That night, however, Fate took the matter in hand. Precisely what happened is the bit that must remain missing in the puzzle. The dog slept in the room with his master, in a house where several young officers lived close to headquarters. All of them had been out playing cards at a tavern. Von Busche returned earlier than the rest. He was seen in the street the worse for drink. He went into the house, and must have gone to his room, where the police dog had been shut up for hours in disgrace. A moment later there was a yell, then a gurgling shriek. 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. I couldn't flatter myself that I was loved! I had the idea I wasn't what he wanted--that he'd like to tell me what he _did_ want, and politely bid me good-bye forever."