The Ambushers by Donald Hamilton

you, since Papa happens to be out at the movies.”
    Her voice was dry. She was smiling faintly. She knew me now. At least she knew, because I’d just told her, that if my questionnaire hadn’t specified the female head of the household, I would have rigged it so it did—and as a matter of fact, I had. I answered her smile with a significant look she was free to interpret as she pleased. I was gambling for a real reaction, and I got it.
    She walked over to the record player and paused to look back at me dubiously. She was still not quite sure. Then she moved her shoulders in a reckless sort of shrug and bent over the machine. There was some clattering and scratching before she found the right band on the right record, followed by a few bars of music that could have led to anything. Suddenly the Horst Wessel Lied was filling the room, seeming to come from all around us.
    I’ve never been much of a stereo man. The idea of hearing a record poorly reproduced from two directions instead of one doesn’t seem like a real acoustical breakthrough to me. In this case, however, perhaps because the volume was turned very high, perhaps because the music had strong associations for me, the effect was almost hypnotic. I could practically hear again the heavy boots striking the pavement in that ridiculous goosestep that hadn’t been a bit funny at the time.
    I got up slowly. Catherine Smith was standing by the player watching me. She was a good-looking woman dressed for love, if you want to call it that, but for a moment it meant nothing to me and, I saw, nothing to her, either. The slightly parted lips, the bright eyes, with which she listened to the song that once shook the world, were signs of a different kind of passion.
    She’d made her move. It was my turn now. I faced her, waiting while the instruments worked their way through some fancy orchestration and hit the tune again.
    “Die Fahne hoch ,” I said, speaking the words in time to the music, “die Reihen fest geschlossen, SA marchiert mit ruhig festen schritt...” My accent wasn’t half bad, I thought. I looked into the woman’s eyes and went on, deadpan: “That’s German, Miss Smith. It means, ‘With banners high and closed ranks, SA marches with calm and steady stride.’ SA stands for Sturmabteilung. In English, you know, they were commonly known as Storm Troopers.”
    Her eyes never left my face. We’d reached some more stuff with drums and brasses. She waited. The theme came through, clear and disturbing. At least I’d known it well enough, once, to be disturbed by it. It was like having a snake come back to life after you’d chopped off its head.
    Catherine Smith hummed softly along with the music. She let the first bars go by. Her accurate contralto picked up the tune and the closing words: “...es schaut auf Haakenkreuz vol Hoffnung schon Millionen. Der Tag fur Freiheit und fur Brot bricht an!”
    The song came to an abrupt end. She reached out and switched off the record player without looking that way. Her eyes were very blue and bright, watching me steadily.
    “The Haakenkreuz is the swastika, you know.” Her voice was soft.
    “I know,” I said. I hoped I was making the right responses.
    It was very quiet in the room with the record player still. “Freedom and bread!” she murmured. “It has been a long time since those great days, Henry Evans. A long time. But perhaps they will come again!”

11
    To be honest, it wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. When I’d first heard that music, and seen Ernest Head’s panicky reaction to it, I’d assumed it was meant as a threat, a promise of vengeance perhaps, a warning of retribution to come. Certainly he’d seemed to be taking it that way.
    I’d jumped to certain conclusions about Head’s past— after all, Head translates to kopf in German, and there are a lot of good Teutonic names ending with that syllable. I’d even done some fancy guessing about Catherine Smith’s motives in broadcasting