The dogs settled down to feed.
The handlers re-entered the compound. With practised motions they reattached the dogs’ leads, pulled them off Jorg, and led them away.
The show was over, and the Brownshirts began to move away, chattering excitedly.
Robert ran into the compound, and this time no one stopped him. He bent over Jorg, moaning.
Lloyd helped him to untie Jorg’s hands and remove the bucket. Jorg was unconscious but breathing. Lloyd said: ‘Let’s get him indoors. You take his legs.’ Lloyd grasped Jorg under the arms and the two of them carried him into the building where they had slept. They put him on a mattress. The other prisoners gathered around, frightened and subdued. Lloyd hoped one of them might announce that he was a doctor, but no one did.
Robert stripped off his jacket and waistcoat, then took off his shirt and used it to wipe the blood. ‘We need clean water,’ he said.
There was a standpipe in the yard. Lloyd went out, but he had no container. He returned to the compound. The bucket was still there on the ground. He washed it out then filled it with water.
When he returned, the mattress was soaked in blood.
Robert dipped his shirt in the bucket and continued to wash Jorg’s wounds, kneeling beside the mattress. Soon the white shirt was red.
Jorg stirred.
Robert spoke to him in a low voice. ‘Be calm, my beloved,’ he said. ‘It’s over now, and I’m here.’ But Jorg seemed not to hear.
Then Macke came in, with four or five Brownshirts following. He grabbed Robert’s arm and pulled him. ‘So!’ he said. ‘Now you know what we think of homosexual perverts.’
Lloyd pointed at Jorg and said angrily: ‘The pervert is the one who caused this to happen.’ Mustering all his rage and contempt, he said: ‘Commissar Macke.’
Macke gave a slight nod to one of the Brownshirts. In a movement that was deceptively casual, the man reversed his rifle and hit Lloyd over the head with the butt.
Lloyd fell to the ground, holding his head in agony.
He heard Robert say: ‘Please, just let me look after Jorg.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Macke. ‘First come over here.’
Despite his pain, Lloyd opened his eyes to see what was happening.
Macke pulled Robert across the room to a rough wooden table. From his pocket he drew a document and a fountain pen. ‘Your restaurant is now worth half of what I last offered you – ten thousand marks.’
‘Anything,’ said Robert, weeping. ‘Leave me to be with Jorg.’
‘Sign here,’ said Macke. ‘Then the three of you can go home.’
Robert signed.
‘This gentleman can be a witness,’ Macke said. He gave the pen to one of the Brownshirts. He looked across the room and met Lloyd’s eye. ‘And perhaps our foolhardy English guest can be the second witness.’
Robert said: ‘Just do what he wants, Lloyd.’
Lloyd struggled to his feet, rubbed his sore head, took the pen, and signed.
Macke pocketed the contract triumphantly and went out.
Robert and Lloyd returned to Jorg.
But Jorg was dead.
Walter and Maud came to the Lehrte Station, just north of the burned-out Reichstag, to see Ethel and Lloyd off. The station building was in the neo-Renaissance style and looked like a French palace. They were early, and they sat in a station cafe while they waited for the train.
Lloyd was glad to be leaving. In six weeks he had learned a lot, about the German language and about politics, but now he wanted to get home, tell people what he had seen, and warn them against the same thing happening to them.
All the same he felt strangely guilty about departing. He was going to a place where the law ruled, the press was free, and it was not a crime to be a social democrat. He was leaving the von Ulrich family to live on in a cruel dictatorship where an innocent man could be torn to pieces by dogs and no one would ever be brought to justice for the crime.
The von Ulrichs looked crushed; Walter even more than Maud. They were like people who have heard bad news, or suffered a death in the family. They seemed unable to think much about anything other than the catastrophe that had happened to them.
Lloyd had been released with profuse apologies from the German Foreign Ministry, and an explanatory statement that was abject yet at the same time mendacious, implying that he had got into a brawl through his own foolishness and then had been held prisoner by an administrative error for which the authorities were deeply sorry.
Walter said: ‘I’ve had a telegram from Robert. He’s arrived safely in London.’
