The Notched Ears

Dr. Gregory Hewson shortened his long angular stride in order to keep step with the white clad figure of his chubby friend, A. Kahn Haidari of the Calcutta Police, as they walked down a corridor of the Indian General Hospital of Calcutta. Even though it was quite early in the morning, Dr. Hewson’s seersucker suit was plastered to him with perspiration generated by the humid heat of Calcutta in the monsoon season.

“But, Gregory, my friend. I cannot understand how you have induced me to bring you here. It isn’t as though you were a medical man. You are an anthropologist and a psychologist. If the department should hear of my bringing you here to see one of these strange cases of mutilation, I would be subjected to criticism.”

“Look, Kahn. What you told me last night at dinner about these screwy cases interested me. Nobody is going to object. Just relax. I want to see this fellow that got chopped up. After all, I’ve got to do something until my ship arrives. The department I was working for has folded completely. You are a good enough friend to keep me from going crazy in this heat by giving me something to think about, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I will have to be. There is no resisting you, my friend. Here is the ward.” They walked from the hall into a large room lined on both sides by beds placed closely together. All of the beds were filled with patients of all shades of Oriental and Indian color. A. Kahn Haidari stopped by the bed of a lean intelligent looking Indian. He looked as though he belonged to a hill country race.

Gregory leaned forward and said, “Urdu bolta hai?”

The man smiled up at him and said, “Yes, sahib, I speak Urdu, but my English is good. It will be easier for you. Speak in English.”

“Thank you. I would like to hear how you received these wounds. Mr. Haidari tells me that you were walking peaceably out in the Tollygunge section and you were attacked. Did you see those who attacked you?”

“No, sahib. I saw no one. There was merely a great blow on my head. The next I remember, I awoke in a field near an English club with these many wounds. I was weak from loss of blood, but I crawled to the English club and they obtained help for me. Now I grow rapidly well.”

“You were in a Japanese prison in Rangoon?”

“Yes, sahib. I was captured while serving with the British Fourteenth Army. I was liberated by that same army after many months in prison. I recovered in hospital here in Calcutta and was released last week. I was attacked while trying to find a cousin I have not seen in a great many years.”

Gregory spoke in an undertone to Haidari, “If it can be arranged, I would like to see his wounds.”

Haidari shrugged his shoulders and cast a helpless look at the ceiling. “I have done this much, I may as well do all. Nurse! Come here, please. My colleague wishes to inspect this man’s wounds.”

The Indian nurse bent over the bed, and with deft gentle hands removed the bandages which covered the man’s upper arm, the outside of his thigh and the outside of the calf of his leg, all on the right side. Then she went around the bed and started to remove similar bandages on the man’s left side.

Haidari interrupted, “Never mind, Nurse. Just the left ear. Gregory, all of those wounds on the left side are identical to the ones on the right. Now, look here. See there are two deep longitudinal cuts on the upper arm about four inches long. Three similar ones on the thigh and only one on the calf. They are all about one inch deep and appear to have been made with a razor or scalpel. Come around here and look at that ear. See, the top quarter of the ear has been completely slashed away. It is gone.”

Gregory whistled in surprise and said, “Do you mean to tell me that the eight people who have also been mutilated in this fashion have had identical marks?”

“Identical, except for the fact that the number of longitudinal cuts on the arms and legs vary in each instance, but there is always at least one, never more than three. Two of the victims died because too long a time elapsed between when they were cut and when they received aid.”

Gregory looked at his watch and said hurriedly, “Thanks, Kahn, but I’ve got to run and see the American consul at ten. Something about a passport. But I want a chance to go over the other facts of this case with you. Suppose you let me buy you lunch at Firpo’s. Can you be there at twelve-thirty just inside the front door? Good! See you then.” And the bushy-haired figure of the young American disappeared out the door of the ward. Haidari and the man on the bed looked at each other with that sad, amused expression which means, all over the world, “These Americans!”

The huge upstairs dining room at Firpo’s was crowded, and they had to wait for nearly ten minutes for a table. Gregory stood and watched that dizzy expanse of whirling fans which covered the ceiling, and envied Haidari’s cool costume — a white linen shirt with the tail hanging outside his thin white cotton pants. At last they were seated. A turbaned waiter took their order and Gregory began the second phase of his inquisition.

“Let’s do it this way, Kahn. I’ll go over the facts that you have given me, and you stop me if I’m wrong.”

“That will be excellent, but there are not many facts available. Start, please.”

“Fact number one is that all of the nine people who have been chopped up in your fair city spent some time as guests of the Japanese in one of their prisons in or near Rangoon.”

“Right.”

“All of the victims state that they were very poorly treated during the first half of their imprisonment, culminating in a series of beatings which nearly killed them. They remember little about that period, in fact, being conscious so little of the time.”

“Right again.”

“Then they were well treated for the balance of their confinement.”

“That is what they have all said.”

“But the fact that intrigues me the most is that they all claim to have received a small notch in the top of the left ear. Right on top, in fact. A notch about a quarter of an inch deep and the same amount wide. Now all of those notches are gone. Slashed off. What do you make of that?”

“As I have told you before, I make nothing of it. I cannot understand it.”

“And that takes care of everything we know?”

“It does. There is nothing else to go on. Even if we find ten more persons on whom the same violence has been used we will learn no more, I think.”

For many minutes Gregory sat in silence, his brow furrowed. From time to time he would run his brown hand through his dark mop of hair. Then he looked up again. “You say that three of the victims were Europeans?”

“Three were. Two were British subjects resident out here. We call them domiciled Europeans. The third was a Greek who was caught in Burma but who had previously lived for many years in Calcutta.”

“Have you checked their stories of the prison camps with other released persons?”

“But of course. The stories agree.”

“Could these people have traded a promise to work for Japan after the war for good treatment while in prison? Could the notched ear have been a warning?”

“That was considered, but all of these people are most emphatic about their loyalty to India and their hatred of the Japanese. I, for one, believe them. They are all bewildered by what has happened to them.”

“Did you ever hear of a notched ear being used to mark agents employed by the Japanese?”

“No. The only mark we know of was used in North Burma. It was a deep cut between the thumb and first finger. The scar, a white line, helped our military in segregating those who worked as agents. Many of them are now in the Red Fort in Old Delhi. It will be a long time before they walk as free men again.”

“Is there any remote chance of this mutilation having anything to do with religious fanatics or political matters?”

“About politics, I cannot say. About religion I can say definitely no. It has been my affair for many years to know all aspects of religious conflict here in Bengal Province. This trouble does not fit with the facts I have accumulated.”

“Well, Kahn, I’m stopped cold. It doesn’t make sense.” Gregory shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in bewilderment.

“You know as much as I do, and your guesses will be as good as mine until we get more facts. But understand, Gregory, that you must not talk of this, only to me. Now we must wait for something more to develop.”

“Waiting will get you nowhere, only more hospital cases and deaths. Why not figure out a plan to trap those who are doing the mutilations?” Gregory’s voice was eager.

“A plan! But how?”

“Get a good idea of what those original notches looked like, and notch up a couple of your huskier policemen. Send them out armed to wander the streets out of uniform.”

“Oh, no! I would not have the authority. That is a wild plan. That sounds American. We could never do that sort of thing here in Calcutta.” Incredulity and alarm showed in Kahn’s face.

“Okay, okay. Skip it. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked.”

Soon the talk shifted to other matters, and as soon as they finished their meal they left the table as others were waiting. As Kahn walked back to his office the last words Gregory had spoken kept repeating in his mind, “I’ve got two more weeks to waste, and I am not going to get on that boat without knowing the answer to this.” Kahn shook his head sadly at the insatiable curiosity of his American friend.

Gregory went back and sat in the lobby of the Great Eastern Hotel. As he listlessly watched the colorful crowd moving through the ornate corridor his mind was busy with the problem of the notched ears. He called on all of his experience in the East to help his thinking, but to no advantage. Two weeks to spend. Two weeks to sit in the heat of Calcutta, city of strong stench and rotting beggars, city of violence, city of overhead fans, fried prawns and gin gimlets. Gregory Hewson was a man whose mind ranged like a hungry beast, searching for problems and leaping on them to suck dry the mystery. He depended on problems and complications to keep his mind alive, for he was a man who could sink into an apathy of boredom that was bottomless. He imagined hell to be a place where all of the problems were already solved.

As he sat his hand crept up and he began to finger the tip of his left ear. He realized that the idea he was getting was foolish, but he couldn’t resist it. Then he pulled out a notebook and began to hunt for the address of a British doctor he had met up in Simla.

Three hours later Gregory was again seated in the lobby with a small white bandage on the upper half of his left ear. His tension was gone. He sat completely relaxed, and ordered a gin and water from one of the turbaned waiters who roved the lobby. Gregory decided to spent the next five or six days in relaxation and the pursuit of coolness and comfort. By then his ear would be healed sufficiently to take off the bandage. He sipped his drink and smiled as he remembered the expression on the face of his doctor friend as he had outlined his request.

Six days later Gregory removed the bandage and inspected his ear in the mirror in his bathroom at the hotel. Only a pinkness around the notch showed that it was recent. But the pinkness was only noticeable under close inspection. Then he sat down and scribbled a note to A. Kahn Haidari and placed it on his bedside cabinet where it would be found if he didn’t return. He hoped that the notch was the right size and shape, but Kahn’s description had been very specific, so it didn’t worry him. He then dug out his most comfortable shoes and put them on. His last preparation was to strap on a snub nose thirty-two caliber revolver in a spring clip shoulder holster. The weapon was so small that no bulge was noticeable under his loose-fitting seersucker suit coat. Throughout all of this preparation he wore the satisfied expression of an ardent bridge fan laying out a problem hand to be solved.

Gregory never tired of walking the streets of Calcutta. Here were millions of people who lived so close to the edge of starvation that any scarcity of the basic foodstuffs or change in the prices could cause mass deaths. Here was teeming fertility that contributed to India’s population increase of nine million persons each year. The great famine of forty-three had killed four million persons, most of them in Bengal Province. Gregory smiled a bitter smile as he remembered the newspaper editorial he had read which stated that the great famine had been a failure as it had only killed four million, thus leaving a net increase of five million in population for that year. Five million more to be so poorly fed, poorly housed and poorly educated that by comparison the most poverty ridden hamlets in the states are miracles of plenty.

He watched the naked children begging, the expensive saris of the women, the lumbering ox carts, the bicycle rickshaws, the dilapidated taxis and all the thronging color of the second largest city in the British Empire.

But always he directed his footsteps toward the meaner sections of the city. Around him the scenes of poverty and degradation grew worse as he walked further from the hotel section. As dusk approached he noticed a nearly naked man lying in the gutter. He could have been drunk or drugged or sick or dead. The people who walked past him did not even glance at him. If he was still there at dawn one of the city disposal trucks would investigate.

As it grew dark Gregory checked off the day as a failure. He was certain that no one would notice the tiny notch at night. Since he didn’t want to become a victim of bandits, he hailed a rickshaw to take him back the long miles to his hotel. As he sat in the vehicle listening to the pad pad of the naked feet of the rickshaw coolie on the quiet pavement he began to mentally lay out his route for the next day. He noticed the sound of another pair of coolie’s feet coming along the road behind him at a faster pace. He saw the second coolie then, out of the corner of his eye, jogging along even with him and then slowly pulling ahead. As he started to turn in idle curiosity and look at the passenger in the second rickshaw the entire world exploded. His last conscious impression was of a blinding flash and pain in the back of his head, and the feeling of falling forward into soft, complete blackness.

Consciousness returned slowly to Gregory. His splitting head and feeling of nausea seemed strangely familiar. He opened his eyes and saw nothing. He thought at first that it was night, then as he stared into the darkness and saw no single glimmer of light, a sudden overpowering fear of blindness shook him. The fear speeded up his return to complete awareness of his surroundings. His cheek was pressed against a cool damp surface. The air smelled like a cellar, and he assumed that he was lying face down on dirt. He could move his legs freely, but his arms were lashed together in front of him. They were cramped and numb. He rolled over on his back and felt the tingle of circulation returning to his arms. Then he noticed that he was wearing only what felt to be his underwear shorts and his shoes and socks. He tried to stretch his numb arms and stopped as he felt sharp pain in his upper arms. He reached down with his chin and pulled his arms up to one side. His heart leaped as he felt the adhesive of a bandage under his chin.

Then it hadn’t been bandits that knocked him out in the rickshaw. But why were only the arms cut? Why not the legs? Why was he bandaged? Why had he not been left in the street? Then he suddenly realized why the nausea seemed familiar. It was the same feeling that he had had after an operation. He had been anaesthetized. But the fear about his eyes worried him more than his immediate personal danger.

He climbed cautiously to his feet with much difficulty and tried to stand erect. When he was still in a very stooped position, his head hit a rough ceiling. With his bound hands outstretched in front of him he felt his way around and discovered that he was in a cell about eight feet long and five feet wide with a ceiling only about five feet high. He found no windows. So his fear for his eyes began to disappear. To make certain, he backed to the wall, bent his head down and hacked at the masonry wall with his heel until the metal reinforcement on his heel struck a very visible and very satisfying spark.

It took him a long time to find the entrance to his cell. He finally felt it over in a comer, a wooden door which set flush with the masonry and was only two feet square. He knelt and pressed his nose to the crack between the door and the masonry. He could feel a faint stir of air on his lips, and that reassured him because the air was so foul in the cell that he felt weak and was forced to breathe rapidly. Having learned all that he could from his surroundings, he sat on the floor and leaned against the wall beside the door. He gave up trying to loosen his wrists after a very few tries.

Several times he slept. He had no idea of how much time passed. He utilized his waking hours in trying to make some sense out of his confinement. But all he could develop were theories. He had insufficient facts for his scientific mind to grasp and produce a positive answer. It made no sense.

He was asleep when the low door swung open. It made a grating noise that awakened him instantly. A flickering light shone through the door.

“Crawl out, Sahib.” The words sounded as though his jailor had little English. Gregory had great difficulty crawling with his hands lashed together. But he managed to wriggle through the doorway. He rose to his feet and saw, facing him, an Indian of the lowest caste. He had black hair growing from under the knot of soiled rags on his head. His eyes glinted in the light of a small dish of oil in which a lighted wick was floating. He held the lamp in his left hand and a short heavy club in his right. He pointed the club out to one side, and said, “Go!” Gregory looked and saw a long black corridor. The flickering light did not throw enough of a beam to show the far end of the corridor. Gregory walked slowly and apprehensively into the gloom, the Indian close on his heels. After about twenty feet he came to a narrow stairway leading up. He looked inquiringly back over his shoulder, but the Indian merely jabbed him with the club. He climbed up a flight, and heard the roar of street noises. He paused, was jabbed again, and continued up the second flight. It ended abruptly at a closed door. He stopped and the Indian reached around him and tapped on the door lightly with the club.

A loud call of “Idar ao!” came from beyond the door. A sudden wave of weakness swept over Gregory, and for a second he thought he would faint. The Indian shoved the door open.

For a moment Gregory thought he was in delirium. The door opened into a luxurious modern office with discreet indirect lighting reflecting soft beams from the highly polished desk and comfortable chairs. The rugs were a thick softness from paneled wall to paneled wall. To his right was what appeared to be the main door. The desk was directly in front of him. But as soon as his eyes were adjusted to the light and he obtained his first distinct impression of the man behind the desk, all details of the office faded from his conscious mind.

An Indian of the upper classes sat behind the desk, smiling with disdain at the naked dirty figure of his unwilling guest. He wore a jeweled turban in a dusty pink shade which set off the coffee cream color of his face. It was there that his resemblance to high caste Indians stopped. Instead of the delicate facial bone structure so common among his class, this Indian had a heavy protruding jaw, thick solid looking cheek bones and a massive ridge of bone across his brows. His arms, folded on the desk top, looked unnaturally long and heavy.

After leaving Gregory standing uncomfortably for many long seconds, the man spoke in a gentle voice with a distinct Oxford inflection, “Won’t you please sit down, Dr. Hewson. Over here, please, opposite me. That is excellent. Now we will have a nice talk.” He reached in the drawer of the desk, drew out Gregory’s revolver and laid it on the desk top, and motioned to the guard to leave.

As soon as the guard closed the door gently behind himself, Gregory cleared his throat and said, “You must excuse me if I seem speechless. The guest room you gave me and now all this...” He gestured at the room with his bound hands. “It has me puzzled.”

“And you, Dr. Hewson, have us puzzled. You have injected into a very simple and effective plan an element of doubt. My people are worried. So it becomes necessary to find out what your plans are, and who devised this foolish trick to confuse us. Your papers indicate that you are an American, about to return to your own country.” The man’s tone was pleasant, and in spite of himself, Gregory found it hard to keep from relaxing in the comfort of the chair. But he knew that he would have to keep thinking and planning in order to continue to live. There was an undercurrent of menace in the office of his host.

“Correct. I am about to return to my own country, and I fail to understand why I have become so important to you. I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I want to do is to get out of here.”

“I am speaking, Dr. Hewson, of your notched ear. It has caused us much trouble. We have discovered that you are not one of those we seek. Therefore the notched ear must be a trick. Once we have discovered, either in pleasant conversation or in a manner more harsh, what induced you to attempt this trick, you will most certainly not return to your country. You will take a quiet trip down the Hoogly River, without benefit of boat. Of that I can assure you.”

Gregory forced his expression into a picture of bewilderment. “My ear? The notch in it? I got that at a very rough party.”

“Nonsense, my good fellow. That ear has been examined by a very good surgeon while you were... ah... sleeping, shall we say? He tells me that it is a surgical matter, that notch. That it was done very recently. It was no accident. We have looked into that.”

“I can tell you nothing.” Gregory looked down at the clean bandages on his own upper arms. For long minutes there was silence in the office.

“Let me present your predicament to you in this fashion, Dr. Hewson. You are going to die. No matter what you tell me, you will die. It is ordained. Your only chance of finding out why you are here is to speak frankly to me. Then at least you can die without bewilderment and confusion. I will tell you anything you wish to know. That is the one small favor I can perform for you. Come now. We will exchange our thoughts on this matter.”

Gregory moistened his dry lips. He was frightened. He could think of no way out of his dilemma. Obviously, the fact that he was an American citizen made no difference to the intelligent, persuasive man behind the desk. He could not feel that the threats were bluff. He knew in his innermost mind that he was to die. So he decided to find out as much as he could about the last problem that he would ever have an opportunity to solve.

“You win, then. No one is in on this foolish plan of mine except myself. A man on the Calcutta Police told me of the problem of the mutilations. I thought I could find out something this way. I went too far. I have certain ideas regarding the plan. That is all. I had this notch made in order to be able to dig deeper into the mystery by making a decoy of myself. May I tell you what I have guessed?”

“Most certainly. And I shall correct your guesses. It is my honor to satisfy the curiosity of a man of science such as yourself.”

“Okay, then. My first impression of these mutilations was wrong. I thought in terms of revenge for something these people had done. Then it occurred to me that the pattern of the mutilations indicated that someone was trying to find something hidden in the limbs, in the tissues of these unfortunate people. Is that right?”

“That is correct. You are a man of intelligence. I knew it.”

“Then why the notched ear? It must be because the person in whose tissues these mysterious small articles would be hidden would be unconscious of the fact that they were carrying these articles around. The fact that the ear was slashed to remove the notch would indicate that whoever was doing the collecting wished to avoid the chance of searching in the limbs of the same person twice. I could not figure out why the carrier of the articles was not entirely destroyed after the collection by you, or your organization.”

“I am afraid that was a foolish bit of bravado on my part. I had a childish urge to baffle the local police. A form of egotism, I imagine.”

“I could not imagine a search for notched ears in all of India, so I made the assumption that only those persons who would be likely to return to Calcutta were disfigured.”

“Correct.”

“But what could be hidden in the tissues of persons in a Japanese internment camp which would be collected in Calcutta? What could be the relationship? The only relationship I could imagine was between the Japanese, and their agents in India. But that seemed like a most peculiar arrangement — too unwieldy and full of danger. Then it occurred to me that there was a large group of Indians in Japanese service in Burma — Bose’s Army... the Indian Army of Independence. That made more sense to me. So I imagined a situation where a few of the more important men in Bose’s outfit, say his lieutenants, got together and figured that Japan was on the downgrade. They went to the Japanese and threatened to withdraw their support. The Japanese were worried because they needed the additional Indian troops in the defense of the Arakan sector. So they offered additional riches to these lieutenants.”

“That is an almost exact description of what happened. We felt that the money they offered might mean nothing. If it were to be paid us, it might be removed when and if defeat came, and we would be penniless. We wanted them to send it back to India, where it would be waiting for those of us who returned if the war were lost. But there was no one here we could trust. The situation was deadlocked for about a month, when an obscure officer of the Japanese devised the scheme of turning some of the prisoners into walking banks, for us to collect the funds from when we returned. It sounded most foolish at the time, but it worked. None of them suspected why they were being so mistreated, and then suddenly treated with consideration.”

“Then any small objects of great value could have been used?”

“Correct again. In the flesh of both the right and left arm and leg we could conceal up to a half pound of gems, drugs, platinum. I am one of the two who returned with the details of the plan. I am quickly becoming a wealthy man. The other man who knew the plan died suddenly some weeks ago. Very sad. Those articles which might have set up a bad reaction with the flesh of our walking bank vaults were contained in plastic capsules which resist corrosion. The incisions to bury them were most skillfully made, and of course, the prisoners had so many other wounds that they detected no particular pattern on their own bodies. The items were buried at a sufficient depth that lumps could not be felt.”

“I have never heard of a stranger plan. It’s fantastic.”

“I’m afraid, my dear doctor, that you won’t have the chance to try to make anyone believe you. It is time for you to prepare your thoughts for a short trip to the river. Let me see, you have about two hours. Believe me when I say that I am truly grieved that you must die. You are a brilliant man.”

“There is one small grain of cheer in my dying, however. You will soon join me.”

“What! You are speaking nonsense.”

“I assure you as a man of science that I am speaking nothing but the truth.”

“I fail to understand.”

“I can best explain it this way, by asking you a question. What do people whom you have not seen for two years say to you when you meet again?”

The Indian’s face showed surprise. “Why, they act strange. They find it hard to recognize me. They say I have changed a great deal.”

“Precisely. In the last two years your jaw has grown longer and heavier. Your head has grown in size. Your neck has thickened. In fact all of the bones of your head and shoulders have grown thicker and heavier. They are growing each day.”

“But I have seen doctors about this. It has bothered me. But I am told not to worry. It is nothing.”

“Will it be nothing as your bones steadily thicken? Nothing as your brain is slowly crushed by the expanding bone? As you go insane? As you die in ghastly pain?” Gregory leaned forward.

“You are trying to frighten me! It is not so!”

“Look in your mirror. It is a disease of the glands called acromegaly. I noticed as soon as I saw you that you have an acute form of it. I have worked with it in the states. It is only recently that a cure has been devised.”

“Tell me the cure!”

“And die myself? Don’t be silly.”

“What do you want? Are you trying to trick me?” Stark fear showed in the man’s eyes. He clutched the edge of the desk with his huge hands.

“I am not trying to trick you, and I can promise you one thing. That all of the tortures you could devise will not drag from me one word regarding the cure. I have had experience with pain, and I know that I can resist.”

The Indian looked across into Gregory’s level grey eyes and knew that he was hearing the truth. This determined American would die without giving up a scrap of information that would lead to a cure.

“I will let you die anyway.”

“That’s okay with me, Bud. I will die easier than you will. The sufferings of victims of your disease are horrible to watch. You come out on the dirty end of this deal. The riches you are digging out of these poor joes won’t do you any good.”

“I will visit your country.”

“You won’t have time. Besides, it’s still only experimental. Only I could get you the cure in time to save you.”

There was silence in the office. The Indian drummed nervously on the desk. Then he got up and went over to a mirror. He looked intently into it, rubbing his big hand along the heavy jaw bone. Then he turned back and faced Gregory, desperation in his eyes.

“What are your terms?”

“Come with me to the Calcutta police station.”

“No.”

“Okay, it’s your funeral.”

Ten minutes later pedestrians on Chowringhi Road blinked and stood with their mouths open as a well dressed Indian and a frowzy looking white man wearing only shorts and shoes came hurrying out of an ornate door onto the sidewalk. Gregory could hardly see after the dim lights of the office. He was astonished in that he had unconsciously believed that it was night. The glare of the sun was powerful. They climbed into a bright green taxi, a touring car with two turbaned Sikhs in the front seat. Ten minutes later they entered the main police station.

A. Kahn Haidari did not close his gaping mouth until Gregory had finished his long story. He kept looking first at Gregory and then at the stranger with such a vacant expression that a burble of laughter lay just behind each of Gregory’s words. At last he finished, and the three sat in silence.

“But Gregory, my friend, how will I explain to the...” His voice trailed off in disconsolate confusion. The stranger had been fidgeting throughout the recital. Now he spoke eagerly to Gregory.

“The cure! About the cure! You will fix it with the police so that I can be treated? Soon?”

Gregory smiled slowly and lazily. “Look, old man. You don’t need any cure. Sure you’ve got acromegaly, but it’s only a chronic disease. It stops after a while and just leaves you with an oversize head, hands and feet. In fact, in my country there is a wrestler they call the Angel who has made a fortune out of the weird look he got from having acromegaly. You can relax.”

The dark eyes blazed. “You tricked me! You gave me your word!”

“If you mean that it wasn’t sporting, not cricket, not befitting a wearer of the old school tie, you’re quite right, old boy. You can spend your time in the jolly old jail remembering that I am just a crude American who dosen’t understand the niceties of civilized behavior.”