Evening star., 1950-06-10

! lOllkCI.
Then. one morning in May. 1916.
articles began to appear again in
]
| Lost OF SIX articles on whot was per-
hops the sreotest single instance Of
treochesy in the last war.
the British and continental news
papers, demanding to know what
had happened to the Dutch Of
ficer who had betrayed Arnhem, "
and "the officer who had been i'm
prisoned in the Tower of London. "
Dutch government officials. an
xious as anybody to clear up the
situation, answered this newspaper
agitation in the only way they
could-by promptly fixing the date
for his trial:
Christian Lindemans will an
swer charges of treason before a
special tribunal to assemble at the
end of June. 1916"
But behind the blank, window
less red walls of Scheveningen
Prison. an unexpected develop
ment was apparently taking place.
King Kong" was having his
last love affair!
Women were not q novelty in
Lindemans' lustful experience. At
the height of his reputation,
when he was giant of hard
trained muscle, he had deserved
his nickname. He had as many
girls as there are days in the
year. The rich ones had given him
their jewels. The cafe girls, the
shopgirls. the valiant young fe-
male warriors of the Dutch In
terror Forces with nothing but
themselves to offer, had given as
much as they could.
The first time I had seen Linde-
mans. he was surrounded by girls.
But two years of prison had not
improved his sensual handsome
ness. I had watched him grow
thin and morose. His bones pro-
truded. Nevertheless, there must
apparently have burned some re-
manning vital ember of virile ap-
peal in his gaunt. wrecked body.
For it was one of the reticent,
coldly efficient Netherlands nurses
attached to the prison hospital
who fell in love with him at the
last!
I should explain that women
nurses were not usually found in
prison hospitals of Holland. But
Scheveningen Prison - perhaps
the largest in the Netherlands
had been used for years by the
Nazis during their occupation to
hold political prisoners. 1t was
equipped with torture rooms.
Thousands of Hollands most
valiant patriots had been taken
by the Gestapo to Schevenigen to
be broken until they confessed.
Some Patriots Still There.
Some of these patriots were still
there. in a specially equipped
prison hospital, too i'll to be
moved. After the Nazis had been
driven back. leaving their filthy
damage behind them, Schevenin-
gen became almost more of a
hospital than a. gaol.
There was only one formidable
wing in Scheveningen that still
held the suspected traitors. Nazi
collaborationists. looters, spies.
Among these was Lindemans.
Prison doctors. realizing he had
once had a bullet through his
lung. suspected tuberculosis. He
was removed for a time from his
stark cell with its stone walls and
bare floor to the locked wing of
the prison hospital for tests and
treatment.
1t must have been during this
treatment that he met the nurse.
They found some way of contact
ing each other and becoming in
innate, without the knowledge of
the prison authorities. 1t may
have been that he had known her
before he was arrested. I do not
know, for I was not there in
Scheveningen when the amazing
romance" took place behind
penitentiary walls.
It was a romance" that might
have made a very great difference
to the story of King Kong, might
even have given it a very differ
ent ending to the one fate was
eventually to write.
For, according to what was later
told, it masked a daring last
throw of the dice by the spy, a last
bid to evade the retribution that
he saw closing in on him.
Organized by the nurse, an
eleventh-hour escape plan was
thought out and tried. The girl
must have been a cool worker. for
as far as could be discovered none
OF the hospital guards ever sus-
pected what she was really up to.
Lindemans, it will be realized,
was being kept in a prison hos
pital room, with sound locks on
its door and heavy bars at its
small window. The escape plan
was not very complicated one.
The chief thing it involved was
the actual getting out of that
locked and barred room. And
the simplest way to freedom lay
through the window.
Which meant, of course, that
the bars would have to be re-