In deep shadows, Der Nacht Hund lurked ten feet above the grim, dimly lit alley that wound between the Berlin city hospital and the morgue and ended a block away at the Gelderstrasse bus stop. He had pulled himself, hand-over-hand, up into the shadows by the pipes that ribbed the alley wall. There he waited and watched as the night shift ended and the doctors, interns and nurses drifted out, jabbering as they walked to cars or down the alley below to the bus.
Fifteen minutes passed. He had been watching the alley for several nights, perched in its shadows, checking the nurses, seeking out that perfect beauty and waiting for the moment when she might drop her guard and walk down the alleyway alone.
Der Nacht Hund was infinitely patient.
Two nurses came out of the staff door of the hospital and waited under the bright lights of the emergency entrance for several minutes. One was short and stout, the other, taller and slender with long equine features.
The tall one moved out of the light and lit a cigarette which she shared with the other one. They giggled mischievously, passing the cigarette back and forth, watching lest a doctor or senior nurse catch them. Women were forbidden from smoking on the hospital grounds; if caught, the two would be sternly chastised. In fact, the night supervisor frowned on women smoking at all, considering it a common and filthy habit suitable only for men.
They finished the cigarette, looked back at the exit, then the shorter one shrugged. They proceeded down the alley toward the bus stop.
The third woman was young, barely in her twenties, with an angelic face that exuded innocence and wonder, a delicate beauty who had been in nurse’s training for only a few weeks. As she exited the hospital, she looked around and called out, “Anna? Sophie?”
No answer.
She approached the mouth of the alley cautiously, and leaning forward peered into its gloomy depths. Fifty yards away the alley curved. She could see the long shadows of her two friends cast against the brick wall by the street lamps at the bus stop, could hear faint laughter.
She huddled into her coat and walked rapidly after them.
The loden coat made a slight flapping sound as he dropped toward his prey and she turned a moment before he landed behind her.
She caught a brief glimpse of his warped features but before she could scream he lashed out with one hand, slamming it over her mouth and shoving her against the alley wall. Her eyes bulged in terror; he immediately struck her in the temple with his other fist, a sharp, hard punch that knocked her unconscious. She made a slight whimpering sound, her knees buckled and as she dropped straight down he gathered her up in his arms and whisked her into a doorway.
There was not a sound. The alley was suddenly empty.
“Cut!”
Fifty feet away, the director rose from his canvas chair and applauded.
“Wunderbar, wunderbar!” he said in a thick German accent as he walked across the eerie Gothic movie set toward his stars.
“That should whiten their knuckles.”
The girl walked out into the set with a sigh.
“Wonderful, my darling,” the director cooed, and brushed her cheek with his lips. He was a slight, esthetic man, ramrod straight with the manners of a duke.
“Thank you, Fritz,” she said, genuinely pleased by the compliment. This was only her third film, the first in a costarring part. She was still awed by her luck at playing opposite Johann Ingersoll, Germany’s most popular actor, and being directed by Fritz Jergens, one of Germany’s best-known directors.
The creature emerged behind her.
“Excellent, Johann. Magnificent as always.” Jergens shook the monster’s hand. “You can go to lunch. Freda, we will do you close-ups before we break.”
Ingersoll merely nodded. Remaining in character, he crossed the set in his strange crablike gait and entered a dressing room in the corner of the sound stage.
His valet, Otto Heinz, was waiting as usual. As the actor pulled the door closed, the small, gray-haired man poured Ingersoll a small snifter of brandy. Ingersoll suddenly seemed to grow a foot taller, straightening his shoulders, standing up to his full height. He shook his shoulders out, took out the grotesque plate that covered his real teeth and placed it in a glass cup which Heinz held open for him. He carefully removed the shaggy wig and, as Heinz placed it on a head mold on the corner of the makeup table, the actor dropped wearily on a chaise lounge in the corner of the room.
“It will soon be over,” Heinz said, standing behind him. Short and in his late fifties, Heinz still had the body and arms of a weightlifter. He kneaded his muscular hands into Ingersoll’s shoulders.
“Ten more days,” Ingersoll sighed in a voice that was refined with only a trace of an accent. “This has been the most difficult one so far. Those stunts in that grotesque posture
· . . and the makeup! My God, I will think twice before I ever go this far again.”
Heinz laughed softly. He knew the agony of enduring seven, sometimes eight hours a day in the heavy disguise. It was unbearably hot under the layer of latex and cosmetics, uncomfortable to the point of pain. But he also understood Ingersoll’s drive to make each character more startling, more frightening and original than the previous one. Ingersoll created his own makeup, arising several hours before he was due on the set, applying it himself, assisted only by Heinz, who was also his valet, cook and chauffeur.
“You say that on every show,” Heinz said.
“This time I mean it. I will swear it in my own blood.”
“Of course.”
Heinz had given up his own respectable career as a top makeup man to become Ingersoll’s servant and confidant. He was a key figure in one of Germany’s most popular mysteries— who was the real Johann Ingersoll?
The star had made seven enormously popular horror films, five of them talking pictures, and was being compared to the great American actor Lon Chaney. Yet nobody knew anything about Johann Ingersoll. There were no photographs of him except in the grotesque makeup he invented for each picture. His biography listed only his films. He never granted interviews and went to unusual lengths to protect his real identity. Adding further to the mystique was Ingersoll’s eccentric habit of arriving on the set each day in makeup and leaving the same way, sneaking through the underground tunnels that led to the furnace rooms and the adjoining sound stages, scurrying to some predetermined spot where Heinz was waiting with the limousine. For four years he had eluded both the news reporters and the fans who tried to peer behind the masks, to unveil the real Johann Ingersoll.
The ploy was a publicist’s dream and had enhanced the celebrity and stardom of the actor. His stature was now equal to that of Conrad Veidt, Emil Jannings and Peter Lorre. Together they were the four most popular actors to emerge from Germany’s young film industry.
There was a soft tapping at the door. Ingersoll groaned.
“Now what?”
“Ja?” Heinz said.
“It is Friedrich. Sorry to intrude but it is important.”
“Come, come,” Ingersoll said impatiently.
Friedrich Kessler was a tall, intense man in his mid-thirties, a bon vivant who dressed in the latest fashion, wore his fedora jauntily cocked over one eye and affected a monocle and cane. He was Ingersoll’s attorney, agent and manager, and Ingersoll had made him a rich man in a bankrupt Germany where such a feat was virtually impossible. Only one person other than Heinz knew the truth about Ingersoll and that person was Kreisler. It was Kreisler who had created the idea of the movie star nobody knew, who had accompanied him on his first screen test when Ingersoll had stunned the studio by arriving already made up as a character of his own diabolical imagination. It was Kreisler who negotiated all the contracts and who handled all of Ingersoll’s business affairs.