The Hunt

“You say that on every show,” Heinz said.

“This time I mean it. I will swear it in my own blood.”

“Of course.”

Heinz had given up his own respectable career as a top makeup man to become Ingersoll’s servant and confidant. He was a key figure in one of Germany’s most popular mysteries— who was the real Johann Ingersoll?

The star had made seven enormously popular horror films, five of them talking pictures, and was being compared to the great American actor Lon Chaney. Yet nobody knew anything about Johann Ingersoll. There were no photographs of him except in the grotesque makeup he invented for each picture. His biography listed only his films. He never granted interviews and went to unusual lengths to protect his real identity. Adding further to the mystique was Ingersoll’s eccentric habit of arriving on the set each day in makeup and leaving the same way, sneaking through the underground tunnels that led to the furnace rooms and the adjoining sound stages, scurrying to some predetermined spot where Heinz was waiting with the limousine. For four years he had eluded both the news reporters and the fans who tried to peer behind the masks, to unveil the real Johann Ingersoll.

The ploy was a publicist’s dream and had enhanced the celebrity and stardom of the actor. His stature was now equal to that of Conrad Veidt, Emil Jannings and Peter Lorre. Together they were the four most popular actors to emerge from Germany’s young film industry.

There was a soft tapping at the door. Ingersoll groaned.

“Now what?”

“Ja?” Heinz said.

“It is Friedrich. Sorry to intrude but it is important.”

“Come, come,” Ingersoll said impatiently.

Friedrich Kessler was a tall, intense man in his mid-thirties, a bon vivant who dressed in the latest fashion, wore his fedora jauntily cocked over one eye and affected a monocle and cane. He was Ingersoll’s attorney, agent and manager, and Ingersoll had made him a rich man in a bankrupt Germany where such a feat was virtually impossible. Only one person other than Heinz knew the truth about Ingersoll and that person was Kreisler. It was Kreisler who had created the idea of the movie star nobody knew, who had accompanied him on his first screen test when Ingersoll had stunned the studio by arriving already made up as a character of his own diabolical imagination. It was Kreisler who negotiated all the contracts and who handled all of Ingersoll’s business affairs.

To everyone else, his friends and neighbors, Ingersoll was Hans Wolfe, a reclusive Berlin businessman who frequently spent weeks at a time abroad.

“So, how does it go?” Kreisler asked.

Heinz rolled his eyes as if to say “don’t ask.”

“I need rest,” Ingersoll said.

“Three months when you finish. We don’t start Das Mitternachtige Tier until spring.”

“It will take me that long to create the character. I have already done a werewolf once; this one must be different.”

“Ah, you go skiing in Austria for a month, think about it around the fire at night.”

“I suppose.”

“I . . . uh . . . you have a visitor,” Kreisler said tentatively.

Ingersoll looked tip sharply.

“I do not take visitors on the set. You know that,” he snapped.

“I think perhaps you will make an exception this time.”

“No exceptions!”

Kreisler took a letter from his pocket and handed it to Ingersoll.

“He’s outside,” the agent said.

Ingersoll turned the letter over. There was an official wax seal on the back. His intolerance with the intrusion was obvious as he ripped open the envelope and unfolded the note. It read:

Herr Ingersoll

This will introduce Dr. Wilhelm Vierhaus, a member of my personal staff. I will be in your debt if you will give him a few moments of your time on a matter of the utmost importance to us both.

It was signed “A. Hitler.”

Ingersoll was shocked when Vierhaus entered the dressing room—the visitor’s body might have been a creation of his own. Vierhaus had a hunchback, a small distortion on his left shoulder which he partially concealed with a cloak. He held his head true instead of cocked to the side and stood as straight as his physical deformity would permit in an attempt to minimize it. Thick glasses magnified keen, scrutinizing blue eyes. His hair was neatly trimmed and short but not in the crew cut one might expect of someone in the Nazi hierarchy. Were it not for the crippling defect and the thick glasses, Vierhaus would have been handsome for his features were cleanly chiseled and perfect, his jaw was firm and hard. Everything about Vierhaus exuded strength except the physical trick birth had played on him, a black joke which he managed to minimize with a sense of confidence and self-assurance. His handshake was firm and deliberate, his smile warm and genuine.

“Please forgive this intrusion,” he apologized. “But I was advised that you are a hard man to approach at the