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McClane's stores had overflowed into it on the lower shelves. She could hear the two men talking in the room, Sutton's low, persuasive voice; she couldn't hear what he was saying. Suddenly McClane brought his fist down on the table. "I'll take you. And I'll take your women. And I'll take your ambulances. I could do with two more ambulances. But I won't take Conway." "You can't tell him that."
Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers' seats in the ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came. Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves in readiness and saw McClane's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in front of the Hospital three and four times a day.
Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwinnie and the rest of McClane's corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they hadn't filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doing nothing. She had fretted at the stupidity which had sent them where they were not wanted.
She had got to come to a clear decision about that. If Billy Sutton had done it, or one of McClane's chauffeurs, her decision would have been very clear. She would have said he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his ecstatic love of danger it had an unreal, fantastic quality.
The little man was wilfully shutting his eyes because he was so mean that he couldn't bear to see John as he really was. Now he would have to see. The thought of McClane's illumination consoled her for her own inferior place in the adventure. This time the chauffeurs would have to stay at the end of the village with their cars.
Have you got it clear?" She nodded. So clear that it seemed to her he was talking about a thing she had known once and had forgotten. All the time she had known John's secret. She knew what would come next: McClane's voice saying, "Well then, think think," and his excited gestures, bobbing forward suddenly from the hips. He went on. "The balance had to be righted somehow.
She was so drowsy that at first she didn't hear McClane speaking, she hadn't seen him come to the step of the car. McClane's voice sounded soft and unnatural and a little mysterious. "I'm afraid something's happened." "Who to?" "We-ell " The muffled drawl irritated her. Why couldn't he speak out? "Is John hurt?" "I'm afraid so." "Is he killed?" "Well I don't know that he can live.
She must know; it was a thing she must know for certain, or she would never have any peace. And when the Flamand was laid out on McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the lane and opened the green door. The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of bloodstained hair.
All his dream was in his dead face; his dead face was cold and beautiful like his dream. As she looked at him her breast closed down on her heart as though it would never lift again; her breath shuddered there under her tightened throat. She could feel McClane's hand pressing heavily on her shoulder. She had no strength to shake it off; she was even glad of it.
She felt small and weak and afraid; afraid, not of the beautiful thing that lay there, but of something terrible and secret that it hid, something that any minute she would have to know about. "Where was he hit?" "In the back." She trembled and McClane's hand pressed closer. "The bullet passed clean through his heart. He didn't suffer." "He was getting in Germans?"
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