A Quiet Flame

The Adlons had a huge black Mercedes-Benz 770 Pullman convertible. With headlamps the size of tennis rackets and fenders and running boards as big as the ski jump at Holmenkollen, it was a real plutocrat’s car. The kind of plutocrat who might be a director on the board of the Dyestuff Syndicate. Impersonating Dr. Duisberg wasn’t much of a plan, but I couldn’t figure out another way of getting anything out of Dr. Gerhard Domagk at the state hospital’s jelly clinic. Illmann wasn’t usually wrong about such things. It did seem highly unlikely that any doctor would ever give out the kind of sensitive information that I was after. Unless he thought that, in effect, he was giving out that information to his employer.

Carl Mirow had agreed to drive me to the state hospital. The big Mercedes-Benz made quite an impact as we drove through the hospital’s grounds, especially when I wound down the window and asked a nurse for directions to the urological clinic. Carl got a little cross about that. He said, “Suppose someone sees the license plate and thinks that Mr. Adlon has got a dose of jelly.”

Mr. Adlon was Louis Adlon, the hotel’s owner. He was a man in his sixties, with thinning white hair and a rather neat white mustache. “Do I look anything like Mr. Adlon?”

“No.”

“Besides, if you had a dose of jelly, would you come to the clinic in a car like this? Or with your collar up and your hat pulled down?”

We pulled up outside the red-brick outbuilding that housed the urological clinic. Carl sprang out and opened the door for me. In his driver’s livery he looked like my old company commander. Which was probably the real reason I hadn’t pinched him for running a red light back in 1922. I was always a bit sentimental like that.

I went into the clinic. The entrance doors were double and had frosted-glass windows. The hall inside was bright and cool, and the linoleum floor was wearing so much polish that your shoes squeaked loudly as you tried to tiptoe up to the front desk. Once there, under the vaulted ceiling, your muttered plea for medical care would have sounded like a stage whisper in an opera. A strong smell of ether wasn’t just in the air. The strawberry blonde behind the welcome desk looked like she gargled with the stuff. I placed Dr. Duisberg’s business card on her desk and told her I wanted to see Dr. Domagk.

“He’s not here,” she said.

“I suppose he’s in Leverkusen.”

“No, he’s in Wuppertal.”

That was somewhere else I hadn’t ever heard of. There were times when I hardly recognized the country in which I was living.

“I suppose that’s another new town.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said.

“Who’s in charge while he’s away?”

“Dr. Kassner.”

“Then he’s the person I want to see.”

“Have you an appointment?”

I smiled, affecting a show of self-important patience. “I think you’ll find I don’t need one. If you give Dr. Kassner that business card. You see, nurse, I fund all of the research in this clinic. So unless you want to join the ranks of the six million unemployed, I suggest you hurry along and tell him I’m here.”

The nurse colored a little, stood up, took Duisberg’s card, and, her feet squeaking like a series of squashed mice, disappeared through a set of swing doors.

A minute passed and a pale, awkward man came through the main entrance of the clinic. He was walking slowly, like someone with a bad leg. He kept his eyes on the linoleum, as if expecting to find a better explanation than an overdose of floor polish for the noise under his shoes. At the desk, he stopped and gave me a sideways sort of look, probably wondering if I was some kind of doctor. I smiled at him.

“Lovely day,” I said breezily.

Then a man in a white coat appeared in the hall, striding powerfully toward me like a founding member of the Wandervögel, one hand outstretched and the other holding Duisberg’s business card. He was big and bald-headed, which made him seem more military than medical. Underneath the white coat, he was dressed much as I was, a professional man with a position in the community.

“Dr. Duisberg, sir,” he said unctuously, with a slight speech impediment that might have been due to some ill-fitting false teeth. “What an honor, sir. What an honor. I’m Dr. Kassner. Dr. Domagk will be so very disappointed to have missed you. He’s in Wuppertal.”

“Yes, so I’ve just been informed.”

The doctor looked pained. “I trust there hasn’t been some kind of a mix-up and that he wasn’t expecting you,” he said.

“No, no,” I said. “I’m only in Berlin for a brief visit. I had a short time to kill between appointments, so I thought I might just drop by and see how the clinical trial is coming along. The Dyestuff Syndicate is very excited by your work, here.” I paused. “Of course, if it’s inconvenient . . .”

“No, no, sir.” He bowed. “If you’re happy to make do with my own inadequate explanations.”

“I’m sure they will be quite sufficient for a layman like me.”

“Then, do, please, come this way, sir.”