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Page 84
"But, Monica," I cried, "what about you?"
She reddened deliciously under her pallor.
"Des," she replied happily, "we are allies now, we three. If all goes
well, I'm coming with you and Francis!"
With that she was gone. A few minutes after, a couple of soldiers
arrived with Schmalz and took me downstairs to a dark cellar in the
basement, where I was locked in for the night.
* * * * *
I was dreaming of the front ... again I sniffed the old familiar smells,
the scent of fresh earth, the fetid odour of death; again I heard
outside the trench the faint rattle of tools, the low whispers of our
wiring party; again I saw the very lights soaring skyward and revealing
the desolation of the battlefield in their glare. Someone was shaking me
by the shoulder. It was my servant come to wake me.... I must have
fallen asleep. Was it stand-to so soon? I sat up and rubbed my eyes and
awoke to the anguish of another day.
The sergeant stood at the cellar door, framed in the bright morning
light.
"You are to come upstairs!" he said.
He took me to the billiard-room, where Clubfoot, sleek and washed and
shaved, sat at the writing-table in the sunshine, opening letters and
sipping coffee. A clock on a bracket above his head pointed to eight.
"You wish to speak to me, I believe," he said carelessly, running his
eye over a letter in his hand.
"You must give me a little more time, Herr Doktor," I said. "I was worn
out last night and I could not look at things in their proper light. If
you could spare me a few hours more...."
I put a touch of pleading into my voice, which struck him at once.
"I am not unreasonable, my dear Captain Okewood," he replied, "but you
will understand that I am not to be trifled with, so I give you fair
warning. I will give you until...."
"It is eight o'clock now," I interrupted. "I tell you what, give me
until ten. Will that do?"
Clubfoot nodded assent.
"Take this man upstairs to my bedroom," he ordered the sergeant. "Stay
with him while he has his breakfast, and bring him back here at ten
o'clock. And tell Schmidt to leave my car at the door: he needn't wait,
as he is to beat: I will drive myself to the shoot."
I don't really remember what happened after that. I swallowed some
breakfast, but I had no idea what I was eating, and the sergeant, who
was a model of Prussian discipline, declined with a surly frown to enter
into conversation with me. My morale was very low: when I look back upon
that morning I think I must have been pretty near the breaking-point.
As I sat and waited I heard the house in a turmoil of preparation for
the shoot. There was the sound of voices, of heavy boots in the hall, of
wheels and horses in the yard without. Then the noises died away and all
was still. Shortly afterwards, the clock pointing to ten, the sergeant
escorted me downstairs again to the billiard-room.
Grundt was still sitting there. A hot wave of anger drove the blood into
my cheeks as I looked at him, fat and soft and so triumphant at his
victory. The sight of him, however, gave me the tonic I needed. My nerve
was shaken badly, but I was determined it must answer to this last
strain, to play this uncouth fish for two hours. After that ... if
nothing happened ...
Clubfoot sent the sergeant away.
"I can look after him myself now," he said, in a blithe tone that
betrayed his conviction of success. So the sergeant saluted and left the
room, his footsteps echoing down the passages like the leaden feet of
Destiny, relentless, inexorable.
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