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always carry in his memory. When the storm of the orchestra drowned out Hansi's fiddle, the

listener was leaping to a mountain-top and from it to the next.

Others must have been having the same sort of adventure, for when the last note sounded

they started to their feet and tried to tell the artist about it. Lanny saw that his brother-in-law

had won a triumph. Such a sweet, gentle fellow he was, flushed from his exertions, but even

thinner than usual, showing the strain under which he was living. People seemed to realize

that here was one who was not going to be spoiled by adulation. He wasn't going to enjoy

himself and his own glory, he would never become blase and bored; he would go on loving his

art and serving it. Nobody in that hall failed to know that he was a Jew, and that this was a

time of anguish for his people. Such anti-Semitism as there was in Paris was not among the

art-lovers, and to shout "Bravo!" at this young virtuoso was to declare yourself for the cause

of freedom and human decency.

Lanny thought about the great composer, friend of mankind and champion of the oppressed.

His concerto had been played badly in his own lifetime, and what a revelation it would

have been to him to hear it rendered by a soloist and a conductor, neither having a score. But

then Lanny thought: "What would Beethoven think if he could see what is happening in the

land of his birth?" So the dreams of art fled, and painful reality took their place. Lanny

thought: "The German soul has been captured by Hitler! What can he give it but his own

madness and distraction? What can he make of it but an image of his distorted self?"

X

Hansi always wanted to be taken straight home after a performance; he was exhausted, and

didn't care for sitting around in cafes. He entered the palace and was about to go to his room,

when the telephone rang; Berlin calling, and Hansi said: "That will be Papa, wanting to know

how the concert went."

He was right, and told his father that everything had gone well. Johannes didn't ask for

particulars; instead he had tidings to impart. "The Reichstag building is burning."

"Herrgott!" exclaimed the son, and turned and repeated the words to the others.

"The Nazis are saying that the Communists set fire to it."

"But, Papa, that is crazy!"

"I must not talk about it. You will find the news in the papers, and do your own guessing. The

building has been burning for a couple of hours, and they say that men were seen running

through it with torches."

"It is a plot!" exclaimed Hansi.

"I cannot say; but I am glad that you are not here. You must stay where you are for the

present. It is a terrible thing."

So Hansi did not go to bed for a long while. They sat and talked, and Lanny, who had

friends on Le Populaire, called up that paper to get further details. It was believed that the

great building was gutted, and the government was charging that it had been deliberately fired

by emissaries of the Red International.

All four of the young people were familiar with that elaborate specimen of the Bismarck style

of architecture, and could picture the scenes, both there and elsewhere in the city. "It is a

frame-up," said Bess. "Communists are not terrorists." Lanny agreed with her, and Irma,

whatever she thought, kept it to herself. It was inevitable that every Communist would call it a

plot, and every Nazi would be equally certain of the opposite.

"Really, it is too obvious!" argued Hansi. "The elections less than six days away, and those

scoundrels desperate for some means of discrediting us!"

"The workers will not be fooled!" insisted Bess. "Our party is monolithic."

Lanny thought: "The old phonograph record!" But he said: "It's a terrible thing, as Papa

says. They will be raiding Communist headquarters all over Germany tonight. Be glad that you

have a good alibi."

But neither of the musicians smiled at this idea. In their souls they were taking the blows

which they knew must be falling upon their party comrades.

XI

What happened in the Reichstag building on that night of February 27 would be a subject of

controversy inside and outside of Germany for years to come; but there could be no doubt

about what happened elsewhere. Even while the four young people were talking in Paris, the

leader of the Berlin S.A., Count Helldorf, was giving orders for the arrest of prominent

Communists and Socialists.

The list of victims had been prepared in advance, and warrants, each with a photograph of

the victim in question. The Count knew that the Marxists were the criminals, he said; and

Goring announced that the demented Dutchman who was found in the building with matches

and fire-lighters had a Communist party membership card on him. The statement turned out

to be untrue, but it served for the moment.

Next day Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to sign a decree "for the safeguarding of the state

from the Communist menace," and after that the Nazis had everything their own way. The

prisons were filled with suspects, and the setting up of concentration camps began with a

rush. The Prussian government, of which Goring was the head, issued a statement concerning

the documents found in the raid on Karl Liebknecht Haus three days before the fire. The

Communists had been plotting to burn down public buildings throughout Germany, and to

start civil war and revolution on the Russian model; looting had been planned to begin right

after the fire and terrorist acts were to be committed against persons and property. The

publication of these documents was promised, but no one ever saw them, and the story was

dropped as soon as it had served its purpose—which was to justify the abolishing of civil

liberties throughout what had been the German Republic.

XII

As the evidence began to filter into the newspapers of Britain and France, the young Reds

and Pinks spent many an hour trying to make up their minds about one of the great "frame-

ups" of history. What brain had conceived it? What hand had carried it out? For the former

role their suspicions centered upon a German World War aviator who had fled to Sweden,

where he had become a dope addict and had been in a psychopathic institution. Hermann

Goring was a great hulk of a man, absurdly vain, with a fondness for gaudy uniforms which

was to make him the butt of Berlin wits; he was also a man of immense energy, brutal and

unscrupulous, the perfect type of those freebooters who had ravaged the borders of the German

empire in medieval times, had given themselves titles, and now had huge white marble statues of

themselves in the Siegesallee, known to the Berlin wits as "the Cemetery of Art."

Hermann Goring had got his titles: Minister without Portfolio, Federal Commissioner for Air

Transport, Prussian Minister of the Interior. They carried the same grants of power as in the

old free-booting days, but unfortunately they were subject to elections; on the following

Sunday the proletariat might go to the polls and strip Hermann of his glories—and this would

be extremely annoying to a man of aristocratic tastes, a friend of the former Crown Prince and

of Thyssen. As it happened, the man of action was in position to act, for his official residence

was connected with the Reichstag building by a long underground passage; also he had at his

command a well-trained army, eager to execute any command he might give. What did a

building amount to, in comparison with the future of the.N.S.D.A.P.?