There's a lot of talk about peace in the west, too." "Honestly? Already? God, will you look at that cafe? Five hundred Berliners if there's one, eating pastry and drinking coffee, laughing, talking. Ah, to be a Berliner! Where was I? Oh yes. Well, anyway, at this point, see, the water pump gave out and the fan belt broke. The German planes never stopped going by overhead. The bride was having hysterics. We were twenty miles from the nearest town. There was a cluster of farmhouses about a mile down the road, but they'd been bombed to pieces, so-" "Farmhouses?" Pug broke in alertly. "But the Germans keep claiming loud and clear that the Luftwaffe is attacking only military targets. That's a big boast of theirs." Byron roared with laughter. "What? Dad, the military targets of the Germans include anything that moves, from a pig on up. I was a military target. There I was, above the ground and alive. I saw a thousand houses blown apart out in the countryside, far behind the front. The Luftwaffe is just practicing on them, getting ready for France and England." "You want to be careful how you talk here," Rhoda said. "We're in the car. That's safe, isn't it?" it "Sure is. Go on," Pug said. He was thinking that Byron's story might Turn into an intelligence report. The Germans were indignantly complaining about Polish atrocities, and publishing revolting photographs of mutilated "ethnic Germans" and Wehrmacht officers. By contrast, they offered photographic proof of happy captured Polish soldiers eating, drinking, and doing folk dances; pictures of Jews being fed at soup kitchens, waving at the cameras and smiling; and many photographs of German guns and trucks rolling past farmhouses and through untouched towns, with jovial Polish peasants cheering them. Byron's tale cast an interesting light on all this. On and on Byron talked. At the Grunewald house they went into the garden. "Hey, a tennis court! Great!" he exclaimed in the same manic tone. They sat in reclining chairs, drinks in their hands, as he described the siege of Warsaw with extraordinary clarity, picking out details that made them see and hear and even smell the whole thing-the dead horses on the streets, the tank traps and the menacing sentries at the corners, the unflushed toilets at the embassy when the water main broke, the gangs trying to put out roaring fires in a whole block of buildings with buckets of sand, the taste of horsemeat, the sound of artillery, the wounded piled in the hospital lobby, the farade of a synagogue slowly sliding down into the street, the embassy cellar with its rows of canvas cots, the eerie walk across no-man's-land on a quiet dirt road dotted with autumn wild flowers. The blue-gray Berlin evening drew on, and still Byron talked, getting hoarse, drinking steadily,and losing no coherence or clarity. It was an astonishing performance. Again and again the parents looked at each other. 'I get famished just talking about it," Byron said. He was describing the startling feast laid out by the Germans in the Klovno railroad station. "And there was another spread just like it when we got to Kenigsberg. They've been stuffing us ever since on the train. I don't know where it all goes to. I think in Warsaw I must have digested the marrow out of my bones. They got hollow and they're just now filling up again. Anyway, when and where and how do we eat?" 'You look like such a tramp, Byron," Rhoda said. "Don't you have any other clothes?" "A whole big bag full, Mom. it's in Warsaw, neatly labelled with my name. Probablyies ashes by now." They went to a small dark little restaurant off the Kurt-iirstendamm. Byron laughed, pointing to the fly-specked curling cardboard sign in the window: Tens PXSTAUT DOFS NOT siERVE jvws. "Are there any left in Berlin to serve?" "Well, you don't see them around much," Pug said. "They're not allowed in the theatres and so forth. I guess they're lying pretty low." "Ah, to be a Berliner," Byron said. 'Warsaw's alive with Jews." He stopped talking when the soup came. Apparently his own voice had been keeping him awake, because between the soup and the meat course his head nodded and dropped on his chest. They had trouble rousing him. "Let's get him home," Pug said, signalling to the waiter. "I was wondering how long he'd last." 'Wha? Less not go home," Byron said. "Less go to the theatre. The opera. Less have some civilized fun. Less do the tovm. Ah, to be a Berliner!" Pug said, after they had put Byron to sleep and were strolling in the garden, "Quite a change in him." "It's that girl," Rhoda said. "He didn't say much about her." "That's my point. He said nothing about her. Yet he went to Poland because of her, and got caught in Cracow on account of her. He lost his passport, for heaven's sake, protecting her relatives. Why, he was talking to her uncle when that synagogue all but fell on top of him. Seems to me he did almost everything in Poland but become a Jew." Pug looked coldly at her but she went on unbeedingly, "Maybe you can find out something more about her from this man Slote. It's a strange business, and she must be some girl." Topping the pile of letters on Pug's desk the following morning was a pale green envelope,almost square, engraved in one corner: TH.E whrrn HousE. de he found on a single sheet, similarly engraved, a slanted scrawl in heavy pencil. You were dead right again, old top. Treasury just now informs me the ambassadors got hopping mad at the very idea of our offering to buy their ocean liners. Can I borrow your crystal ball? Ha ha! Write me a letter whenever You get a chance, about your life in Berlin-what you and your wife do for fun, who your German friends are, what the people and the newspapers are saying, how the food is in the restaurants, just anything and everything that occurs to you. What does a loaf of bread cost in Germany today? Washington is still incredibly hot and muggy, though the leaves have started turning. FDR Pug put all other mail aside, and stared at the curious communication from the curious man whom he had once soaked with salt water, who was now his Commander-inel, the creator of the New Deal (of which Pug disapproved), the man with perhaps the best-known name and face on earth except Hitler's. The cheerful banal scribble was out of key with Roosevelt's stature, but it very much fitted the cocky young man who had bounced around on the Davey in a blazer and straw hat. He pulled a yellow pad toward him and listed points for an informal letter about his life in Berlin, for obedience and quick action were Navy habits soaked into his bones. The yeoman's buzzer rang. He flipped the key. "No calls, Mittle." "Aye aye, sir. There's a Mister Slote asking to see you, but I can-" "Slote? No, hold on. I'll see Slote. Let us have coffee." The Foreign Service man looked rested and fit, if a bit gaunt, in his freshly pressed tweed jacket and flannel trousers. "Quite a view," Slote said. "Is that huge pink pile the new chancellery?" "Yes. You can see them change the guard from here." 'I don't know that I'm interested in armed Germans on the move. I have the idea." Both men laughed. Over the coffee the commander told Slote something of Byron's four-hour gush of narrative. The diplomat listened with a wary look, running Ns fingers repeatedly over the rim of his lit pipe. "Did he mention anything about that unfortunate business in Praha?" Henry looked puzzled. 'When we had a girl in the car, and found ourselves under German shellfire?" "I don't believe so. Was the girl Natalie Jastrow?" 'Yes. The incident involved the Swedish ambassador and an auto trip to the front lines." Pug thought a moment. Slote watched his face intently. 'No. Not a word." With a heavy sigh, Slote brightened up. "Well, he exposed himself to direct enemy fire, while I had to take the girl out of the car and find shelter for her." Slote baldly narrated his version of the episode. Then he described Byron's water-hauling, his handiness in making repairs, hisdisregard of enemy planes and artillery shelling. "I'd be glad to put all this in a letter, if you wish," Slote said. "Yes, I'd like that," Pug said with alacrity. "Now, tell me something about this Jastrow girl." "What would you like to know?" Victor Henry shrugged. "Anything. My wife and I are slightly curious about this young female who got our boy into such a jam. What the hell was she doing in Warsaw, with all of Europe mobilizing, and why was he with her?" Slote laughed wryly. "She came to see me. We're old friends. I thought she was out of her mind to come. I did my best to stop her. This girl is a sort of lioness type, she does what she pleases and you just get out of the way. Her unde didn't want her to travel alone, what with all the war talk. Byron volunteered to go along. That's as I understand it." 'He went with her to Poland as a courtesy to Dr. Jastrow? Is that the size of it?" "Maybe you'd better ask Byron." 'Is she beautiful?" Slote puffed thoughtfully, staring straight ahead. "In a way. Quite a brain, very educated." Abruptly he looked at his watch and stood up. "I'll write you that letter, and I'm going to mention your son in my official report." "Good. I'll ask him about that incident in Praha."Oh, no, there's no need. It was just an instance of how he cooperated." "You're not engaged to the Jastrow girl?" No, I'm not." "Well, I hate to get personal, but you're much older than Byron, and quite different, and I can't picture a girl who bridges that gap." Slote looked at him and said nothing. Pug went on, "Where is she now?" "She went to Stockholm with most of our people. Good-bye, Commander Henry." Rhoda telephoned Pug around noon, breaking into his work on the letter to Roosevelt. 'That boys slept fourteen hours," she said. 'I got worried and went in there, but he's breathing like an infant, with a hand tucked under his cheek." "Well, let him sleep." 'Doesn't he have to report somewhere?" "No. Sleep's the best thing for him." Complying with the President's orders to write chattily, Pug closed his letter with a short account of Byron's adventures in Poland. Plans were whirling in his mind for official use of his son's experiences.
He filed the growl letter for the diplomatic pouch, and went home uneasy at having bypassed the chain of command and wasted a work day. He did also feel vague pride in this direct contact with the President, but that was a human reaction. In his professional judgment, this contact was most likely a bad thing. Byron was reclining in the garden, eating grapes from a bowl and reading a Superman comic book. Scattered on the grass de him were perhaps two dozen more comic books, a patchwork of lurid covers. "Hi, Dad," he said. "How about this treasure? Franz collects them." (Franz was the butler.) "He says he's been panhandling or buying them from tourists for years." Pug was stupefied at the sight. Comic books had been a cause of war in their household until Byron had gone off to Columbia. Pug had forbidden them, torn them up, burned them, fined Byron for possession of them. Nothing had helped. The boy had been like a dope fiend. With difficulty Pug refrained from saying something harsh. Byron was twenty-four. "How do you feel?" 'H "Go this is a great Superman. It makes me ungry," Byron said. d, homesick, reading these things." Franz brought Pug a highball on a tray. Pug sat silently with it waiting for the butler to go. It took a while, because Franz wiped a glass-top table, cut some flowers, and fooled with a loose screen door to the tennis court. He had a way of lingering within earshot. Meanwhile, Byron read the Superman through, put it on the pile, and looked idly at his father. Pug relaxed and sipped his drink. Franz was reentering the house. "Briny, that was quite a tale you told us yesterday. The son laughed. "I guess I got kind of carried away, seeing you and Mom again. Also Berlin had a funny effect on m-. "You've had access to unusual information. I don't know if there's another American who went from Cracow to Warsaw after the war broke out." 'Oh, I guess it's all been in the papers and magazines." "That's where you're wrong. There's a lot of arguing between the Germans and the Poles-the few Poles who got away and can still argue -about who's committed what atrocities in Poland. An eyewitness account document." like yours would be an important up another comic book. "Possibly." Byron shrugged, picking "I want you to write it up. I'd like to forward your account to the Office of Naval Intelligence." 'Gosh, Dad, aren't you overestimating it?" "No. I'd like you to get at it tonight.
"I don't have a typewriter," Byron said with a yawn. 'There's one in the library," Pug said. 'Oh, that's right, I saw it. Well, okay." With such casual assents, Byron had often dodged his homework in the past. But his father let it go. He was clinging to a belief that Byron had matured under the German bombing. "That fellow Slote came by today. Said you helped out a lot in Warsaw. Brought water to the embassy, and such." "Well, yes. I got stuck with the water job." 'Also there was an incident at the front line with the Swedish ambassador. You climbed a tower under German fire, while Slote had to hide this Jastrow girl in a farmhouse. It seems to be very much on his mind." Byron opened Horror Comics, with a cover picture of a grinning skeleton carrying a screaming half-naked girl up a stone staircase. "Oh, yes. That was right before we crossed no-man's-land. I made a sketch of the road." "Why does Slote dwell on it?" "Well, it's about the last thing that happened before we left Warsaw, so I guess it remained in his mind." "He intends to write me a letter of commendation about you." "He does? That's fine. Has he got any word on Natalie?" "Just that she's gone to Stockholm. You'll start on that report tonight?" 'Sure." Byron left the house after dinner and returned at two in the morning. Pug was awake, working in the library and worrying about his son, who blithely told him he had gone with other Americans to the opera. Under his arm Byron carried a new copy of Mein Kampf in English. Next day when Pug left the house BYron was up and dressed, lounging on the back porch in slacks and a sweater, drinking coffee and reading Mein Kampf-At seven in the evening the father found Byron in the same place, in the same chair, drinking a highball. He was well into the thick tome, which lay open on his lap. Rubbing bleary eyes, he gave his father a listless wave. Pug said, 'Did you start on that report?" "I'll get to it, Dad. Say, this is an interesting book. Did you read it?" "I did, but I didn't find it interesting. About fifty pages of those ravings give you the picture. I thought I should finish it, so I did, but it was like wading through mud."Byron shook his head. "Really amazing," and turned the page. He went out again at night, returned late, and fell asleep with his clothes on, an old habit that ground on Pug's nerves. Byron woke around eleven, and found himself undressed and under the covers, his clothes draped on a chair, with a note propped on them: Write THAT GODDAMN REPORT. He was'idling along the Kurfilstendamm that afternoon, with Mein Kampf under his arm, when Leslie Slote went hung past him, halted, and turned. "Well, there you are! That's luck. I've been trying to get hold of you. Are you coming back to the States with us or not? Our transportation's set for Thursday." "I'm not sure. How about some coffee and pastry? Let's be a couple of berliners." Slote pursed his lips. "To tell the truth, I skipped lunch. All right. What the devil are you reading that monstrosity for?" "I think it's great."Great! That's an unusual comment." They sat at a table in an enormous sidewalk cafe, where potted flowering bushes broke up the expanse of tables and chairs, and a brass band played gay waltzes in the sunshine. "God, this is the life," Byron said, as they gave orders to a bowing, smiling waiter. Look at these nice, Polite, cordial, jolting, happy Berliners, will you? Did you ever see a nicer city? So clean! All those fine statues and baroque buildings, like that Marvelous opera, and all the spanking new modern ones, and all the gardens and trees-why, I've never seen such a green, clean city! Berlin's almost like a city built in a forest. And all the canals, and the quaint little boats-&d you see that tug that sort of tips its smokestack to get under the bridges? Completely charming. The only thing is, these pleasant folks have just been blowing the hell out of Poland, machine-gunning people from the sky-I've got the scar to prove it-pounding a city just as nice as Berlin to a horrible pulp. It's a puzzle, you might say." Slote shook his head and smiled. "The contrast between the war front and the back area is always startling. No doubt Paris was as charming as ever while Napoleon was out doing his butcheries." 'Slote, you can't tell me the Germans aren't strange." 'Oh, yes, the Germans are strange." "Well, diaes why I've been reading this book, to try to figure them out. It's their leader's book. Now, it turns out this is the writing of an absolute nut. The Jews are secretly running the world, he says. That's his whole message.
They're the capitalists, but they're the Bolsheviks too, and they're conspiring to destroy the German people, who by rights should really be running the world. Well, he's going to become dictator, see, mipe out the Jews, crush France, and carve off half of Bolshevist Russia for more German living space. Have I got it right so far?" 'A bit simplified, but yes-pretty much." Slote sounded amused but uneasy, glancing at the tables nearby. 'Okay. Now, all these nice Berliners like this guy. Right? They voted for him. They fonow him. They salute him. They cheer him. Don't they? How is that? Isn't that very strange? How come he's their leader? Haven't they read this book? How come they didn't put him in a padded cell? Don't they have insane asylums? And who do they put in there, if not this guy?" Slote, while stuffing his pipe, kept looking here and there at the people around them. Satisfied that nobody eavesdropping, he said in a low tone, "Are you just discovering the phenomenon of A(was) dolf Hitler?" 'I just got shot in the head by a German. That sort of called my attention to it." 'well, you won't learn much from Mein Katnpf. That's just froth on top of the kettle." "Do you understand Hitler and the Germans?" Slote lit his pipe and stared at the air for several seconds. Then he spoke, with a wry little smile of academic condescension. 'I have an opinion, the result of a lot of study." "Can I hear it? I'm interested. "It's a terribly long story, Byron, and quite involved." Slote glanced around again. 'Some other time and place I'll be glad to, but" "Would you give me the names of books to read, then?,) "Are you serious? You'd let yourself in for some dull plodding." "I'll read anything you tell me to. "Well, let me have your book." On the Hyleaf of Mein Kampf, Slote listed authors and tides all the way down the page, in a neat slanted hand, in purple Polish ink. Running his eye down the list, Byron felt his heart sink at the unfamiliar array of Teutonic authors, each name followed by a heavy book tide, some by two:... Treitschke-Moe -van den Bnwk-Fries-Menzel-FichteSchlegeArndt-jahn-Riihs-Lagarde-Langbehn-Spengi if... Among them, like black raisins in much gray dough, a few names from his contemporarycivilization course at Columbia caught his eye: Luther-Kant-Hegel-Schopenhauer-Nietzsche. He remembered that course as a nuisance and a nightmare. He had Passed with a D minus, after frantic all-night cramming of smudgy lecture notes from the fraternity files. Slote drew a heavy line, and added more books with equally forbidding authors' names:... Santayana-Mann-Veblen-Renan-Heine-Kolnai-Rauschning..... "Below the line are critics and analysts," he remarked as he wrote. "Above are some German antecedents of Hitler. I think you must grasp these to grasp him." Byron said dolefully, "Really? The philosophers too? Hegel and Schopenhauer? Why? And Martin Luther, for pity sake." Contemplating the list with a certain and satisfaction, Slote added a name or two as he pulled hard at his pipe, making the bowl hiss. "My view is that Hitler and the Nazis have grown out of the heart of German culture-a cancer, maybe, but a, uniquely German phenomenon. Some very clever men have given me hell for holding this opinion. They insist the same thing could have happened anywhere, given the same conditions: defeat in a major war, a harsh peace treaty, ruinous inflation, mass unemployment, Communism on the march, anarchy in the streets-all leading to the rise of a demagogue, and a reign of terror. But I-" The waiter was approaching. Slote shut up and said not a word while they were being served. Watching the waiter until he went out of sight, the Foreign Service man drank coffee and ate cake. Then he started again, almost in an undertone. "But I don't believe it. To me Nazism is unthinkable without its roots in German nineteenth-century thought: romanticism, idealism, nationalism, the whole outpouring. It's in those books. If you're not prepared to read every word of Hegel's Philosophy of History, for instance, give up. It's basic." He shoved the book back to Byron, open at the flyleaf. "Well, there you are, for a starter." "Tacitus?" Byron said. "Why Tacitus? Isn't he a Roman historian?" "Yes. Do you know about Arrninius, and the Battle of the Teutoburger Forest?" "No, I don't." "Okay. In the year 9 A.D Byron, a German war leader named Arminius stopped the Romans at the Rhine, once and for all, and so secured the barbarian sanctuary in the heart of Europe. It's a key event in world history. It led eventually to the fall of Rome. It's affected all European politics and war to this hour. So I believe, and therefore I think you should read Tacitus's account of the campaign. Either you go into these things, or you don't." Byron kept nodding and nodding, his eyes narrowed and attentive. "You've read all these books? Every one?" Slote regarded the younger man quizzically, gnawing his pipe. "I haven't retained them as well as I should, but, yes, I have." 'What you'reactually trying to tell me, I imagine, is to go peddle my papers, that this is a subject for Rhodes Scholars." "Not at all, but it is a hard subject. Now, Byron, I'm really overdue at the embassy. Are you or aren't you coming with us? We fly to Oslo Thursday, and from there to London. Then we just take our chancesdestroyer, freighter, ocean liner, maybe an airplane trip via Lisbon-whatever turns up." Byron said, 'I"at are Natalie's plans? She got kind of snappish with me toward the end, and wouldn't talk much." Slote looked at his watch. 'She was disagreeable and vague with me, too. I really don't know." He hesitated. "I'll tell you something else. You may not like it. You may not believe it. But it's so, and possibly you'd be better off knowing it." "Go ahead." 'I asked her about you, whether you planned to return to Siena. Her answer was, "Well, I hope not. I sincerely hope I never see Byron Henry again, and if you ever get a chance, please tell him so with my compliments."-You look surprised. Didn't you have an argument before she left? I was positive you had." Byron, trying to compose his face, said, "Not exactly. She just seemed grouchy as hell." Slote said, "She was in a gruesome mood. Said she had a bad backache from all the train riding, for one thing. Very likely she meant nothing by it. I know she felt grateful to you. As indeed I do." Byron shook his head. "I can't say I've ever understood her." Slote glanced at the check and said, tucking bright-colored marks under a saucer, 'well, look, Byron, there's no time to discuss Natalie Jastrow. I'll tell you this. I've had no peace of mind since the day I first met her two years ago, at a very stupid cocktail party on the Quai Voltaire." "Why don't you marry her?" Byron said, as Slote started to rise. The older man fell back in his chair, and looked at him for several seconds. "All right. I'm not at all sure I won' Byron, if she'll have me." "Oh, she'll have you. I'll tell you what. I guess I'll stay on here with my folks for a while. I won't go to Oslo." Slote stood, holding out his hand. "I'll give your passport and so forth to your father's yeoman. Good luck." Byron said, shaking hands and gesturing at Mein Kampf, "I appreciate the lecture and the list." 'Small return," Slote said, 'for services rendered." 'Will you let me know," Byron said, "if you get word before you leave Berlin about where Natalie went?" Knocking out his pipe against his palm, Slote said, "Certainly," and hurried off into the sidewalk crowd. Byron ordered more ersatz coffee and opened Mein Kampf, as the cafe band struck up a merry Austrian folk dance.
uG Victor Henry'absence in the States, his wife had tangled Dherself in a romance; somethingshehad(s) not done in his much longer absences through almost twenty-five years. There was something liberating for her in the start of a war. She was forty-five. Suddenly the rules she had lived by so long seemed slightly out of date. The whole world was shaking itself loose from the past; why shouldn't she, just a wee bit? Rhoda Henry did not articulate this argument. She felt it in her bones and acted on it. Being an ex-beauty, and remaining pretty, she had always drawn and enjoyed the attention of men, so she had not lacked opportunities for affairs. But she had been as faithful to Pug Henry as he had been to her. She liked to go to church, her hymn-singing and prayers were heartfelt, she believed in God, she thought Jesus Christ was her Savior-if she had never gone deeply into the matter-and she was convinced in her soul that a married woman ought to be true and good. In the old Navy-wife pastime of ripping apart ladies who had not been true and good, she wielded well-honed claws. Setting aside a trivial kiss here and there, only one episode in the dim past somewhat marred Rhoda's otherwise perfect record. After an officers' club dance in Manila, where she had soaked up too much champagnePug being out at sea in a fleet exercise-Kip Tollever had brought her home and had managed to get her dress off. Madeline, then a child troubled by bad dreams, had saved the situation by waking and starting to cry. By the time Madeline was comforted, Rhoda had sobered up. Relieved to be back from the brink, yet bearing Kip no malice, she had donned a proper housecoat and had amiably shooed him out of the house. That had been the end of it. No doubt Kip the next morning had been just as grateful to Madeline. Victor Henry was practically the last man in the Navy he wanted to risk angering. Thereafter, Rhoda was always somewhat kittenish toward Tollever. Now and then she wondered what would have happened had Madeline not awakened. Would she really have gone through with it? How would she have felt? But she would never know; she did not intend to get that close to trouble again; the wine had been to blame. Still, there had been something titillating about being undressed by a man other than old Pug. Rhoda preserved the memory, though she buried it deep. Dr. Palmer Kirby was a shy, serious, ugly man in his middle-fifties. After the dinner party for him, discussing the guests with Sally Forrest, Rhoda had dismissed him as "one of these ghastly B s." just to be sociable, she had vainly tried her usual coquettish babble on Kirby over the cocktails. "Well, since friend husband's away, Dr. Kirby, I've put you on my right, and we can make nAy while the sun shines." "UnL On your right. Thank you."That had almost been the end of it. Rhoda detested such heavy men. But he had happened to say at dinner that he was going next day to a factory in Brandenburg. Rhoda offered to drive him there, simply because she had long wanted to see the medieval town, and Kirby in a sense was her husband's guest. On the way they had a dull, decorous lunch at an inn. Over a bottle of Moselle, Kirby warmed up and started to talk about himself and his work. At an alert question she asked him-living with Pug, Rhoda had learned to follow technical talk-Palmer Kirby suddenly smiled. It seemed to her that she had not seen him smile before. His teeth were big, and the smile showed his gums. It was a coarse male smile of knowledge and appetite, far from disagreeable, but startling in the saturnine engineer. 'Do you'really care, Mrs. Henry?" said dr. Kirby. "I'd be glad to explain the whole business, but I have a horror of boring a beautiful woman." The smile, the words, the tone, all disclosed that the man had missed none of her coquetry; that on the contra , he dry like her. A bit flustered, she touched a hand to her hair, tucking the waves behind her small white ears. 'I assure you, it all sounds fascinating. just use words of one syllable as much as possible." "Okay, but you brought this on yourself." He told her all about magnetic amplifiers-!magamps," he called them-devices for precise control of voltages and currents, especially in high power. Asking one adroit question after another, Rhoda soon drew out the key facts about him. At the California Institute of Technology he had written his doctoral thesis on electromagnetism. At forty he had decided to manufacture magnetic amplifiers on his own, instead of settling for an executive post at General Electric or Westinghouse, and security for life. The long struggle for financing had all but sunk him; it was just now paying off. War industries demanded magamps in quantity, and he was first in the field. He had come to Germany because the Germans were ahead of the United States in the quality of some components. He was studying their techniques and buying their nickel-alloy cores. She also learned that he was a widower and a grandfather. He talked about his dead wife, and then they exchanged long confidences about their children's faults and virtues. Like most men, Kirby loved to talk about himself, once over his shyness. His story of back-breaking money troubles and final success so enthralled her that she forgot to be coy, and spoke pleasantly and to the point. Rhoda was most attractive, in fact, when she made the least effort to be. She was the kind of woman who can dazzle a man at first acquaintance by piling everything into the shop window: none of it forced or faked, but in sum nearly all she has to offer. Victor Henry had long since found that out. He had no complaints, though he had once imagined there must be much more. Palmer Kirby was hit hard by this maximum first impact. He ordered a second bottle of Moselle, and they got to Brandenburg almost an hour late. While he went about his business Rhoda strolled through the picturesque old town, guidebook in hand; and her mind unaccountably kept wandering to her little misconduct long ago with Kip Tollever. She was abit dizzy from the Moselle, and it wore off slowly. When they returned to Berlin toward evening, Kirby offered to take her to dinner and to the opera. It seemed quite natural to accept. Rhoda rushed home and began raking through her dresses and shoes, pushing her hair this way and that, wishing she could have gone to the hairdresser, hesitating over her perfumes. She was still at it when Kirby came to call for her. She kept him waiting for an hour. In girlhood she had always kept boys waiting. Pug had harshly cured her of the habit, for Navy social life began and ended by the clock, and he would not tolerate embarrassment by Rhoda. Keeping Palmer Kirby waiting while she fussed over herself was a delicious little nostalgic folly, a lovely childish self-indulgence, like eating a banana split. It almost made Rhoda feel nineteen again. The mirror told her a different story, but even it seemed friendly to her that night: it showed shiny eyes, a pretty face, a firm figure in the sheer slip, and arms that were round and thin all the way up, instead of bagging above the elbow as so many women's did. She sailed into the living room wearing the pink suit with gold buttons that she had bought to please Hitler. Kirby sat reading one of Pug's technical journals. He took off big black-rimmed glasses and rose, exclaiming, "Well, don't you look grand!" "I'm awful," she said, taking Kirby's arm, "dawdling so long, but you brought it on yourself, asking the old girl out after a hard day." The opera was La Traviata, and they enjoyed discovering that they both had always loved it. Afterward, he proposed a glimpse of the notorious Berlin night life. It was nothing he'd ever do by himself, he said; still, Berlin night life was the talk of the world, and if it wouldn't offend Mrs. Henry, she might enjoy a peek at it. Rhoda giggled at the notion. "Well, this seems to be my night to howl, doesn't it? Thank you very much for a disreputable suggestion, which I hasten to accept. Let's hope we don't run into any of my friends." So it happened that when the telephone rang in the Henrys' home at two in the morning-the long-distance call from New York, via the U.S.S. Marbleh in Lisbon-there was nobody to answer. Rhoda was sipping champagne, watching a hefty blonde German girl fling her naked breasts about in blue smoky gloom, and glancing every now and then at Dr. Palmer Kirby's long solemn face in thick-rimmed glasses, as he smoked a long pipe and observed the hard-working sweaty dancer with faint distaste. Rhoda was aroused and deliciously shocked. She had never before seen a nude dancing woman, except in paintings. After that until her husband returned, she spent a lot of time with Kirby. They went to the less frequented restaurants. In her own vocabulary, she never "did anything." When Pug returned, the adventure stopped. A farewell lunch at Wannsee for Palmer Kirby was Rhoda's idea, but she got Sally Forrest to give the lunch, saying she had already sufficiently entertained this civilian visitor. If Sally Forrest detected an oddity in this she said nothing. With the end of the Polish war at hand-onlyWarsaw was still holding out-the two attaches felt able to take off some midday hours. Berlin wore a peactime air, and there was even talk that rationing would soon be over. Byron drove them all out to the resort in an embassy car. Along the broad sandy beach on the Havel river, people strolled in the sun or sat under broad gaily colored umbrellas, and a number of gymnasts braved the fall breezes to exercise in skimpy costumes. in the luncheon the Forrests ordered, rationing was not much in evidence. The pasty margarine tasted as usual like axle grease, but they ate excellent turbot and good leg of lamb. Midway during the lunch a loudspeaker crackled and whined, and a voice spoke in firm clear German: "Attentioni In the next few minutes you u?ill hear a report of the highest 'InVortance to the Fatherland." The identical words boomed all over the river resort. People stopped on the promenade to listen. On the beach the small figures of the gymnasts halted briefly in their tumbling or running. An excited murmur rose all through the elegant Kaiserpavillon restaurant. "What do you suppose?" Sally Forrest said, as the music resumed, thin gentle Schubert on strings. 'Warsaw, I'd guess," said her husband. "It must be over." Dr. Kirby said, "You don't suppose there's an armistice coming up? I've been hearing armistice talk all week." "Oh, wouldn't that be Marvelous," Rhoda said, "and put an end to this stupid war before it really gets going!" Byron said, "It's been going." Oh, of course," said Rhoda with an apologetic smile, "they'd have to make some decent settlement of that hideous Polish business." "There'll be no armistice," said Pug. The buzz of talk rose higher on the crowded terrace and in the dining room. The Germans, eyes bright and gestures animated, argued with each other, laughed, struck the table, and called from all sides for champagne. When the loudspeaker played the few bars of Liszt's music that preceded big news, the noise began to die. "Sondermeldungl' (Special bulletin!) At this announcement, an immediate total stillness blanketed the restaurant, except for a clink here and there. The loudspeaker randomly crackled; then a baritone voice spoke solemn brief words. "From ............