Dark Tunnel Read Free Page B

I’m right, and if I’m wrong I can’t ruin a man’s career for nothing. But there’s been a leakage of information from the War Board to Nazi agents. You know we handle some pretty confidential stuff, and I’ve got to plug that leak. If I can uncover enough evidence to turn the case over to the Federal boys with a clear conscience—”
    “Christ, do you suspect a member of the board?”
    The five other members of the board flashed through my mind like actors in a disconnected movie short. Hunter, Leverett, Jackson, Vallon, Schneider. The President of the University, an ex officio member, attended some of the meetings, but he was above suspicion. Jackson was too: a former braintruster, head of the economics department, and a grassroots American liberal.
    Hunter, a small brown man who looked like an efficiency expert and knew fifteen languages, hated the Nazis so much that when he was in Washington on a government assignment, the Dies Committee almost investigated him. Colonel Leverett commanded the troops on the campus and had taught at West Point. Vallon, of Romance Languages, was the descendant of a Rochellois Protestant who had come to America at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a slim, elegant man who wore a ruby on his left hand and looked like a prosperous actor. Vallon was said to have a Puritan conscience but I had never met his conscience.
    Schneider was a German, Doctor of Philosophy of Heidelberg and head of the Department of German at Midwestern since 1935. He had left his chair at the University of Munich in protest against Nazi philosophies of education soon after Hitler rose to power. His classic letter of resignation to the Chancellor of the University of Munich had been published in translation in the United States, and made several hundred dollars in royalties for the International Red Cross.
    “Do you suspect Schneider?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Why? On what grounds?” His judgments were impulsive at times and I wondered if this was a time.
    “Who else?”
    “That’s what I was thinking. What about me, then? I need the money more than Schneider with his ten thousand a year.”
    “Sure. Do you suspect yourself? Do you love Germany?” His irony was as subtle as a blowtorch.
    “Not passionately,” I said.
    “Schneider loves Germany.”
    “Maybe he does. But he hates the Nazis and Hitler. Remember what he said about Hitler in that open letter? ‘When a hyena drapes a lion’s skin over his narrow flanks and attempts to improvise a lion’s bearing and a lion’s voice, the imposture is immediately and pitifully apparent to all sensitive eyes and ears, and to all discriminating noses.’ Something like that.”
    “There’s such a thing as protesting too much,” Alec said. “There have been wolves in liberal’s clothing before.”
    “There’s such a thing as suspecting too much.”
    “Perhaps. If Schneider really hates the Nazis so violently, why did he leave his son in Germany to be educated after he left himself?”
    “That doesn’t prove anything. I heard that the Nazis wouldn’t let the boy go. He stayed with his mother’s family in Germany and then they conscripted him.”
    “They let him go two years ago,” Alec said. “He’s been in this country since 1941.”
    “Well, you seem to know more about it than I do. But you haven’t shown me a case against Schneider.”
    “There’s been a leakage of information from the War Board,” he repeated in a whisper like a leakage of steam from a boiler. “Maybe Schneider isn’t responsible. If he isn’t, who is? Who else is there?”
    “How much do you know about Vallon? Your secretary, Helen Madden, has access to everything we touch. I’m not accusing anybody, but how much do you know about her?”
    “Enough,” he said. He drained his glass and got off the stool, looking at me slantwise. The jaw muscles under his ears moved like a tangled bunch of worms. “Helen promised to marry me last week.”
    As I