“You should know,” I answered, and found I had strength enough left to slap her.
“Bitch,” I added.
The room I had had was still empty, but I did not find Doris. I was aware that I had been followed, probably by the doctor, but I wanted no part of him nor any of them just then; I closed the door. Then I lay face down on the bed and tried to stop thinking or feeling anything.
Presently I heard a gasp, and opened one eye; there was Doris. “What in the world?” she exclaimed and came over to me. I felt her gentle hands on me. “Why, you poor, poor baby!” Then she added, “Just stay there, don’t try to move. I’ll get the doctor.”
“No!”
“But you’ve got to have the doctor.”
“No. I won’t see him. You help me.”
She did not answer. Presently I heard her go out. She came back shortly—I think it was shortly—and started to bathe my wounds. The doctor was not with her.
She was not more than half my size but she lifted me and turned me when she needed to as if I had been the baby she had called me. I was not surprised by it; I knew she could take care of me.
I wanted to scream when she touched my back. But she dressed it quickly and said, “Over easy, now.”
“I’ll stay face down.”
“No,” she denied, “I want you to drink something, that’s a good boy.”
I turned over, with her doing most of the work, and drank what she gave me. After a bit I went to sleep.
I seem to remember being awakened later, seeing the Old Man and cursing him out. The doctor was there too—or it could just as well have been a dream.
Miss Briggs woke me up and Doris brought me breakfast; it was as if I had never been off the sick list. Doris wanted to feed me but I was well able to do it myself. Actually I was not in too bad shape. I was stiff and sore and felt as if I had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel; there were dressings on both arms and both legs where I had cut myself on the clamps, but no bones were broken. Where I was sick was in my soul.
Don’t misunderstand me. The Old Man could send me into a dangerous spot—and had done so, more than once—and I would not hold it against him. That I had signed up for. But I had not signed up for what he had done to me. He knew what made me tick and he had deliberately used it to force me into something I would never have agreed to, had I not been jockeyed into it. Then after he had gotten me where he wanted me, he had used me unmercifully.
Oh, I’ve slapped men around to make them talk. Sometimes you have to. But this was different. Believe me.
It was the Old Man that really hurt. Mary? After all, what was she? Just another babe. True, I was disgusted with her to the bottom of my soul for letting the Old Man talk her into being used as bait. It was all right for her to use her femaleness as an agent; the Section had to have female operatives; they could do things men could not do. There have always been female spies and the young and pretty ones had always used the same tools.
But she should not have agreed to use them against another agent, inside her own Section—at least, she should not have used them against me.
Not very logical, is it? It was logical to me. Mary shouldn’t have done it.
I was through, I was finished. They could go ahead with Operation Parasite without me; I’d had it. I owned a cabin up in the Adirondacks; I had enough stuff there in deep freeze to carry me for years—well, a year, anyhow. I had plenty of tempus pills and could get more; I would go up there and use them—and the world could save itself, or go to hell, without me.