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Hambledon into the telephone, and sank back on his pillow. “Did I what? Collect four prisoners

yesterday from the concentration camp. No, why? I don’t collect prisoners, I prefer postage-

stamps, and at the moment I am trying to collect a little sleep. Why, have you lost some? Well,

inform the Commandant. Oh, you are the Commandant. Good morning. It is always a pleasure to

me, Herr Commandant, to have any dealings with you, but my office opens for official business

at nine every morning, and in the meantime surely the local police station—Oh, you have. Well,

you could hardly expect them to find the men in five minutes. No, I am not in the least annoyed,

but I do try to keep regular hours, and 5.45 a.m. is—Yes, but why ring me up? I can only tell the

police to look for them, and I assume they are doing that already, you surely don’t expect me to

leap out of bed and chase the men myself in my pyjamas. Sign the order? It is not necessary for

me to sign any order for the pursuit of escaped prisoners; upon receipt of news that prisoners

have escaped, the necessary action is taken at once. Did I sign an order yesterday? Yes, dozens.

To remove four men from your camp? Certainly not.”

There came a bubbling noise from the ear-piece of the instrument, and Hambledon rolled

over on his pillow and sighed patiently in a manner which he hoped would be audible at the other

end.

“Let me see if I have got this clear,” said Hambledon eventually. “A sergeant and six men

in the uniform of my police came to the camp yesterday morning—at 10.30 a.m. precisely. Well,

that’s in the morning, isn’t it? They produced an order, purporting to be signed by me and

bearing my seal, for the removal of four prisoners, whom you duly handed over. The sergeant

signed a receipt and marched off with the prisoners, and you haven’t seen them since. Well, I’m

afraid you’ve been had, and I will certainly look into the matter with my accustomed energy

when I arrive at the office, but I cannot believe that the Reich will totter on its foundations if I

get another two hours’ sleep first, what’s all the hurry about? Herr Goebbels? What the devil’s

he got to do with it?”

The crackles at the other end explained that Herr Goebbels had happened to be on the

premises when the prisoners had been taken away, and had appeared interested. That the sergeant

in charge had explained that the prisoners were only required for interrogation and would be

returned that evening if possible. That when they were not so returned, the Commandant had

examined the order and thought there was something a little unusual about the Herr Polizei

Oberhaupt’s signature, and finally, that Herr Goebbels had rung up in the small hours to ask if

the prisoners—

“Will you please understand this,” said Hambledon in a tone of voice which silenced the

other as by violence, “unworthy as I am, I hold my office direct from our Leader, and am not

subjected to question, command, or comment from the Ministry of Propaganda or any other

Ministry whatever within the Reich or outside it!”

He paused, but as the other end of the wire maintained a tactful silence, he slammed

down the receiver and lay back on his pillows sizzling with anger. It was perfectly plain that

what had happened was that Goebbels had faked the order and the sergeant’s guard of police;

they had taken away four prisoners who would never, of course, be seen again, and Hambledon

would be accused of having connived at their escape. Quite good, with only two mistakes. One,

being so eager to see that everything went well that he had to be there in person at 10.30 a.m.,

and the other, forging the Chief of Police’s signature so clumsily that even the Commandant

noticed it. No, that might not be a mistake. If Klaus Lehmann denied the signature, saying that

anyone could see it wasn’t his, Goebbels would say that, of course, he wrote it like that on

purpose, in order to be able to deny it. A typical Goebbels touch.

There remained the seal of his office, and there were two facsimiles of this. One was kept

securely in safe-deposit by the Government in case Lehmann’s should be destroyed or

irretrievably lost, the other was held by the Führer, who had duplicates of all seals of office.

There was, however, one minor difference between them, and it was just possible, though

unlikely, that Goebbels did not know this. The seal actually in use by each Government office

was quite perfect; the copies held by the Führer had each one tiny dot in the angle of the left-

hand arm of the swastika, and the copies in safe-deposit had two dots in the same place. One

glance at the wax impression on the order would tell him which one Goebbels had used,

probably the Führer’s, borrowed without permission. If so, the engineer would be hoist with his

own petard indeed. Hambledon’s own seal never left him; even at night it was in his bedroom, so

Goebbels could not possibly have got at that, and the one in official keeping was quite out of the

question.

Hambledon, with a seraphic smile on his lips, fell peacefully asleep and did not wake till

Franz called him at seven-thirty.

Hambledon breakfasted in haste, telephoned the office to say he would be there later, and

drove himself to the concentration camp. To his annoyance, his car was stopped at the gates

instead of being passed through at sight.

“What is all this?”

“New regulations, sir. Too many escapes lately; all cars to be searched.”

“Excellent. Though I never heard of anyone trying to smuggle himself into a

concentration camp.”

“No, sir,” said the corporal stolidly. “But we was told to look for tools and such-like.”

Hambledon said no more, but sat fuming while the men looked under cushions and

carpets. When he was allowed to proceed to the Commandant’s door, he found another man on

duty there who quite openly took charge of his car till he should need it again. Hambledon

remembered the escape of Lazarus three weeks earlier, surely no rumour of that had got back.

Lazarus, with the two old ladies, Ludmilla and Christine, had been safe in Switzerland these ten

days, but he would not have talked. No, this was just another of the Commandant’s systems.

The Chief of Police was shown into the office, where a wild-eyed Commandant greeted

him in very much the manner of a dog who has torn up a sofa-cushion while master was out.

“I cannot describe to you,” babbled the Commandant, “how distressed I was to have had

to—at such an hour—I did not know what—those prisoners—”

“My dear fellow,” said Hambledon kindly, “please don’t distress yourself. It is I who

ought to apologize, I am always like a bear with a sore head before breakfast.”

“Your Excellency is too kind—”

“You were, of course, perfectly right—”

“Only the most imperative commands of duty would—”

“I know, I know. It was the doubt about my signature which rightly impelled you to

communicate with me at once.”

“And the prisoners, Herr Polizei Oberhaupt.”

“And the prisoners, of course. Yours is a great responsibility, Herr Commandant. Now, if

I might see this forged order, some idea might—”

“Certainly, certainly,” said the Commandant, snatching up a bunch of keys and attacking

a safe with them, “but those two prisoners—”

“Two? I thought you said four.”

“There were four. I was thinking of the two whom you interviewed three weeks ago, I

understood you to say you might wish to see them again.”

Hambledon turned perfectly cold. The Commandant, getting no answer to his remark,

explained more fully.

“The Beckensburgs, you remember. Ludovic Beckensburg, the father, retired architect,

and his son, Hugo Beckensburg—”

His voice continued for some time, but Hambledon did not heed it. Goebbels must have

found out that the Beckensburgs had been friends of his, so he had taken them, partly, no doubt,

to make the accusation seem more credible, but mainly to annoy; the rat-faced, crafty, sneering

devil. Well, this time he’d overstepped the mark; Germany was no longer big enough to hold

Goebbels and himself. Goebbels—Hambledon awoke to the fact that he was being offered a

paper, he shook himself together and took it.

“This is an unmistakable forgery,” he said mechanically, and went on staring at the paper

while his mind was screaming questions. Where were they now? Alive or dead, or being tortured

to make them talk about Klaus Lehmann?

“I fear Your Excellency is really not well,” said the Commandant, who was watching his

face. “A little cognac, perhaps—”

“Thank you, no,” said Hambledon hastily. “A touch of indigestion; it will pass.” He

thrust the Beckensburgs to the back of his mind. The seal, there was something to notice about

the seal. Oh, yes, of course, a dot in the corner.

“This wax impression is very rough,” he said, and carried the paper to the window. It was

rough, but there was definitely no dot where one should be, so it was not stamped with the

Führer’s seal, but with his own, or with an exact copy.

“The seal is a forgery, too,” said Hambledon, and took his own from his pocket. “Look,

Herr Commandant, it does not fit.”

He laid the seal gently upon the wax impresssion, but it did not bed down as it should

have done. “You see? Another forgery.”

“But how could such a thing—”

“Quite simple, provided you have a good wax impression. You take a mould from the

impression, warm modeller’s wax, or a softened candle will do. You take a cast from that in

plaster of Paris, and cast it again in lead. Quite simple, but it won’t, of course, be so smooth and

full of detail as the original.”

“The criminal was too clever,” said the Commandant happily. “His misguided ingenuity

has resulted in entirely clearing Your Excellency of any complicity in the matter.”

“Who suggested I was an accomplice?” asked Hambledon coldly, and took his leave

without waiting for an answer from the abashed Commandant.

“This is the same idea as the clumsily forged signature,” he thought, as he waited for the

car to be searched again at the gate. “Goebbels will say I forged it myself in order to be able to

disavow it.”

He passed a gloomy day at the office wondering how he was to tell poor old Frau

Christine of the disaster; the only satisfaction he obtained was in arranging for Frau Magda

Beckensburg and the children to be sent out of the country at once. “They shall have something

saved out of the wreck,” he said, and sent two men he could trust to arrest the little party and put

them over the Swiss frontier as quickly as possible. He was pleasantly surprised when this went

off without a hitch, and still more astonished when several days passed without any accusation

being brought against him. No police investigation into the matter produced any result at all, he

did not suppose it would, nor were any of the prisoners recaptured.

Hambledon remained depressed by the whole affair, even when it began to seem possible

that it held no evil consequences for him. He felt he had failed in his promise to look after the

two men, and the idea that Goebbels had outwitted him was intensely irritating. The flat, too, was

a dull place without Ludmilla there, and a letter from her including the phrase, “Dear Klaus, how

kind and resourceful you are,” doubtless referred to the safe arrival of Magda, complete with

babies. No doubt Franz noticed his master’s low spirits, and one night, when the servant brought

in the evening whisky and soda, he hung about the room and coughed as he did when there was

something he wanted to say.

“What is it, Franz?”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you might be interested to hear that the four prisoners

who escaped from the concentration camp are safe with their friends in Switzerland.”

“
What
?”

“Arrangements had been made, sir, to get the Herren von Maeder and Behrmann out, and

it was as simple to get four out as two. The gracious Fräulein, sir, was grieving over the Herren

Beckensburg. I could not bear, if I may say so, sir, to see so kind a lady unhappy.”

Hambledon’s glass slipped from his hand and rolled unheeded on the carpet.

“I seem to have surprised you, sir,” said Franz, picking it up and wiping it carefully.

“Surp—Do you mean to tell me that you forged that order and faked up that sergeant’s

guard?”

“My organization, sir.”

“Do you realize that I thought Herr Goebbels had done it to incriminate me, and that I’ve

been expecting arrest any moment for the past fortnight?”

“I am extremely sorry, sir. Such an idea never occurred to me. I thought that since your

seal was used you would conclude I had done it, but you would not, of course, inquire.”

“Well, I’m damned!”

“I trust not, sir.”

“How did you get hold of my seal?”

“Your Excellency,” said Franz with a faint smile, “has the inestimable blessing of being

able to sleep soundly.”

“I’ll sleep with it round my neck in future. But, look here, it didn’t fit.”

“I soaped it, sir, to prevent its sticking, but the soap made the wax bubble in a most

unexpected manner. Very disconcerting, sir. But when I realized how like a forgery it looked, I

left it, thinking it would be easier for you to disown it if occasion should arise.”