“Won’t I? Hullo! You’ve got a nice little handful!”
The hand was scarred from wrist to finger-tips.
“Never noticed it before, did you? I’m pretty good at hiding it by now.”
“How on earth was it done?”
“In hell—that’s Africa. I told you I learned massage from an old Arab sheikh; well, I practised on him. I was alone and down with fever, and they don’t have river police on the Lualaba. He made me his slave. Used to thrash me when he chose to say I’d not done my work; make me kneel at his feet and strike me on the face.”
“Good Lord! How did you like that, sonny?”
“I smiled at him till he got sick of it. Then he put me on silence: one word, death. He thought he’d catch me out, but I’d no notion of that; I held my tongue. So one day the old devil sent me to fetch his knife. It was dusk, and I picked it up carelessly; the handle was white-hot. He’d tried that trick with slaves before. Liked to see them howl and drop it, and then finish them off with the very identical knife—confound him!”
“Amen. And what did you do?”
“I? Brought him his knife by the blade; do you think I was going to let him cheat me out of my career?”
Lucian stared at him. “You—you!” he said. “And I verily believe the man’s telling the truth. What happened next?”