1

The Small Car

SHE was walking through the archway leading into Neuhstrasse when she heard the roaring of the car. She did not worry about it at all, for the traffic in the city was so noisy, so fast and so thick that she gave no thought to being hurt, or even to being in danger.

She saw the man in front of her stop, saw his mouth open wide, heard the beginning of a scream.

‘Eeeeeeh!’

A man shouted, close to her, in English.

‘Jump for it!’

Suddenly, awfully, she was afraid. She glanced over her shoulder in a quick, frightened gesture—and saw a car leaping at her, small, white, shiny. The driver’s face was terrified, and his hands seemed to clutch the wheel. A motor-cyclist was just behind the car, staring. His hands were off the handlebars, as if he were pointing at the horror. Suddenly he twisted round in his seat, gripped the handlebars, and sent the machine roaring away from the car.

Next moment, someone clutched her arm, and she was pulled off her feet. She heard a great roaring, felt the rush of wind—and crashed down.

She felt pain, sharp, cruel, in her head, and a strange numbness in her legs.

She saw the car, half on its side on the pavement, resting against a lamp standard. Her legs were between the two wheels, and something beneath the car was holding them fast.

She was aware of other things, too; faces, close to her, hands stretched out towards her, some touching her arms. A man on one knee had both hands stretched out towards her legs—legs she could see only just below the knee.

The car hid the rest.

Suddenly, the significance of what had happened came over her in a frightening wave. Panic seized her. She had been run over, her legs were smashed, crushed beneath that car. She would be a cripple—oh, God, she would be a cripple!

An Englishman was saying,

‘I tried to warn her, but there wasn’t time. There just wasn’t time.’

‘We will look after her,’ a man promised in hard, accented English. He bent over her.

She felt a sharp pain in her left arm, just above the elbow, and cried out. Faces were going round and round in front of her, noises seemed to roar in her ears. She was going to be a cripple, she was going to be—

Unconsciousness came over her in a dark wave.

Unconsciousness seemed to have overcome the driver of the car, too. He was slumped over the wheel, and was a very heavy weight when he was lifted out.

Traffic was held up on one side and the police quickly organized a one-way system. Motorists slowed down obediently, and there was a long line of crawling traffic from the archways towards the City Hall, where the tourists were preoccupied with ancient stones and the carving by ancient hands, the flower and the fruit stalls, the gift stalls, the picture postcard stalls. Here, there was little or no excitement—it was just ‘something that had happened’ further up the street.

By that time, a crowd of hundreds of people had gathered round the car, the fallen girl, and the limp figure of the driver, who was stretched out on the pavement. Eight policemen were already on the spot, some trying to keep the crowd back, some recovering from the shock of what had happened, and eager to help the victim. She lay there, unconscious, unaware of noises and of pain. An Englishman called out,

‘A doctor? Is there a doctor?’

A man in his early thirties was about to bend over the figure of the motorist. He moved away and pushed towards the girl. Another, younger man, appeared on the other side of the circle, carrying a doctor’s bag. He bustled. The girl began to turn her head, and to moan. People were asking who she was. Someone pointed to the camera strap still clutched tightly in her right hand, with her handbag, and said,

‘Tourist.’

‘An English tourist.’

A policeman asked the younger man, ‘You a doctor?’

‘Yes,’ the man answered in brisk German. ‘I have some morphia with me. I will see that she suffers no pain.’ He bent down on one knee. ‘Will you please raise her arm.’

He broke off when the first man also went down on one knee, and raised the girl’s left arm gently. It was tanned to a golden colour. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse, apple green in colour, and a biscuit-brown linen skirt; the hem of the skirt, although rucked up above her knees, was being soaked in crimson. Another little pool of blood was spreading from the legs where the car had gone over them. She turned her head again. The man who held the girl’s wrist also took a little cotton-wool from the doctor, who moved very quickly. The smell of medical spirit was sharp in his nostrils. He rubbed a spot between elbow and shoulder, and a moment later the doctor jabbed the hypodermic needle into the flaccid flesh. The girl flinched and gasped.

‘Now,’ said the doctor. ‘We must have an ambulance.’

A policeman said anxiously, ‘It will be a long time. There is a traffic block at the City Hall and a worse one further along. A tram has broken down.’

‘A cyclist fell in front of it,’ corrected another policeman.

‘First we should lift the car and get the girl free,’ said the man who had helped the doctor. ‘We can take her into the church until the ambulance comes. She will be quiet there.’

More police appeared and carried out his instructions promptly and methodically. Three on each side heaved and heaved until the car was eased away from the lamp standard. That done, it was possible to raise it from the fallen girl. The watching people gasped, called out and pointed. A man cried,

‘Her legs.’

He fainted, and the crowd swayed back.

But once the decision had been taken, no time was wasted. When the doctor had made sure that there was no other serious injury, a big showcard displaying a model wearing stretch corsets was pushed beneath the girl’s smashed legs. Two men took her shoulders, and two the showcard. They lifted gently, and carried her into the church, the door of which was open, as if they were pallbearers. Inside, it seemed dark at first, and darker when the door closed, but with the closing there came stillness and deep silence. A priest approached, quickly, softly. The interior of the church, so ancient on the outside, was strangely new, yet the quiet and the atmosphere seemed touched with the holiness of sanctuary. A spot on the stone floor was cleared and a cloth spread—and the doctor bent over those crushed legs.

‘It will be a miracle if she walks properly again,’ he said.

‘There are many miracles,’ interpolated the priest.

‘Can you help her now?’ asked the young man who had assisted the doctor.

‘With a temporary splint only, to save her from being jolted,’ said the doctor. He busied himself, and the priest and helpers brought poles for the splints—candle snuffers which had been used for hundreds of years. Two policemen kept watch, as if to make sure that the doctor and the priest and the stranger did no more harm to the victim. Everyone kept glancing at the girl’s face. She was lightly tanned, and in a demure, even virginal way, very lovely. There was a child’s simplicity about her appearance. There was nothing brazen or bold or particularly modern about her; her lips were only touched with lipstick and she had on little rouge. Her eyelashes, so black that they were almost blue, rested upswept from the pale cheeks, her hair was as black, a cluster of feathers. Her hands and arms were beautifully shaped—as her legs had been.

‘Is someone looking after the driver?’ inquired the doctor. ‘I think he needs attention too.’

‘There is another doctor with him—I do not yet know what happened.’ The policeman was standing almost angrily to attention. ‘Won’t they ever send the ambulance?’

Almost on his words, a door opened and the roar of traffic clamoured, moving fairly freely now. A shaft of bright light came in, also, and made the crimson on the cloth seem brighter and both beautiful and ugly. ‘The ambulance!’ called the policeman who came stamping forward. Then he seemed affected by the quiet in the church, stopped, and repeated in a whisper, ‘The ambulance. It is here.’

‘Will you go with her?’ asked the man who had helped the doctor.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘May I have your name?’

‘Here is my card,’ said the doctor. ‘Come round and see me, this evening—we will have a drink together.’ He gave a nod and a smile, then followed the ambulance men as they carried the stretcher out of the church, past the crowd which was still waiting, to the ambulance which the traffic now passed with hardly any delay.

The ambulance doors and the church doors closed.

‘So she was not a friend of yours,’ the priest asked the man who had helped.

‘No, Father. She was a stranger.’

‘That makes you a Good Samaritan,’ the priest declared. He smiled gently, a rather portly, plumpish, pale man with a broad nose and full lips.

‘Does it?’ asked the man who had helped. He gave a slow almost sad smile, also giving the impression that he was not really thinking of what he was saying. ‘Thank you, Father, for all you’ve done.’ He turned and walked towards the door. It opened, and a small throng of tourists came in, cameras round their necks, hot and tired because it was near the end of the day. Their guide began to talk at once.

‘Now during the Nazi war, this church, in common with much of Munich, was destroyed by bombing, until only the shell remained. That was true also of the cathedral you remember, and there has been a magnificent work of reconstruction. Here, however, no attempt was made to rebuild the church as it was.’ The small, stocky, greyhaired, tired-sounding guide paused and looked round his party as if likely to be challenged; when he was not, he gave a little sigh, and went on, ‘It was made into a new church, inside the old walls, or what was left of the old walls—’

The man who had helped the stricken girl let the door of the church close on him. It was very hot out here. He dabbed at his neck. A few dozen people remained, staring curiously at the door, but most of the sightseeing crowd had gone, and people were hurrying to and fro. English voices, American, French and Italian, sounded against the undertone of German and the clatter of footsteps and traffic din.

The police had finished their work. A few patches of fine sand covered the blood on the pavement. A few splinters of glass remained in the curb. Some tire marks showed on the pavement, too, but passers-by did not heed them, for they did not know what story they told.

The helpful young man turned and walked slowly towards the Karlsplatz and crossed it by devious means whenever the traffic permitted, until he reached the hotel which overlooked the criss-cross of roads, the mass of traffic and of people on the way home from work. The porter at the hotel saluted him.

‘Good afternoon, Herr Schmidt.’

‘Are there any messages for me?’

The porter turned round to look at the wall of pigeon holes. There were no messages in that for Room 401. He took the key out and handed it to Herr Schmidt, who went up the short flight of stairs to the automatic lift. It was in service. He stood staring at the plain doors. He was a man of five-feet-eight, well-proportioned, well-dressed in medium-coloured grey. His dark hair was cut short, and had a sharply defined parting. His features were good but not striking, his grey eyes narrowed as if habitually.

The lift door opened to reveal three middle-aged men, all of them talking. They went past Schmidt. He stepped inside and pressed the fifth-floor button, was taken up slowly, past people waiting at the other floors. He stepped out on the fifth, glancing right and left before going along to his room.

He opened the door a fraction and hesitated, listening. He seemed satisfied, and stepped inside. He closed and locked the door, paused by the bathroom door which was ajar, went past it into the double room which he occupied. It overlooked that seething whirlpool of trams, cars and people. He picked up the telephone from a table by the side of the bed, and when the operator answered, gave a number in London, England—a Whitehall number—with great precision.

2

Consciousness

WHEN the girl first came round, she was just aware of others in the room with her, but could not see them properly. There were soft voices soothing, gentle hands touching her. Everyone seemed to be whispering. Soon she slipped off again, into unconsciousness.

When she came round next time, she had a dull headache, but otherwise felt almost normal. Her eyes were rather heavy, and there was an unfamiliar odour, rather like a disinfectant. Suddenly, she realized what had happened, and drew in a sharp breath. Almost at once a girl approached from a corner of the room. She looked very young, she wasn’t dressed in a nurse’s uniform, and she was smiling.

‘It’s all right, Miss Dale,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be all right.’

‘But—but my legs!’ Even if her thoughts