«It is the Count coming home.»
It was a true answer, I was certain; she had forgotten for the moment that I was her patient and had let slip into her voice an expression of just that vague alarm that I myself had felt when listening to the horn the night before.
«The Count?» I asked. «Who is the Count?» She came and looked down at me, so that I could just make out her features in the grey light from the window.
She murmured something in German, then explained in English:
«Count Johann von Hackelnberg.»
«And who is he?» I persisted, being determined to make the most of this opportunity when she seemed to have been startled into treating me as a sane person. But she paused and considered me before replying, as if my ignorance had reminded her that I was not normal after all; still, she did answer:
«Well, he is the Reich Master Forester.»
«Is he?» I said. «I thought Marshal Goering was that.»
I might have mentioned the name of our ship's cat for all the recognition she showed. She had got over her lapse into sincerity, I saw, and was back again in this pretence that the contemporary world did not exist–the pretence which was part of my treatment, I supposed.
She looked quite blank and repeated the name absently once or twice, evidently thinking of something entirely different. Then with an effort she became brisk and shook up my pillows.
«Come now!» she ordered. «You must go to sleep. You must not wake so early. It is not good for you.» And she went smartly out of the room.
I reviewed the whole matter in the sunlight with some satisfaction. I had at last got something definite. It was news to me that Hermann Goering had divested himself of one of his functions, but it was more than likely that we should never have heard of that event in Oflag XXIX Z. What was settled was that I was the guest of the Reich Master Forester, and that seemed to me to explain more than it left unexplained. But what a queer character the Graf von Hackelnberg must be to go a-hunting in the forest by moonlight. A breakneck business, I should have thought; then I began to recall tales of our English eccentrics of the eighteenth century. It might well have been not a hunt I heard, but a drunken ride, a wild spree by young Nazis full of wine, with the old Count winding them on with his hunting horn. It was a plausible picture, but it did not quite convince me. The horn had sounded too often; it had gone on too long, and the nurse had not been shocked in the way she would have been by the drunken wildness of a gang of young bloods; that home-coming horn was familiar to her; she was frightened of something she knew very well.
4
Day Nurse bustled in with my breakfast, and I noticed a distinct change in her manner. She was taut with self-importance and insufferably authoritarian. I was not greatly surprised, when, having whisked away my breakfast things and rearranged the speckless vessels on my bedside-table, she announced that the Doctor was coming to see me. She made me nervous by the exaggerated importance she gave to the visit, but, as if to console me for her brusqueness, a little before the hour she confided that he might let me get up if he was satisfied by his examination. I was shaved and washed, my pyjamas were changed, the bed fresh-made, the dustless room dusted, new flowers were brought in and the shining floor given a super shine by the broad-backed serf who went at the job like clockwork. Finally Day Nurse removed the dressings from my hands, produced the steriliser and various bright instruments and then, as a light footfall sounded outside, stood to rigid attention at the foot of my bed. The Doctor came in humming a jaunty tune, glanced quickly round the room and addressed Day Nurse, who seemed frozen there, with a glazed look in her eyes. I'd seen nurses in England overdo the yessir-nosir business with a surgeon, and I'd seen a little of German discipline, but this out-prussianed them all. A quartermaster answering an Admiral on an inspection day was nothing to Day Nurse; she looked as brittle and unbending as a figure of glass and the short replies came snapping out like whip-cracks. The Doctor was anything but officer-like. He lounged, rather than stood, and he looked the nurse up and down as he questioned her with more of a lazy interest in her figure and dress than in what she was saying. He was a young man, with a pasty face, intelligent-looking enough, but self-indulgent and domineering. He was dressed in white trousers and a cream silk shirt with a bright silk handkerchief tied loosely round his throat. I could imagine him having leaned his tennis-racket just outside the door.
After hearing Day Nurse's report and giving a glance at my temperature chart, he moved over and looked at me, knitted his brows for a second and then waggled his head and looked rather pleased with himself. His examination was perfunctory; he listened to my heart, felt my pulse, lifted my lids and peered into my eyes, and, after a final hard stare at my hands, straightened up and said in very good English:
«You can get up now. Come and have a chat in my office.»
Day Nurse thawed the moment he was out of the room and in her relief that the ordeal was over she was almost gushing. She brought me a rich brocade dressing gown and a pair of slippers made of the same soft synthetic leather that I had seen the Slav servant wearing.
For all I felt so well, my knees, of course, were like water from lying so long in bed and I was glad of Day Nurse's arm. It was the first time I had been outside my room and I had something to do to control my eagerness to see what the place looked like. I had no more than a hurried glimpse of my surroundings, for the Doctor's office was close by, across a broad verandah. I saw, however, that my room was at the corner of a spacious, one-storey wooden building raised above the ground by a high brick base. The forest came very close; there was no garden, only the natural lawns of the woodland in the openings of the trees.
The Doctor's room was more shaded by the trees than my own. The light that came in was leaf-green, yet the effect of the white-painted walls and the high polish on all the woodwork was such that the room looked light. It seemed half study, half surgery; bookcases and instrument cabinets alternated round the walls and a vast wooden desk stood in the middle. The Doctor invited me to sit in an easy chair beside the desk and swivelled his desk-chair round to face me, dismissing the nurse with a nod.
I suppose I talked far more than a prisoner of war ought that morning. After the baffling 'humouring' to which I had been subjected by the nurses it was a great relief to talk to someone who appeared, at least, to treat me as a sane and normal person. It was naive of me, no doubt, but it did not occur to me that he was encouraging me to talk in order to study me; I believed that he just wanted the pleasure of a chat. He gave me the impression of not having enough work to do, of being bored and glad to see a stranger. I forgot how much he must have known about me already. I don't know how many canons of security I offended against, but, with his prompting, and under the stimulus of his interest, I told him the whole story of my escape, concealing only the fact that Jim Long had escaped with me. He drew with a pencil on a pad in front of him while was talking, but took no notes. When I had finished he gave me a long stare. It was only then, I think, when I looked back into his eyes that I became aware of some kind of calculation in his manner, something not so easy and trustworthy as I had thought at first.
«Tell me this,» I blurted out. «Why don't you hand me over to the police? I've admitted that I'm a British prisoner.»
«The police?» he repeated thoughtfully. «It is not necessary. The Master Forester has jurisdiction in the Reich forest.»
«But I'm a prisoner of war,» I persisted. «I should be under military law.»
«Ja, ja,» he said. «I understand. There is no hurry. We must get you well first.»