“I tell you no,” Nichols was saying in a fluent, abominable, literal translation into Spanish. “Take the knife so... thumb upwards. Stab down in the soft between the neck and the shoulder-blade. You get right into the lungs with the point. I’ve tried it: ten times. Never stick the back. The chances are he moves, and you hit a bone. There are no bones there. It’s the way they kill pigs in New Jersey.”
The Cuban bent his brows as if he were reflecting over a chessboard. “Ma....” he pondered. His knife was lying on the table. He unsheathed it, then got up, and moved behind the seated Nova Scotian.
“You say... there?” he asked, pressing his little finger at the base of Nichols’ skinny column of a neck. “And then...” He measured the length of the knife on Nichols’s back twice with elaborate care, breathing through his nostrils. Then he said with a convinced, musing air, “It is true. It would go down into the lungs.”
“And there are arteries and things,” Nichols said.
“Yes, yes,” the Cuban answered, sheathing the knife and thrusting it into his belt.
“With a knife that length it’s perfect.” Nichols waved his shadowy hand towards Salazar’s scarf. Salazar moved off a little.
“I see the advantages,” he said. “No crying out, because of the blood in the lungs. I thank yous Señor Escoces.”
Nichols rose, lurching to his full height, and looked in my direction. I closed my eyes. I did not wish him to talk to me. I heard him say:
“Well, hasta mas ver. I shall get away from here. Good-night.”
He swayed an immense shadow through the door. Salazar took the candle and followed him into the corridor.