on, "in case we're
sent for."

"Anyhow," said Charlotte, "_I'm_ not going to bed."

John smiled. A struggling, dejected smile.

"My dear child, I've told you they're not going to send us out first."

"I don't know--" said Gwinnie.

"I _do_ know. We shall be lucky if we get a look in when McClane's cars
break down."

"That's it. Have you seen their cars? I overhauled them this morning, in
the yard. They're nothing but old lorries, converted. And one of 'em's
got solid tyres."

"Well?"

"Well--You wait."

They waited. Even the McClane Corps had to wait.

* * * * *

"I don't care," said Charlotte, "how beastly they are to me, provided
they leave John alone."

"What can they do?" he said. "They don't matter."

"There's such a lot of them," said Gwinnie. "It's when they're all
together they're so poisonous."

"It's when they're _separate_," Charlotte said. "I think Mrs. Rankin
_does_ things. And there's McClane swearing he'll get us out of Belgium.
But he won't!"

She didn't care. She had got used to it as she had got used to the
messroom and its furnishings, the basket chairs and backless benches, the
two long tables covered with white marbled American leather, the
photographs of the King and Queen of the Belgians above the chimney
piece. The atmosphere of hostility was thick and penetrating, something
that you breathed in with the smells of ether and iodine and
disinfectant, that hung about the grey, leeking corridors and floated in
the blond light of the room. She could feel a secret threat in it, as if
at any minute it might work up to some pitch still more malignant, some
supreme disaster. There were moments when she wondered whether McClane
had prejudiced the authorities against them. At first she had regarded
the little man as negligible; it was the women who had fascinated her, as
if they had or might come to have for her some profound importance and
significance. She didn't like McClane. He straddled too much. But you
couldn't go on ignoring him. His dreamy, innocent full face with its
arching eyes was a mask, the mask of dangerous, inimical intentions; his
profile was rough cut, brutal, energetic, you guessed the upper lip thin
and hard under the hanging moustache; the lower one stuck out like a
sucker. That was his real face. It showed an adhesive, exhausting will
that squeezed and sucked till it had got what it wanted out of people. He
could work things. So coul