Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [67]
Lady Matilda nearly crossed herself by mistake.
‘The Order of the Death’s Head,’ said Big Charlotte.
She walked slowly and painfully down the room and pointed to where on the wall hung, framed in gilt and surmounted with a skull, the Order of the Death’s Head.
‘See, it is my most cherished possession. It hangs here on my wall. My golden youth band, when they come here, salute it. And in our archives in the castle here are folios of its chronicles. Some of them are only reading for strong stomachs, but one must learn to accept these things. The deaths in gas chambers, the torture cells, the trials at Nuremberg speak venomously of all those things. But it was a great tradition. Strength through pain. They were trained young, the boys, so that they should not falter or turn back or suffer from any kind of softness. Even Lenin, preaching his Marxist doctrine, declared “Away with softness!” It was one of his first rules for creating a perfect State. But we were too narrow. We wished to confine our great dream only to the German master race. But there are other races. They too can attain master-hood through suffering and violence and through the considered practice of anarchy. We must pull down, pull down all the soft institutions. Pull down the more humiliating forms of religion. There is a religion of strength, the old religion of the Viking people. And we have a leader, young as yet, gaining in power every day. What did some great man say? Give me the tools and I will do the job. Something like that. Our leader has already the tools. He will have more tools. He will have the planes, the bombs, the means of chemical warfare. He will have the men to fight. He will have the transport. He will have shipping and oil. He will have what one might call the Aladdin’s creation of genie. You rub the lamp and the genie appears. It is all in your hands. The means of production, the means of wealth and our young leader, a leader by birth as well as by character. He has all this.’
She wheezed and coughed.
‘Let me help you.’
Lady Matilda supported her back to her seat. Charlotte gasped a little as she sat down.
‘It’s sad to be old, but I shall last long enough. Long enough to see the triumph of a new world, a new creation. That is what you want for your nephew. I will see to it. Power in his own country, that is what he wants, is it not? You would be ready to encourage the spearhead there?’
‘I had influence once. But now–’ Lady Matilda shook her head sadly. ‘All that is gone.’
‘It will come again, dear,’ said her friend. ‘You were right to come to me. I have a certain influence.’
‘It is a great cause,’ said Lady Matilda. She sighed and murmured, ‘The Young Siegfried.’
IV
‘I hope you enjoyed meeting your old friend,’ said Amy as they drove back to the Gasthaus.
‘If you could have heard all the nonsense I talked, you wouldn’t believe it,’ said Lady Matilda Cleckheaton.
Chapter 16
Pikeaway Talks
‘The news from France is very bad,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, brushing a cloud of cigar ash off his coat. ‘I heard Winston Churchill say that in the last war. There was a man who could speak in plain words and no more than needed. It was very impressive. It told us what we needed to know. Well, it’s a long time since then, but I say it again today. The news from France is very bad.’
He coughed, wheezed and brushed a little more ash off himself.
‘The news from Italy is very bad,’ he said. ‘The news from Russia, I imagine, could be very bad if they let much out about it. They’ve got trouble there too. Marching bands of students in the street, shop windows smashed, Embassies attacked. News from Egypt is very bad. News from Jerusalem is very bad. News from Syria is very bad. That’s all more or less normal, so we needn’t worry too much. News from Argentine is what I’d call peculiar. Very peculiar indeed. Argentine,