She got out of the chair and started for the door, but Fenner reached out, caught her wrist and pulled her round. She swung blindly for his face with hooked finger-nails. He caught her hand, imprisoned her two wrists in one hand and smacked her face with his other hand. Four red bars appeared on the side of her face, and she said, “Oh!”
He let go of her hands and pushed her away roughly. “Sit down and shut up!”
She sat down, her hand touching her cheek gently. She said, “You’re going to be sorry for that.”
Fenner eased himself in the chair so that it creaked. “That’s what you think,” he said, yawning. “Let me tell you another little story. It’s a story about a nasty little girl and a Chinaman. It’ll slaughter you.”
She clenched her fists and pounded them on her knees. “Stop! I know what you’re going to say. I don’t want to hear!”—
Fenner said, “For you, there has never been anyone but Chang. He was everything t© you. When Carlos killed him, your life stopped. Nothing mattered to you. All you had to live for was to get even with Carlos for taking away the one thing that made your horrible life worth while. That’s right, isn’t it?”
She put her hands over her face and shivered, then she said, “Yes.”
“Thayler and you went to New York for a short trip. You couldn’t even be parted from Chang for a few days, so he came up and you saw him, when Thayler was busy elsewhere. Carlos sent two of his Cubans and they found Chang and killed him. That’s right, too, isn’t it?”
“They came in the night when I was with him,” she said. Her voice was expressionless. “One of them held me while the other cut his throat. I was there when they did it. They said they’d kill me if he resisted, so he just lay on the bed and let that awful Cuban cut his throat. Somehow, he managed to smile at me when he was doing it. Oh, God, if you could have been there! If you could have seen him lying there with the Cuban bending over him. The sudden look of terror and pain in his eyes as he died! I could do nothing, but I swore that I’d get Carlos, I would smash everything he had built up.
Fenner yawned again. He was feeling tired. “You’re not very nice,” he said. “I can’t feel any pity for you, because you always thought of yourself first. If you were really fine you would have had your revenge, even if it brought you down too, but you hadn’t the guts to lose what you already had, so you had to plot and plan to keep Thayler and get Carlos thrown to the wolves.”