The Hour of the Donkey

Wimpy gestured eloquently, almost insultingly, with his bloody hand. 'So were my orderlies in Colembert— medical orderlies in the battalion aid post. And they're dead. And there's a barn full of prisoners-of-war in Colembert—and they're dead too. They're all dead—shot down in cold blood!'

He wasn't play-acting, Bastable decided. He might have been to begin with, but he wasn't now. He was mixing lies with truth, but he wasn't play-acting any more: he was speaking for the real Captain Saunders, RAMC, as Captain Saunders dummy4

might have spoken, to the life—to the death. The clever lies were blotted out by the fouler truth. Wimpy was Doc Saunders now.

The German officer stared at him, stone-faced. 'You . . . you saw this, Doctor?' He paused. 'You saw it happen?'

Wimpy stared back at him uncompromisingly. 'If I had seen it happen I wouldn't be here to tell you about it. But it's there for you to see... sir. In Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts. Just down the road from here.'

The challenge hung between them, unarguable.

'We were in the cellar,' said Wimpy, recalling himself to his original story. 'We had to dig ourselves out.'

The young German officer stirred uneasily. 'Prisoners . ..

haf.. . haf been known to ... to try to escape, Hauptmann Saunders,' he said with slow concentration on his English.

'Prisoners?' Wimpy echoed the word contemptuously. 'And my wounded in the battalion aid post? Most of them couldn't walk a yard.' He let the words sink in. 'They threw grenades into the aid post—it was in a cellar ... They threw gtenades down the stairs.'

Silence.

'It's there for you to see,' Wimpy spoke only to the young officer, as though they were alone together. 'The cellar is there—and my wounded are there. They are not going to escape, I assure you.'

My wounded was a brilliant touch, thought Bastable. It was dummy4

so brilliant that, if it hadn't been true for Doc Saunders, it would have been an obscene lie for Captain Willis—

Captain W. M. Willis?

The senior German officer drew himself up, taking back the control of the situation which he had momentarily lost. The other Germans stiffened instinctively.

The senior German officer addressed the young officer. The young officer clicked his heels.

'Captain Saunders . . . you have made a very serious allegation. There will be an immediate investigation of that allegation. A report will be made.'

Wimpy drew a deep breath. 'Thank you, sir.'

The German nodded. 'Also . . . you are a prisoner of the Wehrmacht—the German Army. If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. You have my word on that.

And that applies also to this officer.' He pointed at Bastable.

'Th-thank you sir.' Wimpy swallowed almost audibly.

In the circumstances, Wimpy took that well, thought Bastable. But they were both still in the deepest trouble, that word-of-a-German-officer meant.

'You will remain here, for the time being, while we remain here.' The German nodded, saluted, and turned away.

Bastable closed his eyes and relaxed himself on to the grass verge. There was nothing he could do any more to shape his destiny, he was as.helpless and as useless as little Alice in her dummy4

pram, a prisoner not only of the Wehrmacht, but also of circumstances and events he could no longer control.

Truthful lies and lying truth held him like a web in the midst of his enemies.

The cold touch of the damp rag on his forehead aroused him again. 'That's the ticket,' murmured Wimpy. 'Look as though you're dying, old boy!'

If you could have died according to orders, and mingled with the roadside dirt, that at least would have solved all his dilemmas and swallowed up all his fears, thought Bastable miserably.

'You're not really crocked, are you, old boy?' murmured Wimpy gently in his ear. 'No broken bones, or anything?'

Bastable opened his eyes to gaze at his tormentor. 'You're the bloody doctor—you tell me,' he hissed.

Wimpy was sitting down beside him. 'Can you feel your toes and your fingers? No pain anywhere?'

'Only in the neck,' said Bastable.

'In the neck?' For a second Wimpy sounded solicitous, then he got the point. 'Jolly good . . . because ... I thought I did that rather well, actually.'

There was no denying that, temporary though their survival might be: the ex-schoolmaster had run away just as quickly as the ex-businessman, but he had talked them both out of a very tight corner brilliantly for the time being.

dummy4

He nodded, and Wimpy nodded back.

'Yes ... the trick is to twitch the rear wheel to the left and put the front wheel over and send the bike on ahead