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entertainment if he expected others to furnish it to him.

II

Newspapers had been forbidden in the prison during this crisis; but you could get all sorts of

things if you had the price, and the Hungarian had managed to secure the Münchner Zeitung

of Monday. He permitted Lanny to have a look at it, standing against the wall alongside the

door, so as to be out of sight of any warder who might happen to peer through the square

opening in the door; if he started to unlock the door Lanny would hear him and slip the paper

under the mattress or stuff it into his trousers. Under these romantic circumstances he read

the flaming headlines of a radio talk in which his friend Joseph Goebbels had told the German

people the story of that dreadful Saturday of blood and terror. Juppchen had been traveling

about the Rheinland with the Führer, dutifully inspecting labor-camps, and he now went into

details, in that spirit of melodrama combined with religious adoration which it was his job to

instill into the German people. Said crooked little Juppchen:

"I still see the picture of our Führer standing at midnight on Friday evening on the terrace of

the Rhein Hotel in Godesberg and in the open square a band of the Western German Labor

Service playing. The Führer looks seriously and meditatively into the dark sky that has

followed a refreshing thunderstorm. With raised hand he returns the enthusiastic greetings of

the people of the Rheinland . . . In this hour he is more than ever admired by us. Not a quiver

in his face reveals the slightest sign of what is going on within him. Yet we few people who stand

by him in all difficult hours know how deeply he is grieved and also how determined to deal

mercilessly in stamping out the reactionary rebels who are trying to plunge the country into

chaos, and breaking their oath of loyalty to him under the slogan of carrying out a 'Second

Revolution.'"

Dispatches come from Berlin and Munich which convince the Führer that it is necessary to

act instantly; he telephones orders for the putting down of the rebels, and so: "Half an hour

later a heavy tri-motored Junkers plane leaves the aviation field near Bonn and disappears into

the foggy night. The clock has just struck two. The Führer sits silently in the front seat of the

cabin and gazes fixedly into the great expanse of darkness."

Arriving in Munich at four in the morning they find that the traitorous leaders have already

been apprehended. "In two brisk sentences of indignation and contempt Herr Hitler throws

their whole shame into their fearful and perplexed faces. He then steps to one of them and rips

the insignia of rank from his uniform. A very hard but deserved fate awaits them in the

afternoon."

The center of the conspiracy is known to be in the mountains, and so a troop of loyal S.S.

men have been assembled, and, narrates Dr. Juppchen, "at a terrific rate the trip to Wiessee is

begun." He gives a thrilling account of the wild night ride, by which, at six in the morning

"without any resistance we are able to enter the house and surprise the conspirators, who are

still sleeping, and we arouse them immediately. The Führer himself makes the arrest with a

courage that has no equal . . . I may be spared a description of the disgusting scene that lay

before us. A simple S.S. man, with an air of indignation, expresses our thoughts, saying: 'I only

wish that the walls would fall down now, so that the whole German people could be a

witness to this act.'"

The radio orator went on to tell what had been happening in Berlin. "Our party comrade,

General Göring, has not hesitated. With a firm hand he has cleared up a nest of reactionaries and

their incorrigible supporters. He has taken steps that were hard but necessary in order to save the

country from immeasurable disaster."

There followed two newspaper columns of denunciation in which the Reichsminister of Popular

Enlightenment and Propaganda used many adjectives to praise the nobility and heroism of his

Führer, "who has again shown in this critical situation that he is a Real Man." A quite different

set of adjectives was required for the "small clique of professional saboteurs," the "boils, seats

of corruption, the symptoms of disease and moral deterioration that show themselves in

public life," and that now have been "burned out to the flesh."

"The Reich is there," concluded Juppchen, "and above all our Führer."

III

Such was the story told to the German people. Lanny noticed the curious fact that not once

did the little dwarf name one of the victims of the purge; he didn't even say directly that

anybody had been killed! As a specimen of popular fiction there was something to be said for

his effusion, but as history it wouldn't rank high. Lanny could nail one falsehood, for he knew

that Hugo Behr had been shot at a few minutes after nine on Friday evening, which was at

least three hours before the Führer had given his orders, according to the Goebbels account.

The jail buzzed with stories of other persons who had been killed or arrested before

midnight; in fact some had been brought to this very place. Evidently somebody had given the

fatal order while the Führer was still inspecting labor camps.

It was well known that Göring had flown to the Rheinland with his master, and had then

flown back to Berlin. Hermann was the killer, the man of action, who took the "steps that were

hard but necessary," while Adi was still hesitating and arguing, screaming at his followers,

threatening to commit suicide if they didn't obey him, falling down on the floor and biting the

carpet in a hysteria of bewilderment or rage. Lanny became clear in his mind that this was the

true story of the "Blood Purge." Göring had sat at Hitler's ear in the plane and terrified him

with stories of what the Gestapo had uncovered; then, from Berlin, he had given the orders,

and when it was too late to reverse them he had phoned the Führer, and the latter had flown to

Munich to display "a courage that has no equal," to show himself to the credulous German people

as "a Real Man."

The official statement was that not more than fifty persons had been killed in the three days

and nights of terror; but the gossip in the Ettstrasse was that there had been several hundred

victims in Munich alone, and it turned out that the total in Germany was close to twelve

hundred. This and other official falsehoods were freely discussed, and the jail buzzed like a

beehive. Human curiosity broke down the barriers between jailers and jailed; they whispered

news to one another, and an item once put into circulation was borne by busy tongues to

every corner of the institution. In the corridors you were supposed to walk alone and not to

talk; but every time you passed other prisoners you whispered something, and if it was a tidbit

you might share it with one of the keepers. Down in the exercise court the inmates were

supposed to walk in silence, but the man behind you mouthed the news and you passed it on to

the man in front of you.

And when you were in your cell, there were sounds of tapping; tapping on wood, on stone,

and on metal; tapping by day and most of the night; quick tapping for the experts and slow

tapping for the new arrivals. In the cell directly under Lanny was a certain Herr Doktor

Obermeier, a former Ministerialdirektor of the Bavarian state, well known to Herr Klaussen.

He shared the same water-pipes as those above him, and was a tireless tapper. Lanny learned