"I can't see any afterwards."
Sutton smiled.
"And yet," he said, "there will be one."
XVII
The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing of stiff silk.
Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk on their way to England, had been taken on board the naval transport Victoria. They were the only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left them a clear space on the deck. Charlotte was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when McClane came to her there.
He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something had pleased him.
"I knew," he said, "that some day I should get you three. And that I should get those ambulances."
She couldn't tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted or that he had foreseen John Conway's fate which would ultimately give it him.
"The ambulances—Yes. You always wanted them."