Come into my Parlour Read Free

displayed such interest? I refer to the trapping of Gregory Sallust.”
    â€œBut certainly, my dear
Herr Gruppenführer,
” the Admiral purred. “And now, if you like. You Gestapo men are so active that you leave us poor old fogies of the original Service little to do in these days. That, of course, is our excuse for having concerned ourselves in a matter which is really your affair; but to which you have obviously been too busy to attend, owing to the pressure of more important business.”
    Grauber showed his uneven teeth in a false smile. “As things are, a certain amount of overlapping between our Departments is inevitable; but that will be rectified when the two services are brought under one head—as they are bound to be in due course. In the meantime, we always find your co-operation invaluable. May I show you the way to my office?”
    â€œAs I was instrumental in having a bomb removed from it last month, I have the good fortune to know it,” replied the Admiral imperturbably, “but I shall be delighted to accompany you there.”
    Having exchanged these honeyed thrusts, the hulking Gestapo Chief and the delicate looking elderly sailor left the room side by side and walked down the long echoing corridor.
    They were old enemies, and the rivalry between them was bitter in the extreme. Grauber, with Himmler’s backing, had many times endeavoured to bring about the disbandment of the Admiral’s department and the absorption of its best men into his own espionage machine, but the O.K.W. had always successfully resisted his attempts, and Canaris was confident that they would continue to do so.
    He disliked Grauber personally, regarding him as a gutter-bred thug, typical of the worst elements that had lifted Hitler to power, and despised his brutal heavy-handed methods. He was not the least afraid of the Gestapo Chief, because he knew his own position was secure as long as von Rundstedt, von Räder, von Bock, von Geisenheim,and half a dozen others like them remained at the head of the
Wehrmacht
, and he did not believe that Hitler could wage a successful war without them. In consequence, he took an impish delight in treading on Grauber’s corns whenever the opportunity offered; and he had raised the question of Gregory Sallust that morning almost as much for the pleasure of making Grauber appear negligent in front of Himmler as because he honestly considered the matter was important.
    Grauber not only hated but also secretly feared the little Admiral. He was shrewd enough to know that most of these top men of the High Command had something that the great majority of the Nazi leaders lacked, and could now never obtain.
    Few of the Party chiefs had ever been outside Germany before their rise to power; they knew little of the customs and mentality of other races, and the bulk of their followers, young men brought up as fanatics in the Nazi tradition and not even allowed to read the true histories of the countries with which Germany had gone to war, were abysmally ignorant of every type of thought that animated human endeavour outside their own political creed.
    The Generals and the Admirals, on the other hand, had, as young men, travelled freely before the First World War, and, as they were drawn from Germany’s upper classes, had competed at horse shows, sailed their yachts, hunted, gambled and shot on the most friendly terms with their opposite numbers in Britain, France and the United States. They were, moreover, infinitely better educated, as they had been free of all the world’s literature in the days before the Nazis had banned a great part of the human race’s most important contributions to religion, history, philosophy and ethics.
    In consequence, the wisened little Admiral and his middle-aged cronies were far better qualified to understand the enemy’s mentality, and invariably made much shrewder appreciations of their future intentions than