The bullet from a small 8 mm. short-trigger Pelmann and Rosenthal Mk. IV spins in the region of two thousand revolutions per second and at very close range the flesh laceration is severe, due to heavy scoring by the large number of lands in the rifling. Carbon monoxide discharge is high and the flesh tattooing is consequently vivid. The bullet enters the body with the effects of an ultra-high-speed drill combined with a blowlamp.

In the case of Schrader the skull had shattered badly and only one side of his face was recognisable. The police-captain compared it with the profile photograph, took a statement from the secretary in the outer office and then telephoned the Selbstmord department at Kriminalpolizei H.Q., since a suicide was more their job than his. Schrader would never go to trial and our interest in him was at an end.

I asked to be present at the summary search for papers and diaries but we turned up nothing that would lead me to Zossen. A phone-call had been made not long before the shot was heard, from a man whose voice and name were unknown to the secretary. It was an hour since we had handed over Rauschnig and started out for Schrader, so someone must have sprung a big leak about Rauschnig's arrest and Schrader had decided not to face the music. It was because of this sort of thing that the Z-polizei liked to be quick when they could.

The captain was again annoyed to find the two energetic Federal Associated Press cameramen on the pavement outside the offices of Schrader-Fahben Shipping Components and I didn't tell him I'd telephoned. It was usually relatives or friends who tipped off the next along the line when the Z went in and made a snatch, and the whole staff of the F.A.P. could buzz with news that wouldn't reach the close associates of arrested men until they printed it.

I made sure they got my picture and then went to find the car. It was a grey Volkswagen hired from Hertz on my sudden decision that morning: I wasn't a free agent, stuck in the back of the police-car all the time, and it irked me. The VW was ubiquitous in shape and colour and would make a useful mobile base if I had to stay away from the Hotel Prinz Johan for more than a day.

The black Mercedes followed me out of the city and through the snowscape. The sky at noon was dark against the white hills. The autobahn through the Corridor was treacherous with stretches of black ice where last night the snow had turned to rain and the rain had frozen. There were few other cars on the route and we were held up less than fifteen minutes at the Helmstedt checkpoint. I showed my second set of papers to avoid delay.

The Star of David School stood in a hollow of the land a few kilometres before Duisbach. The snow on the courtyard was churned by children's feet and they had built a snowman right in the centre, with three faces so that he looked everywhere at once; two were non-smokers and one had a pipe.

There was singing on the sharp air as we left the cars and made for the doors. The porch was stacked with galoshes and gumboots. The singing floated out across the soft white land, so that it seemed Christmas.

It was agreed that to avoid any scene that might worry the children I should locate Professor Foegl alone and get him into the superintendent's quarters before Captain Stettner made the charge. The only person in view was a boy standing glumly outside a classroom in some kind of penance; he was cheered by the apparition of a stranger ignorant of his sins, and told me that Professor Foegl was in the hall where the singing came from. I went in quietly and stood for a while below the rostrum. The choir went a bit ragged and then forgot me, steadying. I watched the children and the man on the rostrum. His head was narrow and the face long and gentle; he closed his eyes now and then and his hands sketched slow rhythms in the air for the singers to follow; they sang almost faultlessly now, the full sweetness of their song drawn from them by the mesmeric hands; they sang as if they loved him.

When the canticle was ended I clapped for the children and caused a total and embarrassed silence. I am no good with children, though I'd meant well. Forced to speak in a whisper I told Professor Foegl that I was the representative of a music publisher and the superintendent would be glad if he could spare a few minutes in his office.

He said he would come. His voice was as gentle as his face. Only the eyes revealed the weakness that had brought him to this day; they were the eyes of a man who is ready to show fear, even when he is smiling.

We found the superintendent with the captain and sergeant. He'd obviously been primed; his face was set in the aftermath of shock. It was quiet in the room. We could hear one another breathing. The captain went into his routine and I saw the fear come flooding into the older man's eyes, and looked away.

"I must therefore ask you to come with me, Herr Professor."

"Yes," he said softly. His gentle head was raised and he stared through the windows at the black trees that stood in the snow, a group of waiting skeletons. "Yes," he said in soft answer to the summons he had lived in fear of, for twenty years.

They took him away. The superintendent had asked me to stay a moment.

"It's unbelievable," he said. "I'm sorry."

"He was of my race." He stood staring at me and his hands were fumbling one against the other as if they were something he'd picked up and didn't know where to put. "Why did he betray us?"

"Out of fear."

"Was he tortured?"

"Not at that time. He knew he would have been if he refused to talk." For his sake I said: " It may be accepted in mitigation by the court."

"Mitigation?" I might have used a totally foreign word. "But there were thousands who were threatened with duress, and they didn't -"

"Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Six millions. He wasn't one of them. I'm sorry."

The blockwarts has used him, and then the Zellenleiters, and the kreisleiters, and at last the gauleiters, playing on his fear and using him as a more and more valuable tool. The evidence on file recorded that he had ‘caused the deprivation and ultimate death of his friends, his neighbours and hundreds of his own kind, by revealing their names and hiding places to the Gestapo.’

The shortest and most graphic of the testimonies held him responsible for ‘a good ten truckloads of deportees who had gone up the Auschwiq chimney.’

"Do you know anything about the Star of David School, Herr Quiller?" He was eyeing me reflectively, as if deciding to give me a confidence.

"It's modern, progressive, with a bias towards the Arts -"

"I don't mean that. Come to the window. I will tell you."

Beyond the window-bay the land rose gently towards the south. Behind the trees were scattered the black oblongs of roofs in the snow. There was the track of a stream running east-west through the floor of the hollow, but there were no willows to mark its banks.

"The school is modern and progressive, yes, and the Arts have a greater place in our curriculum than usual; but it has this in common with other schools: it's full of children. It was built for them especially. They run across these fields and climb those trees in freedom. It is their land, all theirs. And do you find the building itself bright and well-lighted with the big windows? And the decor vital with bright colours?"

I said I did.

"The architect was Joseph Steiner himself. Long rooms, wide corridors, a beautiful synagogue of white and purple stone from Bavaria, after the Finnish style of church. The children are very happy here. You can tell from their singing. You have heard them singing. You should see them in summer – that field is a carpet of clover and they picnic there. You should hear them sing on a summer evening, Herr Quiller." He pointed through the window. "That looks like a stream, but it's really the remains of a railway embankment – a siding. The rails were taken up and used in the construction of the building, and the embankment has slowly fallen almost level with the meadow. The trucks used to come in there from Magdeburg, and that farm behind the trees was the medical experimentation block. The gas-chambers were this side of the railway, here where we are standing. The foundations are built of their rubble. Some of the arrivals were hanged from those trees so that those who were brought here could see them and be warned about disobedience."