"Michael Moorcock - Seaton Begg - The Case of the Nazi Canary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

anyone much good, least of all Alf himself. He's gone under the bed, as we say, and won't come out. And I'm talking
too much. Have a schnapps!" Again he snapped for the waiter, who disappeared through a door and a little later
appeared behind the bar to serve them. Begg and Sinclair modified their orders to beers, but Hanfstaengl hardly
noticed.
"We're not from the newspapers," Begg told him before the drinks arrived. "We're private detectives employed by
Herr Hess. Anything you tell us we will use in the processes of justice."
The lumbering half-American seemed relieved to hear this. He loosened his big coat and made himself more
comfortable. As he listened to the tunes of Strauss and Lehar, he relaxed. "This isn't for publication. I have your word
on it?"
"Our word as English gentlemen," said Begg.
For a while "Putzi" chatted about the old days of the Nazi Party when there were only a few of them, when Hitler
had been released from prison a hero, the author of Mein Kampf, which was published here in Munich by Max
Amman. "We have a concession on pictures of the Nazi hierarchy and Amman publishes what they write. It's pretty
much our only business. This scandal could wreck us." Since the party's success in elections, sales had climbed. Mein
Kampf was now a best-seller and it was money from royalties, Hanfstaengl insisted, not from secret financiers, which
was paying for the Mercedes and the place in Prinzregensburgstrasse. He seemed to be answering questions neither
Begg nor Sinclair had asked. And when Sir Seaton threw the big query at him, he was rather surprised, glad that he did
not have to hide something from the detective. It was dawning on him at last who Begg and Sinclair were.
"You really are the ace sleuths they say you are," he said. "I know those Sexton Blake things are heavily
sensationalized, but it's surprising how like him you are. Do you remember The Affair of the Jade Skull?"
Blake was, of course, the name said to disguise the identity of Sir Seaton Begg in a long series of stories written
for The Union Jack, The Sexton Blake Library, and other popular British publications known as tuppenny skinnies
and four-penny fats.
"I'm surprised they're read at all beyond the London gutters," said Begg, who made a point of never reading the
"bloods."
"Speaking of whichтАФwhat about that material itself? I've seen some of it, of course. The stuff Hitler was being
blackmailed with? Weren't you the middleman on that?"
Only Taffy Sinclair knew that his friend had just told a small, deliberate lie.
"What earthly need is there for you to know more? If you've seen how dreadful that stuff isтАФ?" Hanfstaengl's
brow cleared. "Oh, I get it. You have to eliminate suspects. You're looking for an alibi." He sipped his drink. "Well, I,
too, dealt through a middleman. An SA sergeant who had got himself mixed up in something he didn't like. Called
himself Braun, I think. Nobody ever proved it, but he pretty much confirmed who the blackmailer was and nobody was
surprised. It was that crazy old Heironymite. Stempfle. I'm not sure how a member of an order of hermits, like Father
Stempfle, can spend quite so much time drinking in the seedier Munich beer halls, but there you are. He has a certain
following, of course. Writer and editor, I think. He worked for Amman once."
"The publisher?"
"Do you know him? Funny chap. Never really took to him. He's putting Hitler up at the moment. My view is that
Amman could be cheating Hitler of his royalties. What if he's covering his tracks? Could Geli have found something
out, do you think?"
"You mean she knew too much?"
"Well," said Hanfstaengl, glancing up at the big clock over the bar, "she wasn't exactly an innocent, was she?
Those letters! Foul. But his pictures were worse. It was my own fault. I was curious. I wish I'd never looked." He let out
a great sigh. "Party funds paid the black-mailer, you know. The stuff was impossibly disgusting. I said I'd burn itтАФbut
heтАФ-AlfтАФwanted it back."
The orchestra had begun to play a polka. The couple on the dance floor were having difficulty keeping time. Begg
studied the musicians for any sign of cynicism but found none.
Hanfstaengl's tongue, never very tight at the best of times, it seemed, was becoming looser by the moment. "After
that, things were never the same. Hitler changed. Everything turned a little sour. You want to ask crazy old Stempfle
about it. I'm still convinced only he could have had the inside knowledge. ..."
"But where could I find this hermit?"