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?' he 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 on 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 cafe. A German soldier followed him and stood over him in menacing silence. The man, evidently frightened, spread a cloth on 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: 'Sit konnen 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 on 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. Dejeuner 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
