“I am really getting deeply into your debt, Wilhelm,” Müller said.
“Not at all, Herr Standartenführer.”
“I was thinking, Wilhelm, of giving the lady a little present,” Müller said. “Do you think there would be something, a small porcelain perhaps, or a painting, something like that, in protective custody?”
“I will pick it out myself,” Peis said. “And have it delivered this afternoon.”
“If it would be all right, I’d rather pick something out myself,” Müller said. “Could that be arranged?”
“Of course, Herr Standartenführer,” Peis replied. “We could go to the warehouse directly, if you wish.”
“It’s been a long drive from Berlin, Wilhelm,” Müller said. “Why don’t we go for a drink now to cut the dust, and then have a second to give me the courage to face my mother, and then go to the warehouse?”
Chapter TWO
21 Burgweg,
Marburg an der Lahn
1715 Hours 15 January 1943
“Guten Tag, Wilhelm,” Gisella Dyer said when she opened the door to Peis’s impatient knock. “What can I do for you?”
There was an arrogance in her tone that he didn’t like. He wondered if providing her to Müller had been such a good idea after all. Müller was obviously taken with her. That could become awkward, even dangerous.
“For one thing,” he said coldly, reminding her of her position, “you can remember to call me by my rank when there are others around.”
“Sorry,” she said, but there was more amusement than concern in her voice. She looked over his shoulder down the stairway, her eyebrows raised in curiosity.
Two Kreis Marburg policemen, one of them an old man, were grunting under the load of a large object as they manhandled it up the stairs.
"What’s this, Herr Hauptsturmführer?” Gisella asked.
He ignored the question.
“I have been looking for you for hours,” he said.
"I was at the university,” she said.
"Not in the library,” he said.
“I was in Professor Abschidt’s office, cataloguing,” she said.
“You should leave word where you are,” he said.
The two policemen now had the blanket-wrapped object on the landing. The old policeman, wheezing, supported himself on it.
“May I come in?” Peis asked.
Gisella stepped out of the way. He marched into the apartment and peered into each of the rooms as if making up his mind about something. He concluded that discretion dictated that the radio not be put in the sitting room, although that was the obvious place for it, but in Gisella’s bedroom.
In the warehouse, Standartenführer Müller had been like an old maid. He had spent thirty minutes rejecting one thing after another as “not being quite right for Gisella.” Peis had no idea what Gisella had done to the old fart, but whatever it was, he liked it. Müller was behaving like a schoolboy in love.
Müller had finally settled on an enormous, floor-model, Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft (FEG) combination radio, phonograph, and bar.
It had been the personal household property of the Jew who before his relocation had been the FEG dealer for Marburg. It came with two cardboard cartons of phonograph records, and a smaller cardboard carton that held the glasses and bottles—genuine Bohemian crystal—for the concealed bar.
Peis was not at all pleased with Müller’s final choice. For one thing, he had had to go to the trouble of getting a truck and two policemen from the Kreis police station to bring it to Burgweg. For another, something was wrong with the phonograph, and he had to assure Müller that it would be his pleasure to have that repaired. And the radio was capable of listening to the BBC.