Hanussen replied calmly that he and his friends could easily raise the purchase price. Vetter told him to telephone him next day; then, as the clairvoyant left, he reported to Commissioner Ohst the gist of the conversation. Ohst hurriedly passed on the information to his superiors. Within an hour Hermann Goering, then Prime Minister of Prussia, sent for Count Helldorf. "This is an impossible situation," Goering told the Berlin commander of the SA. "The Party cannot remain involved with this Jewish charlatan. I expect you to deal with the matter at once - before there is a scandal."

Helldorf nodded. He no longer needed to borrow money - the Nazis were masters of Germany. Whatever gratitude he owed Hanussen, he certainly could not risk Goering's or the Fiihrer's displeasure.

At noon that day Hanussen drove slowly along the Unter den Linden and the Kurürstendamm. Near the Friedrichstrasse he stopped his car suddenly. He caught a glimpse of a woman who looked familiar. He got out and told the chauffeur to follow him slowly. Then he walked up to her. It was the Baroness Prawitz. At first she was reluctant to talk to him - but within a few minutes she agreed to take him to her apartment. She was still beautiful - but poor. She lived by modelling and carving small animals - does and stags and hares - which were charming and life-like enough to sell quite well. She had a small, almost bare but strikingly clean and neat apartment at the back of a bleak tenement house. She seemed calm, at peace. She prepared a simple lunch and they talked. Gently she reproached him for the com­pany he kept. He told her that Hitler was the future - and that he had simply backed the winning side as he would back a horse, without worrying what colour it was. Then he suddenly offered her help. This was no life for her - wouldn't she come back to him? Let them make a fresh start! But she refused, without anger or resentment. No one could go back, she explained. No one could make a fresh start with the same man or the same woman.

Abruptly, Hanussen's mood changed. He became pale, he shivered.

"I'm afraid," he told the Baroness. "I know one thing: the end is terrible. It is always terrible. But my end is worse than that… "