I don’t know why, I don’t know why! And they’re burning them there!”
Who owned them, Doremus did not know, nor why they had been seized, but he saw Alice in Wonderland and Omar Khayyám and Shelley and The Man Who Was Thursday and A Farewell to Arms all burning together, to the greater glory of the Dictator and the greater enlightenment of his people.
The fire was almost over when Karl Pascal pushed up to Shad Ledue and shouted, “I hear you stinkers — I’ve been out driving a guy, and I hear you raided my room and took off my books while I was away!”
“You bet we did, Comrade!”
“And you’re burning them — burning my —”
“Oh no, Comrade! Not burning ’em. Worth too blame much, Comrade.” Shad laughed very much. “They’re at the police station. We’ve just been waiting for you. It was awful nice to find all your little Communist books. Here! TAKE HIM ALONG!”
So Karl Pascal was the first prisoner to go from Fort Beulah to the Trianon Concentration Camp — no; that’s wrong; the second. The first, so inconspicuous that one almost forgets him, was an ordinary fellow, an electrician who had never so much as spoken of politics. Brayden, his name was. A Minute Man who stood well with Shad and Staubmeyer wanted Brayden’s job. Brayden went to concentration camp. Brayden was flogged when he declared, under Shad’s questioning, that he knew nothing about any plots against the Chief. Brayden died, alone in a dark cell, before January.
An English globe-trotter who gave up two weeks of December to a thorough study of “conditions” in America, wrote
