Unknown - Isherwood, Christopher (The Berlin Stories - The Last of Mr Norris - Goodbye to Berlin) (TXT)

“We needed more men like old Arthur in the Party. He was a speaker, if you like!”

His enthusiasm warmed Frl. Schroeder’s heart. The tears stood in her eyes.

“I always shall say Herr Norris was one of the best and finest and straightest gentlemen I ever knew.”

We were all silent. In the twilit room we dedicated a grateful, reverent moment to Arthur’s memory. Then Otto continued in a tone of profound conviction:

“Do you know what I think? He’s working for us out there, making propaganda and raising money; and one day, you’ll see, he’ll come back. Hitler and the rest of them will have to look out for themselves then… .”

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It was getting dark outside. Frl. Schroeder rose to turn on the light. Otto said he must be going. He’d decided to make a start this evening now that he was feeling rested. By daybreak, he’d be clear of Berlin altogether. Frl. Schroeder protested vigorously. She had taken a great fancy to him.

“Nonsense, Herr Otto. You’ll sleep here tonight. You need a thorough rest. Those Nazis will never find you here. They’d have to cut me into little pieces first.”

Otto smiled and thanked her warmly, but he wasn’t to be persuaded. We had to let him go. Frl. Schroeder filled his pockets with sandwiches. I gave him three handkerchiefs, an old penknife, and a map of Germany printed on a postcard which had been slipped in through our letter-box to advertise a firm of bicycle makers. Even this would be better than nothing, for Otto’s geography was alarmingly weak. Un-guided, he would probably have found himself heading for Poland. I wanted to give him some money, too. At first he wouldn’t hear of it, and I had to resort to the disingenuous argument that we were brother communists. “Besides,” I added craftily, “you can pay me back.” We shook hands solemnly on this.

He was astonishingly cheerful at parting. From his manner you would have supposed that it was we who needed encouragement, not he.

“Cheer up, Willi. Don’t you worry … Our time will come.”

“Of course it will. Goodbye, Otto. Good luck.”

“Goodbye.”

We watched him set off, from my window. Frl. Schroeder had begun to sniff.

Toor boy … Do you think he’s got a chance, Herr Bradshaw? I declare I shan’t sleep the whole night, thinking about him. It’s as if he were my own son.”

Otto turned once to look back; he waved his hand jauntily and smiled. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and strode rapidly away, with the heavy, agile gait of a boxer, down the long dark street and

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into the lighted square, to be lost amidst the sauntering crowds of his enemies.

I never saw or heard of him again.

Three weeks later I returned to England.

I had been in London nearly a month, when Helen Pratt came round to see me. She had arrived back from Berlin the day before, having triumphantly succeeded, with a series of scalding articles, in getting the sale of her periodical forbidden throughout Germany. Already she’d been offered a much better job in America. She was sailing within a fortnight to attack New York.

She exuded vitality, success and news. The Nazi Revolution had positively given her a new lease of life. To hear her talk, you might have thought she had spent the last two months hiding in Dr. Goebbels’ writing-desk or under Hitler’s bed. She had the details of every private conversation and the low-down on every scandal. She knew what Schacht had said to Norman, what von Papen had said to Meissner, what Schleicher might shortly be expected to say to the Crown Prince. She knew the amounts of Thyssen’s cheques. She had new stories about Roehm, about Heines, about Goring and his uniforms. “My God, Bill, what a racket!” She talked for hours.

Exhausted at last of all the misdeeds of the great, she started on the lesser fry.

“I suppose you heard all about the Pregnitz affair, didn’t you?”

“No. Not a word.”

“Gosh, you are behind the times!” Helen brightened at the prospect of yet another story. “Why, that can’t have been more than a week after you left. They kept it fairly quiet, of course, in the papers. A pal of mine on the New York Herald gave me all the dope.”

But, on this occasion, the dope wasn’t all on Helen’s side. Naturally, she didn’t know everything about van Hoorn. The temptation to fill out the gaps in her story, or, at least, to be—

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tray my knowledge of them, was considerable. Thank goodness, I didn’t yield to it. She was no more to be trusted with news than a cat with a saucer of milk. And, indeed, I was astonished how much her resourceful colleague had found out on his own account.

The police must have been keeping Kuno under observation ever since our Swiss visit. Their patience had certainly been remarkable, because, for three whole months, he had done absolutely nothing to arouse their suspicions. Then, quite suddenly, at the beginning of April, he had got into communication with Paris. He was ready, he said, to reconsider the business they had discussed. His first letter was short and carefully vague; a week later, under pressure from van Hoorn, he wrote a much longer one, giving explicit details of what he proposed to sell. He sent it by special messenger, taking all due precautions and employing a code. Within a few hours, the police had deciphered every word.

They went round to arrest him that afternoon at his flat. Kuno was out, having tea with a friend. His manservant had just time to telephone to him a guarded warning, before the detectives took possession. Kuno seems to have lost his head completely. He did the worst thing possible: jumped into a taxi and drove straight to the Zoo Station. The plain-clothes men there recognized him at once. They’d been supplied with his description that very morning, and who could mistake Kuno? Cruelly enough, they let him buy a ticket for the next available train; it happened to be going to Frankfurt-on-the-Oder. As he went up the steps to the platform, two detectives came forward to arrest him; but he was ready for that, and bolted down again. The exits were all guarded, of course. Kuno’s pursuers Tost him in the crowd; caught sight of him again as he ran through the swing doors into the lavatory. By the time they had elbowed their way through the people, he had already locked himself into one of the closets. (“The newspapers,” said Helen, scornfully, “called it a telephone-box.”) The detectives ordered him to come out. He wouldn’t answer. Finally, they had to clear the

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whole place and get ready to break down the door. It was then that Kuno shot himself.

“And he couldn’t even make a decent job of that,” Helen added. “Fired crooked. Nearly blew his eye out; bled like a pig. They had to take him to hospital to finish him off.”

“Poor devil.”

Helen looked at me curiously.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I should have said.”

“You see,” I apologetically confessed, “I knew him, slightly …”

“Well, I’m blowed! Did you? Sorry. I must say, Bill, you’re a nice little chap, but you do have some queer friends. Well, this ought to interest you, then. You knew Pregnitz was a fairy, of course?”

“I rather guessed something of the kind.”

“Well, my pal got on to the inside story of why Pregnitz went in for this treason racket at all. He needed cash quickly, you see, because he was being blackmailed. And who, do you think, was doing the blackmailing? None other than the secretary of another dear old friend of yours, Harris.”

“Norris?”

“That’s right. Well, it seems that this precious secretary … what was his name, by the way?”

“Schmidt.”

“Was it? I dare say. Just suits him… . Schmidt had got hold of a lot of letters Pregnitz had written to some youth. God alone knows how. Pretty hot stuff they must have been, if Pregnitz was prepared to risk his skin to pay for them. Shouldn’t have thought it was worth it myself. Rather face the music. But these people never have any guts… .”