For hours he lay there in a cold sweat. Heavily booted men crashed through the brush repeatedly, prodding with bayonets.
"Zehn," one said. "Ten we got, already. The Kommandant says there should be one more."
Dawn came, but they did not find the American. He stayed there all day without moving, though his thirst became painful. For far and near sounds told him the search was still on. Somehow the news must have leaked out. The prison break had turned into failure. What was to have been escape ended in a death trap.
Winchester lay still another night and day, except for chewing some lush grass for the moisture that was in it. Then on the third night he stole forth and crossed the pasture beyond. It was at Munich, those prisoners from Dunquerque had told him, that he would find friends and shelter — if he could only get to it. The address he had long since memorized.
It took Winchester four nights, walking always in the fields and skirting villages and highways. He drank occasionally from brooks and once succeeded in stealing a hatful of vegetables from a farm garden. But in time he reached the outskirts of Munich and knew that for once he was in luck. A vigorous British air raid was going on.
He made his way to the heart of the town unchallenged. Troopers and firemen were everywhere, but they had their hands full snatching at dazzling fire-bombs or dodging crashing masonry. Winchester hurried on, searching for the small alley three blocks west of the Schutzenplatz. He had little trouble finding his way, despite the pandemonium of flame and destruction going on about him, for Munich was a city fairly familiar to him. He had lived there for months when he was a student before the war.
It was during a lull in the aerial attack that Winchester reached the neighborhood. The street was perfectly dark, except for the dull red glare of reflected fires. The blackness in the alley was as pitch. The American stole into it, feeling with a cautious toe for stumbling-blocks among the cobbles.
He had hardly gone four steps when he froze motionless against a wall. Overhead a brilliant magnesium flare suddenly blazed, lighting the place up like noon. Winchester waited, tense, while it burned out and slowly drifted away. Then, as the dark returned, he took a step forward.
"No!" A soft hand clutched his sleeve. "This way. Say nothing, but — oh, please — hurry!"
The voice was low and vibrant, the voice of a woman. Winchester could barely make out her outline in the darkness, but he judged her to be young. Her hand found his and tugged. He followed her blindly. She had spoken to him in English!
She must be one of the friends his fellow prisoners had told him of. But to his surprise, instead of taking him deeper into the alley, she darted out into the broad street from which he had just come.
"Where to?" he asked huskily.
"Anywhere," she answered in an agonized voice. "Anywhere but there! I have just learned we were betrayed. Two of our members are Gestapo men and they are waiting there for us now. Come!"
They ran blindly in the dark, down one street and up another. Bombs were bursting steadily to the westward, and the barking of the ack-acks was almost continuous. A sudden flare lit the street up once more. Dead ahead of them were two gendarmes. One raised his arm and shouted a challenge, then charged forward. The girl jerked Winchester into a doorway.
"Try this door," she moaned. Her voice was urgent.
The door was locked, but Winchester drew back a yard and launched himself bodily against it. There was a rending of splintering wood and the portal crashed open, hurling the American twice his length into a dark hall. He picked himself up dazedly, only to find the girl was once more at his side. Heavy footfalls were heard running by the door. The police paused, hesitated and turned back.
"Here is a stairway going down," the girl whispered in the dark.
They tumbled down it. It was a spiral staircase and of stone. They had reached the first stage below when they heard the upper door burst open and the yells of their pursuers. Almost in the same instant there was a deafening crash and a blinding flash of light. They were flung into a far corner, and cowered there while they heard the building above them come crashing down. A bomb from the sky had miraculously covered their retreat.
Winchester lay quietly, holding the trembling form of his rescuer in his arms, until the last of the reverberations died away and until the dust which filled the air settled a little. If the policemen above had died, they had died instantly, for they made no sound. At length, assured of comparative safety, Winchester moved the girl a little way and fished out his box of treasured matches. He struck one.
They were in what appeared to be a medieval vault, of heavy stone construction. The stairs down which they had come were choked with fallen debris from above. There was the smell of smoke in the air. Beyond the circle of the flickering light the stairs curved on down into blackness.
"We had better go lower," Winchester said, lifting the girl. "The sub-cellar is the best place until this raid is over."
He did not say so, but what he feared now was fire. It was obvious they had escaped one fate only to be trapped to await another.
Before a huge nail-studded oaken door the stairs ended. The American lifted the heavy wrought-iron latch and swung it open. Inside were rows of glistening white tables, and in brackets on the walls Winchester was delighted to see wax candles. He lit one and closed the door behind.
"How incongruous!" the girl murmured, looking about. She still trembled a little, but her air was as unafraid as though she were at a party. "Look, a modern diet kitchen located in this gruesome old dungeon."
"The guy that did it knew a good air-raid shelter when he saw one," explained Winchester, casting an appraising eye over the groined stone arches overhead. "They can blast the whole town down and we'll still be all right."
But something more than the security of the chamber had taken his eye. At one end of the room was an immense electric refrigerator. The girl already had its door open, looking over its contents. People in blockaded countries soon learn to scout for food at every opportunity. Winchester himself was famished.
Now that there was light, he could see the pinch of hunger in the girl's pale face. He wondered how beautiful she would really be, with color in her cheeks and the sunken spots rounded out once more. For despite his preoccupation with food and safety, the American could not miss observing that she was the kind of girl a man meets but once in a lifetime.
"Smells all right — smells good," she pronounced, dragging out a glass bowl filled with an amber-colored gelatine. She poked a finger into the quivering stuff and tasted it. "It is good!"
They both laughed. The girl set the bowl on the shelf while she crossed the vault to the tables on the other side, where plates and cutlery were stacked. Meanwhile Winchester studied the room, trying to figure out what the layout meant.
One side was lined with shelves on which stood rows of jars containing vari-colored pellets. The label on one read: "Vitamin B Concentrate." The contents of the others were similar, though Winchester had never dreamed before there could be so many vitamins. "L2 & P1, P5 Complex" said the ticket on another jar. Another table had standard foods, such as dried beans, sugar and other staples.
"Everything but meat," commented Winchester, thinking how nice it would be to sink his teeth into a juicy porterhouse once more.
"There's meat, too," the girl told him, handing him a plate of clear amber jelly, "but I imagine this is better for you on an empty stomach. You poor fellow, you must be nearly starved."
"You don't look overfed yourself," Winchester smiled back.
Then he looked at the cupboard she had indicated when she said there was meat. She had thrown the doors open to reveal a row of small cages containing cats, dogs and rabbits — all sound asleep.
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