“That is good. Ah, my dear Hassan…”
The voices moved away, out of earshot. The door banged to, swung for a moment on its hinges. A little later a bold rat moved stealthily, its nose vibrating, searching across Shaw’s mouth. He could see it as a huge mountain before his eyes, could even smell it, but he could not feel it. It walked up his face, over his hair. The tail drooped down, was dragged slowly across his unfeeling lips. The rat moved on, disappeared. Soon after, one of the policemen came back and looked down at Shaw. He said, “Yes, my friend, you live yet, though officially you are very dead. Your friends will be informed accordingly in due course. And to-night you will go to your last resting-place… unless in the meantime you are prepared to give us certain information, which we shall ask of you when the drug wears off and you are able to speak again.”
When a long time later he came through the drug his hands were bound tightly behind his back, his ankles were roped together. Men stood over him with rifles.
They wanted to know just how much information about Lubin had leaked out to the West, and what were the countermeasures being put into effect by the British and other Governments, and exactly what Shaw’s orders had been.
He said nothing.
He was told that if he didn’t speak willingly then the truth would be forced out of him.
He clenched his teeth, muttered: “Just try.”
They kicked his body, they beat him with rifle-butts. But he kept silent. They picked him up, held him steady, and smashed blow after blow into his defenceless face, and still he bit down on torn lips and kept silent. And then, as daylight once again faded from that high-set, barred window the inquisition ended at last. One of the men, his face filled with hate and cruelty and the naked desire for simple revenge, said:
“Yesterday you told me you had never heard of the oasis of Solli. Now you shall hear what it is.”
“Go on, then.”
The Egyptian said, “The oasis possesses something unique for this part of the world. You are going to die now, slowly. Because you have already been certified dead in the official manner, it is now necessary for us to give you proper public burial.” The thick, rubbery lips twitched, seemed to mull the words over in satisfaction. “What better place than Solli, where it is not too public, and where you will not last long enough for exhumation should our plans go astray? Now listen. Solli possesses a Tower of Silence, which you may perhaps have seen when we entered the village. You understand, Solli is the centre of a small area many of whose inhabitants are a race apart. They are Parsees, from India, and there are enough of them for an enlightened administration to allow them to follow their own religion and to practise their own burial rites. Do you understand?”
Shaw’s eyes blazed and his bound fists bunched behind his back, but his mouth clamped tight. He understood well enough now.
“You will speak, Commander Shaw?”
He gritted his teeth. “No, you bastard. I won’t.”
“Very well.”
The man kicked him again, and then they moved towards him and held him down hard. One man went outside, came back in a minute or two. Shaw caught sight of the long, sharp needle, the big bottle of paralysing liquid. He set his teeth as the needle drove in and the terrible pain began again, set his whole body afire, worse even than before, as though he had been given a bigger dose. Within three minutes he was once more numbed from head to foot, unable to move a muscle, only his brain still living on, his brain and his revolving desperate thoughts. He knew well enough what the Tower of Silence meant; he hadn’t recognized that tall building yesterday simply because it was the very last thing he would have expected to find in Egypt. But he knew what they were, those tall towers of the silent dead where the only sounds were those of the vultures, whirring down from the sky on black, flapping wings to consume the corpses, leaving behind them nothing but piles of whitened bones; and he knew that he was to be eaten alive, the living flesh torn from him by the sharp, probing beaks of the birds of prey.
CHAPTER TEN
That evening Sir Donald Mackinnon had got the story, the very surprising and disturbing story, from the A. and P. Line’s agents in Port Said. The agents had been notified officially by the police authorities that the British Commander Shaw had become involved in a public disturbance of his own making; in consequence whereof he had been arrested, had resisted violently, drawing a gun on the police, and had received unavoidable injuries from which he had since died. The authorities, the agents’ representative told Sir Donald, had said that they could in no way hold themselves answerable for what had happened; and they had even intimated that they intended pressing their own Government to make representations to the United Kingdom Government through diplomatic channels, protesting at the incident and at the strong anti-Egyptian tendencies exhibited by a serving officer.
Sir Donald’s face, when he heard all this, went dark with anger. He snapped, “It’s damn ridiculous! It’s just a lot of hokum! Shaw wasn’t the sort of man to do that. Besides…” He checked himself. He couldn’t say anything about the job Shaw was aboard to do. He raised his arms hopelessly, let them drop. He swung round on the agent. “Dammit, isn’t there anything we can do?”
The agent, an Englishman, shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Captain. No more than we’ve already done from our end, that is. You know what Port Said’s like these days. If that’s the official line, they’ll stick to it whatever we say or do.” He added, “Anyway, there’s no reason to doubt that it’s true, you know. I don’t mean to suggest for one moment that this passenger actually started the incident in any way, but it’s just the sort of thing that does blow up. Spit at the British, start a riot — and then blame the innocent victim.” He shrugged. “You see what I mean? And then the police arrest him. And they’re never exactly gentle. I remember—”
Sir Donald interrupted, demanded heatedly: “But isn’t there any way of checking, of finding some solid proof of all this?”
“No, no further than has already been done.” The agent tapped the report, which lay on the Captain’s desk. ‘This is genuine all right, except probably as regards how the incident started. If it isn’t, well, we can’t crack it. And anyway, come to that — what else could have happened to the man? Frankly, I’m surprised there’s been quite so much flap — even the Embassy’s been more than ordinarily anxious.”
Sir Donald sighed frustratedly. If only he was free to speak… he growled, “Damn and blast! You’re convinced he really is dead, aren’t you?”
The reply was terse: “He’s been seen by a doctor and a certificate’s been issued. There’s no doubt about it at all.” The agent paused, then added: “By the way, I’ve had a cable from London. Your Chairman’s rather anxious for you to go through the canal, Sir Donald. Seems keen to get you through to Australia without any more delay.” He shrugged. “For some reason or other, he’s being extremely insistent about that. That’s the third cable I’ve had in under twenty-four hours, actually.”
Sir Donald got up, strode up and down the cabin, hands behind his back. He said, “I’m not at all keen to go through the canal without knowing more about Shaw.”
The agent said with finality, “We certainly aren’t going to hear any more, sir, except possibly much later on through diplomatic sources in London. I can assure you positively of that. We’ve done our very best.” He added meaningly, “And there’s still time to get you into the convoy leaving at midnight.”
The Captain glared. “What you mean is, those are the orders from London?”
“From the Chairman personally.”