'Must be very worrying for you,' said Colonel Pikeaway. 'Finding things so difficult to say.'
His telephone rang. He listened, then handed it to Sir George.
'Yes?' said Sir George. 'Yes? Oh yes. Yes. I agree. I suppose - No - no - not the Home Office. No. Privately, you mean. Well, I suppose we'd better use - er -' Sir George looked round him cautiously.
'This place isn't bugged,' said Colonel Pikeaway amiably.
'Code word Blue Danube,' said Sir George Packham in a loud, hoarse whisper. 'Yes, yes. I'll bring Pikeaway along with me. Oh yes, of course. Yes, yes. Get on to him. Yes, say you particularly want him to come, but to remember our meeting has got to be strictly private.'
'We can't take my car then,' said Pikeaway. 'It's too well known.'
'Henry Horsham's coming to fetch us in the Volkswagen.'
'Fine,' said Colonel Pikeaway. 'Interesting, you know, all this.'
'You don't think -' said Sir George and hesitated.
'I don't think what?'
'I mean just really - well, I - mean, if you wouldn't mind my suggesting - a clothes brush?'
'Oh, this.' Colonel Pikeaway hit himself lightly on the shoulder and a cloud of cigar ash flew up and made Sir George choke.
'Nanny,' Colonel Pikeaway shouted. He banged a buzzer on his desk.
A middle-aged woman came in with a clothes brush, appearing with the suddenness of a genie summoned by Aladdin's lamp.
'Hold your breath, please. Sir George,' she said. 'This may be a little pungent.'
She held the door open for him and he retired outside while she brushed Colonel Pikeaway, who coughed and complained:
'Damned nuisance these people are. Always wanting you to get fixed up like a barber's dummy.'
'I should not describe your appearance as quite like that, Colonel Pikeaway. You ought to be used to my cleaning you up nowadays. And you know the Home Secretary suffers from asthma.'
'Well, that's his fault. Not taking proper care to have pollution removed from the streets of London.
'Come on. Sir George, let's hear what our German friend has come over to say. Sounds as though it's a matter of some urgency.'
Chapter 17
HERR HEINRICH SPIESS
Herr Heinrich Spiess was a worried man. He did not seek to conceal the fact. He acknowledged, indeed, without concealment, that the situation which these five men had come together to discuss was a serious situation. At the same time, he brought with him that sense of reassurance which had been his principal asset in dealing with the recently difficult political life in Germany. He was a solid man, a thoughtful man, a man who could bring common sense to any assemblies he attended. He gave no sense of being a brilliant man, and that in itself was reassuring. Brilliant politicians had been responsible for about two-thirds of the national states of crisis in more countries than one. The other third of trouble had been caused by those politicians who were unable to conceal the fact that although duly elected by democratic governments, they had been unable to conceal their remarkably poor powers of judgment, common sense and, in fact, any noticeable brainy qualities.
'This is not in any sense an official visit, you understand,' said the Chancellor.
'Oh quite, quite.'
'A certain piece of knowledge has come to me which I thought is essential we should share. It throws a rather interesting light on certain happenings which have puzzled as well as distressed us. This is Dr Reichardt.'
Introductions were made. Dr Reichardt was a large and comfortable-looking man with the habit of saying 'Ach, so' from time to time.
'Dr Reichardt is in charge of a large establishment in the neighbourhood of Karlsruhe. He treats there mental patients. I think I am correct in saying that you treat there between five and six hundred patients, am I not right?'
'Ach, so,' said Dr Reichardt.
'I take it that you have several different forms of mental illness?'
'Ach, so. I have different forms of mental illness, but nevertheless, I have a special interest in, and treat almost exclusively one particular type of mental trouble.' He branched off into German and Herr Spiess presently rendered a brief translation in case some of his English colleagues should not understand. This was both necessary and tactful. Two of them did in part, one of them definitely did not, and the two others were truly puzzled.
'Dr Reichardt has had,' explained Herr Spiess, 'the greatest success in his treatment of what as a layman I describe as megalomania. The belief that you are someone other than you are. Ideas of being more important than you are. Ideas that, if you have persecution mania -'
'Ach, no!' said Dr Reichardt. 'Persecution mania, no, that I do not treat. There is no persecution mania in my clinic. Not among the group with whom I am specially interested. On the contrary, they hold the delusions that they do because they wish to be happy. And they are happy, and I can keep them happy. But if I cure them, see you, they will not be happy. So I have to find a cure that will restore sanity to them, and yet they will be happy just the same. We call this particular state of mind -'
He uttered a long and ferociously sounding German word of at least eight syllables.
'For the purposes of our English friends, I shall still use my term of megalomania, though I know,' continued Herr Spiess, rather quickly, 'that that is not the term you use nowadays, Dr Reichardt. So, as I say, you have in your clinic six hundred patients.'
'And at one time, the time to which I am about to refer, I had eight hundred.'
'Eight hundred!'
'It was interesting - most interesting.'
'You have such persons - to start at the beginning -'
'We have God Almighty,' explained Dr Reichardt. 'You comprehend?'
Mr Lazenby looked slightly taken aback.
'Oh - er - yes - er - yes. Very interesting, I am sure.'
'There are one or two young men, of course, who think they are Jesus Christ. But that is not so popular as the Almighty. And then there are the others. I had at the time I am about to mention twenty-four Adolf Hitlers This you must understand was at the time when Hitler was alive. Yes, twenty-four or twenty-five Adolf Hitlers -' he consulted a small notebook which he took from his pocket - 'I have made some notes here, yes. Fifteen Napoleons. Napoleon, he is always popular, ten Mussolinis, five reincarnations of Julius Caesar, and many other cases, very curious and very interesting. But that I will not weary you with at this moment. Not being specially qualified in the medical sense, it would not be of any interest to you. We will come to the incident that matters.'
Dr Reichardt spoke again at rather shorter length, and Herr Spiess continued to translate.
There came to him one day a government official. Highly thought of at that time - this was during the war, mind you - by the ruling government. I will call him for the moment Martin B. You will know who I mean. He brought with him his chief. In fact he brought with him - well, we will not beat about the bush - he brought the Führer himself.'
'Ach, so,' said Dr Reichardt.
'It was a great honour, you understand, that he should come to inspect,' went on the doctor. 'He was gracious, mein Führer. He told me that he had heard very good reports of my successes. He said that there had been trouble lately. Cases from the army. There, more than once there had been men believing they were Napoleon, sometimes believing they were some of Napoleon's Marshals and sometimes, you comprehend, behaving accordingly, giving out military orders and causing therefore military difficulties. I would have been happy to have given him any professional knowledge that might be useful to him, but Martin B. who accompanied him said that that would not be necessary. Our great Führer, however,' said Dr Reichardt, looking at Herr Spiess slightly uneasily, 'did not want to be bothered with such details. He said that no doubt it would be better if medically qualified men with some experience as neurologists should come and have a consultation. What he wanted was to - ach, well, he wanted to see round, and I soon found what he was really interested to see. It should not have surprised me. Oh no, because you see, it was a symptom that one recognizes. The strain of his life was already beginning to tell on the Führer.'
'I suppose he was beginning to think he was God Almighty himself at that time,' said Colonel Pikeaway unexpectedly, and he chuckled.
Dr Reichardt looked shocked.
'He asked me to let him know certain things. He said that Martin B. had told him that I actually had a large number of patients thinking, not to put too fine a point on it, that they were themselves Adolf Hitler. I explained to him that this was not uncommon, that naturally with the respect, the worship they paid to Hitler, it was only natural that the great wish to be like him should end eventually by them identifying themselves with him. I was little anxious when I mentioned this but I was delighted to find that he expressed great signs of satisfaction. He took, I am thankful to say, as a compliment, this passionate wish to find identity with himself. He next asked if he could see a representative number of these patients with this particular affliction. We had a little consultation. Martin B. seemed doubtful, but he took me aside and assured me that Herr Hitler actually wished to have this experience. What he himself was anxious to ensure was that Herr Hitler did not meet, well, in short, that Herr Hitler was not to be allowed to run any risks. If any of these so-called Hitlers, believing passionately in themselves as such, were inclined to be a little violence or dangerous... I assured him that he need have no worry. I suggested that I should collect a group of the most amiable of our Führers and assemble them for him to meet. Herr B. insisted that the Führer was very anxious to interview and mingle with them without my accompanying him. The patients, he said, would not behave naturally if they saw the chief of the establishment there, and if there was no danger... I assured him again that there was no danger. I said, however, that I should be glad if Herr B. would wait upon him. There was no difficulty about that. It was arranged. Messages were sent to the Führers to assemble in a room for a well distinguished visitor who was anxious to compare notes with them.
'Ach, so. Martin B. and the Führer were introduced in the assembly. I retired, closing the door, and chatted with the two ADC's who had accompanied them. The Führer, I said, was looking in a particularly anxious state. He had no doubt had many troubles of late. This I may say was very shortly before the end of the war when things, quite frankly, were going badly. The Führer himself, they told me, had been greatly distressed of late but was convinced that he could bring the war to a successful close if the ideas which he was continually presenting to his general state were acted upon, and accepted promptly.'
'The Führer, I presume,' said Sir George Packham, 'was at that time - I mean to say - no doubt he was in a state that -'
'We need not stress these points,' said Herr Spiess. 'He was completely beyond himself. Authority had to be taken for him on several points. But all that you will know enough from the researches you have made in my country.'
'One remembers that at the Nuremberg trials -'
'There's no need to refer to the Nuremberg trials, I'm sure,' said Mr Lazenby decisively. 'All that is far behind us. We look forward to a great future in the Common Market with your Government's help, with the Government of Monsieur Grosjean and your other European colleagues. The past is the past.'
'Quite so,' said Herr Spiess, 'and it is of the past that we now talk. Martin B. and Herr Hitler remained for a very short time in the assembly room. They came out again after seven minutes. Herr B. expressed himself to Dr Reichardt as very well satisfied with their experience. Their car was waiting and he and Herr Hitler must proceed immediately to where they had another appointment. They left very hurriedly.'
There was a silence.
'And then?' asked Colonel Pikeaway. 'Something happened? Or had already happened?'
'The behaviour of one of our Hitler patients was unusual,' said Dr Reichardt. 'He was a man who had a particularly close resemblance to Herr Hitler, which had given him always a special confidence in his own portrayal. He insisted now more fiercely than ever that he was the Führer, that he must go immediately to Berlin, that he must preside over a Council of the General Staff. In fact, he behaved with no signs of the former slight amelioration which he had shown in his condition. He seemed so unlike himself that I really could not understand this change taking place so suddenly. I was relieved, indeed, when two days later, his relations called to take him home for future private treatment there.'
'And you let him go,' said Herr Spiess.
'Naturally I let him go. They had a responsible doctor with them, he was a voluntary patient, not certified, and therefore he was within his rights. So he left.'
'I don't see -' began Sir George Packham.
'Herr Spiess has a theory -'
'It's not a theory,' said Spiess. 'What I am telling you is fact. The Russians concealed it, we've concealed it. Plenty of evidence and proof has come in. Hitler, our Führer, remained in the asylum by his own consent that day and a man with the nearest resemblance to the real Hitler departed with Martin B. It was that patient's body which was subsequently found in the bunker. I will not beat about the bush. We need not go into unnecessary details.'
'We all have to know the truth,' said Lazenby. 'The real Führer was smuggled by a pre-arranged underground route to the Argentine and lived there for some years. He had a son there by a beautiful Aryan girl of good family. Some say she was an English girl. Hitler's mental condition worsened, and he died insane, believing himself to be commanding his armies in the field. It was the only plan possibly by which he could ever have escaped from Germany. He accepted it.'
'And you mean that for all these years nothing has leaked out about this, nothing has been known?'
