“IVe met them.” Savary tried to give him the envelope back under the table.
“Then you’ll know that their business is terrorism carried to as extreme a degree as possible. They not only shoot the Boche, they also like to make an example of collaborators, isn’t that the colorful phrase? So if I were you, I’d be sensible. Take the letter. Needless to say, don’t read it. If you do, you’ll probably never sleep again. Just give it to Sophie with my love. I’m sure she’ll have a message for me, which you’ll let me have as soon as you’re back.”
“Damn you, General,” Savary muttered and put the envelope in his pocket.
“The Devil took care of that long ago. Don’t worry. You’ve nothing to worry about. Guido Orsini’s a good lad.”
“The Count?” Savary shrugged. “Flashy Italian pimp. I hate aristocrats.”
“No Fascist, that one, and he’s probably got less time for Hitler than you have. Have you any decent cigarettes in your bag? I’m going crazy smoking that filthy tobacco they’ve been importing for the official ration lately.”
Savary loqked cunning. “Not really. Only a few Gitanes.”
“Only, the man says.” Gallagher groaned aloud. “All right, I’ll take two hundred.”
“And what do I get?”
Gallagher opened the bag Chevalier had given him. “Leg of pork?”
Savary’s jaw dropped: “My God, my tongue’s hanging out already. Give me.”
Gallagher passed it under the table and took the carton of cigarettes in return. “You know my telephone number at the cottage. Ring me as soon as you get back.”
“All right.”
Savary got up and they went outside. Gallagher, unwilling to wait, got a packet of Gitanes out, opened it and lit one. “Jesus, that’s wonderful.”
“I’ll be off then.” Savary made a move to walk toward the gangway of the Victor Hugo.
Gallagher said softly, “Let me down on this one and 111 kill you, my friend. Understand?”
Savary turned, mouth open in astonishment as Gallagher smiled cheerfully and walked away along the pier.
George Hamilton was a tall, angular man whose old Harris tweed suit looked a size too large. A distinguished physician in his day, at one time professor of pharmacology at the University of London and a consultant of Guy’s Hospital, he had retired to a cottage in Jersey just before the outbreak of war. In 1940, with the Germans expected at any day, many people had left the island, a number of doctors among them, which explained why Hamilton, an M.D. and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, was working as a general practitioner at the age of seventy.
He pushed a shock of white hair back from his forehead and stood up, looking down at Kelso on the couch. “Not good. He should be in hospital. I really need an x-ray to be sure, but I’d say at least two fractures of the tibia. Possibly three.”
“No hospital,” Kelso said faintly.
Hamilton made a sign to Helen and Gallagher, and they followed him into the kitchen. “If the fractures were compound-in other words, if there was any kind of open wound, bone sticking through, then we wouldn’t have any choice. The possibility of infection, especially after all he’s been through, would be very great. The only way of saving the leg would be a hospital bed and traction.”
“What exactly are you saying, George?” Gallagher asked.
“Well, as you can see, the skin isn’t broken. The fractures are what we term comminuted. It might be possible to set the leg and plaster it.”
“Can you handle that?” Helen demanded.
“I could try, but I need the right conditions. I certainly wouldn’t dream of proceeding without an x-ray.” He hesitated. “There is one possibility.”
“What’s that?” Gallagher asked.
“Pine Trees. It’s a little nursing home in St. Lawrence run by Catholic Sisters of Mercy. Irish and French mostly. They have x-ray facilities there and a decent operating theater. Sister Maria Teresa, who’s in charge, is a good friend. I could give her a ring.”
“Do the Germans use it?” Helen asked.
“Now and then. Usually young women with prenatal problems, which is a polite way of saying they’re in for an abortion. The nuns, as you may imagine, don’t like that one little bit, but there isn’t anything they can do about it.”