“Out!”
The order was barked at Shaw, and a gun was.pushed into his back. He was prodded forward into the room as soon as he was clear of the car.
Suddenly, as he came through the doorway, he was given a violent blow in the back which sent him staggering forwards to land in a heap at the farther wall. The door was banged to behind him, and he heard heavy bolts snick home.
After that, silence; silence and darkness lit by a stray moonbeam coming, coldly silver, through a very tiny barred window set high up in one wall. A window which, even if he could reach it, would be far too small to squeeze through. The moon cast a long, intersected shadow on the opposite wall. Shaw went inch by inch over the rest of the place, but he could find nothing whatever that offered any hope of a way out; he might just as well save his strength for whatever lay ahead. After a time he sat down on a pile of smelly sacks in a corner. Still the brooding oppressive silence and the aloneness… until he heard the tiny mutterings and squeakings of rats, rats which ran and scampered about the floor, burrowed into the sacks upon which he sat. He lashed out at them with his fists, felt his knuckles plunge into fur, heard the shrill protests, felt the tear of sharp teeth at his ankles.
He kicked out, got to his feet, horror gripping his heart. What in God’s name did they mean to do with him now— leave him here, food for the rats? But surely some one would take action at the Port Said end. Sir Donald Mackinnon would be wondering, and worrying too. And Judith. Laty-mer would surely get to hear, through the Consulate in Port Said, the Ambassador in Cairo. And yet, even so, what could Latymer or anyone else do? This was Egypt; a fat lot of notice they’d ever taken of British representations in the past. There was no special reason why they should change now. Besides, as an agent, Shaw couldn’t expect this country to pull him out of a hole once he got caught.
And in the meantime REDCAP was without its officer-in-charge and Donovan’s girl was alone too. Andersson would no doubt be back aboard the New South Wales, Andersson who had led him so neatly into this trap by his carefully worded cable, Andersson who must have known he would follow him. That alone presupposed the man’s guilt, his real identity. Sick and giddy, in an agony of spirit, Shaw paced up and down that stinking, stuffy room, until he was physically and mentally exhausted; and then he fell on to the pile of sacks, in a huddle, went at last to sleep.
He didn’t know how long he slept; but he awoke to find a very bright light shining into his eyes. As he blinked into it, it moved, and two men appeared suddenly and came forward and threw their weight on him, holding down his arms and chest. Two more men came from behind the light, each took one of his legs and held it fast to the ground. None of them spoke, but he heard their hard breathing, felt it on his face. Then another man appeared with something in his hand, knelt down beside Shaw. His jacket was ripped with a sharp knife, the sleeve was rolled back, ripped again until the whole sleeve hung in tatters from his shoulder. And then Shaw felt a needle drive into his flesh, knew a moment of almost unbearable agony as something was pumped into him. He cried out through clenched teeth, jerked and twisted his limbs, but the men, sweating and panting, held fast. The pain shot through him, seemed to flow into every crevice, every cell in his body. He was racked, tortured with it. As the needle was withdrawn a whisper of blood dripped from its end on to Shaw’s chest. The men still held him down; and then, after centuries of time as it seemed, the pain began to ebb slowly away, draining out of him through toes and finger-tips, leaving him weak but almost happy just because that agony had disappeared.
Soon after his legs and arms were released.
Oddly, he wasn’t conscious of any actual feeling as of men’s weight having lifted from his limbs. He only knew they’d let go of him because he heard them moving about and then, out of the corner of his eye, he could see them outlined in that bright light. And then they went away and the light went out; Shaw felt curiously numb and weak, but he tried to struggle up to a sitting position so as to ease the headache that had gripped him. He felt that if the blood could drain away he would feel less groggy, more able to concentrate his thoughts. But after a while he realized that he couldn’t move. Apart from that tearing headache, there was absolutely no feeling in his body at all. Even his eyes wouldn’t obey his will now, wouldn’t turn. He was inert, corpse-like. A feeling of horror, of utter panic, took hold of him for a moment, and then he forced his mind to remain quiet, composed and ready for whatever must happen next. For a long time nothing happened. The first faint dawn struggled through the barred window and lit on the wall, and he just lay there, absolutely still, not able even to blink, to move his lips. Every muscle seemed paralysed. And then, as the cell lightened a little more, the door opened and the sun came through. A man walked into his fixed line of vision, stood there looking down at him, seemed to be studying him intently. Then, as though far, far away, Shaw heard this man speak and, with his knowledge of the language, was able to follow what was said.
“How did it happen?”
A voice came from the doorway, outside Shaw’s vision. He identified it as the voice of one of the policemen: “The man was armed, and he resisted arrest after causing a disturbance, doctor. You can see the injuries for yourself, the injuries we were forced to inflict — the blood on the hair, the mouth…
The doctor bent and Shaw heard him murmur: “A blow in the mouth, and on the head…” He bent closer, down on one knee. Shaw tried desperately to speak, failed. The man pulled back an eyelid, felt for the heart, the pulse. There was nothing; Shaw had dried up, was suspended in a kind of cold storage.
Shaw heard the man say, with a curious inflexion in his voice as though he knew what he was saying was a lie: “Yes, you are right. The man is dead.”
He tried to cry out: I’m not, I’m not, I’m as alive as you are, as anxious to get back into the good fresh air, but I can’t move, I can’t speak. But I am not dead. No words came; he lay like the corpse he had been pronounced to be. Then once again he heard the doctor speak.
The doctor said sardonically, “He is dead, but how? His injuries are not severe. What is all this, Hassan?”
“It is a matter which I must not discuss, doctor. I can only tell you this: he is an important man, and his absence will cause much consternation in London, and aboard the liner, the New South Wales. It could be awkward. But if he can be shown to have caused a disturbance in Port Said, and to have been arrested, and then to have died from injuries received while resisting lawful arrest… why, then no questions will be asked, for inquiries will not be made too closely into the death of an Englishman if it is backed up by a doctor’s certificate. And if anything is raised by London, then our authorities will have an answer to give. That is the way we wish it to be. And Solli is not Port Said, doctor.”
The doctor laughed. “And I am not the medical officer of the Port Said police! And you come to me because you know I will co-operate.”
“Your fee is high enough, doctor.”
“Oh, well, as to that…” Again the doctor laughed. “I will ask no more questions. Clearly this is no ordinary police matter, but I shall not ask for whom you work outside hours of duty, Hassan! I shall issue a certificate which will satisfy your superiors, and you need not worry.” He added, almost apologetically: “And in return, apart of course from my fee…?”
“Your past indiscretions will not be brought to light, doctor.”