The only son of a good but impoverished Hessian family, he had been expelled from school for theft. Another theft landed him in prison for a year and caused his father to disown him. Milt learned the watchmaking trade in prison. He was by no means interested in it, but useful work of some kind was mandatory and it appeared the easiest of the jobs available. He was not sufficiently skilled at the time of his release to follow the trade.
He was not particularly skilled at anything, for that matter. And, after an unsuccessful attempt at burglary, which almost resulted in his rearrest, he became a waiter in a beerhall. He fitted in well there. He was lazy and clumsy, but this very clumsiness, coupled with what seemed to be a beaming, unquenchable good humor, made him an attraction… That waiter, Max,
Since he could do nothing else, Milt put up with the gibing and jokes. He beamed and exaggerated his clumsiness, and made a fool of himself generally. Inwardly, however, he seethed. He had never been good- natured; he was sensitive about his appearance. He could have toasted every one of the beerhall customers over a slow fire and enjoyed doing it.
Then, one day, the leader of a troupe of vaudevillians noticed Milt, and was impressed by what he saw. This awkward youngster could be valuable; he was a natural for low-comedy situations. He didn't have to pretend (or so the leader thought). He was a born stooge and butt.
Milt joined the troupe. Eventually, early in 1913, he came to America with it.
That was the end of the good-natured business. That was the end of being the clumsy and lovable little brother of his fellow vaudevillians. Cold-eyed and unsmiling, Milt let it be known that he despised and hated them all. One more innocent joke, one more pat on his ridiculously potted belly-and there would be trouble. The funny business was strictly for the stage from now on.
Milt got away with it for four months, during which he extorted three raises in pay. By the time he deliberately forced his dismissal, he had acquired a sizable sum of money and no small knowledge of the country, its language and customs.
He got himself fired in San Francisco. Five days and five hundred dollars later, he had a new name and a number of sworn documents proving his American citizenship. His parents, these documents revealed, had been the proprietors of a San Francisco restaurant. He had been privately tutored by a Dutch schoolmaster. Parents, restaurant, schoolmaster-and the original records of his birth-had been destroyed in the great fire and earthquake. Milt's English was not good-but what of that? Many legal residents of the country talked a poorer brand. For that matter, many legal residents of the country had no legal way of proving their right to be here except by the very method Milt used.
Americans, it seemed, were not as exacting as Germans, and Milt easily found employment as a watchmaker. He pursued it just long enough to discover that his employer's streak of larceny, while latent, was virtually as broad as his own. At Milt's suggestion-for which he took half the profits-the store owner filed hundreds of suits against merchant seamen for articles allegedly bought from him. Since the defendants had shipped out and were unaware of the notices of suit brought in obscure legal papers, judgment was automatic.
Later he opened his own small side-street watch-repair shop. Until a certain day in 1942, he thought he was doomed to remain there, barely making a living, a foolishly cheerful-looking fat man who could not acquire the wherewithal and was rapidly losing the nerve for the gigantic swindles he dreamed of.
One of these last was inspired by his own history. Perhaps there were many persons who had entered and remained in the United States under the same circumstances as his. If one had the means to ferret them out-! Ironically, he was pondering this very scheme on that day in 1942 when, looking up from his workbench, he discovered that others had thought of it also. Thought of it and acted upon it.
Being Milt, he was not, naturally, at all discomfited by the discovery. His words and his expression were actually contemptuous.
'Do not tell me, please!' He narrowed his eyes in mock thoughtfulness. 'Ah, yes, I remember now. Madrid, 1911, was it not? Alvarado and his Animales. There was considerable debate, I remember, as to which was which.'
'And, you, I recall you well, also,' said the chinless man. 'A human swine-there would have been a novelty! Unfortunately, my
He spoke rapidly for ten minutes, ending with a sharp-soft 'Well?' that was a statement rather than a question. Milt took a drink from a brandy bottle before replying.
'Let me see if I understand,' he said. 'You have aligned your cause, unofficially, with that of the Reich where my father is now resident. And unless I accommodate you in this matter, certain unpleasant things will happen to him. He might possibly find himself in prison, that is right?'
'Regrettably, yes.'
'Fine,' said Milt. 'Beat him well while he is there. Starve him also, if you can. He has such a great fat stomach I doubt that it is possible.'
Milt smiled pleasantly. The chinless man blanched. 'Monster!' he stammered, then recovered himself. 'But there is something else, Herr Max. You are in this country illegally. A word to-'
'Any number of people,' said Milt, truthfully, 'will swear that I was born here. But why do we dispute, Seсor Alvarado? That so- foolish man who leads your equally preposterous government-'
'Silence!'
'-may be moved by motives of idealism. You may be also. I am not so stupid. I want money. If you want this thing done, you will pay for it. It is as simple as that, and no simpler.'
Thus, Milt, who like everyone else in the jewelry trade had begun dabbling in gold when the price went to thirty-five dollars an ounce- -thus, funny-looking little Milt became a large-scale buyer for the Nazi government.
His first move was to build up a group of house-to-house buyers who worked out of his shop. Their purchases, less perhaps an undetectable third, went directly and regularly to the mint, where he built up and still had a reputation as a man above suspicion. His next move was to rent numerous post-office boxes under different names; small boxes, such as individuals rent. Under those names, he inserted small newspaper ads in as many different sections of the country.
There are thousands of such advertisers; little men, often with little knowledge of a highly exacting business. Because they are little, they feel obliged to place money ahead of good will. They grade and weigh 'close'-the doubts which always arise are decided in their own favor. Because they lack the necessary training and wit-and despite their petty and pitiful efforts to do the opposite- they make disastrous buys. It is then obligatory, or so they feel, to be still 'sharper' to make up for their losses.
The end result of all this is that the little men acquire a bad or at best 'uneven' reputation. They buy less and less gold. Usually, in a few months or a few years, they are out of business.
It would be a physical impossibility to check on all these small mail buyers, and the federal authorities see no need to do so. Before gold can be diverted into the black market, it must first be acquired. And the little men just don't buy it, not a fraction of the quantity needed to pay them for the risk… That is, of course, none of them bought it but Milt's little men. Gold poured in on the little men. They bought pounds of it every day.
Milt had expected to get out of the gold traffic when the Nazis had become unable to buy. But the chinless man gave no sign of ceasing operations, and Milt was far too wise to express a desire to quit. Angrily he realized that, in effect, he was jeopardizing his liberty and perhaps his life for nothing. He could never spend his wealth in the United States. He would never be allowed to leave the United States to spend it. He was getting old. Unless he withdrew from the ring soon, it would be too late. The things money bought would have become meaningless.
Mixed with his anger was a kind of apathy, a dread dead feeling that whatever he did mattered little. Even if he could get away… well, what then? How would a man of his age occupy himself in a strange new country? Alone, completely alone, with no one to care whether he lived or died.
He had been unable to deposit his money in a bank and afraid to place it in a safe deposit box; such
