The neighbours listened--and shrugged their shoulders. The parents of
the child who had been beaten by Von Busche lived next door. They heard
sounds of a scuffle; furniture falling; faint groans and deep growls.
Lips dared not speak, but eyes met and said: "The dog's done what we
couldn't do."
Silence had fallen long before Von Busche's fellow officers came home;
such silence as that town knew, where bombardment ceased not by day or
night. Before dawn, a bomb fell on the roof of the house, which till
then had never been touched, and the officers all scuttled out to save
themselves; all but Von Busche. Whether in the confusion he was
forgotten, or whether it was thought he had not come home, no one could
tell. He was not seen again till after the Germans had packed up in
haste and decamped, which they did a few hours later, leaving the
townsfolk to shelter in cellars. It was only when the British arrived,
and Siegfried limped out from the battered house, that the dog's
existence was recalled--and the sounds in the night. Then the house was
searched, and Von Busche's body found, half buried under fallen tiles
and plaster. There were wounds in his throat, however, not to be
accounted for by the accident. The dog's broken leg was also a mystery.
"I had the poor boy mended up by a jolly good surgeon," Jack Curtis
finished his story. "He's as sound as ever now. He attached himself to
me from the first, as if he knew he had to thank me for his cure, but he
wasn't enthusiastic.
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