‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘But last night. … I felt—’
He didn’t let me finish. ‘I was surprised, that’s all. Damn it, Farrell, I don’t bear you any grudge for what happened. It wasn’t your fault. A guy can stand so much and no more. I wouldn’t have stood up to even two of that little swine’s operations.’ He said that little swine’s operations so easily that I found myself relaxing.
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 lines 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.’