A Rogue by Compulsion: An Affair of the Secret Service — John Shaqi
A Rogue by Compulsion: An Affair of the Secret ServiceBridges, Victor
General
A Rogue by Compulsion: An Affair of the Secret Service
Bridges, Victor
Secret service -- Fiction; Spy stories
Then there was Tommy Morrison. Somehow or other I didn't think Tommy
would be quite as anxious as Joyce. I could almost see him slapping
his leg and laughing that great laugh of his, as he read about my
theft of the bicycle and my wild dash down the hill past the warder.
He was a great believer in me, was Tommy--and I felt sure that nothing
but the news of my recapture would shake his faith in my ability to
survive.
It was good to know that, whatever the rest of the world might be
thinking, these two at least would be following my escape with a
passionate hope that I should pull through.
Just about six o'clock in the evening of the next day Savaroff
returned. I heard the car drive up to the house, and then came the
sound of voices and footsteps, followed by the banging of a door.
After that there was silence for perhaps twenty minutes while my two
hosts were presumably talking together in one of the rooms below.
Whether Sonia was with them or not I could not tell.
At last I heard some one mounting the stairs, and a moment later
McMurtrie's figure framed itself in the doorway.
"I'm afraid I am interrupting your work," he said, standing on the
threshold and looking down at the sheets of foolscap which littered
the table in front of me.
"Not a bit," I returned cheerfully. "I've just finished"; and I began
to gather up the fruits of my two-days' toil into something like
order.
He shut the door and came across to where I was sitting. "Do you mean
you have made out the full list of what you want?" he asked, picking
up one of the sheets and running his eye rapidly over the notes and
calculations.
"I have done it all in the rough," I replied, "except the drawing of
the shed. That will only take an hour or so."
"Excellent," he exclaimed. "I can see there won't be much time wasted
when we once get to work." Then he laid down the paper. "Tomorrow
morning I propose trying the first of our little operations. Savaroff
has brought me the things I needed, and I think we can finish the
whole business in a couple of days."
"What part of me are you going to start on?" I inquired with some
interest.
"I think I shall alter the shape of your nose first," he said. "It's
practically a painless operation--just one injection of hot paraffin
wax under the skin. After that you have only to keep quiet for a
couple of hours so that the wax can set in the right shape."
"What about the X-ray treatment?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "That's perfectly simple too. Merely a
matter of covering up everything except the part that we want exposed.
One uses a specially prepared sort of lead sheeting. There is
absolutely no danger or difficulty about it."
I thought at first that he might be purposely minimizing both
operations in order to put me at my ease, but as it turned out he was
telling me nothing except the literal truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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