Read QB VII for Free Online

victory. From here, there could be no further delays. The fascist would be brought to heel.
    Thomas Bannister took all of this with the apparent dispassionate calm that stamped his personality and career as a human refrigerator.
    To the man who had suffered the most, it mattered the least. Eli Janos would still be a eunuch when it was over and it did not matter one way or the other.
    They were seated and the room darkened. Before them was a glass-paneled room with a height marker on the rear wall. The men in prison uniform were marched in. They blinked from the sudden shower of light. A police officer directed them to face the dark room beyond the glass.
    Adam Kelno stood second from the right in a mixture of tall and short and fat and thin people. Eli Janos leaned forward and squinted. Immediate identification eluded him so he started at the left side of the line-up.
    “Do take your time,” Magistrate Griffin said.
    All that broke the silence was the deep wheezing of Nathan Goldmark and it was all he could do to restrain himself from jumping up and pointing at Kelno.
    Janos’s eyes stopped for a long search of each of them, probing for recognition of that terrible day in Barrack V.
    Down the line. One, then the other. He came to Adam Kelno and hunched forward. The officer inside ordered everyone to turn left profile, then right profile. Then they were marched out and the light turned on.
    “Well?” Magistrate Griffin asked.
    Eli Janos drew a deep breath and shook his head. “I do not recognize any of them.”
    “Have the officer bring in Dr. Kelno,” Robert Highsmith said in a sudden, unexpected flare.
    “It’s not required,” the magistrate said.
    “This bloody business has been going on for two years. A blameless man has been in prison. I want to make completely certain of this.”
    Adam Kelno was marched in and made to stand before Eli Janos and they stared at each other.
    “Dr. Kelno,” Highsmith said, “would you speak to this man in German or Polish.”
    “I want my freedom,” Adam said in German. “It’s in your hands,” he concluded in Polish.
    “Does the voice mean anything?” Highsmith said.
    “He is not the man who castrated me,” Eli Janos said.
    Adam Kelno sighed deeply and bowed his head as the officer led him out
    “Are you willing to swear a statement?” Highsmith asked.
    “Of course,” Janos answered.
    There was a formal letter that His Majesty’s government regretted any inconvenience to Adam Kelno for his two year detention in Brixton Prison.
    As the prison gate closed behind him, the patient and loving Angela rushed to his arms. Behind her, in the alleyway that lead to the entrance, his cousin Zenon Myslenski with Count Anatol Czerny, Highsmith, and Smiddy. There was someone else. A little boy who wavered cautiously under the prodding of “Uncle” Zenon. Then he toddled forward and said ...“Daddy.”
    Adam lifted the child. “My son,” he cried, “my son.” And soon they passed down the long high brick wall into a rare day of sunlight in London.
    The conspiracy had been beaten, but Adam Kelno was filled with an even greater fear without the protection of prison walls. He was on the outside now and the enemy was relentless and dangerous. He took his wife and son and fled. He fled to the remotest corner of the world.

7
    “A DAM! A DAM!” A NGELA SHRIEKED .
    He tore over the veranda and flung the screen door open at the same instant Abun, the houseboy, arrived. Angela had flung herself over Stephan to shield the child from the cobra coiled near the bed, tongue flicking, head bobbing in a death dance.
    Abun motioned Adam Kelno into stillness, slowly unsheathed his parang. His bare feet slipped noiselessly over the rat mat.
    Hisssss! A flashing arc of steel. The snake was decapitated. Its head bounced off and the body crumpled after a short violent tremor.
    “Don’t touch! Don’t touch! Still full poison!”
    Angela allowed herself the luxury of screaming, then sobbed