Among them was a little girl, a wan, ethereal little creature who sat apart from the other children and watched their play with far-away, haunting eyes, as if she wondered what in the world they were doing. Sheila had found toys for her—a ball, a doll, a jumping-jack—and tried to coax her to play. But she only clung to them for their rare value as possessions; as a means to enjoyment they were quite meaningless. From one of the older children Sheila got her story. Her father had been killed, her mother was with the Boches; there was no one else. With an aching heart the nurse wondered how many thousand Madelines France held.
One day she brought the child in to Monsieur Satan and repeated her story. He listened wisely, patting her on the head, and then whispered to Sheila: “Ah, what did I say! These Boches—they get everything—the mothers, the sweethearts.” Then to Madeline: “Listen, ma pauvre; you shall have the sadness no longer. Monsieur Satan will promise you happiness, ah, such happiness in the new beautiful world he is preparing for you. Now go. But ’sh ... sh! You must say nothing.”
From this moment Sheila became senior partner. It was she who suggested all the extraordinary horrors Monsieur Satan had overlooked. It was she who speeded up time and plans. “I have the hospitals and streets all mined in case the flying bombs should not come thick enough; and I have the wells poisoned. Isn’t that a clever idea?”
The man looked disturbed. “That’s as clever as the Boches. But the children—where will they drink? You must take care of the children.”
Then Sheila played her trump card and said the thing she had been waiting so long to say. Like Monsieur Satan she hissed the words between her teeth, while her face took on all the diabolical cunning it could muster. “The children—bah! What do they matter, after all? I have decided—the children shall be destroyed.”
Monsieur Satan sprang from his chair. He pinioned her arms behind her, forcing her back so he could look deep into her eyes with all the hate and mercilessness his soul harbored. “Touch Madeline—the children, never! Let so much as one little hair of their heads be harmed and I—Monsieur Satan—will kill you!”
She left him with a non-committal shrug, left him panting and swearing softly under his breath.
From that moment he watched Sheila suspiciously and followed the children with jealous eyes. For Madeline he called constantly; and she sat on his knee by the hour while he danced the jumping-jack outrageously and taught her to sing to the doll a certain foolish berceuse that Poitou mothers sing to their babies.
Sheila had planned to stage their day of destruction with the craft of a master manager. She had had to take certain officials into her confidence and get the chief to sign such orders as had never been issued in a hospital before. But in the end Fate staged it, and did it infinitely better than the nurse had even conceived it. The hour of doom struck a full half-day too soon—the children were playing in the gardens, under Monsieur Satan’s window instead of being in the cellar of the crêche as he had decreed; and Sheila was helping another head nurse do dressings in the ward outside.
There were only a few minutes after the siren blew before the first of the great Fokkers appeared over the city. Monsieur Satan’s mind went strangely blank; the children stopped their play and gaped stupidly into the sky; Sheila did nothing but listen. Then the bombs began to rain down on the city. The noise was terrific. The children ran aimlessly about, shrieking pitifully. It was this that set Monsieur Satan’s mind to working again. He broke out of the little room like the madman he was. He might have been Lucifer himself as he stumbled along on his bandaged foot, his hair erect, his eyes blazing a thousand inextinguishable fires. In the corridor he came upon Sheila, with other nurses and doctors, hurrying to gather in the out-of-door patients. As he overtook them a bomb struck the hospital.