The Valhalla Exchange - Jack Higgins [55]
'But we can't just sit here and wait for it to happen,' Canning said.
Claire, sitting by the fire with Madame Chevalier, said, 'Has it ever occurred to you, Hamilton, that you just might be making a mountain out of a molehill here? An American or British unit could roll up to that gate at any time and all our troubles would be over.'
'And pigs might also fly.'
'You know what your trouble is?' she told him. 'You want it this way. Drama, intrigue, up to your ears in the most dangerous game of all again.'
'Now you listen to me,' he began, thoroughly angry, and then the door opened and Schneider entered.
He clicked his heels. 'Excuse me, Herr General, but Dr Gaillard is wanted urgently in the village. Herr Meyer's son has had a ski-ing accident.'
'I'll come at once,' Gaillard said. 'Just give me a moment to get my bag.'
He hurried out, followed by Schneider. Birr said, 'Always work for the healers, eh? Nice to think there are people like Gaillard around to put us together again when we fall down.'
'Philosophy now?' Canning said. 'May God preserve me.'
'Oh, he will, Hamilton. He will,' Birr said. 'I've got a feeling the Almighty has something very special lined up for you.'
As Claire and Madame Chevalier started to laugh, Canning said, 'I wonder whether you'll still be smiling when the SS drive into that courtyard down there?' and he stalked angrily from the room.
Arnie Meyer was only twelve years old and small for his age. His face was twisted in agony, the sweat springing to his forehead, trickling down from the fair hair. He had no mother and his father stood anxiously at one side of the bed and watched as Gaillard cut the trouser leg open with a pair of scissors.
He ran his fingers around the angry swelling below the right knee and, in spite of his gentleness, the boy cried out sharply.
'Is it broken, Herr Doctor?' Meyer asked.
'Without a doubt. You have splints, of course, with your mountain rescue equipment?'
'Yes, I'll get them.'
'In the meantime I'll give him a morphine injection. I'll have to set the leg and that would be too painful for him to bear. Oh, and that private Schneider left, Voss I think his name is. Send him in here. He can assist me.'
The mayor went out and Gaillard broke open a morphine ampoule. 'Were you coming down the north track again?'
'Yes, Herr Doktor.'
'How many times have I warned you? Out of sun among the trees, when it's below freezing, conditions are too fast for you. Your father says you tried to jump a tree, but that isn't true, is it?' Here, he gave the boy the injection.
Arnie winced. 'No, Herr Doktor,' he said faintly, 'I came out of the track on to the slope and tried to do a Stem Christiana like I've seen you do, only everything went wrong.'
'As well it might, you idiot,' Gaillard told him. 'Frozen ground - hardly any snow. What were you trying to do? Commit suicide?'
There was a knock at the door and Private Voss came in, a small middle-aged man with steel spectacles. He was a clerk from Hamburg whose bad eyes had kept him out of the war until the previous July.
'You wanted me, Herr Doktor?'
'I'll need your assistance in a short while to set the boy's leg. Have you ever done anything like this before?'
'No.' Voss looked faintly alarmed.
'Don't worry. You'll soon learn.'
Meyer came back a moment later with mountain-rescue splints and several rolls of bandage.
'If I had hospital facilities, I'd put this leg in a pot,' Gaillard said. 'It is absolutely essential that once it's set, it remains immobile, especially so in the case of a boy of this age. It will be your responsibility to see that he behaves himself.'
'He will, I promise you, Herr Doktor.'
'Good, now let's see how brave you can be, Arnie?'
But Arnie, in spite of the morphine, fainted dead away at the first touch. Which was all to the good, of course, for Gaillard was really able to get to work then, setting the bone with an audible crack that turned Voss's face pale. The little private hauled on the foot as instructed and held a splint on the other