The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [72]
I shouted a warning to Fischer, but he was already out in the passage. Geven was after him in a flash. By the time I got through the door, Fischer was already backing away and yelling for help. There was blood streaming from a gash on his face and he had his hands up trying to protect himself. Geven was hacking and slashing at him like a madman.
As I ran forward and clung onto the arm wielding the chopping knife, Harper came into the passage from the dining room.
“Senden illâllah!” bawled Geven.
Then Harper hit him in the side of the neck and he went down like an empty sack.
Fischer’s arms and hands were pouring blood now, and he stood there looking down at them as if they did not belong to him.
Harper glanced at me. “Get the car around, quick.”
I stopped the car at the foot of the steps and went in through the front of the house. It did not seem to be a moment for standing on ceremony.
Fischer was sitting in a marble-floored washroom just off the main hall. Harper and Miss Lipp were wrapping his hands and arms in towels; Miller was trying to stanch the face wound. The Hamuls were running round in circles.
Harper saw me and motioned to Hamul. “Ask the old guy where the nearest doctor is. Not a hospital, a private doctor.”
“I will ask him,” muttered Fischer. His face was a dirty gray.
I caught Hamul’s arm and shoved him forward.
There were two doctors in Sariyer, he said, but the nearest was outside Bülyükdere in the other direction. He would come to the villa if called by telephone.
Harper shook his head when Fischer told him this. “We’ll go to him,” he said. “We’ll give him five hundred lira and tell him you tripped over an electric fan. That should fix it.” He looked at Miss Lipp. “You and Leo had better stay here, honey. The fewer, the better.”
She nodded.
“I don’t know the way to this doctor’s house,” I said. “May we take Hamul as a guide?”
“Okay.”
Harper sat in the back with Fischer and a supply of fresh towels; Hamul came in front with me.
The doctor’s house was two miles along the coast road. When we got there, Fischer told Hamul to wait outside in the car with me; so it was not possible for me to walk back and tell the men in the Opel what was going on. Presumably, they would find out from the doctor later on. Hamul fingered the leather of the seat for a while, then curled up on it and went to sleep. I tried to see if I could get out without waking him, but the sound of the door opening made him sit up instantly. After that, I just sat there and smoked. I suppose that I should have written a cigarette packet message about the car doors and dropped it then—Hamul wouldn’t have noticed that—but at that point I still thought that I was going to be able to make a verbal report later.
They were inside well over an hour. When he came out, Fischer didn’t look too bad at first sight. The cut on his face had a lint dressing neatly taped over it, and his left arm was resting in a small sling of the kind that suggests comfort for a minor sprain rather than a serious injury. But when he got closer I could see that both his hands and forearms were quite extensively bandaged, and that the left hand was cupped round a thick pad taped so as to immobilize the fingers. I got out and opened the door for him. He smelled of disinfectant and surgical spirit.
He and Harper got in without a word, and remained silent on the way back to the villa.
Miller and Miss Lipp were waiting on the terrace. As I pulled up into the courtyard, they came down the steps. I opened the door for Fischer. He got out and walked past them into the house. Still, nothing was said. Hamul was already making for his own quarters at the back. Miller and Miss Lipp came up to Harper.
“How is he?” Miller asked. There was nothing solicitous about the question. It was a grim request for information.