Free Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler Page B

difference in their badges I guessed that they were a Corporal and a Private. They were young, bronzed, and rather stupid-looking. Our eyes met as I came up, and I nodded, but they did not reply in any way or make any movement to intercept me. I stopped by the door, looked up at the plate to confirm that I was at the right house, and then reached up to pull a bell handle bracketed to the wall.
    The next moment I received a violent blow on the shoulder. The shock of it made me gasp. I lurched against the door and twisted round. The Private had his rifle raised to prod me again. The Corporal had his rifle pointed at my stomach, and his finger was on the trigger. I raised my hands.
    The Corporal shouted something and took a pace backwards. I moved away from the door. I started to say in German that I did not understand what he was saying, but he shouted again, and this time I caught the word for‘papers’. With the heel of my hand I indicated my breast pocket and said,
‘Papieren.’
The Private jabbed the muzzle of his rifle into my ribs. Then the Corporal, stepping forward, tore open my jacket, snatched out my wallet, and stepped smartly away from me.
    It all happened in a few seconds. I was absurdly shaken. I must have looked it, for the Private grinned at me then in quite a friendly way as if my discomfort were a tribute to his efficiency. The Corporal was frowning over my press permit. He looked at the photograph on it and he looked at me. Then he folded the permit, put it back in the wallet and, coming up to me, began to speak very slowly and distinctly, waving the wallet under my nose to emphasize what he was saying. It was clearly an admonishment. I nodded. Then he gave me back the wallet, saluted negligently, and moved away. Behind me the Private stretched up and pulled the bell handle. A bell clanged inside the courtyard. Then he, too, went back to his post under the tree.
    They watched me as I waited, the Private still grinning, the Corporal frowning coldly. My shoulder hurt abominably and I badly wanted to rub it; but a curious shame and perhaps, too, a fear of pleasing them prevented my doing so. I was disconcerted by these unfamiliar and, I could not help thinking, rather childish emotions. I had behaved stupidly and had been roughly treated and humiliated in consequence; but it was no use; my hatred of them welled up like a sickness.
    Then I heard footsteps crossing the courtyard inside: the clacking, slithering footsteps of wooden-soled sandals without heel straps. There was a pause and a rattling of bolts. Then the door opened a few inches and an oldwoman looked out. She had a face like a walnut shell, with woolly grey hair and bright little eyes very deep in their sockets.
    She looked past me to the guards.
    ‘I should like to see Madame Deltchev,’ I said in German.
    She snapped out a reply I did not understand.
    From behind me the Corporal shouted something. I looked round in time to see him raise his rifle threateningly. She snapped again, then very slowly she opened the door. I heard the Private laugh as I went inside.
    The wall of the courtyard was about fourteen feet high and decorated all the way round with big frescoes of pastoral scenes: peasants dancing, a young man wooing a dairymaid, a village wedding. They were crude and conventional like the decorations on Russian toys. The predominant colours were cobalt blue, terracotta and ochre, but in some places the paint had flaked so badly that only a faint discolouration of the stones showed where it had been. The floor of the courtyard was paved with square flags, on which stood potted plants of various kinds, some of them in brilliant flower. Out of a square space in the flagstones grew a big cherry tree. Beyond it, in a corner, there was a neat wood pile, with vine poles leaning against the wall by it.
    The old woman had stopped to bolt the door again, but now she straightened up and faced me grimly, her arms folded, her eyes bright and full of