Dickens of a Time

Lieut. Hans Strehl, 23, and Lieut. Siegfried Schmidt, 25, both Nazi airmen, both prisoners of war at the Fort Henry internment camp outside Kingston, Ont., seem to have literal minds. Not long ago they apparently got a copy of Pickwick Papers from the camp library, and came across the passage in which Weller the elder suggested that the hero escape from his imprisonment in the Fleet with the help of a piano:

"Me and a cab'net-maker has devised a plan for getting him out. A planner, Samivel--a planner!" said Mr. Weller, striking his son on the chest. . . .

"Wot do you mean?" said Sam.

"A planner forty, Samivel," rejoined Mr. Weller, in a still more mysterious manner, "as he can have on hire, vun as von't play, Sammy."

"And wot 'ud be the good of that?" said Sam.

"Let him send to my friend, the cab'net-maker, to fetch it back, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller. "Are you awake now?"

"No," rejoined Sam.

"There ain'r no vurks in it," whispered his father. "It 'ull hold him easy, with his hat and shoes on, and breathe through the legs, vich is holler. Have a passage ready taken for 'Merriker. The 'Merrikin gov'ment mil never give him up, ven they find as he's got money to spend, Sammy."

Lieuts, Strehl and Schmidt seemingly decided that old Weller, whose super-cockney sounded like their own German accent of English, had something there. They made their plans slowly.

Finally they asked their captors if they might throw a little party in Fort Henry's recreation hall. The captors said yes. Might they rent a couple of pianos from Kingston for the party? Yes.

The pianos came, the party was held.

Last week, the rental period having expired, truckmen went to Fort Henry, loaded one of the pianos on to their truck, took it back to town, rolled it on to the platform of the C. W. Lindsay Piano Co. A few minutes later the company's bookkeeper heard sounds inside the piano that were too big for mice, too small for snapping piano wire. He investigated, found a young man wiggling out from a half-opened panel. The bookkeeper, who in all his years around pianofortes had never seen one with a man in it, called the police. They found the young man had 25 feet of quarter-inch rope wound around his leg, carried vitamin tablets in his pockets. He was Hans Strehl.

Some one remembered that there was another piano to be fetched from the camp. He warned the guards. The guards looked at the piano. Siegfried Schmidt was in it.

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