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flat on her belly between the bullets! . . . ah, Mademoiselle de Chamarandel what she'd been through! . . . she could be pretty funny . . . in her flight she'd teamed up with the Milice families at Gérardmer. . . and that's not all! . . . on the beach she'd made the conquest of the whole German Embassy . . . stopping place on their pullback to Frankfort . . . plus the croupiers from Monte Carlo on their way to open a new school in Stuttgart, a branch of our academy . . . In the position she was in . . . no more pharmacy, no more house, no more grandmother . . . and young thugs all over itching to scalp ° her . . . the young lady, no dope, had become very friendly with the gentlemen of both camps, Gaullist croupiers, Nazis from the embassies . . . but maybe a little too much rump for jittery young men . . . especially on the diving board! . . . witness the low brawl between the Vichy flunkeys, the "occult résistants" of the Simplon, and the Boche inhabitants of Baden-Baden, crippled, twisted hunchbacks from the hospitals, who went to the pool for the free striptease . . . all steaming exasperated, ready to do us in, they'd picked the cobbles to tie around our necks . . . if not for Madame von Dopf they'd have done it . . . Taking advantage of the lull we start back along the banks of the Oos . . . somebody comes running in the other direction . . . Fräulein Fisher! . . . one more that loves us dearly . . . and brags about being very mean . . . the Americans spanked her . . . she lumps us all together . . . she has a special kind of ugliness . . . so much like Quasimodo . . . that it can't have hurt her any . . . in Algiers they spanked her . . . at the Consulate . . . now she's with Schulze . . . his secretary . . . nature had given her a rough deal, her whole left cheek one strawberry mark, thick red hair done up in a cow's tail, those eyes, one gray, one blue . . . with a squint . . . terrifying . . . and proud of it! . . . she came from the Hartz Mountains, home of the witches . . . she cultivated her décor, her room all full of pictures of witches . . . witch dolls . . . on the wall, witches painted on plates . . . hanging from the ceiling . . . witches riding on broomsticks . . . "All on our way to the Sabbath," she warned us. That fine old legend meant a lot to her . . . She saw herself stirring the cauldron, with us and the Americans inside it, skinned and boiling nicely . . . In Algiers, after the landing, the Americans had disinfected her . . . we were to blame! such people! . . . and coming toward us now in a big hurry . . . what's the good word? . . .
    "Doctor! Doctor!"
    She'd come for me.
    "The Legationsrat wishes to see the doctor . . . urgent! . . . if you don't mind . . ."
    "At your service, Mademoiselle Fisher . . . I'm with you . . ."
    Two minutes . . . I was at Schulze's . . .
    "Doctor, do you know what has happened?"
    "Oh, more or less, Monsieur le Ministre, more or less . . ."
    "Oh no, Doctor, you don't know . . . but you will . . . you know this hotel . . . you've been all over?"
    "Yes, I think so . . . just about . . ."
    "Then if you please, if you don't mind . . . I'll send one of my men with you . . . he'll have a special key . . . a passkey . . . you know . . . no point knocking . . . you'll open and you'll find . . . patients . . . if you don't mind, take all your equipment . . . you know, your bag . . . these rooms especially! . . . I'll give you the numbers."
    He writes . . .
    "113 . . . 117 . . . 82 . . . go in without knocking . . . they might not open . . . don't say I sent you . . ."
    "Oh, not a word, Monsieur le Ministre."
    "Then; when you've taken care of them . . . come back and see me! . . . you won't tell anyone what you've seen . . . never! . . . never!"' 
    "Like a tomb, Monsieur le Ministre. Like a tomb!" 
    "Thank you, Doctor . . . I'll see you later . . . later!" 
    I know those rooms . . . 117 . . . especially 113 . . . no need to be a magician . . . it had been obvious for