Andrea ran a massive hand through his thick, dark, curling hair, heavily streaked with grey above the temples.
«I cannot be sure, Captain. I imagined I heard a noise — a kind of shuffle — about ten minutes ago, but r thought my ears were playing tricks. Then I heard the same sound a minute ago. So I am afraid—»
«Ten minutes, eh?» Mallory nodded thoughtfully, then looked at the prisoner. «What's your name?» he asked sharply. «What are you doing here?»
There was no reply. There were only the sullen eyes, the sullen silence — a silence that gave way to a sudden yelp of pain as Andrea cuffed the side of his head.
«The Captain is asking you a question,» Andrea said reproachfully. He cuffed him again, harder this time. «Answer the Captain.»
The stranger broke into rapid, excitable speech, gesticulating wildly with both hands. The words were quite unintelligible. Andrea sighed, shut off the torrent by the simple expedient of almost encircling the scrawny throat with his left hand.
Mallory looked questioningly at Andrea. The giant shook his head.
«Kurdistan or Armenian, Captain, I think. But I don't understand it.»
«I certainly don't,» Mallory admitted. «Do you speak English?» he asked suddenly.
Black, hate-filled eyes glared back at him in silence. Andrea cuffed him again.
«Do you speak English?» Mallory repeatea relentlessly.
«Eenglish? Eenglish?» Shoulders and upturned palms lifted in the age-old gesture of incomprehension. «Ka Eenglish!»
«He says he don't speak English,» Miller drawled.
«Maybe he doesn't and maybe he does,» Mallory said evenly. «All we know is that he has been listening and that we can't take any chances. There are far too many lives at stake.» His voice suddenly hardened, the eyes were grim and pitiless. «Andrea!»
«Captain?»
«You have the knife. Make it clean and quick. Between the shoulder blades!»
Stevens cried out in horror, sent his chair crashing back as be leapt to his feet.
«Good God, sir, you can't—»
He broke off and stared in amazement at the sight of the prisoner catapulting himself bodily across the room to crash into a distant corner, one arm up-curved in rigid defence, stark, unreasoning panic limned in every feature of his face. Slowly Stevens looked away, saw the triumphant grin on Andrea's face, the dawning comprehension in Brown's and Miller's. Suddenly he felt a complete fool Characteristically, Miller was the first to speak.
«Waal, waal, whaddya know! Mebbe he does speaka da Eenglish after all.»
«Maybe he does,» Mallory admitted. «A man doesn't spend ten minutes with his ear glued to a keyhole if he doesn't understand a word that's being said… . Give Matthews a call, will you, Brown?»
The sentry appeared in the doorway a few seconds later.
«Get Captain Briggs here, will you, Matthews?» he asked. «At once, please.»
The soldier hesitated.
«Captain Briggs has gone to bed, sir. He left strict orders that he wasn't to be disturbed.»
«My heart bleeds for Captain Briggs and his broken slumbers,» Mallory said acidly. «He's had more sleep in a day than I've had in the past week.» He glanced at his watch and the heavy brows came down in a straight line over the tired, brown eyes. «We've no time to waste. Get him here at once. Understand? At once!»
Matthews saluted and hurried away. Miller cleared his throat and clucked his tongue sadly.
«These hotels are all the same. The goin's-on — you'd never believe your eyes. Remember once I was at a convention in Cincinnati—»
Mallory shook his head wearily.
«You have a fixation about hotels, Corporal. This is a military establishment and these are army officers' billets.»
Miller made to speak but changed his mind. The American was a shrewd judge of people. There were those who could be ribbed and those who could not be ribbed. An almost hopeless mission, Miller was quietly aware, and as vital as it was, in his opinion, suicidal; but he was beginning to understand why they'd picked this tough, sunburnt New Zealander to lead it.
They sat in silence for the next five minutes, then looked up as the door opened. Captain Briggs was hatless and wore a white silk muffler round his throat in place of the usual collar and tie. The white contrasted oddly with the puffed red of the heavy neck and face above. These had been red enough when Mallory had first seen them in the Colonel's office — high blood pressure and even higher living, Mallory had supposed: the extra deeper shades of red and purple now present probably sprung from a misplaced sense of righteous indignation. A glance at the choleric eyes, gleaming lightblue prawns afloat in a sea of vermilion, was quite enough to confirm the obvious.
«I think this is a bit much, Captain Mallory!» The voice was high pitched in anger, more nasal than ever. «I'm not the duty errand-boy, you know. I've had a damned hard day and—»
«Save it for your biography,» Mallory said curtly, «and take a gander at this character in the corner.»
Briggs's face turned an even deeper hue. He stepped into the room, fists balled in anger, then stopped in his tracks as his eye lit on the crumpled, dishevelled flgure still crouched in the corner of the room.
«Good God!» he ejaculated. «Nicolai!»
«You know him.» It was a statement, not a question.
«Of course I know him!» Briggs snorted. «Everybody knows him. Nicolal. Our laundry-boy.»
«Your laundry-boy! Do his duties entail snooping around the corridors at night, listening at keyholes?»
«What do you mean?»
«What I say.» Mallory was very patient. «We caught him listening outside the door.»
«Nicolai? I don't believe it!»
«Watch it, mister,» Miller growled. «Careful who you call a liar. We all saw him.»
Briggs stared in fascination at the black muzzle of the automatic waving negligently in his direction, gulped, looked hastily away.
«Well, what if you did?» He forced a smile. «Nicolai can't speak a word of English.»
«Maybe not,» Mallory agreed dryly. «But he understands it well enough.» He raised his hand. «I've no desire to argue all night and I certainly haven't the time. Will you please have this man placed under arrest, kept in solitary confinement and incommunicado for the next week at least. It's vital. Whether he's a spy or just too damned nosy, he knows far too much. After that, do what you like. My advice is to kick him out of Castelrosso.»
«_Your_ advice, indeed!» Briggs's colour returned, and with it his courage. «Who the hell are you to give me advice or to give me orders, Captain Mallory?» There was a heavy emphasis on the word «captain.»
«Then I'm asking it as a favour,» Mallory pleaded wearily. «I can't explain, but it's terribly important. There are hundreds of lives»
«Hundreds of lives!» Briggs sneered. «Melodramatic stuff and nonsense!» He smiled unpleasantly. «I suggest you keep that for your cloak-and-dagger biography, Captain Mallory.»
Mallory rose, walked round the table, stopped a foot away from Briggs. The brown eyes were still and very cold.
«I could go and see your Colonel, I suppose. But I'm tired of arguing. You'll do exactly as I say or I'll go straight to Naval H.Q. and get on the radio-telephone to Cairo. And if I do,» Mallory went on, «I swear to you that you'll be on the next ship home to England — and on the troop-deck, at that.»
His last words seemed to echo in the little room for an interminable time: the stillness was intense. And then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the tension was gone and Briggs's face, a now curiously mottled white and red, was slack and sullen in defeat.
«All right, all right,» he said. «No need for all these damned stupid threats — not if it means all that much to you.» The attempt to bluster, to patch up the shredded rags of his dignity, was pathetic in its transparency. «Matthews — call out the guard.»