short, loud or dim. He couldn't tell whether they were inside or out. Did they have a special
execution chamber, or did they just shoot you anywhere you happened to be? And what did they
do with all the blood? Lanny imagined that he smelled it, and the fumes of gunpowder; but
maybe he was mistaken, for the stink of a rusty old slop-pail can be extremely pungent in a
small cell. An art expert had seen many pictures of executions, ancient and modern, so he
knew what to imagine. Sometimes they blindfolded the victims, sometimes they made them turn
their backs, sometimes they just put an, automatic to the base of their skulls, the medulla; that
was said to be merciful, and certainly it was quick. The Nazis cared nothing about mercy, but
they surely did about speed.
Every now and then a door clanged, and Lanny thought: "They are taking somebody to his
doom." Now and then he heard footsteps, and thought: "Are they coming or going?" He
wondered about the bodies. Did they have stretchers? Or did they just drag them? He imagined
that he heard dragging. Several times there were screams; and once a man going by his door,
arguing, shouting protests. What was the matter with them? He was as good a Nazi as anyone
in Germany. They were making a mistake. It was eine gottverdammte Schande— and so on. That
gave Lanny something new to think about, and he sat for a long time motionless on his straw
pallet, with his brain in a whirl.
Maybe all this hadn't anything to do with Freddi and a jailbreak! Maybe nothing had been
discovered at all! It was that "Second Revolution" that Hugo had been so freely predicting!
Hugo had been shot, not because he had tried to bribe a Dachau guard, but because he was on
the list of those who were actively working on behalf of Ernst Rohm and the other malcontents
of the Sturmabteilung! In that case the shootings might be part of the putting down of that
movement. It was significant that Lanny's captors had been men of the Schutzstaffel, the "elite
guard," Hitler's own chosen ones. They were putting their rivals out of business; "liquidating"
those who had been demanding more power for the S.A. Chief of Staff!
But then, a still more startling possibility—the executions might mean the success of the rebels.
The fact that Hugo Behr had been killed didn't mean that the S.S. had had their way
everywhere. Perhaps the S.A. were defending themselves successfully! Perhaps Stadelheim had
been taken, as the Bastille had been taken in the French revolution, and the persons now being
shot were those who had put Lanny in here! At any moment the doors of his cell might be
thrown open and he might be welcomed with comradely rejoicing!
Delirious imaginings; but then the whole thing was a delirium. To lie there in the darkness
with no way to count the hours and nothing to do but speculate about a world full of maniacal
murderers. Somebody was killing somebody, that alone was certain, and it went on at intervals
without any sign of ending. Lanny remembered the French revolution, and the unhappy
aristocrats who had lain in their cells awaiting their turn to be loaded into the tumbrils and
carted to the guillotine. This kind of thing was said to turn people's hair gray over night; Lanny
wondered if it was happening to him. Every time he heard footsteps he hoped it was somebody
coming to let him out; but then he was afraid to have the footsteps halt, because it might be a
summons to the execution chamber!
He tried to comfort himself. He had had no part in any conspiracy of the S.A. and surely they
wouldn't shoot him just because he had met a friend on the street. But then he thought: "Those
banknotes!" They would attach a still more sinister meaning to them now. They would say:
"What were you paying Hugo Behr to do?" And what should he answer? He had said that he
hadn't known what Hugo wanted of him. They would know that was a lie. They would say:
"You were helping to promote a revolution against the N.S.D.A.P." And that was surely a
shooting offense-even though you had come from the sweet land of liberty to do it!
Lanny thought up the best way to meet this very bad situation.
When he was questioned, he would talk about his friendship with the great and powerful, and
wait to pick up any hint that the questioner had made note of the bills, or had found out about
Freddi Robin. If these discoveries had been made, Lanny would laugh—at least he would try to
laugh—and say: "Yes, of course I lied to those S.S. men on the street. I thought they were
crazy and were going to shoot me. The truth is that Hugo Behr came to me and asked for
money and offered to use his influence with the S.A. in Dachau to get my friend released.
There was no question of any bribe, he said he would put the money into the party funds and
it would go for the winter relief." One thing Lanny could be sure of in this matter—nothing that
he said about Hugo could do the slightest harm to the young sports director.
VII
Footsteps in the corridor; a slot at the bottom of Lanny's door was widened, and something
was set inside. He said, quickly: "Will you please tell me how long I am to be kept here?" When
there was no reply, he said: "I am an American citizen and I demand the right to communicate
with my consul." The slot was made smaller again and the footsteps went on.
Lanny felt with his hands and found a metal pitcher of water, a cup of warm liquid,
presumably coffee, and a chunk of rather stale bread. He wasn't hungry, but drank some of the
water. Presumably that was breakfast, and it was morning. He lay and listened to more shooting
off and on; and after what seemed a very long time the slot was opened and more food put in.
Out of curiosity he investigated, and found that he had a plate of what appeared to be cold
potatoes mashed up with some sort of grease. The grease must have been rancid, for the smell was
revolting, and Lanny came near to vomiting at the thought of eating it. He had been near to
vomiting several times at the thought of people being shot in this dungeon of horrors.
A bowl of cabbage soup and more bread were brought in what he assumed was the evening; and
this time the warder spoke. He said:
"Pass out your slop-pail." Lanny did so, and it was emptied and passed back to him without
washing. This sign of humanity caused him to make a little speech about his troubles. He said
that he had done nothing, that he had no idea what he was accused of, that it was very
inhuman to keep a man in a dark hole, that he had always been a lover of Germany and a
sympathizer with its struggle against the Versailles Diktat. Finally, he was an American citizen,
and had a right to notify his consul of his arrest.
This time he managed to get one sentence of reply: "Sprechen verboten, mein Herr." It
sounded like a kind voice, and Lanny recalled what he had heard, that many of the permanent
staff of these prisons were men of the former regime, well disciplined and humane. He took a
chance and ventured in a low voice: "I am a rich man, and if you will telephone the American
consul for me, I will pay you well when I get out."
"Sprechen verboten, mein Herr" replied the voice; and then, much lower: "Sprechen Sie
leise." Speaking is forbidden, sir; speak softly! So the prisoner whispered: "My name is Lanny
Budd." He repeated it several times: "Lanny Budd, Lanny Budd." It became a little song. Would
that it might have wings, and fly to the American consulate!
VIII
For three days and four nights Lanny Budd stayed in that narrow cell. He could estimate the
number of cubic feet of air inside, but he didn't know what percentage of that air was oxygen,
or how much he needed per hour in order to maintain his life. His scientific education had been
neglected, but it seemed a wise precaution to put his straw sacks on the floor and lie on them
with his mouth near the breathing hole.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday—he could tell them by the meal hours —and during a total of some
eighty-two hours there were not a dozen without sounds of shooting. He never got over his
dismay. God Almighty, did they do this all the time? Had this been going on ever since the
National Socialist revolution, one year and five months ago? Did they bring all the political
suspects of Bavaria to this one place? Or was this some special occasion, a Nazi St. Bartholomew's
Eve? "Kill them all; God will be able to pick out His Christians!"
Lanny, having nothing to do but think, had many and varied ideas. One was: "Well, they are
all Nazis, and if they exterminate one another, that will save the world a lot of trouble." But
then: "Suppose they should open the wrong cell door?" An embarrassing thought indeed! What
would he say? How would he convince them? As time passed he decided: "They have forgotten
me. Those fellows didn't book me, and maybe they just went off without a word." And then, a
still more confusing possibility: "Suppose they get shot somewhere and nobody remembers me!"
He had a vague memory of having read about a forgotten prisoner in the Bastille; when the
place was opened up, nobody knew why he had been put there. He had had a long gray beard.
Lanny felt the beginnings of his beard and wondered if it was gray.
He gave serious study to his jailers and their probable psychology. It seemed difficult to
believe that men who had followed such an occupation for many years could have any human
kindness left in their systems; but it could do no harm to make sure. So at every meal hour he
was lying on the floor close to the hole, delivering a carefully planned speech in a quiet,
friendly tone, explaining who he was, and how much he loved the German people, and why he
had come to Munich, and by what evil accident he had fallen under suspicion. All he wanted
was a chance to explain himself to somebody. He figured that if he didn't touch the heart of
any of the keepers, he might at least get them to gossiping, and the gossip might spread.
IX
He didn't know how long a person could live without food. It wasn't until the second day that
he began to suffer from hunger, and he gnawed some of the soggy dark bread, wondering what
was in it. He couldn't bring himself to eat the foul-smelling mash or the lukewarm boiled cabbage
with grease on top. As for the bitter-tasting drink that passed for coffee, he had been told that
they put sal soda into it in order to reduce the sexual cravings of the prisoners. He didn't feel any
craving except to get out of this black hole. He whispered to his keepers: "I had about six
thousand marks on me when I was brought in here, and I would be glad to pay for some decent
food." The second time he said this he heard the kind voice, which he imagined coming from an
elderly man with a wrinkled face and gray mustaches. "Alles geht d'runter und d'ruber, mein
Herr." . . . "Everything topsy-turvy, sir; and you will be safer if you stay quiet."
It was a tip; and Lanny thought it over and decided that he had better take it. There was a civil
war going on. Was the "Second Revolution" succeeding, or was it being put down? In either
case, an American art lover, trapped between the firing lines, was lucky to have found a shell-
hole in which to hide! Had the warder been a Cockney, he would have said: "If you knows of a
better 'ole, go to it!"
So Lanny lay still and occupied himself with the subject of psychology, which so far in his life
he had rather neglected. The world had been too much with him; getting and spending he had
laid waste his powers. But now the world had been reduced to a few hundred cubic feet, and
all he had was the clothes on his back and what ideas he had stored in his head. He began to
recall Parsifal Dingle, and to appreciate his point of view. Parsifal wouldn't have minded being
here; he would have taken it as a rare opportunity to meditate. Lanny thought: "What would
Parsifal meditate about?" Surely not the shooting, or the fate of a hypothetical revolution! No,
he would say that God was in this cell; that God was the same indoors as out, the same
yesterday, today, and forever.
Then Lanny thought about Freddi Robin. Freddi had been in places like this, and had had the
same sort of food put before him, not for three days but for more than a year. What had he said
to himself all that time? What had he found inside himself? What had he done and thought, to
pass the time, to enable him to endure what came and the anticipation of what might come? It
seemed time for Lanny to investigate his store of moral forces.
X
On Tuesday morning two jailers came to his cell and opened the door. " 'Raus, 'raus.'" they
said, and he obeyed to the best of his ability; he was weak from lack of food and exercise—not
having dared to use up the air in that cell. Also his heart was pounding, because all the
psychology exercises had failed to remove his disinclination to be shot, or the idea that this might
be his death march. Outside the cell he went dizzy, and had to lean against the wall; one of the
jailers helped him up the flight of stone stairs.
They were taking him toward an outside door. They were going to turn him loose!—so he
thought, for one moment. But then he saw, below the steps, a prison van—what in America is
called "Black Maria," and in Germany "Grüne Minna." The sunlight smote Lanny's eyes like a
blow, and he had to shut them tight. The jailers evidently were familiar with this phenomenon;
they led him as if he were a blind man and helped him as if he were a cripple. They put him
into the van, and he stumbled over the feet of several other men.
The doors were closed, and then it was mercifully dim. Lanny opened his eyes; since they had
been brought to the condition of an owl's, he could see a stoutish, melancholy-looking gentleman
who might be a businessman, sitting directly across the aisle. At Lanny's side was an eager little
Jew with eyeglasses, who might be a journalist out of luck. Lanny, never failing in courtesy,
remarked: "Guten Morgen"; but the man across the way put his finger to his lips and nodded
