"No." She turned to the English youth with a sad smile. "I have made you happy only to make you unhappy. I spoke to Ivan Nikolsk, but he did not speak to me. He is unconscious. He has been so for four days. He has illness, and a terrible fever. Nina has done what she could. But there is no doctor, and it would mean her life to go to the Nazis in the village. Nina says that he has not long to live. And I have seen him, and so believe her!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
End of the Beginning
The echo of Senior Lieutenant Petrovski's words seemed to linger tauntingly for ages and ages. Nobody else spoke. Nobody could think of anything to say. The stillness of dawn stole in through the broken and shattered windows, and lent to the place the atmosphere of a long abandoned tomb. Dawson tried desperately to think of something to say—anything that would remove a little of the bitterness that was stamped all over the Russian girl's face. Not one bit of what had happened was her fault, but that didn't make any difference to her. She accepted the fault as her own, and it showed plainly in the bitter look on her face.
"Well, that just tightens things up a little," the words finally came to his tongue, and popped off. "We've just got to shift into high gear a little sooner. The big idea now is to get Ivan Nikolsk to a good Russian hospital, and get him there fast. Right?"
"True enough," Freddy Farmer grunted, and stared at him hard. "But I fancy there are one or two little details to be worked out, what?"
"Right!" Dawson shot right back at him. "And that's where you and I can earn a little of what they pay us. Look, Senior Lieutenant, just where is this Nina's house? Can you tell me exactly, so I'd recognize it when I saw it?"
"But of course!" the Russian girl replied, and brightened up a little. "It was in that mosaic aerial map. You recall those two roads that formed a Y by those star-shaped fields? You remember speaking about the shape of those fields, eh? It is that house right there in the top part of that Y."
"Check!" Dawson cried eagerly, as he instantly pin pointed the spot on the memory picture of that aerial map in his brain. "Yes! I know just where it is. Now, another question. Are there many Nazis roaming around here? I mean, could you and Agent Jones get to this Nina's house without being stopped and picked up?"