Hindenburg's Man

A slim, excited equerry climbed and scrambled to reach Old Paul von Hindenburg, who was hunting chamois, last week, high in the Bavarian Alps. Panting, the equerry snapped to a flushed salute before the President of Germany, and held out a telegram. "Urgent! Herr Reichs Praesident!" he gasped.

Fumbling with old fingers the President unfolded the telegram. ". . . MURDERED. . . ." he read, and then a name, ". . . TSCHIRPE. . . ."--the name of an old soldier, servitor, friend.

When he looked up from the telegram, the President seemed to become Feldmarschall as of old. Curt orders fired rapidly at the equerry replaced the ponderous, civilian manner of Old Paul von Hindenburg. The murdered man had been his personal military servant throughout the War, and long previous. Master and servant were born on the same day--four score years ago. They grew up together in the army of Imperial Germany. As President of the Republic, Great Paul von Hindenburg remembered his poor old friend every year with a gift of money, on their joint birthdays.

The telegram told meagerly that both Servitor Tschirpe and his wife (also old) had been murdered, at Leuthen, near Sagan in Silesia. Soon the curtly ordered equerry panted and scrambled down with a presidential telegram which took automatic priority over every other message on the wires between Bavaria and Silesia.

Jumpy police officials read the demand of Hindenburg for action, justice. They acted. Soon Silesia breathed easier at the arrest of a notoriously vicious and possibly lunatic youth, who, the pouncing police charged, had murdered Herr und Frau Tschirpe--though no theory as to why he should have done so was announced last week.

Old Paul von Hindenburg seemed satisfied, resumed his chamois kill.