“In spite of his injuries, somehow the captain managed to stage enough of a recovery for him to make it into the military court some five weeks later. On March second, nineteen thirty-eight, he gave his evidence and directly contradicted the story given by his original blackmailer, Otto Schmidt. The proceedings were an absolute farce. I sat and watched the whole thing in the Preussenhaus and even Hermann Göring looked embarrassed. Everyone could see he’d been badly beaten and everyone knew by who but somehow this evidence was ignored. Thanks to the captain, General von Fritsch was acquitted. But the mischief was already done, and while he retained his military rank he was not reinstated as commander in chief. He subsequently returned to his regiment and was killed during the invasion of Poland in September nineteen thirty-nine. There are some who believe he put himself in the way of a hero’s death. And that would have been quite typical of a man of that background.

“After his dismally unconvincing performance in court, I heard Otto Schmidt was rearrested a couple of weeks later and taken to a concentration camp—probably Sachsenhausen—where I imagine he died wearing a pink triangle. Jews in the camps were forced to wear a yellow star. Homosexuals wore a pink triangle. It meant that the guards could devise punishments to fit the crime, as they saw it. Which must have been terrible. Because of the six million, it’s usually forgotten that lots of German homosexuals also met violent deaths in the camps. The Nazis never seemed to run short of minorities to persecute.”

“Dreadful,” said Maugham. “It’s tragic the number of queers who are blackmailed. You would think the very frequency of it would make it less tragic somehow, and that those of us with coarser frames could hardly bear much of it. And yet queers like me regard it almost as an occupational hazard. I often wonder what it is that other men seem to have against queers. I think it’s the importance we attach to things that most men find trivial and the cynicism with which we regard the subjects the common man holds essential to his spiritual welfare. That and an abnormal interest in other men’s c-cocks.”

I laughed. “Yes, probably.”

“And the poor old captain?” he asked. “What became of him?”