Comes the Dark Stranger - Jack Higgins [15]
Shane looked around the room and smiled faintly, ‘You seem to have done all right for yourself since. The porter told me you were Doctor Crowther now. When did that happen?’
Crowther shrugged. ‘A couple of years back. I did some research and it happened to come out right, that’s all.’ He grinned. ‘I’m married now, you know. Got a little girl. You must come out to dinner one night and meet my wife.’
‘I’d like that,’ Shane said. He got to his feet and walked to a glass case containing specimens. As he examined them he said, ‘Do you ever see any of the old bunch?’
Crowther shook his head. ‘I visited Charles Graham when I first came home. It was such a harrowing experience, I’ve never cared to repeat it.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Shane told him. ‘I called on him this morning. What about the other two? Do you ever see anything of them?’
‘Not socially, if that’s what you mean,’ Crowther said. ‘I met Reggie Steele in town one day and he asked me to have a drink with him, but I was in a hurry,’ He laughed. ‘To tell you the truth, I wasn’t particularly keen.’
‘Why not?’ Shane asked, suddenly alert.
Crowther shrugged. ‘It’s the old story. The man one knew in the army seems a different person out of it.’
Shane looked across at him strangely. ‘Doesn’t what happened out there mean anything to you at all?’
Crowther looked surprised. ‘Korea?’ he said. ‘It’s a fading memory, thank God.’
‘And what about the temple and Colonel Li?’
Crowther held another match to the bowl of his pipe. ‘It gave me some troubled nights at first, but not for long. It’s amazing how quickly nature helps us to forget the really unpleasant things.’
Shane shook his head and said with conviction, ‘I can never forget. At nights I think of Li and that damned club foot of his and of Simon Faulkner and what they did to him.’ He walked back to his chair and when he sat down, his eyes burned straight into Crowther’s. ‘Most of all I can’t forget that somebody told Li what he wanted to know.’ He smiled strangely. ‘We never did find out who that person was.’
For a moment Crowther stared at him, his face expressionless and then he laughed lightly. ‘No, we never did, did we?’
There was a further moment of silence, pregnant with meaning and Shane said, ‘I know it wasn’t me and it couldn’t have been Graham because he was lying unconscious in my cell at the time.’
Crowther laid his pipe carefully on the desk and leaned back in his chair. He said calmly, ‘Are you suggesting it was me, Shane? Is that what you’ve come to find out after all these years?’
Shane’s eyes bored into him. ‘Was it?’ he said.
There was a sudden, vibrant stillness in the room as the two men sat there, poised on the brink of something terrible and then Crowther laughed shortly and leaned down and unlaced his right shoe. He pulled off the sock and raised his foot so that Shane could see it clearly. There were no toes, just a puckered line of scar tissue. Crowther said, ‘Take a good look.’
Shane leaned across, his face expressionless. ‘How did it happen?’
Crowther started to pull on his sock. ‘On the march north in that prison column. I omitted to tell you they made us walk to China. It took us almost five months. It was a hard winter that year. Most of the men died. I was lucky. All I got was frostbitten toes. When gangrene set in, there was only one thing to do. I sliced them off with a jack-knife.’
He finished lacing his shoe and stood up. He was limping slightly as he came round the desk. ‘If it was me, it didn’t do me much good, did it?’ he said.
Shane stood up and held out his hand. ‘No, I don’t suppose it did - if it was you.’
He walked to the door and as he opened it, Crowther said, ‘For God’s sake, leave it alone, man. It’s dead and buried now. What good can it possibly do anybody to know now?’
Shane turned slowly, a peculiar smile on his face.
‘You’re the third person today who’s said that,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder why everybody’s so worried.’
Crowther’s shoulders sagged and something