. The good soul, usually so sensible, so well adjusted to her

routine of caring for those she loved, was now in a state of near distraction; her mind was as if in

a nightmare, obsessed by all the horror stories which were being whispered among the Jews in

the holes where they were hiding, apart from the rest of Germany. Stories of bodies found every

day in the woods or dragged out of the lakes and canals of Berlin; suicides or murdered people

whose fates would never be known, whose names were not mentioned in the press. Stories of the

abandoned factory in the Friedrichstrasse which the Nazis had taken over, and where they now

brought their victims to beat and torture them. The walls inside that building were soaked

with human blood; you could walk by it and hear the screams—but you had best walk quickly!

Stories of the concentration camps, where Jews, Communists, and Socialists were being made to

dig their own graves in preparation for pretended executions; where they underwent every

form of degradation which brutes and degenerates were able to devise—forced to roll about in

the mud, to stick their faces into their own excrement, to lash and beat one another insensible,

thus saving labor for the guards. "Oi, oi!" wailed the poor mother, and begged the Herrgott to

let her son be dead.

Only one thing restrained her, and that was consideration for her kind friends. "I have no

right to behave like this!" she would say. "It is so good of you to come and try to help us poor

wretches. And of course Freddi would want us to go away, and to live the best we can without

him. Do you really believe the Nazis will turn Papa loose?"

Lanny didn't tell her the story; he just said: "It will cost a lot of money"—he guessed that

would help to make it real to her mind. She couldn't expect any kindness of these persecutors,

but she would understand that they wanted money.

"Oh, Lanny, it was a mistake that we ever had so much! I never thought it could last. Let it all

go—if only we can get out of this terrible country."

"I want to get you out, Mama, and then I'll see what can be done about Freddi. I haven't

dared to try meantime, because it may make more trouble for Papa. If I can get four of you out

safely, I know that is what Freddi would want."

"Of course he would," said Mama. "He thought about everybody in the world but himself. Oi,

my darling, my little one, my Schatz! You know, Lanny, I would give my life in a minute if I

could save him. Oh, we must save him!"

"I know, Mama; but you have to think about the others. Papa is going to have to start life

over, and will need your counsel as he did in the old days. Also, don't forget that you have

Freddi's son."

"I cannot believe any good thing, ever again! I cannot believe that any of us will ever get out of

Germany alive. I cannot believe that God is still alive."

VI

Oberleutnant Furtwaengler telephoned, reporting that the prisoner had signed the necessary

documents and that the arrangements were in process of completion. He asked what Lanny

intended to do with him, and Lanny replied that he would take the family to Belgium as soon as

he was at liberty to do so. The businesslike young officer jotted down the names of the persons

and said he would have the exit permits and visas ready on time.

It would have been natural for Lanny to say: "Freddi Robin is missing. Please find him and

put me in touch with him." But after thinking and talking it over for days and nights, he had

decided that if Freddi was still alive, he could probably survive for another week or two, until the