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I swung round, my breath caught, gazing at the plain painted panels. Was it a knock, or had I imagined it?

Then it came again. It was real enough. Suppose it were Sansevino? The palms of my hands pricked with sweat and I was trembling.

‘Who is it?’ I called.

‘My name’s Hacket. I’m in the next room to you. I’m trying to get some sleep.’ It was an American voice, but much deeper than Shirer’s. I crossed the room and opened the door. A big, broad-shouldered man emerged from the shadows of the corridor blinking his eyes sleepily behind rimless glasses. His grey hair was ruffled and he had the appearance of a surprised and rather angry owl. He peered past me into the room. ‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes. Why?’

He looked at me rather oddly. ‘I thought you must be having an all-night conference. Suppose you go to bed and let other folk get some sleep.’

‘Have I been disturbing you in some way?’ I asked.

‘Disturbing me?’ His voice was almost a snarl. ‘Just take a look at this.’ He tapped the wall that separated my room from the next. ‘Paper thin. Do you realise I’ve been listening to your voice for nearly two hours now? I guess maybe I’m a little peculiar — I like it quiet when I sleep. Good night to you.’

His purple dressing-gown merged again into the shadows of the corridor and I heard his door close. It was only then that I realised that I must have been talking aloud to myself. I glanced at my watch. It was past two. With a rather guilty feeling I closed my door and began to undress. Now that I was going to bed I realised that I was terribly tired. I didn’t even bother to unstrap my leg. I just fell into bed and switched off the light.

My mind was still hammering away at the same problem. At what point I went to sleep, I don’t know. Probably almost at once, for I barely seemed to have turned the light out before my thoughts had merged into fantasy and I was off on a crazy chase after Sansevino through a ward planted with cacti that all looked like Shirer. I cornered him in an operating theatre where lights started as far-off pinpoints and came rushing towards me till they burst in blinding flashes inside my brain. I had Sansevino in a corner. He was the size of a mouse and I was wrestling with the spring of a trap baited with my own foot. And then he began to swell. In a moment he had filled the cockpit of my plane and was looking down at me as I descended slowly into the ground. His hands reached out towards me. They were huge hands, long-fingered and smooth. They touched my clothes, undoing the buttons, and then I felt them against my skin.

I woke then, my body rigid, all the muscles tense as though I’d been subjected to an electric shock. A slight draught touched my face and I knew the windows to the balcony were open. The bedclothes had been flung back and I was cold, particularly round the stomach where my pyjama trousers had been pulled away. There was a slight movement to my left and the sound of breathing.

Somebody was in the room with me.

I lay quite still. My muscles seemed frozen. I wanted to run, but it was like it is in a nightmare when you try to run but can’t. I was rigid with terror. The breathing came nearer, bending over me. Hands touched my bare stomach, sliding across the cringing flesh till they touched the stump of my left leg. They felt where it fitted into the cup of my artificial leg. Then they began to move up my body, feeling their way in the darkness as though they knew the shape of every muscle, every bone.

I stiffened in sudden, mortal terror. I knew those fingers. Lying there I knew who it was bending over me in the dark. I knew the touch of his hand and the way he breathed as certainly as if I could see him, and I screamed. It was a scream torn from the memory of the pain those hands had caused me. And as my scream went shrieking round the room, I lashed out with the frenzied violence of a man fighting for his life. But all I hit was air.

I thought I heard the sound of soft shoes on tiles and then a click of the windows closing. The air in the room no longer stirred. I sat up, gulping for breath in great sobs. My chest was heaving so that I thought my lungs would burst. I couldn’t still my panic.

Therewith a shock the windows flew open. Somebody floundered against the table. I screamed at him to go away. I could hear him moving blindly across the room. Panic gripped me so that I could scarcely breathe. And all the time I was screaming at him the only sound that came out of my mouth was an inarticulate retching for breath.

The central light clicked on and I was blinking at a figure in scarlet pyjamas. It was the man from the next room. 標hat’s the trouble?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

I tried to explain, but I couldn’t get any words out. My heart was pounding and I seemed to have no control over my tongue. My breath just came in great sobs. Then I was sick, a dry retching. ‘Are you ill? Would you like a doctor?’

‘No,’ I gasped. I could feel my eyes dilating in horror at the suggestion. ‘No. I’m all right.’

‘Well, you don’t look it.’ He came over and stood staring down at me. ‘You must have had one hell of a nightmare.’

I realised I was half-naked and fumbled with the buttons of my pyjama jacket. ‘It wasn’t a nightmare,’ I managed to get out. ‘There was someone here, in the room. His hands were—’ It sounded so absurd when I tried to put it into words. ‘He was going to do something to me. I think he was going to kill me.’

‘Here, let me pull the bedclothes round you. Now then, you just lie still and relax.’

‘But I tell you—’

‘Take it easy now.’

‘You don’t believe me,’ I said. ‘You think I’m making it up.’ I thrust my artificial leg out from beneath the bedclothes. ‘Do you see that? A Dr. Sansevino did that. It was during the war. They wanted to make me talk. To-night I met him again, here in Milan. Don’t you see — he was here in this room. He was going to kill me.’ I remembered how Zina had changed the drinks over. Of course. It all fitted in. ‘He thought he’d drugged me. I tell you, he came here to kill me. If I hadn’t woken up—’

I stopped then. He had picked up a packet of cigarettes and was holding one out. I took it automatically and he lit it for me. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘Just draw on that and relax,’ he said.

I knew he didn’t believe me. He was so solid and practical. But somehow I’d got to make him believe me. It was suddenly very important. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like to have three operations on your leg and be conscious all the time?’ I stared at him, trying to will him to believe what I was telling him. ‘The man was a sadist. He enjoyed doing it. He’d caress my leg with his fingers before he operated. He liked the feel of the flesh he was going to cut away.’ I could feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead. I was working myself up into a lather again in my effort to convince him. ‘I know the touch of those fingers as I knew the feel of my own. They touched me to-night. I was dreaming about him, and then I woke and his fingers were moving over my body. It was dark, but I knew they were his hands. That’s when I screamed. You’ve got to believe me. It was Sansevino. He was here in this room.’

He pulled up a chair and sat down, lighting one of my cigarettes. ‘Now, listen to me, young fellow. There was no one in this room. I came in here as soon as you started screaming. The door was locked. The room was quite empty. You’ve had—’

‘But I tell you Sansevino was here,’ I shouted at him. ‘He was here, in this room. He was bending over me. I could hear his breathing. He went out by the windows. I know it was him. I know it, I tell you. I know it.’ I suddenly stopped with my hand in mid-air. I had been beating at the bedclothes in my agitation.

‘All right. He was here. But in your imagination. Not in reality. Listen. I was skipper of a LST at Iwo Jima. I know what war neurosis is like. And afterwards — you get relapses. You had a tough time. You lost a leg. All right, but don’t let it prey on your mind. What’s your name?’