He turned to Zina Valle. “Can you imagine what it’s like to have your foot amputated without any anaesthetic? The foot was damaged when he crashed. But it wasn’t badly damaged. It could have been saved. Instead they let it become infected with gangrene. Then they had an excuse for operating. Once it was gangrenous they had to operate in order to save his life. And then when they got him on the operating table they found they’d run out of anaesthetic. But it was made perfectly clear to him that if he cared to talk, to tell them who he’d dropped behind the fines and where, the anaesthetic might be found. But he kept his mouth shut and they strapped him down and gagged his mouth and sawed his foot off. And he had to lie there, fully conscious, watching them do it, feeling the bite of the saw teeth on his own bones.…”
I wanted to tell him to shut up, to talk of something else. But somehow I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there, listening to him describing it with every nerve in my body shrieking out at the memory of it. And then I saw his dark eyes looking at me, watching me as he described how they’d done everything possible to hasten the healing of the wound. “And then, when it was nearly healed, they artificially infected the stump with gangrene again. Within a few days—”
But I wasn’t listening now. I was staring at him with a sense of real shock. I’d never told any one that they’d infected the leg with gangrene each time to give them an excuse to operate. I’d told Reece and Shirer about the operations, of course. But I’d never told them about the gangrene. It was bad enough knowing that they were there in that ward through my weakness without giving them any reason to think that the operations had been necessary. Of course, it was possible one of the orderlies, or even Sansevino himself, had told Shirer, but somehow I was sure they hadn’t. If they had, Reece at any rate would have made some comment.
I stared across the room with a sense of growing horror. The man was watching me, telling the story of my operations for the sheer pleasure of seeing my reaction. I felt suddenly sick. I finished off my drink. “I think I must go now,” I said.
He stopped then. “You can’t go yet. Let me give you another drink.” He came across the room and took my glass. As he bent to pick it up from the table where I had placed it, his neck was within reach of my hands. I had only to stretch forward.… But in the moment of thinking about it he had straightened up. Our eyes met. Was it my imagination or was there a glint of mockery there? “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how the memory of pain would affect you.” He turned to the cocktail cabinet and I wiped the sweat from my face. I saw Zina Valle glance from me to the man she thought was Walter Shirer. Her eyes were suddenly sharp and interested. Had she guessed the truth?
“Zina. Another drink?”
“Please. I will have a whisky this time, Walter.”
“Do you think that wise?”
“Perhaps not. We are not always wise.”
“I really think I should be going,” I muttered. I was feeling dazed, uncertain of being able to control myself. It was Walter Shirer I’d seen dressed up in Fascist uniform sitting dead at that desk. Anger rose up and choked me. The words il dottore were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say them, to see him swing round under the shock of discovery and then to close with him and choke the life out of him. But I stopped myself in time. I’d never get away with it. I’d never convince the authorities. And anyway he’d be armed. And then suddenly I knew that if he realised that I was aware of his true identity I’d never get out of the room alive. The ghastly game had got to be played out to the end now. That, and that alone, was clear in my mind. He was coming over to me now with the drink in his hand, “Here you are, Farrell. Now just you sit down and relax.”
I took the drink and sank into the nearest armchair. If I was to get out of the room alive I’d got to convince him that I still thought he was Shirer. “Funny thing,” I said. “I only discovered a few days ago that you and Reece were alive. The hospital authorities gave out that you’d both been shot while trying to escape.”
He laughed. “We damn nearly did get shot. The ambulance we got away in broke down and we had to take to the hills. Didn’t you ever come across Reece? I thought you and his sister—”
“She broke it off.”
His eyebrows lifted. Shirer had never looked like that. This man was considering the mental impact of a thing like that, considering it as a doctor.
“That was not very kind of her,” Zina Valle said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I would like my drink, please, Walter.”
He took it across to her and went back to the cabinet for his own. Zina Valle slid her feet to the floor and came across to me. “You do not seem to be very lucky in love, signore,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. She placed her drink on the table where I had placed my own. “Perhaps you make a lot of money with the cards?”
“I don’t play cards,” I replied.
She laughed. “Always I am trying to prove that proverb. I do not think it is a true one.” She yawned. “I am getting sleepy, Walter.”
He looked at his watch, “It’s only half-eleven.”
“Yes, but I must be up early to-morrow.” She glanced down at me. “Perhaps you would see me home, Mr. Farrell?”
It was almost as though she were offering me a means of escape from that room. “Of course,” I said.
Shirer rang the bell and as the door opened behind me, he said, “Pietro. Order a taxi.”
Zina Valle had moved back to her chair. I reached out for my drink. And then I glanced across at her, for my glass wasn’t where I’d placed it. She had taken mine and left me hers on the far side of the table. I was about to mention it, but something in her expression made me keep silent. Anyway, she had already finished the drink.
The man, Pietro, came in to say that the taxi was waiting. I got up and helped her on with her wrap. “How long will you be in Milan, Walter?” she asked.
“I can’t say. But don’t worry. I’ll see you get what you want. Farrell. You’ve left your drink.” He held the glass out to me. “Scotch is too valuable these days to be wasted.” He watched me while I knocked it back. Like a doctor seeing that his patient takes his medicine, I thought. And then I saw that Zina Valle was looking at him with an odd expression in her eyes.
He took the glass and put it down for me on a side table. Then he accompanied us to the lift. “It was nice of you to come and see me, Farrell,” he said. His hand held mine and I felt a tingle run up my spine. The touch of his smooth fingers made me want to jerk him towards me and break him, smash him into little pieces. The hand I held, I knew, had never mined coal. I dropped it as though it was something that was dangerous to touch. “I hope this won’t be the last time we meet.” He smiled. The lift gates closed and we went down. My last sight of him was peering down at us as we descended, the light catching his eyes and making them appear black like sloes.
In the taxi, Zina Valle took my arm and leaned close. “You do not like Walter, eh?”
I didn’t answer and she added: “You hate him. Why?”
I didn’t know what to say. To change the subject I said jokingly, “You took my drink, you know.”
“But of course. Why do you think I take the trouble to get up when I am very happy sitting in my chair?”
I stared at her. “Do you mean you did it purposely? Why?”
She laughed. “Because I do not think it is good for you. Tell me, why was Walter so strange to-night? And that name—Sansevino. It frightened him. When he hears that a friend of Dr. Sansevino is wanting to see him, he turns very white. And when you come in—for a moment I think he is afraid of you. Is he afraid of you?”
“Afraid of me?” The phrase echoed in my mind like a peal of bells. Afraid of me! Sansevino afraid of me! I felt a sudden surge of power, of exultance. I had him now. I knew his secret. I could play the same game with him that he’d played with me. There was a saltness in my mouth; the taste of revenge.
“Well? Is he?”
“Perhaps.”
“Why?”
“One day, if I get to know you better, I may tell you.”
“Is it because of something he has done—something he has done to you?” Her voice was eager, questing, as though she wanted the power that I possessed.
“Why do you ask?” I said. “Don’t you like him?”
The taxi stopped with a jerk. She was looking straight into my face, her eyes very wide and luminous. “I hate him,” she breathed. Then the door was opened and she got out. “Don’t forget—if you come to Napoli I am at the Villa Carlotta.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t forget. Good night.”
“Buona notte.” She blew me a kiss and was gone, swallowed by a big modern block of flats.
“Where to, signore?”
“Albergo Excelsior.”
“Bene.”
The taxi turned into the Corso Buenos Aires, and I sat, watching the street lamps flash by, hugging to myself the thought that I had Sansevino alive and in my power. It was a mood of elation that took me back to my hotel and stayed with me when I reached my room. I was too tensed-up to think of sleep. I paced up and down, my imagination running ahead of time, picturing just how I would handle the situation.
Looking back on it now I think my mood must have been a very queer one. I was excited, fascinated and afraid, all at the same time. For over a year I had lived in daily fear and dread of what this man could do to me. I had thought him dead. And now I knew that he was alive. Unless I were stark, raving mad, the man I had met was Sansevino. It was a frightening thought.
But even whilst my nerves cringed the mood of elation in which I had returned to the hotel still remained with me and I kept on repeating to myself: Sansevino is alive. I’ve got him now. This time he is in my power.
What should I do? Go to the police? No, no. That would be too straightforward. Let him learn what it was like to be afraid. Yes. That was what Zina Valle had said—I think he is afraid of you. Afraid! That was the thought that filled my mind. Sansevino was afraid of me. And he’d go on being afraid. All the rest of his life he’d be afraid.
I laughed out loud at the thought. No, I wouldn’t go to the police. They might not believe me, anyway. I wouldn’t say anything. But I’d keep in touch with him. And from time to time I’d let him know that I was still alive, that I knew who he was. Let him sweat it out through the long nights as I had sweated it out in the heat of summer on Como. Let him know what it was not to sleep for fear—fear of the rope that I could put round his neck.
And then I thought of Tuček. God! Has he anything to do with Jan Tuček’s disappearance? I remember how Sismondi had been waiting for him that night. Was there some connection there? A man who could do what Sansevino had done—who had cold-bloodedly organised.…
There was a sudden knock at the door.
I swung round, my breath caught, gazing at the plain painted panels. Was it a knock, or had I imagined it?
Then it came again. It was real enough. Suppose it were Sansevino? The palms of my hands pricked with sweat and I was trembling.
“Who is it?” I called.
“My name’s Hacket. I’m in the next room to you. I’m trying to get some sleep.” It was an American voice, but much deeper than Shirer’s. I crossed the room and opened the door. A big, broad-shouldered man emerged from the shadows of the corridor blinking his eyes sleepily behind rimless glasses. His grey hair was ruffled and he had the appearance of a surprised and rather angry owl. He peered past me into the room. “Are you alone?”
“Yes. Why?”
He looked at me rather oddly. “I thought you must be having an all-night conference. Suppose you go to bed and let other folk get some sleep.”
“Have I been disturbing you in some way?” I asked.
“Disturbing me?” His voice was almost a snarl. “Just take a look at this.” He tapped the wall that separated my room from the next. “Paper thin. Do you realise I’ve been listening to your voice for nearly two hours now? I guess maybe I’m a little peculiar—I like it quiet when I sleep. Good night to you.”
His purple dressing-gown merged again into the shadows of the corridor and I heard his door close. It was only then that I realised that I must have been talking aloud to myself. I glanced at my watch. It was past two. With a rather guilty feeling I closed my door and began to undress. Now that I was going to bed I realised that I was terribly tired. I didn’t even bother to unstrap my leg. I just fell into bed and switched off the light.
My mind was still hammering away at the same problem. At what point I went to sleep, I don’t know. Probably almost at once, for I barely seemed to have turned the light out before my thoughts had merged into fantasy and I was off on a crazy chase after Sansevino through a ward planted with cacti that all looked like Shirer. I cornered him in an operating theatre where lights started as far-off pinpoints and came rushing towards me till they burst in blinding flashes inside my brain. I had Sansevino in a corner. He was the size of a mouse and I was wrestling with the spring of a trap baited with my own foot. And then he began to swell. In a moment he had filled the cockpit of my plane and was looking down at me as I descended slowly into the ground. His hands reached out towards me. They were huge hands, long-fingered and smooth. They touched my clothes, undoing the buttons, and then I felt them against my skin.
I woke then, my body rigid, all the muscles tense as though I’d been subjected to an electric shock. A slight draught touched my face and I knew the windows to the balcony were open. The bedclothes had been flung back and I was cold, particularly round the stomach where my pyjama trousers had been pulled away. There was a slight movement to my left and the sound of breathing.
Somebody was in the room with me.
I lay quite still. My muscles seemed frozen. I wanted to run, but it was like it is in a nightmare when you try to run but can’t. I was rigid with terror. The breathing came nearer, bending over me. Hands touched my bare stomach, sliding across the cringing flesh till they touched the stump of my left leg. They felt where it fitted into the cup of my artificial leg. Then they began to move up my body, feeling their way in the darkness as though they knew the shape of every muscle, every bone.
I stiffened in sudden, mortal terror. I knew those fingers. Lying there I knew who it was bending over me in the dark. I knew the touch of his hand and the way he breathed as certainly as if I could see him, and I screamed. It was a scream torn from the memory of the pain those hands had caused me. And as my scream went shrieking round the room, I lashed out with the frenzied violence of a man fighting for his life. But all I hit was air.
I thought I heard the sound of soft shoes on tiles and then a click of the windows closing. The air in the room no longer stirred. I sat up, gulping for breath in great sobs. My chest was heaving so that I thought my lungs would burst. I couldn’t still my panic.
Then with a shock the windows flew open. Somebody floundered against the table. I screamed at him to go away. I could hear him moving blindly across the room. Panic gripped me so that I could scarcely breathe. And all the time I was screaming at him the only sound that came out of my mouth was an inarticulate retching for breath.
The central light clicked on and I was blinking at a figure in scarlet pyjamas. It was the man from the next room. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
I tried to explain, but I couldn’t get any words out. My heart was pounding and I seemed to have no control over my tongue. My breath just came in great sobs. Then I was sick, a dry retching. “Are you ill? Would you like a doctor?”
“No,” I gasped. I could feel my eyes dilating in horror at the suggestion. “No. I’m all right.”
“Well, you don’t look it.” He came over and stood staring down at me. “You must have had one hell of a nightmare.”
I realised I was half-naked and fumbled with the buttons of my pyjama jacket. “It wasn’t a nightmare,” I managed to get out. “There was someone here, in the room. His
hands were—” It sounded so absurd when I tried to put it into words. “He was going to do something to me. I think he was going to kill me.”
“Here, let me pull the bedclothes round you. Now then, you just lie still and relax.”
“But I tell you—”
“Take it easy now.”
“You don’t believe me,” I said. “You think I’m making it up.” I thrust my artificial leg out from beneath the bedclothes. “Do you see that? A Dr. Sansevino did that. It was during the war. They wanted to make me talk. To-night I met him again, here in Milan. Don’t you see—he was here in this room. He was going to kill me.” I remembered how Zina had changed the drinks over. Of course. It all fitted in. “He thought he’d drugged me. I tell you, he came here to kill me. If I hadn’t woken up—”
I stopped then. He had picked up a packet of cigarettes and was holding one out. I took it automatically and he lit it for me. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Just draw on that and relax,” he said.
I knew he didn’t believe me. He was so solid and practical. But somehow I’d got to make him believe me. It was suddenly very important. “Have you any idea what it’s like to have three operations on your leg and be conscious all the time?” I stared at him, trying to will him to believe what I was telling him. “The man was a sadist. He enjoyed doing it. He’d caress my leg with his fingers before he operated. He liked the feel of the flesh he was going to cut away.” I could feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead. I was working myself up into a lather again in my effort to convince him. “I know the touch of those fingers as I know the feel of my own. They touched me to-night. I was dreaming about him, and then I woke and his fingers were moving over my body. It was dark, but I knew they were his hands. That’s when I screamed. You’ve got to believe me. It was Sansevino. He was here in this room.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down, lighting one of my cigarettes. “Now, listen to me, young fellow. There was no one in this room. I came in here as soon as you started screaming. The door was locked. The room was quite empty. You’ve had—”
The Angry Mountain Page 9