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noise-less laughter.
CHAPTER V
IT HAD been a simple gesture of a kind that Simon Templar could never resist,
and it gave him exactly the same unfathomably primitive satisfaction that an
urchin derives from putting his thumb to his nose and extending his fingers
outwards. It was a moral catharsis that touched the well-springs of all
unsophisticated human bliss. And if he could have witnessed the re-ception of
his jest his pleasure would have been almost too ecstatic to be borne.
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Abdul Osman himself came out on deck to supervise the hoisting up of the sack,
and the leer on his face did not improve his beauty. Mr. Trape was beginning
to recover by that time, and the sack was squirming vigorously to an
accompaniment of hoarse grunts and indistinguishable words.
"He must have a head of iron, that Englishman," muttered Osman. "He should
have slept for many hours."
The thought crossed his mind that a man with a constitution like that would
stand much torture, and his mouth watered at the prospect. He lifted his foot
and kicked the sack cold-bloodedly, and it yelped at each thump of his shoe.
"Before you die you shall have much more to shout for," said Osman gloatingly.
"Take him to the saloon."
Rough hands dragged the sack below, and Abdul Osman followed. Then it was cut
open, and the storm broke.
Osman, it must be admitted, had never been con-sidered even attractively ugly.
He was a short, pot-bellied man with a fat sallow face and black hair that
covered his head in tight curls. Out of his own hearing, it was said that much
of his family tree was as black as his hair, and certainly he had a squat nose
and a yellow-ish tinge in the whites of his pig-like eyes that supported the
theory. A closely clipped black moustache curved in a broad arch over his
thick, pouting lips and gave his face, even in repose, an expression of
sensual bestiality that was nauseating.
And his rage at the sight of Mr. Trape emerging from the sack put him right
out of comparison with anything human. His face resembled nothing so much as
the fat end of a bloated and malignant slug. His eyes almost disappeared in
the rolls of unhealthy-looking fat that creased down on them. Clearly marked
circles of bright red sprang up and burned on his cheeks, plainly revealing
the edges of the skin-grafting oper-ations that had obliterated the Saint's
brands; the rest of his jowl was blotched yellow and grey. And out of his
distorted mouth flowed a stream of shrill profanity that was horrible to hear.
Nor was his wrath purely vocal. He kicked Trape again, and kicked and tore at
the men who had carried in the sack until they fled from the room. And then,
with the most lasting and concentrated malignance, he kicked his secretary,
who had played no part in the proceedings at all.
But that was nothing unusual. Mr. Clements was there to be kicked. He was
kicked whenever anything went wrong, and just as impartially when everything
went right. Abdul Osman kicked him, cuffed him, and spat in his face; and his
secretary cringed. There was something hideous about his quivering submission.
For Clements was a white man. His hair was almost ash-blond, his shrinking
eyes grey.
"Swine!" Osman hissed.
His sunken eyes glittered with the vindictive pleasure that soothed his senses
whenever he heaped humiliations on that cowering travesty of a man. Even in
that paroxysm of fury the sensation was like balm to his uncontrolled
nerves- perhaps it was the very thing that finally turned the tide of his
unleashed savagery and began to restore him to reason. For that crawling
servile thing that had once been a man was the most permanently soothing
monument to Abdul Osman's vanity in the world. Simon Templar, as a helpless
prisoner, might supplant him; but until the day came when Osman could look
down and spit in the face of that ultimate triumph the degradation of Clements
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reigned as his supreme achievement.
Less hastily, ten times more malignantly, Osman reached out a hand, grasped
his secretary by the nose, and forced him to his knees. He stared at him
con-temptuously for a moment; then he put a foot in his face and sprawled him
over.
"Get up, pig."
Clements obeyed.
"Look at me."
The white man raised his eyes slowly. Abdul Osman saw the red sparks of futile
hate glowing in their depths like hot embers, and laughed.
"You know that I always have my revenge, don't you?" His almost perfect
English had a sibilant accent, as if a snake had spoken. "How unfortunate it
was that my misguided parents should have sent me to an English school!
Unpleasant for me, perhaps; but how much more enduringly regrettable for you!
I was a dirty nigger then, wasn't I? And it seemed so humorous to you to
humiliate me. I trust you look back on those days with satisfaction, Clements
?"
The man did not answer.
"It was such a pity that you began to try the needle, and then found you
couldn't live without it. And then that you committed that indiscretion which
finally put you at my mercy.... You were so strong and healthy once, weren't
you?- so proud and brave! You would never have let me strike you. You would
have struck me yourself, like this."
His flat hand smacked the other's face from side to side once, twice.
"You would like to strike me again, wouldn't you? But then there is always the
certainty that you would have to bare your back to my little whip. It's
wonderful how hunger for the needle, and the entertainment of my little whip,
have curbed your spirits." He was play-ing with the man now, drugging his
disordered vanity again with the sadistic repetition of a scene that he had
played hundreds of times and never tired of. "Pah! I've crushed you so much
that now you haven't even the courage to kill yourself and end your misery.
You're mine, body and soul the idol of the school fawning on the dirty nigger.
Doesn't that reflection please you, Clements?" He was watching the silent man
with a shrewdness in his slow malevolence. "You'll be wanting the needle again
about now, won't you? I've a good mind to keep you waiting. It will amuse you [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]