He was laughing at me now and suddenly I saw that he had no moustache. The face dissolved into Shirer’s face. But the red, sadistic excitement of the eyes remained.
Then my head cleared and I knew where I was. I was in Santo Francisco and Sansevino was bending over me. A torch was switched on and his face vanished in the blinding light of it. He had my automatic in his hand and he was laughing, a horrible, tensed-up, tittering sound. ‘Now, my friend, perhaps you will be good enough to let me have a look at your lovely new leg.’
His hands were tearing at my trousers. I jerked upright at his touch. He hit me in the face with the torch then, knocking me back into the grit of the ash that covered the roof-top. I felt the blood trickling down from a cut above my right eye. It reached my mouth. I licked at it with my tongue. It was salt and full of grit. He had pulled my trousers clear of my thigh now and his hands were working at the straps of my leg. Involuntarily I flinched. He gave a soft snicker. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said. ‘I do not have to operate this time to remove your leg. See, it is only held by straps — leather straps; the living tissues have gone.’ I could hear his tongue savouring the relish of his words. And all the time I was thinking there was something I had to do. Fear clutched at me at the touch of his hands. I fought it, struggling to clear my brain, to think what had to be done. I couldn’t think with those bloody fingers moving over the flesh of my thigh, touching the cringing skin of my stomach.
Then suddenly he had my leg free. ‘There. You see. It is quite painless, this operation.’
I sat up. He stepped back quickly. The metal of my leg gleamed a dull red. It looked absurdly horrible as he held it in his hands — like looking at my own leg, severed from my body in one lump and bathed in blood. He had switched off the torch now and he was smiling at me. ‘You can do what you wish now, Mr. Farrell. You’re not very mobile.’ It was Shirer’s voice. But almost in the same instant he had reverted to il dottore. ‘I make a nice job of that leg, eh? The stump has healed well.’
I cursed him then, mouthing obscenities in an effort to drown my fear. But he only laughed, his teeth a red, pointed gleam. Then he had ripped the pad out of the artificial limb and turned the contraption upside down. He gave a little cry of satisfaction as a chamois leather bag and a roll of oilskin fell into the ash. He picked the bag up, tearing excitedly at the cord that bound it, his eyes gleaming with greed.
‘So!’ He peered into the mouth of the bag, crooning to himself. ‘Tucek told the truth. Bene! Bene!’
‘What have you done with him?’ I cried.
He looked at me. Then he smiled. It was a wicked, devilish smile. ‘You need not worry about him. I have not hurt him — very much. He is quite safe. So is Maxwell and the lovely Contessa. The stupid American is safe too.’ He laughed. ‘He come all the way from Pittsburgh — where I come from, eh? — to see Vesuvius in eruption. Well, now he has a grandstand view. I hope he likes it,’ he added venomously.
‘What have you done with them?’ I demanded, anger suddenly getting the better of my fear.