The Sleepwalkers (6 page)

“Doktor Meckel.” Willi held up his ID.

The physician was middle-aged with not much hair, but had a ruddy physique and the strong, nimble hands of a pianist. He examined Willi’s Kripo badge, and for an instant his sharp blue eyes tightened. Then they all but exploded with charming light.

“Why Inspektor Kraus, what an honor! Of course I’m familiar with you. Who in Berlin isn’t? The way you used psychological insight to stalk the Child Eater—positively exemplary. How may I be of service to you today? Sit down. Have some coffee.”

“That’s all right. I’m here in reference to a recent patient at your office.” Willi pulled out the photograph of the princess.

The doctor looked it over as if with the fondest memories.

“Ah, yes. Marilyn something, wasn’t it?”

“Magdelena.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Came to me with a sprained ankle. Made a big fuss about it as some women will, you know. I bandaged her up and gave her some codeine tablets. Told her to try to keep off the ankle as much as possible.”

Codeine? Willi wondered. Might that have caused the wide-eyed state Rudy took for sleepwalking?

“How strong were these tablets, Doctor?”

“Five milligrams. For placebo effect mainly. Why? Did something happen? You’re with the Homicide Commission. She isn’t—?”

“We hope not, Doctor. But the princess has gone missing.”

“Princess!” He looked genuinely shocked.

Willi’s sixth sense was doing somersaults. Meckel was lying through his teeth.

“Yes. Daughter of the king of Bulgaria. Her father is most anxious to have her returned. So is President von Hindenburg. The Berlin police are leaving no stone unturned. Since you were one of the last to see her, Doktor Meckel, it’s likely we shall wish to speak with you more.”

“Yes, of course. But I’ve told you everything I know.”

An orderly appeared. “Doktor Meckel, major street fighting in Wedding. The injured are starting to arrive.”

“Herr Inspektor, you must excuse me.”

“Yes, of course, Herr Doktor. Until we meet again.”

“Welcome to Hell.” The hatcheck girl winked at Gunther, handing him a ticket for his coat.

“Simmer down, boy,” Willi cautioned. “Remember, this is work.”

For more than a decade the very name
Berlin
had been a byword among the in-the-know sets for decadence and depravity, and Klub Hell on raunchy Friedrich Strasse dished up a particularly stagy version. Topless barmaids in devil’s horns. Surrealistic murals of Dante’s inferno. And boiling cauldrons of dry ice that kept the place in a perpetual fog.

Gunther was in heaven.

They were given a table on the mezzanine with an excellent view of the stage. Willi could see how a provincial princess might be entranced by the theatrical glamour of the lighting and décor. But who had sent her here? Doktor Meckel?

When the lights dimmed, Gunther wiggled in his chair like a kid at the circus. Before a backdrop of lurid red gauze, the floor show began: a series of tableaux vivants composed by squads of scantily clad vixens, each scene depicting a moment of particularly prurient history—Joan of Arc being burned at the stake, topless; Jack the Ripper tearing apart a naked London lady of the night. These were followed by silhouette compositions,
avec
vixens behind the red gauze: eroticized torture mainly, forced gratification, bondage, humiliation. There was endless cracking of whips, spanking of fannies, and exaggerated cries for pity. Gunther, Willi noticed, was not merely enthralled, but embarrassed to the core, his long, bony face turning continuous shades of red and purple.

“For goodness’ sakes,” Willi whispered. “Don’t act like you never left a farm.”

“I never did, until Police Academy.”

“Well, you must have had cows and bulls and whatnot.”

“Sure. But they never spanked each other!”

A buxom acrobat named Helga was soon twisting herself into a Bavarian pretzel. Three topless Negresses demonstrated the latest dance craze from New York—the shimmy-shake. And a satanic ventriloquist tried to seduce a sexy schoolgirl dummy.

Finally all the lights went dark, except for a single spotlight onstage. The room fell into silent expectation. From the rafters a small choir of half-naked angels in silver sequins descended by wires, bearing with them a large cage. Inside, as if being cast from heaven into hell, was the Great Gustave in top hat and tails, hands held dramatically overhead, seeming to writhe in pain.

The audience applauded wildly.

Onstage, the angels released him and Gustave stepped from captivity, silently surveying his new environment. Then slowly, deliberately, tugging on each finger of his white gloves, he prepared to master whatever came his way.

“Meine Damen und Herren,”
his deep baritone boomed through the room. “So this is Hell!”

The whole nightclub shook with laughter.

Gustave was a veteran showman, Willi knew from his cousin Kurt’s tirades. A born carny who’d mastered everything from lion taming to mind reading. After thirty years in the business, he was pure stagecraft, from his whitened face and dark eyes to the exaggerated silent-screen expressions.

“Hell”—his voice trembled like a stage villain’s—“is a state of mind as much as a physical place. Which is why Klub Hell has dragged me down here tonight to journey with you into realms of the mind normally experienced only during sleep. The realm of the deep subconscious.

“For our journey this evening I am going to require several volunteers, which I will choose from among the females. No offense, gentlemen. I just happen to like girls.

“Now, ladies, as I walk through the audience, I’m going to ask you all to raise your skirts—nothing indecent, only to the knees. My job, I confess, was easier a few years ago when we had short skirts. But these days I must ask you all to lift your skirts, ladies, back to where they were in 1929, lift them so that I may note their shape and character. That’s right. Thank you. Thank you all so very much.”

Willi found it astonishing that not a single woman failed to obey this command, but almost in unison they hiked their skirts to the delight of their male companions.

“It’s not merely that I like looking at women’s legs, which I do. But it’s a little known fact,
meine Damen und Herren,
that there are nine basic types of women’s legs, and that they can say as much about a woman’s character as her face or her palm. Now, for example, this lovely lady here has what are called Champagne Bottle legs, not merely because they are expensive and delicious, which I’m sure they are, but because of their shape, with thin, delicate ankles and firm, fulsome calves. The knee is never bony but rounded, spherical. This tells me she is soft and affectionate, motherly. That she has many friends and a warm, loving home. Am I right?”

“Yes, yes, you are!”

“Do you agree?” he asked the man next to her.

“Yes, quite.”

“Then you’re a lucky man. Unfortunately women with Champagne Bottle legs do not make the best subjects for our experiments. No, I am looking for what are called Baby Doll legs, where the ankle tapers imperceptibly to the calf, delicately complementing the knee, because a woman with Baby Doll legs possesses an acute sense of trust and curiosity. Or I am looking for the Classic legs, which indicate a woman who is both intuitive and imaginative. Or best of all, Ideal legs. You may wish you had these, ladies. But only one in a thousand women does. The Ideal leg, like anything wonderful and perfect, indicates a strong, vital life force. Passion!”

Willi couldn’t help but picture the Mermaid’s monstrously mangled legs. Or that photo of the Bulgarian princess, with her husband bowing to her. Could she have had Baby Doll legs? Or Classic? Something about this Gustave seemed more hellish than just his nightclub act. He was assessing not merely the legs, but the faces of these women, their postures, their clothing. Selecting the exact subject he wanted. Or am I just being paranoid? Willi wondered. Feeling natural resistance to a force of obvious power? Because this Gustave had his game perfected all right. He was choosing only the sexiest ladies to participate in his hypnotic high jinks.

When the six loveliest women in the room were seated on stage in a semicircle, the lights went back down on the rest of the crowd.

“Ladies . . . ,” the voice boomed. “I want you to keep your eyes fixed directly on mine. As I talk, they will begin to feel tired. Very tired. You will find yourself wanting to relax. A feeling of pleasant tiredness and drowsiness overcoming you . . . you feel fine . . . you feel relaxed . . . close your eyes and in a few minutes you will fall into a pleasant, gentle sleep.”

His voice was so deliberately low and monotonous, even some
people not onstage could be seen with their heads nodding over.

“
Meine Damen und Herren,
the ladies now are in a light hypnotic trance. There is nothing magical about it. They are aware of everything that’s going on. Right, girls?”

All the women nodded. Gustave tapped a pretty brunette on the shoulder. “Sweetheart, what is your name?”

“Hannah Lore,” she said with her eyes still closed.

“Hannah Lore, how do you feel?”

“Lovely. Just lovely.”

“I shall now take them into a deep trance.

“You are comfortable now. Completely comfortable. Your whole body is relaxed. You have no feeling of tension. You are drifting asleep. A deep, deep, delightful sleep. I’m going to count backwards from ten, and when I finish, you will be asleep, deep, deep asleep. . . . Ten . . . nine . . .”

At the end of his countdown the Great Gustave tested each subject for signs of a trance. “The arms should be as limp as rope,” he tells the audience. As he lifts them, several arms indeed fall back corpselike. “The eyeballs should be turned up.” He demonstrates by yanking several of the ladies’ eyelids.

“Hannah Lore.” He returns to her. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Lovely.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I will now demonstrate to you the power hypnotic trance exerts over the human mind.

“Hannah Lore . . . can you speak Chinese?”

“Of course not.” She giggles. “I’m from Düsseldorf.”

“When I snap my fingers, you will awaken and you will no longer be Hannah Lore from Düsseldorf, but the dowager empress of ancient China. You are very angry because one of your servants has stolen your favorite teacup. You’re not sure who it is, but you vow to catch the thief and cut off his head. Here we go now. One. Two. Three.” He snapped his fingers.

Hannah Lore jumped from her seat and with a furious scowl started screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Ching how ni gon! He how gon ni how? Chow kow ling chew! Ling chew! Ling chew!”

She kept making slitting motions with her finger across her throat.

The audience was in hysterics.

“When I clap my hands, you will fall back to sleep!”

Gustave clapped, and the empress collapsed as if poisoned, dead into her throne.

“Hannah Lore,” he said. “Do you speak Chinese?”

“No, of course not.” She giggled again. “I’m from Düsseldorf.”

In this manner the Great Gustave entertained for an hour.

Willi was astonished at the patent aura of seduction to it all. How the man stood above these limp women’s bodies, commanding them with his deep, demanding masculine voice, his every wish instantly obeyed. Turning women into bumblebees. Ballerinas. French maids.

Gunther clearly was not oblivious to the implications either. “What I couldn’t do with six girls under my control like that,” he muttered, forgetting himself in Willi’s presence.

Every man in the audience, Willi was sure, was thinking exactly the same.

But not every man in the audience had the Great Gustave’s gifts.

After the show the King of Mystics returned his subjects to the world of ordinary consciousness, and the adoring arms of their men. They recalled nothing of their adventures. All felt marvelous, they reported, as if they’d just spent a week at Baden-Baden’s finest spa. The clients of Hell were left well satisfied with their evening’s peek into the bizarre, expensive netherworld of Weimar Berlin.

As soon as the lights came up, Willi led Gunther backstage and sought out the dressing room of the Great Gustave. They found the performer at his makeup table already half-transformed. Gone was the jet-black hair, sitting now on a wig stand, the deathly
looking black eyes crumpled on a dozen paper napkins. The white skin. The strange red lips, all washing away under cold cream.

“Kripo? My word!” He rose to his feet showing more natural emotion than he had all night. “What on earth have I done now? Come, come in.”

“Herr Gustave,” Willi addressed him. “Saturday night you hypnotized a young woman who later went missing.”

“What, missing?”

Willi handed him the picture of the princess.

“I don’t remember her. Honestly, I’d tell you if I did. I’ve nothing to hide. But you know how many shows a week I do? All these women’s faces blur together in my mind. My work requires so much concentration. Perhaps nearly as much as yours, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv.”

“What about the legs?” Willi asked. “Would you say she had Champagne Bottle? Baby Doll? Or the Ideal?”

“Oh, that!” Gustave laughed, wiping the rest of the cold cream from his face and turning into a perfectly unremarkable man in his late forties, with thin brown hair, calm, gentle eyes, and a rather amiable expression. “You don’t really take that leg stuff seriously? It’s all part of the act. I just use it to rile up the women. Women are my calling card. I must live up to my reputation, to prove I can get even the most attractive completely in my power. There’s no such thing as the nine kinds of legs. I just made that up to sound as if I possess all sorts of esoteric knowledge. People want to believe in magic. They want to give themselves up to a higher power. It’s all part of my job, gentlemen. You do yours. I do mine. I’m sorry this poor girl has gone missing. Truly I am. I hold no malice toward any living being. But I certainly had nothing to do with it. Once I wake these women up, they are completely back to normal. You saw that with your own eyes.”