Stranger with a Package

Bruno Beiersdorf, 13, and his friend, Werner Breitschopp, were carefully reared schoolboys. "We are poor," said Bruno's mother, "but we've always tried to give our boy the best. Above all, we watch out that he doesn't read any Kriminalschmoeker [dime detective novels]."

Last week Bruno and Werner turned up as the unexpected heroes of a real-life Kriminalschmoeker. The boys were hovering near Munich's main railway station, hoping to pick up some pocket money for washing car windows, when the villain of the piece sidled up to them. "Want to earn some money?" he murmured. "Mail this package for me. I'm in a hurry." He handed them a heavy parcel and three marks. Three marks (70-c-) was big money for such an errand.

They glanced at the package: it was addressed to Chancellor Adenauer at Bonn. When the boys noticed that their benefactor, instead of running for a train, was still following them, their suspicions solidified. At the first street corner, they showed their package to a streetcar supervisor standing by. The supervisor turned it over to some policemen in a prowl-car. The cops put in a call to Fireman Karl Reichert, explosives expert.

Reichert, ill with the flu, left his bed to help. At police headquarters he turned the keys of his car over to a policeman, "in case something happens to me." In an old air-raid shelter near by, Reichert, assisted by two cops, gingerly opened the parcel and took out Volume L-Z of a standard German encyclopedia. "Hmm," wondered a cop, "why would anyone send the Chancellor an encyclopedia?" A moment later, a blinding flash hurled him to the wall; two hours later, Reichert was dead from the bomb meant for Chancellor Adenauer.

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