A very little knowledge of German police ways was enough to render it quite credible. It was just the sort of low cunning which would chime with their methods. There were plenty of people, besides aliens, who were anxious to get out of Berlin at such a time, and it would suit the authorities admirably to have this secret means of finding out who they were and acting accordingly.
Rosa's description of the Futtenplatz was well deserved: a squalid, dirty place, with mean shops of the poorest sort. The Jew's second-hand clothes shop was one of the meanest and dirtiest, and Graun himself fitted thoroughly into the picture.
When I entered he was bargaining with a man who wanted to sell him a coat, and while the transaction proceeded—while the old Jew was beating down the price to the last pfennig, that is—I had ample time to observe him.
Red-haired, with red tousled beard and whiskers, pronounced Hebraic features, small suspicious eyes, and filthy from the top of his narrow forehead to the tip of his clawlike finger-nails, he was one of the most repulsive specimens one could wish to avoid.
"What do you want?" he asked in a high-pitched rasping voice, squinting at me, when his customer went out, cursing him for the smallness of the amount he had received for the coat.
I told him straight out. The remembrance of Feldmann's tips was one reason, and my desire not to stop one unnecessary moment in such unsavoury surroundings was another.
He shook his head. "You've come to the wrong shop, my man. Given up all that sort of thing long ago. Too risky."
"All right; sorry to have troubled you. Good-day," I replied casually, and turned to leave.
He let me get to the door and then called me back. "Wait a moment. Who sent you here?"
"No one in particular. It's pretty well known, isn't it? Good-day."