At the bottom it was darker still. We turned left, in the direction of the voices, and saw a little spot of light in the left wall twenty feet away. Inching along, we got to it. There was the dim outline of a closed door, and the light was coming through a hole in it, eight inches square, with its center at eye level for a man a little shorter than me. Wolfe started to slide an eye past the edge of the hole, thought better of it, moved an arm’s length away from the wall, and looked through the hole. Inside, a man was talking, loud. Wolfe moved closer to the hole, then sidestepped and put his face almost against the door, with his left eye at the right edge of the hole. Taking it as an invitation, I moved beside him and got my right eye at the left edge of the hole. Our ears rubbed.
There were four men in the room. One of them was sitting on a chair with his back to us. Another one was neither sitting nor standing nor laying down. He was hanging. He was over by the far wall, with his arms stretched up and his wrists bound with a cord, and the cord was fastened to a chain suspended from the ceiling. His feet were six inches above the floor. Tied to each ankle was the end of a rope a few feet long, and the other end of each rope was held by a man, one standing off to the right and the other to the left. They were holding the ropes tight enough to keep the subject’s feet spread apart a yard or more. The face of the subject was so puffed and contorted that it was half a minute before I realized I had seen him before, and that long again before I placed him. It was Peter Zov, the man with the flat nose, slanting forehead, and low, smooth voice who had been in Gospo Stritar’s office, and who had told Wolfe he was a man of action. He was getting action, no question about that, but his voice wouldn’t be so low and smooth after the screams he had let loose.
The man in the chair with his back to us, who had been talking, stopped. The two men standing started to pull on the ropes, slow but sure. The gap between the subject’s feet widened to four feet, four and a half, five — more, and then no one looking at Peter Zov’s face would have recognized him. An inch more, two, and he screamed. I shut my right eye. I must have made some other movement too, for Wolfe gripped my arm. The scream stopped, with a gurgle that was just as bad, and when my eye opened the ropes were slack.
“That won’t do, Peter,” the man in the chair said. “You are reducing it to a routine. With your keen mind you have calculated that all you have to do is scream, and that time you screamed prematurely. Your scream is not musical, and we may be forced to muffle it. Would you prefer that?”
No answer.
“I repeat,” the man in the chair said, “that you are wrong to think you are finished. It is not impossible that we can still find you useful, but not unless you play fair with us. Much of the information you have brought us has been of no account because we already had it. Some of it has been false. You failed completely in the one important operation we have entrusted to you, and your excuses are not acceptable.”
“They’re not excuses,” Peter Zov mumbled. He was choking.
“No? What are they?”
“They’re facts. I had to be away.”
“You said that before. Perhaps I didn’t explain fully enough, so I’ll do it more patiently. I am a patient man. I admit that you must make sure to keep your employers convinced that you are to be trusted, since if you don’t you are of no value whatever, either to them or to us. I am quite realistic about it. You’re being discourteous, Peter; you’re not listening to me. Let him down, Bua.”