I hesitated. Then some devil in me prompted me to say, ‘Just tell him a friend of Dr. Sansevino wishes to see him.’
The porter picked up the telephone. He gave my message. There was a pause and then he was talking fast, looking at me all the time, and I knew he was describing me to the person at the end of the line. At length he put down the receiver and called one of the pages. The boy took me up in the lift to the top floor, along a heavily carpeted corridor and rang the buzzer of a door marked B. It was opened by a manservant, or it might have been a secretary. It was difficult to tell. He was neatly dressed in a lounge suit and his small button eyes were quick and alert. ‘Please to come in, signore.’ He spoke English in a manner that suggested he hated the language.
He took my hat and coat and then showed me into a large, surprising modern room. It was decorated in white and gold, even the baby grand was white and gold, and it was lit by concealed lighting. The floor was carpeted in black. The effect was startling in contrast with the rest of the hotel. ‘So it’s you, Farrell.’ Shirer came forward from the fire, his hand held out in greeting. ‘Why in the world didn’t you say who you were?’ His voice was irritable, his face pale and his eyes searching my face.
I looked past him and saw Zina Valle in a big armchair by the electric fire, her legs curled up under her and a sleepy, rather satisfied smile on her face. She looked somehow content and relaxed, like a cat that has been at a bowl of cream. ‘A friend of Dr. Sansevino.’ Shirer patted my arm. ‘That’s rich coming from you.’ He caught the direction of my gaze and said, ‘You know the Contessa Valle, I think.’
‘Yes,’ I said. And then as Shirer took me towards the fire I said to her. ‘I thought you were in Florence.’
She smiled. ‘I could not go to-day. I shall go tomorrow instead.’ Her voice was slurred and languorous.
‘Queer running across you again like this,’ Shirer said. ‘It takes me back to things I’d rather forget. I guess you’d rather forget them, too — eh? Sorry about last night. Afraid you caught me off balance. It was just that I wasn’t expecting to find you there. Care for a drink?’
‘Thank you,’ I murmured.
‘What will it be? Whisky and soda?’
‘That’ll do fine.’
He had turned to an elaborate cocktail cabinet. ‘I had no idea you were in Milan. I suppose you’re here on business. Sismondi never entertains any one unless there is some business behind it.’
He_was talking too fast — too fast and with a sibilance that did not belong to Shirer. The room, too. Walter Shirer had been an ordinary, simple sort of person. Maybe he’d reacted against his environment. He’d been a coal miner. But even then the room didn’t seem to fit and I was filled with uneasiness.
He handed me my drink. Then he raised his glass. ‘Up she goes!’ I remembered Shirer in agony over those gas blisters raising a glass of filthy medicine to his lips and saying ‘Up she goes!’ He’d always said that as he drank.
An awkward silence developed. Zina Valle had closed her eyes. She looked relaxed and almost plump. A clock on the mantelpiece ticked under a glass case. ‘How did you know I was at the Nazionale?’ Shirer asked.
‘Oh — somebody told me,’ I replied.
‘Who?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I couldn’t tell him I’d overheard him give the address to the taxi-driver last night. ‘I think perhaps it was the Contessa, this morning when she came to see me.’
He turned quickly towards her. ‘Zina. Did you give Farrell my address this morning? Zina!’ She opened her eyes. ‘Did you tell Farrell I was at the Nazionale?’
‘I heard you the first time, Walter,’ she replied sleepily. ‘I don’t remember.’
He gave an impatient shrug of his shoulders and then turned back to me. ‘Well now, suppose you tell me why you’re here?’
I hesitated. I wasn’t really sure. I wasn’t sure about anything, the room, the man himself — it was all so strange. ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. It was just that I didn’t want to leave it as it stood between us last night. I quite realise how you must feel. I mean — well, at the time I thought you’d understood. I stood two of their damned operations, but the third—’ My voice trailed away.
‘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.’
‘Do you think that wise?’
‘Perhaps not. We are not always wise.’
‘I really think I should be going,’ I muttered. I was feeling dazed, uncertain of being able to control myself. It was Walter Shirer I’d seen dressed up in Fascist uniform sitting dead at that desk. Anger rose up and choked me. The words il dottore were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say them, to see him swing round under the shock of discovery and then to close with him and choke the life out of him. But I stopped myself in time. I’d never get away with it. I’d never convince the authorities. And anyway he’d be armed. And then suddenly I knew that if he realised that I was aware of his true identity I’d never get out of the room alive. The ghastly game had got to be played out to the end now. That, and that alone, was clear in my mind. He was coming over to me now with the drink in his hand. ‘Here you are, Farrell. Now just you sit down and relax.’