Joe’s teeth tried to chatter.
He didn’t let them.
6
Major Holt wasn’t to be found when Joe got out to the Shed. And he wasn’t in the house in the officers’-quarters area behind it. There was only the housekeeper, who yawned pointedly as she let Joe in. Sally was presumably long since asleep. And Joe didn’t know any way to get hold of the Major. He assured himself that Braun was a good guy—if he weren’t he wouldn’t have insisted on taking a licking before he apologized—and he hadn’t said there was any hurry. Tomorrow, he’d said. So Joe uneasily let himself be led to a room with a cot, and he was asleep in what seemed seconds. But just the same he was badly worried.
In fact, next morning Joe woke at a practically unearthly hour with Braun’s message pounding on his brain. He was downstairs waiting when the housekeeper appeared. She looked startled.
“Major Holt?” he asked.
But the Major was gone. He must have done with no more than three or four hours’ sleep. There was an empty coffee cup whose contents he’d gulped down before going back to the security office.
Joe trudged to the barbed-wire enclosure around the officers’-quarters area and explained to the sentry where he wanted to go. A sleepy driver whisked him around the half-mile circle to the security building and he found his way to Major Holt’s office.