by Nevil Shute
He stepped back. ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘You must be realist. It is not sensible to let a brave young man die, when he could be saved to work for your country when the war is over. And further, nobody can ever know. Charenton will stay in prison till the war is over, in a month or two; then he will be released. You and your family of children will have to stay in France, but if you help us now you need not stay in prison at all. You can live quietly in Chartres with the young woman. Then, when the war is over, in the autumn, you shall all go home. There will be no enquiries about this from England, because by that time the whole organisation of British spies will have become dispersed. There is no danger for you in this at all, and you can save that young man’s life.’ He leaned towards Howard again. ‘Just a few little words,’ he said softly. ‘How did he do it? He shall never know you told.’
The old man stared at him. ‘I cannot tell you,’ he replied. ‘Quite truthfully, I do not know. I have not been concerned in his affairs at all.’ He said it with a sense of relief. If he had had the information things would have been more difficult.
The Gestapo officer stepped back. ‘That is mere nonsense,’ he said harshly. ‘I do not believe that. You know sufficient to assist an agent of your country if he needs your help. All travellers in any foreign country know that much. Do you take me for a fool?’
Howard said: ‘That may be so with German travellers. In England ordinary travellers know nothing about espionage. I tell you, I know literally nothing that could help this man.’
The German bit his lip. He said: ‘I am inclined to think you are a spy yourself. You have been wandering round the country in disguise, nobody knows where. You had better be careful. You may share his fate.’
‘Even so,’ the old man said, ‘I could not tell you anything of value to you, because I do not know.’
Diessen turned to the window again. ‘You have not got very much time,’ he said. ‘A minute or two, not more. Think again before it is too late.’
Howard looked out into the garden. They had put the young man with his back against the wall in front of a plum-tree. His hands now were bound behind his back, and the Feldwebel was blindfolding him with a red cotton handkerchief.
The German said: ‘Nobody can ever know. There is still time for you to save him.’
‘I cannot save him in that way,’ the old man said. ‘I have not got the information. But this is a bad, wicked thing that you are going to do. It will not profit you in the long run.’
The Gestapo officer swung round on him suddenly. He thrust his face near to the old man’s. ‘He gave you messages,’ he said fiercely. ‘You think you are clever, but you cannot deceive me. The “Trout Inn”—beer—flowers—fish! Do you think I am a fool? What does all that mean?’
‘Nothing but what he said,’ Howard replied. ‘It is a place that he is fond of. That is all.’
The German drew back morosely. ‘I do not believe it,’ he said sullenly.
In the garden the Feldwebel had left the young man by the wall. The six soldiers were drawn up in a line in front of him, distant about ten yards. The officer had given them a command and they were loading.
‘I am not going to delay this matter any longer,’ said Diessen: ‘Have you still nothing to say to save his life?’
The old man shook his head.
In the garden the officer glanced up to their window. Diessen lifted his hand and dropped it. The officer turned, drew himself up and gave a sharp word of command. An irregular volley rang out. The old man saw the body by the plum-tree crumple and fall, twitch for a little and lie still.
He turned away, rather sick. Diessen moved over to the middle of the room. The sentry still stood impassive at the door.
‘I do not know whether I should believe your story or not,’ the German said heavily at last. ‘If you are a spy you are at least a clever one.’
Howard said: ‘I am not a spy.’
‘What are you doing in this country, then? Wandering round disguised as a French peasant?’
‘I have told you that,’ the old man said wearily, ‘many times. I have been trying to get these children back to England, to send them to their homes or to America.’
The German burst out: ‘Lies—lies! Always the same lies! You English are the same every time! Stubborn as mules!’ He thrust his face into the other’s. ‘Criminals, all the lot of you!’ He indicated the garden beyond the window. ‘You could have prevented that, but you would not.’
‘I could not have prevented you from killing that young man. That was your own doing.’
The Gestapo officer said, gloomily: ‘I did not want to kill him. He forced me to do it, you and he between you. You are both to blame for his death. You left me with no other course.’
There was a silence. Then the German said: ‘All your time you spend lying and scheming against us. Your Churchill and your Chamberlain, goading us on, provoking us to war. And you are just another one.’
The old man did not answer that.
The German pulled himself together, crossed the room, and sat down at a table. ‘This story of yours about sending these children to America,’ he said. ‘I do not believe a word of it.’
The old man was very, very tired. He said, indifferently: ‘I can’t help that. That is what I meant to do with them.’
‘You still say that you would have sent them to your married daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where does she live in America?’
‘At a place called Coates Harbor, on Long Island.’
‘Long Island. That is where the wealthy live. Is your daughter very wealthy?’
The old man said: ‘She is married to an American business man. Yes, they are quite well off.’
The German said incredulously: ‘You still wish me to believe that a wealthy woman such as that would make a home in her own house for all these dirty little children that you have picked up?’
Howard said: ‘She will do that.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘You do not understand. Over there, they want to help us. If they make a home for children, refugees from Europe, they feel that they are doing something worth while. And they are.’
The German glanced at him curiously. ‘You have travelled in America?’
‘A little.’
‘Do you know a town called White Falls?’
Howard shook his head. ‘That sounds like quite a common name, but I don’t recollect it. What state is it in?’
‘In Minnesota. Is that far from Long Island?’
‘It’s right in the middle. I should think it’s about a thousand miles.’ This conversation was becoming very odd, the old man thought.
The German said: ‘Now about mademoiselle. Were you going to send her to America also? Is she one of your children, may I ask?’
The old man shook his head. ‘I would like her to go there,’ he replied. ‘But she will not leave France. Her father is a prisoner in your hands; her mother is alone in Chartres. I have tried to persuade her to come with us to England, but she will not do so. You have nothing against her.’
The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘That is a matter of opinion. She has been helping you in your work.’
The old man said wearily: ‘I tell you over and over again, I have no secret work. I know that you do not believe me.’ He paused. ‘The only work that I have had for the last fortnight has been to get these children into safety.’
There was a little silence.
‘Let them go through to England,’ he said quietly. ‘Let the young man Focquet sail with them for Plymouth in his boat, and let Mademoiselle Rougeron go with them to take them to America. If you let them go, like that, I will confess to anything you like.’
The Gestapo man stared at him angrily. ‘You are talking nonsense,’ he replied. ‘That is an insult to the German nation that you have just made. Do you take us for a pack of dirty Russians, to make bargains of that sort?’
Howard was silent.
The German g
ot up and walked over to the window. ‘I do not know what to make of you,’ he said at last. ‘I think that you must be a very brave man, to talk as you have done.’
Howard smiled faintly. ‘Not a brave man,’ he said. ‘Only a very old one. Nothing you can do can take much from me, because I’ve had it all.’
The German did not answer him. He spoke in his own language to the sentry, and they took Howard back to the prison room.
Chapter Eleven
Nicole greeted him with relief. She had spent an hour of unbearable anxiety, tortured by the thought of what might be happening to him, pestered by the children. She said: ‘What happened?’
He said wearily: ‘The young man, Charenton, was shot. Then they questioned me a lot more.’
She said gently: ‘Sit down and rest. They will bring us coffee before very long. You will feel better after that.’
He sat down on his rolled-up mattress. ‘Nicole,’ he said. ‘I believe there is a chance that they might let the children go to England without me. If so, would you take them?’
She said: ‘Me? To go alone to England with the children? I do not think that that would be a good thing, Monsieur Howard.’
‘I would like you to go, if it were possible.’
She came and sat by him. ‘Is it for the children that you want this, or for me?’ she asked.
He could not answer that. ‘For both,’ he said at last.
With clear logic she said: ‘In England there will be many people, friends of yours and the relations of the English children, who will care for them. You have only to write a letter, and send it with them if they have to go without you. But for me, I have told you, I have no business in England—now. My country is this country, and my parents are here and in trouble. It is here that I must stay.’
He nodded ruefully. ‘I was afraid that you would feel like that.’
Half an hour later the door of their room was thrust open, and two German privates appeared outside. They were carrying a table. With some difficulty they got it through the door and set it up in the middle of the room. Then they brought in eight chairs and set them with mathematical exactitude around the table.
Nicole and Howard watched this with surprise. They had eaten all their meals since they had been in captivity from plates balanced in their hands, helped from a bowl that stood upon the floor. This was something different in their treatment, something strange and suspicious.
The soldiers withdrew. Presently, the door opened again, and in walked a little French waiter balancing a tray, evidently from some neighbouring café. A German soldier followed him and stood over him in menacing silence. The man, evidently frightened, spread a cloth upon the table and set out cups and saucers, a large pot of hot coffee and a jug of hot milk, new rolls, butter, sugar, jam, and a plate of cut rounds of sausage. Then he withdrew quickly, in evident relief. Impassively, the German soldier shut the door on them again.
The children crowded round the table, eager. Howard and Nicole helped them into their chairs and set to work to feed them. The girl glanced at the old man.
‘This is a great change,’ she said quietly. ‘I do not understand why they are doing this.’
He shook his head. He did not understand it either. Lurking in his mind was a thought that he did not speak, that this was a new trick to win him into some admission. They had failed with fear; now they would try persuasion.
The children cleared the table of all that was on it and got down, satisfied. A quarter of an hour later the little waiter reappeared, still under guard; he gathered up the cloth and cleared the table, and retired again in silence. But the door did not close.
One of the sentries came to it and said: ‘Sie können in den Garten gehen.’ With difficulty Howard understood this to mean that they might go into the garden.
There was a small garden behind the house, completely surrounded by a high brick wall, not unlike another garden that the old man had seen earlier in the day. The children rushed out into it with a carillon of shrill cries; a day of close confinement had been a grave trial to them. Howard followed with Nicole, wondering.
It was another brilliant, sunlit day, already growing hot. Presently, two German soldiers appeared carrying arm-chairs. These two chairs they set with mathematical exactitude precisely in the middle of a patch of shade beneath a tree. ‘Setzen Sie sich,’ they said.
Nicole and Howard sat down side by side, self-consciously, in silence. The soldiers withdrew, and a sentry with a rifle and a fixed bayonet appeared at the only exit from the garden. There he grounded his rifle and stood at ease, motionless and expressionless. There was something sinister about all these developments.
Nicole said: ‘Why are they doing this for us, monsieur? What do they hope to gain by it?’
He said: ‘I do not know. Once, this morning, I thought perhaps that they were going to let us go—or at any rate, let the children go to England. But even that would be no reason for giving us arm-chairs in the shade.’
She said quietly: ‘It is a trap. They want something from us; therefore they try to please us.’
He nodded. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘it is more pleasant here than in that room.’
Marjan, the little Pole, was as suspicious as they were. He sat aside upon the grass in sullen silence; since they had been taken prisoner he had barely spoken one word. Rose, too was ill at ease; she wandered round the garden, peering at the high walls as if looking for a means to escape. The younger children were untouched; Ronnie and Pierre and Willem and Sheila played little games around the garden or stood, finger in mouth, looking at the German sentry.
Presently Nicole, looking round, saw that the old man was asleep in his arm-chair.
They spent the whole day in the garden, only going back into their prison room for meals. Déjeuner and diner were served in the same way by the same silent little waiter under guard; good, plentiful meals, well cooked and attractively served. After dinner the German soldiers removed the table and the chairs, and indicated that they might lay out their beds. They did so and put all the children down to sleep.
Presently Howard and Nicole went to bed themselves.
The old man had slept only for an hour when the door was thrust open by a German soldier. He bent and shook the old man by the shoulder. ‘Kommen Sie,’ he said. ‘Schnell—zur Gestapo.’
Howard got up wearily and put on his coat and shoes in the darkness. From her bed Nicole said: ‘What is it? Can I come too?’
He said: ‘I don’t think so, my dear. It’s just me that they want.’
She expostulated: ‘But what a time to choose!’
The German soldier made a gesture of impatience. Howard said: ‘Don’t worry. It’s probably another interrogation.’
He was hustled away and the door closed behind him. In the dark room the girl got up and put on her skirt, and sat waiting in the darkness, sitting on her bed among the sleeping children, full of forebodings.
Howard was taken to the room in which they had first been interviewed. The Gestapo officer, Major Diessen, was there sitting at the table. An empty coffee cup stood beside him, and the room was full of his cigar-smoke. The German soldier who brought Howard in saluted stiffly. The officer spoke a word to him, and he withdrew, closing the door behind him. Howard was left alone in the room with Major Diessen.
He glanced at the clock. It was a little after midnight. The windows had been covered over with blankets for a blackout.
Presently the German looked up at the old man standing by the wall. ‘So,’ he said. ‘The Englishman again.’ He opened a drawer beside him and took out a large, black automatic pistol. He slipped out the clip and examined it; then put it back again and pulled the breech to load it. He laid it on the blotting-pad in front of him. ‘We are alone,’ he said. ‘I am not taking any chances, as you see.’
The old man smiled faintly. ‘You have nothing to fear from me.’
The German said: ‘Perhaps not. But you have much to fear from me.’
There was a little silence. Presently he said: ‘Suppose I were to let you go to England after all? What would you think then, eh?’
The old man’s heart leapt and then steadied again. It was probably a trap. ‘I should be very grateful, if you let me take the children,’ he said quietly.
‘And mademoiselle too?’
He shook his head. ‘She does not want to come. She wants to stay in France.’
The German nodded. ‘That is what we also want.’ He paused, and then said: ‘You say that you would be grateful. We will see now if that is just an empty boast. If I were to let you go to England with your children, so that you could send them to America, would you do me a small service?’
Howard said: ‘It depends what it was.’
The Gestapo man flared out: ‘Bargaining! Always the same, you English! One tries to help you, and you start chaffering! You are in no position to drive bargains, Mr. Englishman!’
The old man persisted: ‘I must know what you want me to do.’
The German said: ‘It is a matter of no difficulty.…’
There was a short pause.
His hand strayed to the black automatic on the desk before him, and began fingering it. ‘There is a certain person to be taken to America,’ he said deliberately. ‘I do not want to advertise her journey. It would be very suitable that she should travel with your party of children.’
The gun was now in his hand, openly.
Howard stared at him across the table. ‘If you mean that you want to use my party as a cover for an agent going to America,’ he said, ‘I will not have it.’
He saw the forefinger snap round the trigger. He raised his eyes to the German’s face and saw it white with anger. For a full half-minute they remained motionless, staring at each other.
The Gestapo officer was the first to relax. ‘You would drive me mad,’ he said bitterly. ‘You are a stubborn and obstinate people. You refuse the hand of friendship. You are suspicious of everything we do.’
