standing nor lying down. He was hanging. He was over by the far wall, with his arms stretched up and his wrists bound with a 220 cord, and the cord was fastened to a chain suspended from the ceiling. His feet were six inches above the floor. Tied to each ankle was the end of a rope a few feet long, and the other end of each rope was held by a man, one standing off to the right and the other to the left. They were holding the ropes tight enough to keep the subject's feet spread apart a yard or more. The face of the subject was so puffed and contorted that it was half a minute before I realized I had seen him before, and that long again before I placed him. It was Peter Zov, the man with the flat nose, slanting forehead, and low, smooth voice who had been in Gospo Stritar's office, and who had told Wolfe he was a man of action. He was getting action, no question about that, but his voice wouldn't be so low and smooth after the screams he had let loose. The man in the chair with his back to us, who had been talking, stopped. The two men standing started to pull on the ropes, slow but sure. The gap between the subject's feet widened to four feet, four and a half, five -- more, and then no one looking at Peter Zov's face would have recognized him. An inch more, two, and he screamed. I shut my right eye. I must have made some other movement too, for Wolfe gripped my 221 arm. The scream stopped, with a gurgle that was just as bad, and when my eye opened the ropes were slack. 'That won't do, Peter,' the man in the chair said. 'You are reducing it to a routine. With your keen mind you have calculated that all you have to do is scream, and that time you screamed prematurely. Your scream is not musical, and we may be forced to muffle it. Would you prefer that?' No answer. 'I repeat,' the man in the chair said, 'that you are wrong to think you are finished. It is not impossible that we can still find you useful, but not unless you play fair with us. Much of the information you have brought us has been of no account because we already had it. Some of it has been false. You failed completely in the one important operation we have entrusted to you, and your excuses are not acceptable.' 'They're not excuses,' Peter Zov mumbled. He was choking. 'No? What are they?' 'They're facts. I had to be away.' 'You said that before. Perhaps I didn't explain fully enough, so I'll do it more patiently. I am a patient man. I admit that you must make sure to keep your employers convinced that you are to be trusted, since 222 if you don't you are of no value whatever, either to them or to us. I am quite realistic about it. You're being discourteous, Peter; you're not listening to me. Let him down, Bua.' The man on the left dropped the rope, turned to the wall, unfastened a chain from a peg, and played it out through a pulley on the ceiling. Peter Zov's feet got to the floor, and his arms were lowered, but only until his hands were even with his shoulders. He swayed from side to side as if he were keeping time to slow music. 'That should improve your manners temporarily,' the man in the chair told him. 'I was saying that I realize you must satisfy that fool, Gospo Stritar, that you serve him well, but you must also satisfy me, which is more difficult because I am not a fool. You could have carried out that operation without the slightest risk of arousing his suspicion, but instead you went to America on a mission for him, and how you have the impudence to come here and expect to be welcomed -- even to be paid! So I am paying you. If you answer my questions properly the payment may be more to your taste.' 'I had to go,' Peter Zov gasped. 'I thought you would approve.' 223 'That's a lie. You're not such a blockhead. Those enemies of progress who call themselves the Spirit of the Black Mountain -- you know their chief target is the Tito regime, not us, and it suits our purpose for them to make things as difficult as possible for Belgrade. There is little chance, perhaps none, that they will be able to overthrow the regime, but if they do that will suit us even better. We would march in and take over in a matter of hours. Our hostility to the Spirit of the Black Mountain is only a pretense, and you understood that perfectly. The more help they got from America the better. If that lackey of a crook, that Marko Vukcic who made himself rich pandering to the morbid appetites of the bloated American imperialists -- if he had increased his help tenfold it would have been a great favor to us. You knew that, and what did you do? At the command of Belgrade you went to America and killed him.' He made a gesture. 'If you thought we wouldn't know, you are so big a fool that you would be better dead. The night of March fourth you entered Italy at Gorizia, with papers under the name of Vito Rizzo, and went on to Genoa. You sailed from Genoa as a steward on the Amilia on March sixth. She docked at New York on March 224 eighteenth, and you went ashore that night and killed Marko Vukcic and were back on the Amilia before nine o'clock. I don't know who briefed you in New York, or whether you had help in such details as stealing the car, but that's of no importance. You stayed aboard the Amilia until she sailed on March twenty-first, left her at Genoa on April second, and returned to Titograd that night. I tell you all this so you may know that you can hide nothing from us. Nothing.' He gestured again. 'And on Sunday, April fourth, you came here to explain to these men that you had been unable to carry out our operation because you had been sent abroad on a mission. You found a woman here, drinking vodka with them, which was a surprise to you, but a greater surprise was to find that they already knew where you had been and what your mission was. Mistakes were made, I admit it, I only learned of them when I returned to Tirana yesterday from Moscow. They told you that they knew about your mission, and that alarmed you and you fled, and not only that, after you left they told the woman about you. They blame the vodka, but they will learn that it is not a function of vodka to drown a duty. Later they corrected their blunder by disposing of the woman -- that is in their favor 225 -- but they will have to be taught a lesson.' His tone sharpened. 'That can wait, but you can't. Up with him, Bua.' Peter Zov sputtered something, but Bua ignored it. He had it on Peter in bulk, so when he pulled the chain not only Peter's arms went up but also the rest of him. When the feet were well off the floor Bua hooked the chain on the peg and picked up the end of the rope and was ready to resume. So was his colleague. 'Of course,' the man in the chair said, 'you had to come when you got my message yesterday, since you knew what to expect if you didn't, so that's no credit to you. You can get credit only by earning it. First, once more, how many boats patrol out of Dubrovnik, and what are their schedules?' 'Damn it, I don't know!' Peter was choky again. 'Bah. My patience can't last forever. Split him.' As the men tightened the ropes Wolfe lowered himself to a squat, pulling at my sleeve, and I went down to him. He had the long knife in his right hand. I had been so intent with my eye at the hole that I hadn't seen him take it from his belt. His left hand was fumbling at a pocket. He whispered in my ear, 'We're going in when he 226 screams. You open the door, and I go first. Gun in one hand and capsule in the other.' I whispered back, 'Me first. No argument. Rescue him?' He nodded. As we straightened up he was still fumbling in his pocket, and I was reaching to the holster for the Marley. It didn't carry the punch of the Colt, but I knew it better. I admit I felt in my pocket to touch the capsule, but I didn't take it out, wanting the hand free. The door should be no problem. On our side was a hasp with a padlock hanging on a chain. He started to scream. A glance showed me that Wolfe's left hand had left his pocket, and he nodded at me. As I pushed the door open and stepped through, what was at the front of my mind was light. Its source hadn't been visible through the hole. If it was a lamp, as it must be, and if one of them killed it, knives would have it on guns. The only insurance against it would be to plug the three of them in the first three seconds. I didn't do that, I don't know why -- probably because I had never shot a man unless there was nothing else left. The scream drowned the sound of our entry, but Bua saw us and dropped the rope and goggled, and then the other one, and the man in the chair jumped up and whirled to face 227 us. He was closest, and I put the Marley on him. Wolfe, beside me, with the hand that held the knife at his belt level, started to say something but was interrupted. The closest man's hand went for his hip. Either he was a damn fool or a hero, or because I didn't say anything he thought I wasn't serious. I didn't try anything fancy like going for his arm or shoulder, but took him smack in the chest at nine feet. As I moved the gun back to level, the hand of the man on the right darted back and then forward, and how I knew a knife was coming and jerked myself sidewise the Lord only knows. It went by, but he was coming too, pulling something from his belt, and I pressed the trigger and stopped him. I wheeled left and saw a sight. Bua was at the wall with his knife raised, holding it by the tip, and Wolfe, with his knife still at belt level, was advancing on him step by step, leaning forward in a crouch. When I asked him later why Bua hadn't let fly, he explained elementary knife tactics, saying that you never throw a knife against another knife at less than five meters, because if you don't drop your man in his tracks, which is unlikely if he's in a crouch, you'll be at his mercy. If I had known that I might have tried for Bua's shoulder, but I didn't, and 228 all I wanted was to get a bullet to him before his knife started for Wolfe. I fired, and he leaned against the wall, with his hand still raised. I fired again, and he went down. This was funny, or call it dumb. Before Bua even hit the floor I turned around to look for the light. I had entered the room with the light on top of my mind, and apparently it had stayed there and I had to get it off. It was a letdown to see that it came from three spots: two lanterns on a shelf to the right of the door, and one on the floor at the left. I had worried about nothing. Wolfe walked past me to the chair, sat, and said, 'Better look at them.' Peter Zov, still hanging, croaked something. Wolfe said, 'He wants down. Look at them first. One of them may be shamming.'
They weren't. I took my time and made sure. I suspected Bua when I put a piece of fuzz from my jacket on his nostrils, holding his lips shut, and it floated off, but two more tries showed that it had been only a current in the air. 'No shamming,' I reported. 'It was close quarters. If you wanted any --' 'This is what I wanted. Let him down.'
