# Writing > Short Story Sharing >  Bon sang ne peut mentir.

## MANICHAEAN

“Bon sang ne peut mentir.”

"Messieurs! Faites vos jeux," the croupiers were crying for the hundreth time, their voices, inviting players to stake their counters of hundred or five hundred franc notes upon the spin of the red and black wheel. It was March, the height of the Riviera season and that afternoon the tense atmosphere of gambling was laden with the combined odours of perspiration and Chanel No 9.

Around each table were crowds four or five deep behind those fortunate enough to obtain seats, all eager and anxious to try their fortune upon the rouge or noir, or upon one of the thirty-six numbers, the columns, or the transversales. There was but little conversation. The assembled well-dressed idlers escaping the winter were too intent upon the game. But above the click of the plaques, as they were raked into the bank by the croupiers, and the clatter of counters as the lucky players were paid with deft hands, there rose the insistent chant:

"Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!"

Here English duchesses rubbed shoulders with the most notorious women in Europe, and men who at home in England were exemplary fathers and church attendees, laughed in a relaxed fashion with attired cocottes from Paris, dubious unknown posers and aspiring celebrities, the latter, invariably over endowed with excitable vocal cords and too much eye contact.

Upon that wide polished parquet floor of the splendidly decorated rooms, with their mural paintings and heavy gilt ornamentation, the world and the half-world were upon an equal footing.

Into that stifling atmosphere—for the Administration of the Bains de Mer of Monaco seem as afraid of fresh air as of purity propaganda—the afternoon sunlight struggled through the curtained windows, while over each table, in addition to the electric light, oil-lamps shaded green with a billiard-table effect cast a dull illumination upon the eager countenances of the players.

Through in the trente-et-quarante rooms all was silence, and counters, were being staked with a twelve-thousand franc maximum. This abode was the haunt of the professional gambler, especially for some obscure reason, of females with the means to indulge.

Certain stereotypes could be discerned. The smart women from Paris, Vienna, or Rome that tended never to lose their heads and that gambled always discreetly. The fashionable high class working girls that seldom lost much. They gambled at the tables “petite au petite” and made eyes at men whether they won or lost. If the latter they generally obtained a "loan" from somebody. 

And it was strange to see respectable Englishwoman admiring the same daring costumes of the French pseudo-"countesses" at which they had held up their hands in horror when they have seen them pictured before in Vogue.

On that particular day in one of these salles-de-jeu, a rather striking lady was experiencing quite a run of luck. To the men, both young and seasoned that viewed her, the dark eyes suffused a glow of liquid depths and bare shoulders of delicate proportions exuded a glimpse of a bedroom potential.

But "Mademoiselle," as the croupiers always called her, was usually lucky. She was an experienced, and therefore a careful player. When she staked a maximum it was not without very careful calculation upon the chances. Mademoiselle was well known to the Administration. Often her winnings were sensational, hence she served as an advertisement to the Casino, for her success always induced the uninitiated and unwary to stake heavily, and usually with disastrous results.

The green-covered gaming table, at which she was sitting next to the end croupier on the left-hand side, was crowded. She had won four maximums en plein within the last half-hour, and the crowd around the table noting her good fortune were now following her. Time after time she let the coups pass. The croupiers' invitation to play did not interest her. Long artistic fingers simply toyed with her purse, or touched her dozen piles or so of plaques.

As two sharp suited Japanese slipped past the end table unseen on their way out into the big atrium —the hall in which players go out to cool themselves, or collect their determination for a final flutter—Mademoiselle had just won the maximum upon the number four, as well as the column, and the croupier was in the act of pushing towards her a big pile of counters each representing a thousand francs.

The eager excited throng around the table looked across at her with envy. But her countenance was expressionless. Counting out twenty-five counters she gave them to the croupier and said quietly:

"Zero-trois!"

Next moment a dozen persons followed her play, staking their all upon the spot where she had asked the croupier at the end of the table to place her stake.

"Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!" came the cry again.

Then a few seconds later the croupier called:

"Rien ne vas plus!"

The red and black wheel was already spinning, and the little ivory ball sent by the croupier's hand in the opposite direction was clicking quickly over the numbered spaces.

The eyes of men and women, fevered by the gambling mania, watched the result. Slowly it lost its impetus, and after spinning about unevenly it made a final jump and fell with a loud click.

"Zer-r-o!" cried the croupier.

And a moment later Mademoiselle had pushed before her at the end of the croupier's rake another pile of counters, while all those who had followed the remarkable woman's play were also paid.

Down the table one of the regulars lent towards her companion.

"Everyone tries to discover who she is, and where she came from five years ago. But nobody has yet found out. Even Monsieur Bernard, the chief of the Surveillance, does not know," she went on in a whisper.

"He is a friend of mine, and I asked him one day. She came from Paris, he told me. She may be American, she may be Belgian, or she may be English. She speaks English and French so well that nobody can tell her true nationality."

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## cacian

Merci beaucoup MANICHAEAN c'est magnifique cette histoire et quelle fin!! :Thumbs Up: 
J'adore votre style moitier francais moitier anglais.
J'adore aussi le titre: 'bon sang ne peut mentir' translating literally (not hypethatically) 'good blood does not lie'
But then 'bon sang de bon soir' is a kind a light swearing in French.
Forgive the lack of *cedille* and *accents* for I have no idea where they are in my keyboard/computer.

PS
It is interesting how in French the word HISTOIRE means *a story* as well as* history*.
Is that saying something?

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## MANICHAEAN

Cher Cacian

Merci beaucoup pour les compliments. "Bon sang de bon soir" c'est juron? Vraiment! Je ne sais pas ca. Pour moi, quand je suis en France, je dit "Merde!"

M.

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## cacian

> Cher Cacian
> 
> Merci beaucoup pour les compliments. "Bon sang de bon soir" c'est juron? Vraiment! Je ne sais pas ca. Pour moi, quand je suis en France, je dit "Merde!"
> 
> M.


Haha...Merde c'est tres fort haha...''Bon sang'' c'est beaucoup plus leger...you have written a perfect story. I enjoyed it thank you.
Forgive me for mispelling your name MANICHAEAN..I have corrected now.
By the way does MANICHAEAN means something?

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## AuntShecky

Quite interesting story. The setting and slightly jaundiced mood remind me
of a Somerset Maugham short story, "The Facts of Life," not to be confused with the sitcom of that name. I don't know if the Maugham story was the basis of the movie "The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo," but I'll stick it in the Google machine some day when I'm feeling (the L-word.)

Me, I know nothing about casino gambling, and that's just as well. You know the old saying, "I make my own luck." If that were true, I don't know why I'd manufacture luck as bad as mine! Ask any three year old (of the four-legged variety) and he or she will back me up.

You'll note that my reply is in English--not the King's but the Court Jester's.
I wouldn't dare reply _en francais_. The PC I've been using has been nothing but trouble the past couple of days. If I dared typing my decades-old high school French on this thing it would probably start shooting flames.

But I do know what "Manichaean" means. Do I earn any points for that?

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## MANICHAEAN

Yes full marks, but then a lady who reads as widely as you, I would not expect anything less.

But let Cacian do a bit of digging!


M.

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## MANICHAEAN

Reuben Frankenberger was not your average Jo. With a name like that, your options are by definition, limited. Swarthy and compact, with clean cut features, the first thing you noticed was the eyes. They were so alive and emitted strikingly the intelligence that lay within. There were no doubt, women that would have willingly compromised themselves for the long dark eye lashes that he possessed and that inadequately masked the fires he held within. 

To all outward appearances, in terms of dress, speech & manners, he was as English as pie and chips in the East End of London. And yet, there was none of the poverty of that area about him, more the streetwise foundations imbued in his childhood.

He was staying at the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather obscure little establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms who know Monte Carlo and prefer the little place to life at the Hermitage, the Riviera Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil. The Palmiers was a place where one met a cosmopolitan crowd, but where the _cocotte_ in her bright plumage was absentan advantage which only the male habitue of Monte Carlo can fully realize. The eternal feminine is always so very much in evidence around the Casino and the most smartly dressed woman whom one might easily take for the wife of an eminent politician will with regular assumed indifference, deplore her bad luck and beg for "a little loan."

He put on a light overcoat over his dinner-jacket and strolled in the warm dusk across the Gardens and up to the Galerie, with its expensive little shops, past the original Ciro's to the Metropole.

Lady Randolph was seated at a little wicker table with her daughter Mary, a delicate, fair-haired girl, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in the current Gallic location could be considered smart.

Mother and daughter greeted Reuben enthusiastically, and at Lady Ranscomb's orders the waiter brought them an aperitif.

"We've been all day motoring up to the Col di Tenda. Sospel is lovely!" declared Marys mother. "Have you ever been there?"

"Once and only once. I motored from Nice across to Turin," was his reply. "Yes. It is truly a lovely run. The Alps are gorgeous. I like San Dalmazzo and the chestnut groves," he added. "But the frontiers are annoying. All those restrictions. Nevertheless, the run to Turin is one of the finest I know."

Presently they rose, and all three walked into the crowded _salle-a-manger_, where the chatter was in every European language, and the gay crowd were gossiping mostly of their luck or bad fortune at the _tapis vert_. At Monte Carlo the talk is always of the run of sequences, the many times the _zero-trois_ has turned up, and of how little one ever wins _en plein_ on thirty-six.

Over dinner Reuben reflected on how Lady Randolph, even though she had been so kind to him over the years, would never allow her only daughter to marry a man who was not rich. Had not Mary told him of the sly hints her mother had recently given her regarding a certain very wealthy man named George Grey, an eligible bachelor who lived in one of the most expensive flats in Park Lane, and who was being generally sought after by mothers with marriageable daughters. In many cases mothersand especially young, good-looking mothers with daughters "on their hands"are too prone to try and get rid of them "because my daughter makes me look so old," as they whisper to intimates of their own age.

After dinner they strolled across to the Casino, presenting their yellow cards of admissionthe monthly cards granted to those who are approved by the black-coated committee of inspection, who judge by one's appearance whether one had money to lose.

The Mademoiselle was observed in her usual seat at the tables wearing a black dress cut slightly low in the neck, with a string of Chinese jade beads of pale apple green hue that set off to full advantage her throat and slender neck. Today her fortunes were more mixed and she was in that twilight zone of neither winning, nor losing too much. Not that the Management of the Casino were overly concerned as they knew how at the little pigeon-hole where counters were exchanged for cheques she came often and handed over big sums in exchange for drafts upon certain banks, both in Paris and in London.

"I noticed her playing before," Reuben said in a quiet reflective tone. "What do the gossips really say about her, Mary? All this is interesting. But there are so many interesting people here."

"Well, the man who told me about her said that her past was obscure. Some people say that she was an Austrian opera singer; and others assert that she is English. But all agree that she is a clever and very dangerous woman."

"Why dangerous?" inquired Reuben in surprise.

"Ah! That I don't know. The man who told me merely hinted at her past career, and added that she was quite a respectable person nowadays in her affluence. Butwell" added the girl throwing her head back with a laugh, "I suppose people gossip about everyone in this place."

"Who was your informant?" asked Reuben.

"His name is Cardi. I believe he is an official of one of the departments of the Ministry of Justice in Paris."

"Ah! Then he probably knew more about her than he told you, I expect."

"No doubt, for he warned my mother and myself against making her acquaintance," said the girl. "He said she was a most undesirable person, but she fascinates me," Mary declared. "If Monsieur Cardi had not warned us I should most probably have spoken to her."

"Oh, my dear, you must do no such thing!" cried her mother, horrified. "It was extremely kind of monsieur to give us the hint. He has probably seen how unconventional you are, my dear."

"Monsieur Cardi might tell us a bit more about her," she added.

"I doubt if he would. These French officials are always as close as oysters," remarked Reuben.



The next morning he endeavoured to make contact with Monsieur Cardi but to his chagrin, he learnt his prey had left at ten-fifteen on the previous night by the _"rapide"_ for Paris. He had been recalled urgently, and a special _"coupe-lit'_ had been reserved for him from Ventimiglia.

He resolved therefore as an alternative to stake out Mademoiselle, from when she left the Casino, and so he went out to the Cafe de Paris opposite, where he sat upon the _terrasse_ smoking and listening to the red-coated orchestra of Roumanian gipsies. 

She eventually emerged & proceeded to walk home alone. He downed the last of his cognac and followed. His footsteps led him out of Monte Carlo and up the winding road which runs to La Turbie, above the bay.

A walk of ten minutes brought him to the iron gates of a substantial white villa, over the high walls of which climbed roses and geraniums and jasmine. The night air was heavy with their scent. He opened the side gate and walked up the gravelled drive to the terrace whereon stood the house, commanding a view of the Mediterranean and the far-off mountains of Italy.

His ring at the door was answered by a staid elderly Italian manservant.

"I believe Mademoiselle is at home," Hugh said in French. "I desire to see her, and also to apologize for the lateness of the hour. My visit is one of urgency."

"Mademoiselle sees nobody except by appointment," was the man's polite but firm reply.

"I think she will see me if you give her this card," answered Reuben.

The man took it hesitatingly, glanced at it, placed it upon a silver salver, and, leaving the visitor standing on the mat, passed through the glass swing-doors into the house.

For some moments the servant did not reappear.

Reuben, standing there, entertained just a faint suspicion that he heard a woman's shrill exclamation of surprise and the sound emboldened him.

The servant returned, saying: "Mademoiselle will see you, Monsieur. Please come this way."

He followed the man along a corridor richly carpeted in red to a door on the opposite side of the house, which the servant threw open and announced the visitor.

Mademoiselle had risen to receive him. Her countenance was, he saw, blanched almost to the lips. Her black dress caused her pallor to be more apparent.

"Well, sir? Pray what do you mean by resorting to this ruse in order to see me? Who are you?" she demanded.

Reuben was silent for a moment. Then in a hard voice he said:

"I am the son of the dead man whose card is in your hands, Mademoiselle! And I am here to ask you a few questions!"

The woman smiled in a pretense of indifference and shrugged her half-bare shoulders.

"Oh! Your father is deadis he?" she asked.

"Yes. He is dead," Reuben said meaningly. 

He glanced around the luxurious little room with its soft rose-shaded lights and pale-blue and gold decorations. On her right as she stood were long French windows which opened on to a balcony. One of the windows stood ajar, and it was apparent that when he had called she had been seated in the long wicker chair outside enjoying the balmy moonlight after the stifling atmosphere of the Rooms.

"And, Mademoiselle," he went on, "I happen to be aware that you knew my father, andthat you are cognizant of certain facts concerning his mysterious end."

"I!" she cried, raising her voice in sudden indignation. "What on earth do you mean?" She spoke in perfect English, though he had hitherto spoken in French.

""Perhaps, it is a bitter memory, Mademoiselle?"

The woman pursed her lips. There was a strange look in her eyes. For several moments she did not speak. It was clear that the sudden appearance of the dead man's son had unnerved her.

"Your father was a good man. There were others that were not," she said softly. Let me just say that your father was not exactly the man you believed him to be. He led a strange dual existence.

Reuben was startled by a bright flash outside the half-open window, a loud report, followed by a shriek of pain.

Mademoiselle staggered and crumpled heavily upon the carpet.

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## Hawkman

What a fascinating blend of John Buchan, Agatha Christie and Ian Flemming! Loved the turning point  :Biggrin:  can't wait to see what happens next.

Live long and prosper - H

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## cacian

> Yes full marks, but then a lady who reads as widely as you, I would not expect anything less.
> 
> But let Cacian do a bit of digging!
> 
> 
> M.


Haha...good idea but I should 1/2mark for guessing it meant something. :Tongue: 
So you are MANICHEAN as the name indicate? because you are the very first one I have ever met who is.
I have never heard of it until now.

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## MANICHAEAN

H

Thanks. All three writers you mentioned were mothers milk to me. Thats most probably why you percieved their influence in the tale. Mind you, I have not slipped in a vodka martini yet, nor "Pussy Galore!"

C
"Take care, less you find yourself unawares in the company of angels." Question for you. Where does that come from & in what circumstances?

Best wishes to you both.

M.

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## MANICHAEAN

Reuben rushed quickly to the prone woman. He placed his fingers upon her heart, but could detect no movement. Kneeling, he raised her gently by the shoulders & head. A growing red stain was apparent near her breast. Gurgling sounds came from her throat as she tried to speak against an upsurge in blood from her internal injuries. Reuben bent close.

Your half-brother Huten, he thought she said.

Then, Graz, and sank back.

The Italian man-servant rushed in.

Quick man. Doctor & police in that order. Move!

The Italian hurried out through the door as four female servants entered the room where their mistress lay motionless. All of them were "deshabille." Reuben left them to unloosen her clothing and hastened out upon the veranda whereon the assassin must have stood when firing the shot.

The veranda, he saw, led by several steps down into the garden, while beyond, a distance of a hundred yards, was the main gate leading to the roadway. The assassin, after firing, had, no doubt, slipped out of the gate.

The doctor was the first to arrive and looked at the deathly countenance with the closed eyes, and noted that the wound had been overlaid with a cotton handkerchief belonging to one of the maids. Mademoiselle's dark well-dressed hair had become unbound and was straying across her face, while her handsome gown had been torn in the attempt to unloosen her corsets.


The police of Monte Carlo are not exactly the A Team in terms of expediency. Perhaps they are never over anxious to arrest a criminal, because Monte Carlo attracts the higher criminal class of both sexes from all over Europe. If the police of the Principality were constantly making arrests it would be bad advertisement for the Casino. Hence, they prefer to watch and to give information to the bureaux of police of other countries, so that arrests invariably take place beyond the frontiers of the Principality of Monaco.

When two officers of the Bureau of Police did arrive, they were of the officious type that some men in uniform, for no apparent reason feel, establishes them as of a superior breed.

It did not get off to a good start. Having ascertained the basic facts of the shooting & in the absence of any assassin still lurking around outside the window, they homed in on Reuben.

"Rather late for a call, surely?" said the tall one.

The young Englishman hesitated.

"Am I compelled to answer that question?"

"I am Charles De Cygnet, Chief Inspector of the Surete of Monaco, and I press for a reply," answered the other firmly.

"And I, Reuben Frankenberger, a British subject, at present decline to satisfy you," was the young man's response.

The two kepiss converged and they let it go.

Turning to the Italian man-servant they asked; "Mademoiselle arrived here two months ago, I believe?"

"Yes, m'sieur. She spent the autumn in Paris, and during the summer she was at Deauville. She also went to London for a brief time, I believe."

"Did she ever live in London?" asked Reuben eagerly, interrupting the Frenchmans interrogation.

"Yesonce. She had a furnished house on the Cromwell Road for about six months."

"How long ago?" asked Reuben.

"Please allow me to make my inquiries, monsieur!" exclaimed the detective angrily. May I remind you where you are.

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## MANICHAEAN

Reuben could not sleep that night and sat up in bed in his pale blue silk pajamas, his brain engaged, endeavouring to piece together; the facts, half-facts, assumptions and other variables that spun around inside his brain. 

Firstly it seemed that there was a definite possibility that he had been followed here to Monaco by someone who was determined to prevent him from knowing the truth; for Mademoiselle could have been killed easily at many more convenient locations or opportunities. Then there were the words that she had uttered. The knowledge of a half-brother of which he was unaware. And the word Huten? Was that a name? His German was adequate enough to know it meant to guard or as an alternate translation could even be the English word heed.

Though he was unconscious of it, a middle-aged, well-dressed Frenchman had, while he was in his room, been making inquiries regarding him of the night concierge and some of the staff. The concierge had recognized the visitor as Armand Buisson, of the police bureau at Nice. It seemed as though the French police were unduly inquisitive concerning the well-conducted young Englishman. 

Also at that moment, in his private room at the bureau of police down in Monaco, Superintendent De Cygnet was carefully perusing a dossier of official papers which had been brought to him by the archivist.

Between his lips was a long, thin, Swiss cigarhis favorite smokeand with his gold-rimmed pince-nez poised upon his aquiline nose he was reading a document which would certainly have been of considerable interest to Reuben if he had seen it.

It was headed: "Republique Francaise. Department of Herault. Prefecture of Police. Bureau of the Director of Police. Reference Number 20197.B.," and was dated nearly a year before. 
It commenced:

"Copy of an 'information' in the archives of the Prefecture of the Department of Herault concerning the woman Geli Raubal, now passing under the name of Brigitte Hamann and living at the Villa Amette at Monte Carlo.

"The woman in question was born in 1884 at Ranshofen, a village in the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary and was the daughter of one Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. At the age of seventeen, after her father's death, she became a school teacher and at nineteen had an affair with an amateur painter, whose records we have been unable to pursue. Apparently the liaison went wrong and they broke up.

"She then joined the chorus of a revue at the Jardin de Paris, where she met a well-to-do Englishman named Percy Bryant. The pair went to England, where she married him, and they resided in the county of Northampton. Six months later Bryant died, leaving her a large sum of money. She never returned to Austria but proceeded to France. She rented an apartment in Paris, and afterwards played at Monte Carlo, where she won a considerable sum, with the proceeds of which she purchased the Villa Amette, which she now occupies each season."

Extracts of reports concerning Gelid Raubal, alias Brigitte Hamann, are herewith appended:

"Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, Londonto the Prefecture of Police, Paris.

"Mademoiselle Brigitte Hamann rented a furnished house at Hove, near Brighton, in June, 1918. Afterwards moved to Worthing and to Exeter, and later took a house in the Cromwell Road, London, in 1919. She was accompanied by an Italian manservant named Cataldi. Her conduct was suspicious, though she was undoubtedly possessed of considerable means. She was often seen at the best restaurants with various male acquaintances, more especially with a man named Franz Xaver Schwarz. Her association with this person was curious, as he was the Treasurer linked to a political party in Germany. Certain suspicions were aroused, and observation was kept, but nothing tangible was discovered. She left London quite suddenly, but left no debts behind."

"Information from the Borough Police Office, Worthing, to the Prefecture of Police, Department of Herault.

"Mademoiselle Brigitte Hamann has been identified by the photograph sent as having lived in Worthing in December, 1918. She rented a small furnished house facing the sea, and was accompanied by an Italian manservant and a French maid. A serious fracas occurred at the house on the evening of December 18th, 1918. A middle-aged gentleman, whose name is unknown, called there about seven o'clock and a violent quarrel ensued between the lady and her visitor, the latter being very seriously assaulted by the Italian. The constable on duty was called in, but the visitor refused to prosecute, and after having his injuries attended to by a doctor left for London. Three days later Mademoiselle disappeared from Worthing."

De Cygnet, Inspector of the Detective Police of Monaco, smiled and laid down his cigar.

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## cacian

> H
> 
> Thanks. All three writers you mentioned were mothers milk to me. Thats most probably why you percieved their influence in the tale. Mind you, I have not slipped in a vodka martini yet, nor "Pussy Galore!"
> 
> C
> "Take care, less you find yourself unawares in the company of angels." Question for you. Where does that come from & in what circumstances?
> 
> Best wishes to you both.
> 
> M.


Hi MANICHAEAN this is an interesting twist on 
'ignorance is bliss'
I have tried to look for the origin of this quote but alas I can't find it on Google.

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## Jassy Melson

> Reuben Frankenberger was not your average Jo. With a name like that, your options are by definition, limited. Swarthy and compact, with clean cut features, the first thing you noticed was the eyes. They were so alive and emitted strikingly the intelligence that lay within. There were no doubt, women that would have willingly compromised themselves for the long dark eye lashes that he possessed and that inadequately masked the fires he held within. 
> 
> To all outward appearances, in terms of dress, speech & manners, he was as English as pie and chips in the East End of London. And yet, there was none of the poverty of that area about him, more the streetwise foundations imbued in his childhood.
> 
> He was staying at the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather obscure little establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms who know Monte Carlo and prefer the little place to life at the Hermitage, the Riviera Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil. The Palmiers was a place where one met a cosmopolitan crowd, but where the _cocotte_ in her bright plumage was absentan advantage which only the male habitue of Monte Carlo can fully realize. The eternal feminine is always so very much in evidence around the Casino and the most smartly dressed woman whom one might easily take for the wife of an eminent politician will with regular assumed indifference, deplore her bad luck and beg for "a little loan."
> 
> He put on a light overcoat over his dinner-jacket and strolled in the warm dusk across the Gardens and up to the Galerie, with its expensive little shops, past the original Ciro's to the Metropole.
> 
> Lady Randolph was seated at a little wicker table with her daughter Mary, a delicate, fair-haired girl, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in the current Gallic location could be considered smart.
> ...


I would guess that the butler did it.

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## Jassy Melson

> Reuben could not sleep that night and sat up in bed in his pale blue silk pajamas, his brain engaged, endeavouring to piece together; the facts, half-facts, assumptions and other variables that spun around inside his brain. 
> 
> Firstly it seemed that there was a definite possibility that he had been followed here to Monaco by someone who was determined to prevent him from knowing the truth; for Mademoiselle could have been killed easily at many more convenient locations or opportunities. Then there were the words that she had uttered. The knowledge of a half-brother of which he was unaware. And the word Huten? Was that a name? His German was adequate enough to know it meant to guard or as an alternate translation could even be the English word heed.
> 
> Though he was unconscious of it, a middle-aged, well-dressed Frenchman had, while he was in his room, been making inquiries regarding him of the night concierge and some of the staff. The concierge had recognized the visitor as Armand Buisson, of the police bureau at Nice. It seemed as though the French police were unduly inquisitive concerning the well-conducted young Englishman. 
> 
> Also at that moment, in his private room at the bureau of police down in Monaco, Superintendent De Cygnet was carefully perusing a dossier of official papers which had been brought to him by the archivist.
> 
> Between his lips was a long, thin, Swiss cigarhis favorite smokeand with his gold-rimmed pince-nez poised upon his aquiline nose he was reading a document which would certainly have been of considerable interest to Reuben if he had seen it.
> ...


This reads like the beginning of a novel.

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## MANICHAEAN

The scene was the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It was the half-hour before sunset, and the whole valley of the Inn—_still wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer_—began to glow with mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the world, there were touches of piercing primary colours—red, yellow, violet—the palette of a synchromist.

Far below, hugging the winding river lay Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and villas. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice laboured toward the town.

It was a striking scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all Europe. It had colour, dignity and repose. The Alps there came down a bit and so increased their spell. They were not the harsh precipices of Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of Northern Italy, but rolling billows of clouds and snow, the high-flung waves of some titanic but stricken ocean. Now and then came a faint clank of metal from the funicular railway, but the tracks themselves were hidden among the trees of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell was heard from afar. A great bird of prey, swept across the crystal spaces.

A shelf on the mountainside had been converted by man into a terrace. On it, clinging to the mountain, was a former Alpine gasthaus now one of the homes of the German Chancellor and along the front of the terrace, protecting from the sheer drop of a thousand feet, was a stout wooden rail.

Two men stood by the rail, one erect and holding his wrists crossed in front of him.

“The business with Frau Raubal, it is finished?” he asked of the other.

“I’m told she is unlikely to survive,” the other answered deferentially.

By now the sun had reached the skyline to the westward and the tops of the ice mountains. Scarlet’s warred with golden oranges, and vermilions faded into pinks. Below, in the valley, the colours were beginning to fade slowly to a uniform grey. The wild reds of hades splashed upon the cold whites and pale hues of heaven. The night train for Venice, a long line of black coaches, was entering the town.

“As my lawyer Herr Frank, I need you now to undertake a further delicate investigation.”

“Of course Herr Chancellor,” answered the second man and he stood, nervous and unsure.

“There is an attempt by one of my family relatives to blackmail me concerning my ancestry & I want you to make enquiries. As you may be aware, I was not close to my father & the origins of my paternal grandfather are of some interest. You will start in Graz where my grandmother was believed to have worked.”

The lawyer nodded and shivered inwardly.

The sun had now disappeared behind the great barrier of ice and the colours of the scene were fast changing. All the scarlet’s and vermilions were gone and a luminous blood like hue bathed the whole scene in its light. The night train for Venice, leaving the town, appeared as a long string of blinking lights. A chill breeze came from the Alpine vastness to westward. The deep silence of an Alpine night settled down.

----------


## MANICHAEAN

The lawyer having departed, the Chancellor retired back inside. He knew he would have trouble sleeping and that, even when he did, the solace of rest was invariably not there. So he sat in the heavy wooden, high backed chair and looked at the fire that burned in the large stone hearth. He thought back to his journey so far, His Struggle, as he liked to refer to it. He remembered vividly his past bohemian life in Vienna helped by support from his mother. He had worked then, first as a casual labourer and then eventually as a painter, selling watercolours. His only real succour, his mother had died aged 47 and the money had then run out.

He looked around the vast room. How far removed now from living in a homeless shelter, and after that, a house for poor working men on _Meldemannstrasse._Was it back then that he had seen his first orthodox Jew? An apparition in a long caftan and with black hair locks. They had not been like that in Linz. Were these Germans?
 
But then with bitterness he pondered, Were the Viennese, German either, with their enclosed tight distrust of all perceived outsiders?

He remembered his first sorties into _Wien_ his mind inflamed by such strophes as _"Immer luste, fesch und munter, und der Wiener geht nit unter."_ But he had been brought gradually to the realization that something was amiss.

He had expected to find a city gone mad with lascivious waltzes. He had dreamed of Vienna as the "gayest city in Europe." But gaiety in Vienna is an end, not a means. It is born in the blood of the people. Alongside the real Viennese night life, the blatant and spectacular caprices of Paris are so much tinsel. The life on the _Friedrichstrasse_, the brightest and most active street in Europe, becomes tawdry when compared with the secret glories of the _Kärntnerring._ In the one instance we have gaiety on parade, in strumpet garb. In the other instance, it is an ineradicable factor of the city's life. Pleasure in Vienna is not elaborate and external. It is a private, intimate thing in which every citizen participates according to his standing and his pocketbook. Vienna is perhaps the one city in the world which maintains a consistent attitude of genuine indifference toward the outsider.

Strangers you are when you enter and as strangers you take your departure.

Was it the _Amerikan-bar_ in the centre of the _Kaisergarten_ that he had discovered Gabrielle, a sad little French girl, alone and forsaken in the midst of merriment, drinking Dubonnet and dreaming of the _Boulevard Montparnasse._ 
He had bought her another Dubonnet. In her was epitomized the sadness of the stranger in Vienna. Lured by lavish tales of gaiety, she had left Paris, to seek an unsavoury fortune in the love marts of Vienna. But her dream had been broken. She was lonely as only a Parisian can be, stranded in an alien country. She knew scarcely a score of German words, in fact no language but her own. Her youth and coquetry did not avail. She was an outsider, a deserted onlooker. She spoke tenderly of the _Café du Dôme_, of _Fouquet's, the Café d'Harcourt, Marigny_ and the _Luxembourg_. She was pretty, after the anemic French type of beauty, with pink cheeks, pale blue eyes and hair the colour of wet straw. Her slender, soft fingers were without a ring. Her jewelry, no doubt, had long since gone to the money lender. She seemed childishly happy because he had sat and talked to her. Poor little Gabrielle! Her tragedy was one of genuine bereavement, or perhaps the worst of all tragediesloneliness. But her case was typical. The Viennese are not hospitable to strangers. They are an intimate, self-sufficient people.

He had eventually passed out into the bleak street, the first faint flush of dawn in the east and the _wässerer_ were washing off the cabs.

He wished that he might have been able to think of a gayer Vienna at that time, as the shadows had dissolved from the streets and the grey morning light had struck the great steeple of _Stefans-Dom_. But another picture had presented itself. He saw a little French girl, out of touch with all the life around her, sipping her Dubonnet in solitudea forlorn girl with pink cheeks, pale blue eyes and hair the colour of wet straw.

He rose from the chair & proceeded further into the house towards the bedroom.

Perhaps now, sleep will come.

----------


## MANICHAEAN

The Chancellor’s bedroom was a single long chamber at the back of the house approached through a wood beamed corridor of morbid and dated aspect. Inside, rarely drawn heavy drapes, covered a high window overlooking a frozen cobbled courtyard. A large four poster bed of a bygone era that had to be climbed up onto was positioned at the far end.

Once undressed & laying there, his senses eventually adjusted to the darkness and the stillness that lays heavy upon these mountain abodes. He made out four spandrels from the corners of the chamber which ran up to join a sharp, cup-shaped roof. He was already acquainted with the high vault like ceiling and walls alternating with baroque type oils, and thick, coarse surfaces of embossed wallpaper. Any ornaments in the way of lamps or other bric-brac were of sufficient bulk and intensity to bear them well through the unremitting journeys of eternity.

To slip into a sleep is like a death desired. To be entrapped in a disturbing ongoing sleep, over which one has no control is unnerving for the most insensitive of souls. But then, that is the nature of the beast.

There appeared a new figure upon the scene, initially dimly perceived, but then vivid. This was a tall, thin person clad in gabardine, with a gaunt and austere face. He bore himself with a slow and impressive dignity, as if he took command of all things from the instant of his entrance. In spite of his appearance and disturbing attire, it was now his business, his room, his to command. He carried a coil of light ropes over his left forearm. The form on a bench looked him up and down, but the expression was unchanged. It spoke defiance.

Another man had entered the room with a bucket of what he thought was water in either hand. Another followed with a third bucket. They were laid beside the bench upon which the form lay. The second man had a wooden dipper—a bowl with a straight handle—in his other hand. This he gave to the man in the black, long coat. At the same moment there was an approach from the side with a dark object that looked like a crude metal spout. The hair was jerked back and the object thrust with great force into the mouth. Eyes rolled wildly in the head, as the ladle was raised and water poured in. The form gagged and struggled to control the flow, the harsh edges of the spigot against the back of the throat. The ladle was raised again and blood contained therein spilled over the rim.

He thought the scream was muted but it was not so. It traversed the house, but no one came. Those who had served this man were in fear themselves of the daemons that were incarnate therein.

With heart beating exertion, he forced himself back to consciousness, breaking through the bonds of sleep. Back into life with horrible energy, his hands were extended as if in protection against the unseen. He found himself lying shivering, his hair dank with terror, on sweat soaked sheets in this tomb of a room.

Sitting at the side of the bed he sank his throbbing head into his shaking hands. And then, suddenly, his heart seemed to stand still in its bosom, and he could not even scream, so great was his terror. Something was advancing toward him through the darkness of the room.

Horror coming upon a horror can break a man's spirit and the Chancellor could neither reason, nor in such extreme circumstances, even pray. He could only sit like a frozen image, and watch the figure coming down the great room. And then he could smell the odour and nearness of his Master about his being and he collapsed.

----------


## MANICHAEAN

Cataldi, the Italian manservant, rang the Hotel des Palmiers after Reuben had finished his dinner to inform him that _Mademoiselle_, had finally passed away.

There was thus, no real reason for Reuben to stay. The door in Monaco was closed, albeit prematurely. If he was to gain any traction at all regards his fathers death, his interest needed now to be refocused on the other side of the Austrian border. In addition, having not been charged on any real involvement with the death of _Mademoiselle_, he had no desire to getting bogged down in a swamp of bureaucratic and tedious enquiries by Chief Inspector De Cygnet of the _Surete Monaco_.

Therefore having briefly left an apologetic note for Lady Randolph & Mary, he quickly packed his valise, settled the bill and climbed into his Talbot-Lago coupe parked on the forecourt.

It is 725 Kms from Monaco to Graz and he knew he could make good time by driving through the night and continue on into the next day. He would proceed east along the Mediterranean coast, which he knew well, over the Italian border to just before Genoa, then turn north to Piacenza & Brescia. Perhaps then a short nap somewhere, then onto Verona, across the Austrian border to Villach, Klagenfurt and finally Graz.

He was a relaxed and skillful driver and soon settled to a journey with the windows down and to breathing the warm moist coastal air combined with the countryside scents of Southern France. He had now owned this supurb car for over three years, and the machine responded generously to every touch of his reflexes.

He thought of how enchanted he was by Mary that he had just left behind and how she differed so much from other women he had known, even those who by the current standards were considered bright, clever, and cosmopolitan.

Mary was that exception. She took her dresses from Paris and her manners from Piccadilly, and wore both charmingly. There was a quaint pertness, a delightful conceit, a native self-assertion, to the extent that when he had first seen her in the company of other men, she had insisted upon being paid compliments and had succeeded in making some of the most boring of Englishmen in society appear eloquent.

Her sense of humour had kept her from the tragedy of a _grande passion_, and, as there was, as far as he could see, no humility in her love, she would for him, make an excellent wife.

----------


## MANICHAEAN

A week later and Reuben was once again drawing a blank. Sure, the officials at the Graz Register of Births and Marriages were courteous, but with every enquiry into the name _“Hutte”_ or anything similar, it was almost as if someone was there first, eradicating whatever had existed prior. The telephone directories were equally, unforthcoming and he had resorted to combing bars and clubs in different parts of the city, and striking up conversations with strangers in his endeavours to get an initial lead.

He had arranged that afternoon to meet a certain Herr Schmidt who owned a beer hall in a more dubious district of the town and who it was reported had contacts throughout all Graz’s strata’s of society. It was the sort of place that one approached downwind and even then with no airs or affectations. Every second drinker there seemed to have brought his lunch with him, wrapped in newspaper; half a _blutwurst_, two radishes, or an onion, and what appeared to be a heel of rye bread. No waitresses either. Each drinker for himself! You went to the long shelf, selected your _mass_, washed it at the spouting faucet and fell into line. Behind the rail the _zahlmeister_ took your twenty-eight _pfennigs_ and pushed your _mass_ along the counter. Then the perspiring _bierbischof_ filled it from the naked keg, and you carried it either to a table in the courtyard, or drank it standing up under the open sky. Burly assistants entered with fresh kegs; the thud of the bung-starter mallet never seemed to cease. Huge damsels in dirty aprons—retired _kellnerinen_, too bulky, even, for that trade of human battleships—went among the tables rescuing empty _mässe_. Each_ mass_ returned to the shelf and so began another circuit of faucet, counter and table. A dame so fat that she must have remained permanently at anchor—bawled postcards and matches. A man in _pinçe-nez_, sold pale German cigars at three for ten_ pfennigs_.

Here Reuben knew, he was among the plain people, a people, that if he was any judge of character likely believed in a Holy Trinity of; Karl Marx, _blutwurst_ and _Spatenbräu_ beer and that spoke a German that was half speech and half grunt.


From behind where he sat came a voice, "_Grüss' Gott_ or should I say in English, the compliments of God." What other land has such a greeting for strangers thought Reuben as he turned his head.

“Herr Schmidt?” said Reuben and took in the man’s bulk, the show of teeth and the outstretched hand of a bear.

“_Ja_,” was the response and then in good English, “May I join you?”

It is to say the least interesting when a German meets an Englishman socially, for it is in the fundamental matter of morals that the German looks upon the Englishman as a hypocrite, and the Englishman looks upon the German as rather unpolished and undignified.

Neither seems able to find a common ground. The Englishman, for example, pops into his club to escape the world, not to seek it there. The English club and the English home are primarily for seclusion, not for companionship, and this characteristic alone is woefully hard for the stranger to understand. To the gregarious German, priding himself upon _Gemüthlichkeit_, loving reunions, restaurants, his _Stammtisch_, formal and punctilious in his politeness, unused to the ways of the world, but yet convinced that he is now a great man politically and commercially, the Englishman is not only an enigma but an insult.

But despite the initial dislike, pleasantries were exchanged and they sat in uneasy initial small-talk.

Herr Schmidt pointed out the girls, who obviously he knew only too well.

“That there is _Sophie_, and further on there is; _Freda, Elsa, Lili, Kunigunde, Märtchen, Thérèse and Lottchen,_ and over by the barrel, see, even little _Rosa_, who is half Bavarian.”

Reuben nodded and moving on, raised the question of his enquiries into a possible half-brother in Graz with the name of _“Hutte.”_

The German eyed him slowly.

“You are of the Jewish persuasion I believe, though you speak like an Englishman, _Ja?”_

“That is correct, though of a non-practicing variety. Is that a problem?”

“It is not necessarily a problem for it is in my interests for you to pay me for my services,” Herr Schmidt replied, “But I give you some advice for free. Be careful, you may be unaware of the dangers you face.”

“Like?” answered Reuben.

“Herr Frankenberger, let me be as we say in German, a _gemüthlich_ fellow. There is here in Germany a distrust of both the English and those of your religion. On the first count one of the chief causes for the restlessness, particularly in your England, the heart of the greatest empire in the world, is that this new-comer of Germany must be made room for at the table, received with courtesy, and consulted. Another individual has married into the family, and must gradually find her place there. Of all nations in the world, England is the slowest to make new friends and acquaintances, and easily the most awkward in doing so. She is a good friend when you know her, but with the most abominable manners to strangers.

“And on the second?” said Reuben looking the other in the eye.

“Well, let us say that there is no need to mince matters in stating that a suspicion and dislike exists. The German comes by his dislike of the Jew through centuries of traditional conflict, plunder, and hatred, Even as long ago as the close of the fourteenth century the great strife between the princes of Germany and the free cities ceased, in order that both might unite to plunder the Jews. They are regarded always as strangers in our midst. They are of another race. They have other standards and other allegiances. Perhaps we are all of us, the most enlightened of us, provincial at bottom. We like to know who and what our neighbors are, and whence they came; and we dislike those who are outside our racial and social experiences, our moral and religious habits, and the Jew is always, everywhere, a foreigner. At any rate, so the German maintains.Our ideals are spiritual, not material. The American seeks wealth, the Englishman power, the Frenchman notoriety; the German is satisfied with enjoyment of music, poetry, art, and friendly and very simple intercourse with his fellows. Look around you here. The folk of Graz perish more elegantly, more charmingly than anywhere else in the world. When their time comes it is gout that fetches them, or appendicitis, or angina pectoris; or perchance they cut their throats!”

He laughed at what he perceived was his own rough native humour.

“The Germans waste more time drinking beer than in any other way and I for one profit from it. The man who sits with his morning or his afternoon glass of beer beside him, and who, in addition, smokes and reads the newspapers, considers that he is much occupied, and goes home with a good conscience, feeling that he has fully done his duty.”

_“Jeden Feind besiegt der Deutsche:
Nur den Durst besiegt er nicht.”_
“Let me translate.”

“No need,” said Reuben.

“The German conquers every foe,
Except his thirst, that lays him low.”

Both men sensed the cut and parry stage of the conversation had now passed, but not before the German had expounded with an expansive gesture;

“Ah but I am but a vulgar _bierhaus_ owner. Babies, for example, are too vulgar for me; I cannot bring myself to touch them. And actors. And evangelists. And the anecdotes of ancient dames. But in general, as I have said, I joy in vulgarity.”

Reuben smiled.

“It is refreshing talking to you Herr Schmidt so openly. There is nothing more distasteful than innuendos between grown men. And by the way, the charade of the vulgar, provincial _bier_ house owner is so much hot air. Who and what are you really?”

The German paused and said, “It will cost you money, but your father was killed for what he was and for what he attempted to do, the same conclusion that you are likely to follow for what you are.”

“I do not understand.”

Herr Schmidt leant in close, such that one could smell the schnapps & beer seeping from the open pores of his skin.

“We two are here today in what I like to consider The Graz _Parthenon_ of beer drinking, which in itself is fascinating to the _connoisseur_, but a bit too strenuous, a trifle too cruel, perhaps, for the _dilettante_. But let us go beyond the city of Graz. There is Herr Reuben’s in Germany at present an anti-Semitic party, small though it be, in the _Reichstag_, while the party of the Centre, of the Conservatives and the Agrarians, is frankly anti-semitic as well. No Jew can become an officer in the army, no Jew is admitted to one of the German corps in the universities, no Jew can hold office of importance in the state, and I presume that no unbaptized Jew is received at court. The German fears him; in England you do not. We fear the _Speyer_ brothers, or _Kahn_, or _Schiff_, or the members of the house of _Rothschild_. Was it not William the Conqueror who in subjugating Britain said “Let them hate, as long as they fear?” Well Herr Reuben’s, we Germans both hate & fear. The German considers his dealings with the intangible things of life to be a higher form, indeed the highest form, of intellectual employment. He is therefore racially, historically, and by temperament jealous or contemptuous, according to his station in life, of the cosmopolitan exchanger of the world, the Jew. He denies to him either patriotism or originality, and looks upon him as merely a distributer, whether in art, literature, or commerce, as an exchanger who amasses wealth by taking toll of other men’s labour, industry, and intellect.”

“And the point is?” whispered Reuben unnerved.

“The point is Herr Frankenberger, the perverse point is, that at the highest point of the rising salvation of Germany’s interests there is a man who is related both to you, your family and your blood!”

----------


## MANICHAEAN

Herr Schmidt’s final words still stayed fresh in Reuben’s mind long after they had parted.

“Your father died,” Schmidt said, “because he was blackmailing someone. For what end I do not know, for it would appear, to have been out of character for monetary gain. But he was playing, like yourself, a dangerous game in a foreign country.”

“Who was he supposed to be blackmailing?” asked Reuben.

“That I cannot divulge, but I suggest you arrange to meet Dr Edward Bloch who resides here in Graz and he may be able to help you.”

“In what way?”

“He is like yourself, a Jew and treats the poor in this part of town. Do as I say, and speak to him.”

With that, the meeting was over and Reuben proceeded to the address given him and which was nearby. It was, as noted by Schmidt, in a run-down area. The ground floor constituted a cramped reception and surgery, whilst what appeared to be the living quarters were in the dingy basement.

The receptionist eyed him warily as one views a stranger and having explained his business asked him to wait.

Twenty minutes later, he was ushered down the passage to a small office to meet what he hoped was a new source of information.

The doctor rose from his chair to meet him; middle aged, rotund, eyes blinking like someone had turned on a bright light.

“Herr Frankenburger, I think I knew your father and understand why you have come. _Shalom_.”

Reuben warmed to him and instinctively knew he was a good man.

“_Herr Dokter_, may I talk openly?”

“But of course, come sit down.”

Reuben related his efforts so far in trying to resolve his father’s death and the doctor regarded him quietly and thoughtfully.

He leant forward and in a gesture that signified so much in the way of; sadness and friendship and kinship, placed a hand gently on Reuben’s knee.

“My son, I knew your father well and know of his demise. You were most probably kept unaware of what he did here in Austria, as he knew you had your own life to lead. Don’t be angry with him for that. His motives were pure.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Reuben, fighting back the tears. “Blackmail I’m told. Of whom, for what?”

“He was, like yourself, a Frankenberger” said the doctor, “and had old letters from here in Austria that related to payments made by a Jewish family to provide support for a child born out of wedlock.”

“But of value to who?” asked Reuben, his head held straight.

“Of value to a descendent that holds a high political position, but of more importance to Jews living here in Austria and who wish to leave.”

“Are there many?” asked Reuben.

“Many who wish to leave, yes. In reality, only a few have succeeded and I am one that has been given permission, with more than the clothes on the backs of my wife and children.”

The doctor paused, and then continued, almost as an afterthought.

“There may in fact be a supplementary reason in this case, but bear with me as I relate it. It concerns a woman patient I saw way back in January 1907 who had abnormal pains in the chest. I diagnosed breast cancer and her son immediately returned home from Vienna to take care of his ill mother. Surgery was undertaken and one of her breasts was removed. But it was already too late as the cancer was in an advanced stage and it was improbable she would survive. As drastic action was needed to take whatever chances there were, I recommended a painful and expensive form of treatment in which dosages of idoform were applied directly onto the ulcerations that caused the cancer.
We Jews are inordinately attached to our mothers and such it was in this son’s case. Nevertheless her condition worsened and three days before Christmas she died in great pain. Knowing the son’s financial straits, I gave as big a discount as I could when it came to settle the bill, mainly to cover the hospital costs. That woman was named Klara Polzl and the son’s words to me were “I shall be grateful to you forever.”

“Much later, after your father had died in fact, I received one day a visit from certain gentlemen here in my surgery. I was informed that I now had been granted what was termed “special status” but was obliged to return all post cards and paintings given me over the years by the aforesaid son, for which I would be given a receipt.”

Reuben rose. So much had been answered.

“What will you do now?” he asked the doctor. 

“_B’ezrat HaShem_, I am now planning to take my family to New York to start a new life,” was the reply.

----------


## MANICHAEAN

The options of the Chancellor’s lawyer were not good as he viewed the papers before him. He had, as instructed, began his investigation in Graz and then moved onto other parts of Austria and across to Germany. Cautious as only a frightened man can be, he had on his own initiative covered his tracks, or removed evidence that threatened the case he was struggling to resolve. But still, he was dammed if he presented the facts as gleaned, and likewise would be dammed even more if he was found to have been lying.

Individuals had already disappeared or worse and he knew his vulnerability once the task was accomplished and he was still privy to the unsavoury aspects of the facts.

It was two in the morning and as he sat in his study; his eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue and his head was throbbing unremittingly around his temples. His wife had retired much earlier, but like her husband, attained no solace from the danger she instinctively sensed in the current situation.

The lawyer adjusted the lamp on his desk and reviewed again the documents. He was seeking for an escape from unpleasant conclusions.

“Work backwards,” he thought, “for that is the most logical option.” He reviewed as follows:

_ “The German Chancellor Adolph Hitler was one of six children, of whom four; (Gustav, Ida, Otto & Edmund) had died, and only one sister, (Paula) had survived.”
_
_“His father had been Alois Hitler & his mother Klara Polzl.”_ There was no problem there. It came like a malignant growth in the previous generation.

_“The mother of Alois Hitler had been one Maria Anna Schicklgruber, but the name of the father of Alois Hitler was unknown. There were rumoured to be letters from a Jewish family in Graz for whom Maria had worked as a housekeeper, referring to the provision of financial support for the illegitimate child Alois and it was believed that the 19 year old son of the same Jewish family, Leopold Frankenber had fathered the child.”_

The lawyer had muddied the waters as far as he was able and was aided by the fact that:

_“Maria had later married one Johann Georg Hiedler, who later claimed he was the bastard’s father.”_

Further confusion was then sown by:

_“The death of Johann, such that the child was raised in the family of his brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.”_

Evidence was then uncovered that:

_“Nepomuk was possibly the father of Alois.”_

If so, then:

_“J. Nepomuk who was also the grandfather of Klara Poelzl, the Chancellors mother, meant that Johann Nepomuk Hiedler was both the Chancellor’s paternal grandfather and his maternal great-grandfather.”_

Thinking, the unthinkable, “His Client’s family tree was twisted and so was the man himself!”

----------


## MANICHAEAN

Im afraid _Herr Chancellor_, that I have been unable to attain the Frankenburger letters that I refer to in my report in front of you, said the lawyer. The atmosphere was laden with the presage of a storm, almost as a premonitory echo in the room in which they were seated.

There is no need to apologize. I already have them, responded the Chancellor. It is good that you have chosen to be open to me regarding that aspect of your enquiries, he added.

Whatever private disquisitions the lawyer had experienced the night before were calmed somewhat, but he remained perforce, silent and supine. He sensed that only by a determined effort of self-abnegation and effacement could he survive this.

For a time, the Chancellor brooded again over the report before him and the silence hung like an oppressive shadow. Hitler then spoke, at first hesitantly, then with increased tempo.

This is of course most of it lies and innuendo, he commenced. Have I not myself had a law enacted that the definition of Jewishness, specifically excludes Jesus Christ and myself? But we Germans are not at heart business men. There are more eyes with dreams in them in Germany than in all the world. We work hard, increase our factories, our commerce, but our hearts are not in it. The Jew has amassed an enormous part of the wealth of Germany, considering his small proportion of the total population. The German, because he is not at heart a trader, is an easy prey for him.

There are however noble Jews. Perhaps you are unaware, but it was a _Leutnant_ Hugo Gutmann, my commanding Jewish Officer who recommended me, for the award of the Iron Cross 1st Class. That was unusual for a Lance-Corporal, as I then was to get this, as it was almost always reserved for commissioned officers. After the war I could have put him out of the way, but no, I ensured he received his pension, even after he left for America.

Likewise with many Jews I knew in Vienna when I arrived aged only 17 years old. You already know of my gratitude to Dr. Eduard Bloch, the Jewish family doctor who attended my mother until she died. 

In those days I had different dreams. I was captivated by Gustav Mahler's conducting of Wagner and initially wanted a job at the opera house. Then I aspired to become an artist and even took piano lessons!

At this reflection, there was almost an unnatural hint of a smile about the eyes.

Then when I ran out of money I found accommodation in a men's hostel in _Brigittenau_. It was a difficult period. I was destitute and painted postcards and watercolors to fend off starvation. Although it was the Vienna of Freud and Mahler, not all of Vienna's Jews were well off you know. 

My best friend at the hostel was a copper polisher named Josef Neumann, who lent me money and gave me his coat to wear. There was another friend at the time, Reinhold Hanisch who was anti-Semitic but we fell out. I felt in those days closer to Jews. When I fell out with Hanisch, it was another Jew, Siegfried Loffner, who reported Hanisch to the police as having defrauded me.

Why, I used to visit regular and have breakfast with Jakob Wasserberg from Galicia, who ran a small brandy store at 20 _Webgasse,_ close to _Stumpergasse_. Mr. Wasserberg, a tea and _ein Laberl bitte_ I used to say. There was even the one-eyed Jewish locksmith Simon Robinson who from time to time used to support me using money, would you believe from his disability allowance.

His eyes glazed over somewhat, but the silent pause between the two men was observed and the lawyer sat even more unnaturally still.

They were an intelligent people that stuck together more than the Germans. In the men's hostel I developed an approval of Jewish tradition, which had managed to preserve the purity of the "Jewish race" for thousands of years. It should be remembered that in the work of _List_ and _Lanz von Liebenfels_ it is not the alien race that is dangerous and ruinous, but only the mixing of races, which decreases the value of the Aryan "noble people" and therefore should be avoided at all cost. The Jews' have an ability to preserve their race by way of religion and strict rules, among them, the prohibition of marriages with non-Jews. Everything is geared toward the well-being of one's own people, nothing toward consideration of others. We. ..no doubt have to recognize with admiration this incredible strength of the Jews' preservation of their race.

The lawyer absorbed what had been said and then recognized that Hitler had, in adopting the Jewish concept of "purity of race" used it as nothing less than a model for his own _weltanschauung_ regarding the necessity of the racial purity of Aryans.

There were exceptions though. At one time I was sharing a room with one August Kubizek, who earned some money as a viola player at private evening performances, and he took me along to a family music evening held by an affluent Jewish family called the Jahodas. They were at the time regarded as a model of the well-to-do circles of assimilated Jews in Vienna and were keenly interested in the arts. I remember the father; he was a slender, sensitive, quiet man of medium height, with melancholy features and a gray goatee. His wife, Pina, unusually was an Italian Catholic, short and somewhat deformed, with beautiful eyes, and warmhearted. The two had two little daughters who were baptized by the Catholic Church: Klara, and Adele. At the time there was this joke that every aristocrat who was a little bit smart, or had some kind of talent, was immediately considered a Jew; they had no other explanation for it. I remember, in Vienna there were marriages of rich Jewish women to impoverished aristocrats. By law, one or the other of the partners had to convert and it was usually the Jewish one who did so. 

I was nineteen then and when I visited the Jahodas home, I liked it tremendously. What impressed me most was the library, which served me as a reliable measure of judging the people assembled there. I was, I confess, uncomfortable with having to confine myself to being a passive listener all evening, but felt very relaxed with those people, although since I was not a musician, I hadn't been able to participate in the conversation. Furthermore, I had felt uneasy because of my poor clothes.

It must have been very hard, none the less, interjected the lawyer for the first time cautiously.

Yes but I survived, Hitler replied. Samuel Morgenstern who owned a frame and glazier store was the most loyal buyer of my paintings. I did not rely on an agent but always delivered my paintings personally. He certainly did not cheat me. Morgenstern was the first person to pay a good price for the paintings, which is how the business contact was established. I had gone to his store initially offering him, if I remember correctly, three paintings, historical views in the style of _Rudolf von Alt_. Morgenstern also sold pictures, since in his experience it was easier to sell frames if they contained pictures. I sold my paintings almost exclusively to Jewish dealers: _Morgenstern, Landsberger_, and _Altenberg_. The Christian dealers didn't pay any better than the Jews. Besides, they only bought more material when they had disposed of the first shipment, while the Jewish dealers continued to buy whether they had sold anything or not."

It was only with the Jews that one could do business, because only they were willing to take chances. Morgenstern, also procured private customers for me, like the lawyer Dr. Josef Feingold, who in turn later sponsored me.


That the meeting was at an end was signified by the Chancellor rising.The conversation, one sided though it had been, lay between them. Hitler was unusually uncomfortable in having opened up to the man opposite and having reminisced on aspects of his personal life that were normally not on any agenda.

As the lawyer exited from the office chamber and began to descend the staircase to the ground floor, he was obliged to grip the rail firmly and stop. His legs had lost their control, so great had been the fear and he waited a few moment, breathing deeply, before he could proceed. He felt entitled like _Agag_ to believe that the bitterness of death was past.

The Chancellor watched the scene from the shadow of the partially opened door.

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## Steven Hunley

This thing is so enjoyable, that like too much ice cream at a teenager's birthday party, it hurts! It's tough to be literarily objective when you're more than satisfied (read pleased) with not only the setting, characters, and plot, and the whole enchilada in general. It's mentioned that it sounds like the start of a novel. I totally agree, but more like one of those novels you want never to end. This is a rare piece of meat, a fillet mignon of stories, and I savor the flavor.

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## MANICHAEAN

Reuben Frankenberger was killed in action just outside of Munich as the Second World War was entering its final stages. He had, because of his linguistic abilities and knowledge of this part of Germany, been seconded to the US Seventh Army as a guide and interpreter as this force swept south towards Austria. Dachau, 16 km north-west of the city had been liberated the week before.

In 1940, Dr Bloch and his wife emigrated to the USA. As his medical degree was not recognized there, Dr Bloch was no longer able to work as a doctor, and he died penniless and far from home in the Bronx in New York in 1945.

In the fall of 1938, the stores, warehouse, and workshop of Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern’s were "Aryanized" and taken over by the National Socialists. The "purchase price," which was set at 620 marks, was never paid. Because Morgenstern also lost his commercial license, he was no longer allowed to work. Thus the couple- sixty-three and fifty-nine years old, respectively-had no income whatever, and could not leave the country; not having the money either for the trip, obligatory "_Reich_ flight tax," or required visa. In this desperate situation Samuel Morgenstern saw only one way out: asking the Fuhrer personally for help. The letter never reached Hitler for someone had written the word _“Jude”_ on the side and it was filed away. Morgenstern and his wife were taken to a collection camp and deported to the ghetto of Litzmannstadt at Lodz in 1941 which accommodated 160,000 local Jews, 20,000 Jews from Germany and 5,000 Romanian gypsies from Burgenland. In 1943, Samuel Morgenstern died of exhaustion in the ghetto. He was sixty-eight years old. He was buried in the ghetto cemetery.His wife was deported to Auschwitz extermination camp in 1944. Two years later she was declared dead at the request of her brother.

Hitler’s lawyer, Hans Frank was hung at Nuremberg on the 16th October 1946 by Master Sergeant John C. Woods.

The lawyer’s master had committed suicide in the final days of the Battle for Berlin on the 30th April 1945. 



In the months before his execution, the lawyer had sat in his cell and gathered in his mind all he knew and had deduced about his mentor.

His thinking being of a particular bent, he worked his way as chronologically as possible. But first there was that overriding fact that essentially, Hitler, the man he knew perhaps better than most Germans, was in denial. Time and time again he had seemed to have appealed to emotions rather than to reason and reality. He was, as it were, the chief mourner at his own protracted funeral.

But then, he had been forged in a furnace of turmoil; in World War I in the inhuman world of the trenches, he witnessed the death and mutilation of his comrades. It must, by definition have left its mark. There might then perhaps have germinated that “destiny” aspect of his personality. The lawyer knew from his research that Hitler’s baptism of fire had come in October 1914, near the village of Wervicq in Flanders, where he had almost lost his life. A bullet had torn the sleeve of his uniform, but by a wonder he had avoided injury. As his comrades were killed in large numbers, this experience must have attained within him, a feeling of being destined by fate for something special.

The framework of the army must also have given him the security he had missed since the death of his mother in 1907. And then, there was the humiliation of Germany’s defeat, when the news of the November revolution and Emperor William's II abdication arrived as he lay in the military hospital in Pomerania, almost blind from a gas attack.

At the time of his later destitution, in what was exotically described by some as “a bohemian existence”, one could almost tangibly sense his appreciation, even admiration of the Jews that helped him. They were at that time, part of his blood and his being and despite his disgust at his father; he was prepared to compromise with who he was. But still deep inside was this perceived stigma of his father’s lineage being abused by the shadow of a Jewish youth. And all the time in the background was this half Jewish "alcoholic" father, whom he had to drag home from the bars on his mother’s request. The unloved and probably hated father and born-out-of-wedlock grandfather were, he now knew, the two main figures necessary to properly understand the man. However much the denial, he surmised that Hitler knew about the child support paid by Frankenberger, and the fear that Frankenberger could have been his grandfather had never left him. This fear had dominated all of his life and his actions.

On the other hand it seemed that Hitler's anti-Semitism had effectively surfaced only in the aftermath of Germany's defeat. Perhaps it was more a product of its era, as Jews had been deeply involved in the communist revolutions in Germany, Hungary and Russia whilst Jews from foreign countries had purchased German businesses and real estate, while ordinary Germans had been devastated by the post-war inflation.

If Hitler was an anti-Semite, it came much later in life, perhaps even as an act necessitated by politics. It seemed to become a central issue for him only when he decided to become a politician and first began addressing audiences in Munich in 1919 in aggressively anti-Semitic terms. It was then that Hitler, the once weak eccentric who, in his own eyes, had become a somebody during the war, decorated with the Iron Cross First Class, began reinventing himself. He quickly came to believe everything that he was saying, reinforced by the fact that it was what his audiences clearly wanted to hear. His rise would have intoxicated any ambitious politician. The painfully shy young man from Linz was reborn as “The Leader.” Disastrously, too many Germans and Austrians had not only believed him, but loved him.

But even then when Hitler came to power, it initially seemed he was almost a moderating force among the more radical National Socialists. In promulgating the Nuremberg race laws he made numerous exceptions for the so-called _“mischlinge,”_ or products of mixed Jewish-Gentile marriages. Numerous Jews of partial Gentile descent were made "Honorary Aryans" and allowed to serve in the Wehrmacht. More than this, there were many high Nazi officials he knew of part-Jewish descent. Herman Goering had a half-brother, Albert Goering who was a half-Jew. Reinhard Heydrich reputedly had a Jewish actor father. It seemed that especially in the arts Hitler was particularly indulgent, as he allowed favored Jews to participate in German cultural life while ruthlessly purging the majority. Thus, while Erich Leinsdorf and Eric Korngold were fleeing to Hollywood, Franz Lehar was allowed to remain wed to Lizzie Leon, daughter of the Viennese Jewish librettist, Victor Leon and Hitler even sponsored the career of the part-Jewish soprano Margarete Slezak at the Berlin opera.

So the lawyer thought, “What was the final conclusion?”

It seemed to be that, the seeds may have been planted in Vienna, but they needed the bloodshed in the trenches and the dark streets of postwar Munich to germinate his boundless hatred towards his own kinsmen. His lofty idea, which derived from the graves of the First World War, betrayed him and with the help of his inborn sophistry it had made him a servant to his hatred of his Jewish origins and complexes.

And then, dimly at first to the lawyer’s mind came a speculative linkage, that how in his first years as a politician and later in his naming of field headquarters, Adolf Hitler had often incorporated both the name and symbolism of the word _“Wolf”_ when he wished hide his identity for some reason or other.

Unnerved Herr Frank perceived a connection that opera lovers would recognize. It was in the name _“Wolfsschlucht”_ which plays the principal part in Carl Maria von Weber's opera _“Der Freischütz.”_

_“Wolfsschlucht”_ he recollected, “was both a German Field HQ prior to the invasion of Russia and the setting in the opera for the conclusion of a pact with the Devil!”

THE END.

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## Hawkman

Well, it's been an interesting journey Man. We begin with a good, honest blast of Fiction falling into the Murder Mystery Suspence bracket, then we enter the arena of Historical Fiction, Then we get Drama Documentary, and finish with a slice of Speculative Documentary Fiction. That's quite a mix! As soon as the it became apparant that you were basing some of your characters on real people I did a little digging, not too much, just to see where you were going. Of course, Hitler's ancestry has always been a little dubious to say the least, and as you correctly pointed out within your text, subject to certain skull-duggery and mythologisation by various parties with their own agendas. My own research was limited to internet sources of dubious provenance, but were sufficient to give me an insight as to where you were coming from and heading for.

Does it work overall as a Short Story though? Partly, I'd say. I do find the switches in genre and style distracting, and it is a little too episodic to hang together as a single coherent narrative. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading it though, or your inventiveness in weaving historical detail in and out of the speculation.

You never disappoint with your offerings and long may you continue to share them.

Live long and prosper - H

PS. I'm a little surprised that you didn't include that Hitler's decoration for gallantry during WW1 was for saving the life/lives of comrade(s). Nor that he underwent ECT therapy at the end of the war for shell-shock. I have heard it suggested that subsequent to this he underwent personality changes. How true any of this is I am not sure of. I have heard it mentioned and seen it written, though I can't remember where, or attribute any provenance to it, and it may all be part of the mythologisation process previously aluded to. One wouldn't really want to be seen to be making excuses for one of the most evil men in history!

H

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## AuntShecky

I do think this works as a novella, if not a lengthy short story. I'm sure you can find passages to cut or tighten, though-- where you might want it to seem pithier. I don't think you'd want to delete complete passages or sections, as all of them contribute to the overall sense of the story.

As far as "switching" genres, some prodigious authors do it all the time-- the late David Foster Wallace, for example, not to mention Pynchon and the inexplicably neglected Richard Powers. What about Philip Roth's novel about Anne Frank, that was both historical and speculative, as well as as "literary" as Roth always is? So you're in distinguished company, M.

This particular piece is an achievement, and as I said before, kudos for not
descending into the realm described by Godwin's Law.

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## MANICHAEAN

Thank you Hawk & Aunty for the feedback which I've taken on board and appreciate. Either I've got to stop a story taking me where it will on a day to day basis, or the alternative is to finish it first and then stand back and get the tale more balanced regards; style, genre etc.

Unfortunately, I have never been able to think the whole structure and plot of a tale through before I start. I mix my drinks and then wonder why I get a hangover!

It's a bit like surfing the web. New windows open up and you think, "Oh that looks interesting!" and away you go down another street. Then of course, reading a number of books at the same time & dipping in and out, influences very likely the changes in style I indulge in.

Take care & thanks again.

M.

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