“I threw that bomb,” the man said simply. “I am sorry that innocents must suffer, but throwing that bomb was the finest thing I have ever done. My bomb and Henri’s bullets sent a monster out of this world. For that I am proud.”
“Where is Henri?” Michael asked. “He went to the other end of the village to get some tobacco.” Swift alarm flickered in his eyes. “Is he—”
“I’m afraid he is in their hands,” Michael said. “They started at the opposite end of the street. They will be here in a very short while. I am afraid that this is the end, Paul. There is no escape.”
Paul glanced at the white-haired man sitting at the table.
“Doctor Schultz and I are ready to go,” he said, “but you must not be found here. Go back and join von Bock. There is work yet for you to do. And you must remain alive to do that work. It is the most important work in the world. Go, quickly. When they find us — it will be all over in an instant.”
“Wait,” the white-haired man said quietly. He stood up slowly and his knees trembled under the burden of his frail, undernourished frame. There were grooved lines of suffering in the doctors’ face but there was a dignity and nobility in his eyes that was as clear as a beacon light over lashing waves.
“What is it, Doctor Schultz?” Michael asked gently.
“I can save one of you. In my last experiments with electrical dissemination of matter. I developed a device which renders opaque substances practically invisible to the naked eye.” The old doctor paused thoughtfully. “I did not disclose the results of my experiments because I knew the Nazi regime would subvert my invention and use it for their own brutal ends.”
“Do you mean,” Michael asked tensely, “that you have a device that will make a physical substance invisible? Such as a human body?”
“Precisely,” the doctor nodded.
“It seems incredible,” Michael breathed.
The doctor peered over his spectacles.
“There was a time,” he said, “when I was considered as a rather good scientist, you know. That seems a long time ago.”
“Not long enough for the world to have forgotten your work in electrotherapy, Doctor,” Michael said. “Crippled children who have been restored to health through your genius will never forget you.”
“I am glad,” the doctor said simply. “But there is not time to talk of such things now. We must work quickly.”
“But you?” Paul said. “You could save yourself with this device.”
“Save myself for what?” the doctor smiled gently. “There is no place for me in Nazi Germany. I am a healer. In Nazi Europe we need bomb-throwers, pistol-shooters, men of courage and strength. You two are such men.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Michael said simply. He turned to Paul. “There is no time to lose. You must take this chance.”
A sudden stacatto burst of machine gun fire sounded from the street. A woman’s scream, clear and terrible, pierced through the ugly roar of coughing death.
“They will soon be here,” the doctor said quietly.
The eyes of Paul were boiling pools of rage and his hands were clenching and unclenching spasmodically.
“I must live,” he whispered. “I must live. I must strike again and again at these swaggering swine. Nothing must stop me. That, I swear by my mother’s cross.”
The doctor hurried to a small closet and returned in an instant with a small compact device to which a metal headband was attached. He slipped it down over Paul’s head, adjusted the band firmly. There were two dials on the face of the small mechanism.
“The operation is simple, but there are not a half dozen men in the world today who could understand the principle,” the doctor said quietly. “The dial on the left turns the mechanism on, the right turns it off.”
The tumult in the street was growing louder by the second.
“There is little time left,” Michael said.
The doctor snapped the left dial into position and a faint humming noise gradually sounded in the room.
Michael watched tensely but there was no visible change in Paul’s appearance. He forced his nerves into calmness. His ears heard the shouts and running steps of men alongside the building. There was so little time left...
Suddenly the faint humming noise stopped. Michael looked sharply at the doctor. Had something gone wrong?
He swung about to Paul and an electric thrill shot through him.
Paul had disappeared!
No! His straining eyes made out a faint outline, a shadowy suggestion of a human form where Paul had stood.
“Can you hear me?” he asked quickly.
“Yes,” Paul answered. “I feel no change.”
Michael tensed suddenly as he heard booted feet pounding on the steps at the back of the building.
“Back into the corner,” he hissed to Paul. “If I can I will get rid of them.”
“There is no chance,” the doctor said. Michael saw that the doctor was holding a small revolver in his hands. There was a sad, slow smile on his seamed face.
“How a man lives is not always important,” the doctor murmured, “but how a man dies is always important. Au revoir, my friend. The world is in your hands. May God give you strength and wisdom.”
Without haste the white-haired doctor placed the gun against his side and pulled the trigger. He was smiling as he fell to the floor.
An instant later there was a clamor outside and a heavy fist pounded mightily against the door.
“Open, dogs!” a guttural voice snarled. “Open in the name of the Fuehrer.”
Michael bent and took the gun from the doctor’s hand. He wheeled toward the corner where Paul crouched, a faint, barely discernible shadow in the gloom of the room.
“Paul!” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“The underground pass-word has been changed. It is now ‘The time is near at hand.’ Do you hear?”
“Yes. ‘The time is near at hand.’ I will not forget.”
The door was trembling under the shattering impact of a heavy fist. A hoarse, bestial voice cried:
“Smash it down!”
Michael shot a quick look at the door. It would hold for another few seconds but that was all.
“Meet me tonight at the transmitter,” he whispered to Paul. “Luck!”
He stepped quickly to the door, gun in hand, and threw back the bolt. The door crashed inward and a gray-clad storm trooper lunged into the room, tripped and fell forward on his face.
“Ah! Impetuous youth,” Michael murmured.
The stocky, hard-faced Captain Mueller strode into the room, followed by three soldiers with drawn Lugers. The storm trooper who had lunged through the door was picking himself sheepishly from the floor.
Captain Mueller glared about the room, his pale eyes sweeping from the doctor’s huddled figure to the gun in Michael’s hand.
“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped. “You are getting yourself into trouble, Herr Faber.
“Trouble?” Michael said, raising one eyebrow. “For shooting enemies of the Reich? I hardly think so, my young Captain. I would suggest that you read again the Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf and stop making ridiculous speeches.”
A hot angry flush stained the thick neck of the captain. He glared savagely at Michael, then shifted his gaze to the body on the floor.
“Who is this man?” he snapped.
Michael shook his head sadly.
“I am surprised at you, Captain,” he said. “This was the Herr Doctor Schultz. He wrote and lectured incessantly against the doctrines of the Nazi State.”
Captain Mueller looked slowly about the room.
“Was he the only one here? I am looking for a Paul Cheval. Our Intelligence reported that he was hiding here in Lidice.” His pale eyes fastened on Michael.