Straf Battalion 999 [antikvár]

1 Julia Deutschmann took trouble over her appearance that morning. People made concessions more readily to an attractive-lookmg woman than to one who looked haggard and care-worn. She did not have much to do, for she was beautiful anyhow, despite the shadows round her tired eyes and the paleness of her lips; a pencil to her eyebrows, a touch of; rouge on the lips, some powder, a hundred brush-strokes over her curly black hair, wriich she wore loose, without slide or comb. The simple dress was cut to emphasise her figure, the high-heeled court shoes matched tne colour of the material. As she slipped into them, she remembered that it was Ernst who had chosen them. For a moment she stayed motionless, the memory flitted over her face hke a glimmer of h^t, and was then extmguished. She straightened up and gave a last appraising look in the mirror. Then she went. The guard outside the Army High Conmiand in Bendler-strasse, Berlin, read the short note she handed to him, slowly and attentively, as if there were more there than three miserable lines, an impersonal summons to an interview with General von Frankenstein. In the main entrance of the big building complex she met a staff officer, a young lieutenant, who on seeing her saluted with a click of his heels and volimteered to take ner up to the second floor. They halted outside a big oak door at the end of the corridor: a gate which seemed to lead into another worid. 1