Escape from Devil's Island (Peter McCurtin's Crime Chronicles #2) by Peter McCurtin

Author:Peter McCurtin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nazi germany, prisoners, crime novels, devils island, joseph heller, french guinea
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Seven

THE LIGHTS FLICKERED in Colonel Gamillard’s office, and he stopped writing with his gold-nibbed fountain pen and looked up with mild annoyance. The lights flickered for a while, then came on as strongly as before.

“That’s one more matter that needs immediate attention,” he told Boudreau, who was sitting in a wicker chair in front of the Colonel’s desk with a glass of whisky in his hand. It was American rye whisky and Boudreau didn’t like it, didn’t want it. But it was the Colonel’s whisky, that is, it was whisky left behind by the other Colonel when he sailed away to get himself killed; and Boudreau knew better than to say no or ask for something else.

Boudreau drank some of it and allowed the rest to grow warm in his hand. “The generators are old, sir,” he tried to explain.

Colonel Gamillard quivered with impatience. The windows were open and the three rotating fans in the office were working hard, but the room still baked with leftover heat from the day. Later, during the hours between midnight and morning, the wind that stirred the blinds, setting up a tiny clatter, would become cool, making it possible to sleep without uneasy dreams. Now, early in the evening, it was still hot.

The Colonel didn’t like Boudreau’s attitude. The whisky Boudreau was drinking had not been offered as a gesture of friendship but one of careful informality. The man didn’t appear to know the difference. The Colonel’s first impulse was to put Boudreau in his place with one or two words. He resisted the impulse because of the situation. Like him or not, Boudreau was the ranking officer after the Colonel himself. Later he would decide about Boudreau. But first ...

“Look into it, Captain,” he said.

Sitting in another chair, Ducharme swallowed his whisky in a single gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The Colonel looked over at him before he finished what he was writing. It was strange, he thought, to find himself in a stinking little room in a penal colony with two men, one an obvious incompetent who should have been retired years before, the other a gross vulgarian. The Colonel wiped his forehead with a clean white handkerchief. Yet there it was. There he was. At least Ducharme, whatever he was or seemed to be, had the right attitude. The man was loyal, alert, eager to carry out his orders. How a man looked should not be held against him, and though it went against all his aristocratic instincts, the Colonel forced himself to regard Acting Lieutenant Ducharme not as a fat swine but as a bluff, burly, somewhat slow-witted fellow; the sort of fellow who would go through hell for a man he looked up to. All through his career in the army, the Colonel had a soft spot for men who looked up to him, men eager to learn the things he had to teach.

“About this trouble, this talk in the barracks—it must be stopped,” the Colonel said to Boudreau.

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