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Authors: William Peter Blatty
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tightened the drawstring and knotted it. Another put his arms around the boy and held him still, so that he stayed within the compass of the column of light as he wildly thrashed, his eyes bulging in terror and his mouth gaping open in a soundless shriek while through the speakers rasped the lilts of
The Blue Danube
.
“This is truly regrettable,” Vlora uttered sadly. “Yes, it is. It truly is. But the danger to thousands outweighs the pain of one.” He stood up, walked over to a door, and pulled it open. “Come!” he commanded into the shadows of a dimly lit ante-room, summoning Major Tsu and the creaking old doctor with the black valise. The doctor moved quickly to the nearest corner, while Tsu took Vlora’s seat at the table. “Major Tsu will take my place from here out,” announced Vlora. He was staring at the Prisoner with fatherly patience. “You have clearly grown too used to me. Yes. Much too comfortable. That’s very clear. Major Tsu will resharpen your interest. In the meantime, do not think that this boy is an actor. He is not. Should you doubt that, I now give you proof.”
With a lift of his chin Vlora gestured toward the boy, and instantly “Laugher” plucked a knife from his pocket, unclasped it, and sliced off the screaming boy’s little finger, lazily tossing it onto the table in front of the Prisoner. It landed by the basket of fruit.
The Interrogator glared at his son with fury.
“
Damn
you!” he flung at him, seething. “
Damn
you!”
Against his orders that the finger be cut from the boy’s numb hand, Vlora’s son had cut the finger from the hand that had feeling. Vlora turned and strode angrily out of the chamber, fleetingly assailed, as he was from time to time, by a stabbing flash of doubt that surcease from pain for thousands could ever be purchased with the torment of one.
Vlora’s habit was to bludgeon and strangle such thoughts.
This time he did not.
What happened after that would be carefully analyzed but never quite understood; after all, the incontestable facts were so few: As he exited, Vlora had been hastily saluted by the two armed guards who were posted at the door. From there he had proceeded directly to his office, passing many other guards in the halls along the way. But after thirty-seven minutes Vlora suddenly decided to terminate Tsu’s experiment and, bursting from his office in search of a quarrel, he strode rapidly back to the questioning room. The two armed guards were not at their posts. Vlora found them inside, both of them stripped of their uniform and weapons. They were unconscious, concussed and drugged with hypnotics that had come from the doctor’s medical bag, while the old man himself, although not touched, had apparently suffered a fatal heart attack, and inasmuch as the boy was discovered alive, this meant that the number of those who had been killed totaled only four, not five as originally thought, and included a torturer who had died from a powerful blow with the heel of a hand that had instantaneously crushed his windpipe, and another whose spine had been broken by a single smash to the nape of his neck, while the back of Tsu’s skull had cracked wide open from the forceof his body being slammed against a wall. The other torturer, “Laugher,” Vlora’s son, greeted death without a noticeable change of expression except for his eyes, in which frozen forever was a faint odd glimmer of something that no one could properly identify, but more than anything resembled surprise. His neck had been broken.
The two guards who survived could tell their questioners little. On hearing a “scratching sound” on the door, one said, he had entered the chamber alone, caught a glimpse of the Prisoner for “only a flash” before feeling his hands around his throat and being rendered immediately unconscious by “something, some pressure that he put on my nerves.” The other guard, who’d gone into the chamber moments later, related an identical
The Blue Danube
.
“This is truly regrettable,” Vlora uttered sadly. “Yes, it is. It truly is. But the danger to thousands outweighs the pain of one.” He stood up, walked over to a door, and pulled it open. “Come!” he commanded into the shadows of a dimly lit ante-room, summoning Major Tsu and the creaking old doctor with the black valise. The doctor moved quickly to the nearest corner, while Tsu took Vlora’s seat at the table. “Major Tsu will take my place from here out,” announced Vlora. He was staring at the Prisoner with fatherly patience. “You have clearly grown too used to me. Yes. Much too comfortable. That’s very clear. Major Tsu will resharpen your interest. In the meantime, do not think that this boy is an actor. He is not. Should you doubt that, I now give you proof.”
With a lift of his chin Vlora gestured toward the boy, and instantly “Laugher” plucked a knife from his pocket, unclasped it, and sliced off the screaming boy’s little finger, lazily tossing it onto the table in front of the Prisoner. It landed by the basket of fruit.
The Interrogator glared at his son with fury.
“
Damn
you!” he flung at him, seething. “
Damn
you!”
Against his orders that the finger be cut from the boy’s numb hand, Vlora’s son had cut the finger from the hand that had feeling. Vlora turned and strode angrily out of the chamber, fleetingly assailed, as he was from time to time, by a stabbing flash of doubt that surcease from pain for thousands could ever be purchased with the torment of one.
Vlora’s habit was to bludgeon and strangle such thoughts.
This time he did not.
What happened after that would be carefully analyzed but never quite understood; after all, the incontestable facts were so few: As he exited, Vlora had been hastily saluted by the two armed guards who were posted at the door. From there he had proceeded directly to his office, passing many other guards in the halls along the way. But after thirty-seven minutes Vlora suddenly decided to terminate Tsu’s experiment and, bursting from his office in search of a quarrel, he strode rapidly back to the questioning room. The two armed guards were not at their posts. Vlora found them inside, both of them stripped of their uniform and weapons. They were unconscious, concussed and drugged with hypnotics that had come from the doctor’s medical bag, while the old man himself, although not touched, had apparently suffered a fatal heart attack, and inasmuch as the boy was discovered alive, this meant that the number of those who had been killed totaled only four, not five as originally thought, and included a torturer who had died from a powerful blow with the heel of a hand that had instantaneously crushed his windpipe, and another whose spine had been broken by a single smash to the nape of his neck, while the back of Tsu’s skull had cracked wide open from the forceof his body being slammed against a wall. The other torturer, “Laugher,” Vlora’s son, greeted death without a noticeable change of expression except for his eyes, in which frozen forever was a faint odd glimmer of something that no one could properly identify, but more than anything resembled surprise. His neck had been broken.
The two guards who survived could tell their questioners little. On hearing a “scratching sound” on the door, one said, he had entered the chamber alone, caught a glimpse of the Prisoner for “only a flash” before feeling his hands around his throat and being rendered immediately unconscious by “something, some pressure that he put on my nerves.” The other guard, who’d gone into the chamber moments later, related an identical
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