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hundred marks for his trouble—and the risk, of course. Dealing with a Jew, naughty. Helping a

Jew to evade the law, very naughty.”

Four days later he learned from his agents in Brussels that an hundred-mark note, bearing

one of the numbers quoted, had been changed into Belgian money on March 29th last by a Jew

named Reuben Schwartz, who was now living in rooms in the Street of the Candle at Brussels,

having apparently settled there.

“Splendid,” said Tommy Hambledon, and sent two of his police to bring him the person

of Rolf Weinecke from Aachen, instantly, in haste. Next morning Rolf Weinecke, ruffled and

uneasy, was shown into Hambledon’s office. Hambledon did not ask him to sit down, but sent

the troopers away and came straight to the point in a voice as hard and cold as stone.

“You are Rolf Weinecke from Aachen?”

“Yes, sir. May I ask—”

“No. I will do all the asking that may be needed. On Friday, March the 25th last, you

went to your bank in Aachen and drew out the sum of eighteen thousand five hundred marks.”

“I believe I did, but—”

“I know you did. This sum was made up of thirty-seven hundred-mark notes, fifty-six

fifty-mark notes, and the rest in tens to the value of twelve thousand marks.”

The man merely looked at him.

“This money was the proceeds of the sale of bearer bonds which you deposited with the

bank about ten months ago.”

“That is so,” said Weinecke. “The bonds were—”

“You transferred the thirty-seven hundred-mark notes to a Jew named Reuben Schwartz,

at present living in the Rue de la Bougie, Brussels.”

“But, sir, that is—”

“You were about to admit that that is a crime against the State. Are you aware of the

penalties attaching to it?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“But what?”

“But there are so many people—it is so often done,” stammered the man.

“It will be done a lot less in future, believe me. While I am Chief of Police I will not

tolerate such irregularities, perhaps if an example is made in a few flagrant cases such as yours, it

will be realized that I mean what I say. This practice will stop,” said Hambledon incisively, and

banged the table.

Weinecke looked as though if he had much more of this his knees would give way.

“But, sir, I am a good German and a good Nazi. I pay all the taxes without grumbling, I

subscribe to Party funds, I give generously to the Winter Help—”

“You cannot buy the right to sin,” said Hambledon magnificently, “with these

subscriptions. No man is a good German who gives help to the enemies of his country as you

have done. The Jew, the Jew, always the Jew behind these abuses.” (“Streicher ought to hear me

now,” he thought.) “What is there about these Jews that you must defile yourself by serving

them? One would think you were a Jew yourself.”

Weinecke’s face turned green with terror. He had never liked his Jewish grandmother;

when he was a little boy that heavy white face, the dark smouldering eyes, the hooked nose

approaching the jutting chin, had seemed to him to embody all he had heard of witches; and the

strange unknown rites from which he was rigidly excluded, but of which he heard garbled

accounts from his Lutheran nurse, were doubtless witchcraft. The fact was that his mother hated

her husband’s Jewish connection and imbued the boy with her prejudices. Later in his life

Weinecke realized that most of his ideas about the Jews were childish nonsense and his

hysterical dislike reacted into a sort of inquisitive sympathy, but by that time his parents and the

old grandmother were dead, and as he had never had any intercourse with his Jewish cousins the

connection had dropped. It was, he believed, entirely unknown by the time the anti-Jewish

agitation began in Germany. He would help a Jew if he could, just as he would a non-Jew, that is

to say, if there were any money to be made out of it, but admit a Jewish connection, never, never.

And now here was this terrible and powerful man, who knew everything, dragging out this

ghastly secret also and shaking it in his face. His knees bent inwards, his back curved, his

shoulders went up in spite of all efforts to straighten himself, and his eyes showed a line of white

all along below the iris.

Tommy Hambledon watched this in amazement, for he had no idea that there was any

truth in a suggestion he had merely thrown out to frighten the man. “I must be getting Jews on

the brain,” he thought. “The creature’s turning into one before my eyes.”

“Oh, I am not, gracious sir,” protested Weinecke, “I am Aryan all through.”

“Protest that to the court when you are brought before it. You must know that it will be

quite easy to prove you are a Jew,” said Hambledon, meaning merely that the evidence could be

fabricated if necessary, but Weinecke took the words as proof that his ancestry was known. He

still denied it, however, hysterically.

“I am not,” he shrieked, instinctively turning up his palms in the age-old gesture of

protest. “Revered sir, I am not, on the head of my father I swear—”

He stopped abruptly. On the head of my father, what evil demon had put the betraying

phrase into his mouth? Tommy Hambledon leaned back in his chair. Evidently his chance arrow

had sunk to the feather and he had got this man where he wanted him.

“You see,” said the Chief of Police loftily, “it is useless to try to deceive the Reich. I

think you are in rather bad case, Herr Rolf Weinecke.”

The man actually fell on his knees. “I am a good Nazi, all the same,” he wailed. “I never

liked them—the Jews, I mean. It was only my grandmother, I couldn’t help my grandfather

marrying her, could I? Kind, gracious sir, you are too just to punish a poor man for what isn’t his

fault!” Tommy was, but he had no intention of showing it at the moment. “Let me off, don’t tell

anybody. I will do anything you wish, anything—”

“You are a disgusting and repulsive sight,” said Hambledon from the bottom of his heart.

“However, I will give you one chance to serve the Reich, just one. If you satisfy me fully in that,

it may incline me to mercy.”

“Tell me what you want,” said Weinecke instantly, rising to his feet and clasping his

hands in a gesture of submission.

“Put your hands down by your sides for a start,” snapped Hambledon, who found the man

more intolerable every moment. “Stand up straight and answer my questions. You will not, I

think, lie to me. Now, about the twelve thousand marks you sent to Berlin—”

Weinecke supplied a great deal of very useful information. He was the head of the

Aachen branch of the organization which fleeced the Jews at the expense of the Government, for

that was what it amounted to. The Jews declared to the Government for forfeit, a mere fraction of

their actual possessions. Weinecke, and others in similar positions on every German frontier, not

only connived at this but actively assisted the Jews by banking the rest of the money as their

own. When the moment came for the Jew to leave Germany, he was given one-fifth of his

property to take with him and the organization applied the rest to its own uses. Weinecke

explained that they always—or nearly always—kept faith with the Jews, and gave them so high a

proportion as twenty per cent, to induce other Jews to deal with them in the same way. It paid the

Jew and it paid them.

“Yes,” thundered Hambledon, “and the only one that suffers is the Government of the

Reich, and what do you care for that? Go on. These people in Berlin.”

Weinecke said plainly that Herr Goebbels was the brain behind the affair, but never

appeared openly. The Berlin Committee, so to express it, were the eight gentlemen whose names

the gracious Herr had deigned to read to him—Gagel, Dettmer, Kitzinger, Tietz, Rautenbach,

Militz, Baumgartner and Eigenmann. They received, of course, subscriptions from all parts of

Germany, not only from Aachen, at their monthly meetings. This twelve thousand marks in

which the Herr was interested was not, naturally, the whole of the month’s supply from Aachen,

as amounts were transmitted weekly. It so happened that in that week there was only one

windfall, but a large one.

“So when they got there the cupboard wasn’t really bare,” said Tommy to himself. “Only

one plum missing. When’s the next meeting?” he added aloud. Weinecke said, as Hambledon

expected, May the 4th. It was the second date on the card found with the money. “Where do they

meet?”

“I don’t know, honoured sir, I’ve never heard. On my honour I’ve no idea.”

“Your honour! You mean, on the head of your father.” Weinecke, to whom speech had

given a certain amount of confidence, shrivelled up again, and Hambledon improved the moment

by extracting full details of the Aachen end of the business, names, addresses and all, with a view

to effective action. “Now,” he said, “what about Ginsberg?”

“Ginsberg?”

“Ginsberg was a member of the Frontier Guard at Aachen. He was shot at Aachen in

August last year—nine months ago.”

“Oh, I remember now. Ginsberg, yes. He took it upon himself to disapprove of this

business. He made trouble. He was one of those would-be superior people—”

“Silence!” roared Hambledon, really angry this time. “He was my servant, and you dared

—”

“Oh, my God, what have I done? I did not know, noble sir, I didn’t know—I didn’t do it,

I didn’t even complain of him. Schultz did that, I had nothing to do with it, Schultz complained

to the local court and they shot him, I didn’t, I—”

Hambledon touched the bell-push on his desk; two troopers came in promptly.

Hambledon pointed one finger at Weinecke and said, “Take him away, he annoys me. Return for

orders.”

Weinecke collapsed on the carpet and was dragged, howling and struggling, from the

room. Hambledon poured himself out a drink and swallowed it, lit a cigar and took a turn or two

up and down the room till the trooper returned and saluted.

“The man is guilty of murder,” said the Chief of Police. “He will be shot at eight to-

morrow morning.”

The trooper saluted again and went back to his mate in the ante-room outside.

“Speakin’ generally,” he said, “the Chief is easy though stric’, an’ not given to tempers,

not like some I could mention. But when he gets going proper,
Herrgott
, give me Goering!”

Hambledon took another turn across the room.

“There is also Schultz,” he said to himself. “One of these days, Ginsberg my servant, I

will deal with Schultz.”

A day or two later he spoke to Franz. “I think you once told me that you and your friends

between you served most of the Nazi leaders in private service.”

“That is so, sir.”

“If it so happened that among your patrons were any of these men, it would be interesting

to know where and when they are going to meet on May the 4th. Their names are Gagel,

Dettmer, Kitzinger, Tietz, Rautenbach, Militz, Baumgartner and Eigenmann.”

“On May the 4th,” said Franz.

“On May the 4th—that’s next Thursday. To-day’s Saturday. Not too much time.”

“I will do my best to ascertain, sir.”

“Thank you. It will, I fear, be my painful duty to arrest eight members of your German

Freedom League at that meeting.”

“Sir?” said the startled Franz.

“Yes. Their names are Gagel, Dettmer—and so on. 1 repeated them to you just now.”

“I should be very surprised, sir, to learn that any of these gentlemen are Freedom League

members.”

“Not half so surprised as they will be, Franz, if all goes well.”

Franz stared at his master for a moment, and then broke into a low but distinct chuckle.

“To serve you, sir, if I may take the liberty of saying so, is not merely a duty, but a pleasure.”

“I reciprocate your sentiments,” said Tommy solemnly. “ ‘You’re exceedingly polite,’”

he hummed, as the man left the room, “ ‘and I think it only right to return the compliment.’ Some

day, please God, I’ll sit in the stalls at the Savoy again and see a Gilbert and Sullivan opera right

through from the overture to ‘God Save the King.’”

There was a small lecture-hall attached to the Rektor Art School in Berlin, a room about

thirty feet by twenty, with a stage at one end adorned by a backcloth representing the Rhine at

Ehrenbreitstein, and double entrance doors at the other. There was also, of course, a door at each

side of the stage giving on to dressing-rooms behind, two bare rooms with looking-glasses on the

walls and pegs for hats and coats. One of these rooms communicated with the Art School, the

other had a door which opened into a side street. This door was kept locked, but Tommy

Hambledon had seen to it that the lock was well oiled, and what is more, he had a key to it, for it

was in this hall that the Land and Field Club held their monthly meetings.

“Land and Field Club,” said Tommy, when this was reported to him. “Lynx and Fox

Club. Association of Stoats and Weasels. Thank you, Franz.”

There was a full meeting on the night of May the 4th. Eigenmann as chairman and

Rautenbach as treasurer sat at a table in front of the stage to conduct proceedings, while the other

six grouped themselves in gracefully negligent attitudes on the chairs facing them. The entrance