And as each stride took him farther from the town center and the risk of total encirclement, his spirits rose to overtake the physical resurgence that the interlude of refreshment and recuperation in the barber shop had quickened—so much that when he saw a hulking and beady-eyed ruffian staring fixedly at him through every step that led through one of the last blocks of the village buildings, it was only a challenge to the oldest recourse of Saintly impudence, and he walked deliberately and unswervingly into the focus of the stare until it wavered uncertainly before the arrogant confidence of his approach.
“Ciao,” said the Saint condescendingly, with a superior Neapolitan accent. “He will be coming in a few minutes. But do not glare at him like that, or he will turn back and run.”
“What am I to do, then?” mumbled the bully.
“Pretend to be busy with something else. After he passes, whistle Arrivederci, Roma, very loudly. We shall hear it, and be waiting for him.”
He strode on, disdaining even to pause for acknowledgement of the order, though the back of his neck prickled.
But it worked. He had broken another cordon, and the way he had done it proved how much he had recuperated. He felt his morale beginning to soar again. More nets would be cast, but his inexhaustible flair for the unexpected would take him through them.
In a few more moments he had left the last cottages behind, and then a curve in the road took him altogether out of sight of the village and the watcher on the outskirts who should now be watching the opposite way anyhow.
He quickened his step to a gait which from any distance would still have looked like a walk, attracting less attention than a run, but whose deceptively lengthened stride covered the ground at a speed which most men would have had to run to keep up with. At the same time his eyes ceaselessly scanned the barren ridges on either side, alert for any other sentinels who might be watching the road from the heights. The road wound steadily downhill, making his breakneck pace possible in spite of the stifling heat, and he kept it up without sparing himself, knowing that the canyon he followed could be either his salvation or a death trap.
If he had not met the goatherd on the summit, and then had to stop in the last village, he might have had more latitude of choice, perhaps spending a night in the trackless hills and continuing across country until he could drop down into Cefalù, which he should have been able to locate from some peak if he was in the approximate area which he had deduced from his glimpse of Etna. But that was impossible now after where he had been seen. So far he was ahead of the chase, and had succeeded in out-thinking it as well, but that advantage would be lost as soon as the reports filtered in and were coordinated. His only hope now was to reach the coast before he was completely cut off, and lose himself in the crowds which could still be treacherous but could give better cover than any scrawny growth on the stark uplands.
From somewhere ahead came a plaintive squealing sound that slowed his headlong course as he tried to identify it. It repeated itself regularly, but grew no louder; if anything, it seemed to grow fainter as he went slower. He resumed his pace with redoubled alertness, and the intermittent squealing became gradually louder, showing that it must come from something that he was overtaking on the road.
Prudence should have dictated holding back for a safe distance, but curiosity was equally cogent, and besides he could not afford to be slowed down indefinitely by some nameless obstruction. Instead, he accelerated again until he won a glimpse of it.
Soon the road made two consecutive horseshoe bends, bringing him to a clear view of the next level down the rutted track, where he saw that he was being preceded by a carretta siciliana, the picturesque Sicilian mule cart made famous by fifty million picture postcards. The rhythmic creaking which he had heard came from its inadequately lubricated hubs. It carried no load, and—except for its nodding driver—no passengers, but a bacchanalian scene of country maidens dancing with flower-wreathed satyrs graced its sides, while intricate patterns of fruit and foliage revolved on the fellies of its high wheels in an explosion of primary colors that pained the eyes.
Without hesitation Simon turned off the road, avalanched through the intervening gully, and raced into the wake of the trundling cart.
As he caught up with it, he saw that the driver, a gray-whiskered rustic, appeared to be asleep, the reins draped limply from one hand and his hat tilted over his eyes, but he raised his head and scowled down as the Saint came level with him.
“Buon giorno,” Simon said in the standard greeting, falling back to a walk without a hint of short-windedness to betray that he had been hurrying.
“You would not say it was a good day if you had listen to my wife’s tongue cracking like a whip all morning,” said the driver crossly.
“Cattiva giornata,” amended the Saint, ever flexible in such situations.
“Hai ragione. It is the worst kind of day. Have a drink.”
The man produced a damp bottle from a mound of rags between his feet and proffered it. Unlike the goatherd’s wineskin, this flagon contained its proper beverage, and was even moderately cool from the evaporation of the wet cloths in which it had been nested.
Simon enjoyed a second long pull and handed it back. The driver seized the excuse to have one himself, and it was obvious from the way he weaved the bottle up and down that it was not his first drink of the day. The Saint could not be discourteous, and when the bottle was handed him again he forced himself to accept another pleasant swallow of the thin slightly acid wine, walking with one hand on the cart to balance himself while the patient power plant trudged phlegmatically along.
“Where are you going?” asked the driver.
“To Palermo,” Simon replied.
It was in his mind that if that statement were ever relayed to Al Destamio, the hoodlum’s devious psychology would automatically assume that he was heading the opposite way, towards Messina; whereas he really did hope to get back to Palermo. He had left too many loose and unfinished ends there, of which Gina was not the least troubling.
From far behind the valley, at the very limit of audibility, came something like the buzzing of a distant hornet, which swelled rapidly to the proportions of an airplane’s drone and then to a rattle like a pneumatic drill gone berserk. It was no feat of memory for Simon to recognize the sound: he had heard it all too recently—unless there were two internal combustion engines in the area with identically obnoxious exhausts.
The envoy was coming back down from the village. And on the way he had probably spoken with the picket on the outskirts…
“Let us keep each other company,” said the Saint, and with a nimble leap he swung himself up to the seat beside the outraged driver.
“Who asked you?” demanded the latter in befuddled resentment. “What are you doing?”
“Joining you so that we can hurry to the nearest vinaio and buy some more of that excellent beverage which you have been sharing so generously with me. And here is the price of the next round.”
Simon slapped the remaining change from his pocket on to the wooden seat. Small as the sum was, it was sufficient to buy two or three liters of wine at the depressed local prices. The peasant looked at it with heavy-lidded eyes, and picked it up without further protest. He even let Simon take another drag from the bottle before he reclaimed it.
The Saint relinquished his grip and listened calculatingly to the thrumming roar that was now reverberating from the valley walls.
“Drink up,” he said encouragingly, “and let me do your work for you.”
As he spoke, he gently detached the reins from the other’s limp hold. The erstwhile driver turned and opened his mouth for another outburst of indignation, to be greeted with a smile of such seraphic innocence and friendliness that he forgot what he was going to complain about and wisely settled for another swig at the flagon. As his head went all the way back to drain the last gulp from it, the cart lurched over a well-chosen rut and his hat fell off. Simon caught it neatly and put it on his own hea
d, tilted down over his eyes. In an instant his shoulders slumped with the defeat of the overworked and underfed, and the reins drooped as listlessly from his fingers as they had from those of the previous holder.
The timing and the performance were perfect. As the motor-scooter blatted deafeningly up behind and hurtled past, the rider should have seen only a pair of local peasants, the younger one dozing over the reins, the older one groping foggily for something he seemed to have lost in the back of the cart.
Nevertheless the courier jammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt in a billowing cloud of dust, squarely across the road in front of them. From the fact that he did not threaten them with a weapon, Simon could still hope that it was only a routine check, a matter of asking the cartmen if they had seen anything of the quarry. His crude disguise might still be effective, enhanced as it was by his authentically local companion and the wagon they were riding in.
“Alt!” shouted the messenger. “I want to talk to you!”
In spite of the torrid temperature, he wore the short black leather blouse required by the protocol of his fraternity, inside which he must have enjoyed all the amenities of a portable Turkish bath, but as he pushed back his goggles Simon realized that he had seen him before, even though they had been hidden from each other in the barber’s shop. It was one of the stone-faced security guards who had lurked sleeplessly around the marble columns of Don Pasquale’s palazzo above Mistretta.
With every faculty pitilessly aware of its thin margin for survival, the Saint lazily flicked the reins to urge the jenny as close as possible to the gunman—just in case…
“What kind of way is that to talk to anyone?” grumbled the chariot’s owner, blinking perplexedly at the interception.
Then, as he turned to his passenger for confirmation, he saw for the first time something that drove the more complex affront completely out of his fumbling mind.
“You stole my hat, ladrone!” he squawked.
He reached to retrieve the disputed headgear, but his alcoholic aim combined with Simon’s instinctive divergence only succeeded in knocking it off the Saint’s head. It fell almost at the feet of the startled scooterist, who had moved around to the side of the cart for less stentorian conversation, and whose reciprocal recognition was a coruscating gem of over-statement.
Then the mafioso’s right hand darted inside his jacket for the hardware that he should have displayed from the beginning.
Simon Templar moved even faster. He shifted sideways and swung his outside leg faster than the gunman could disengage his gun, and there was a distinct and satisfying crunch as the toe of his shoe caught the thug accurately in the side of the temple.
The man folded quietly to the ground and lay face down in the dirt.
Simon was leaping down for the clincher even while his opponent was falling, but no further effort was necessary. The scooter jockey had lost all interest in his mission, and would not be likely to regain it for a long time.
The Saint swiftly took possession of the half-drawn automatic, and tucked it inside his shirt under the waistband of his trousers where his belt would hold it in place. Then he ran through the man’s other pockets, and came up with a switchblade knife and a well-stuffed wallet. He looked up from it to find that his travelling companion had clambered down from the cart and was staring with mounting bewilderment at the sundry components of the scene.
“What is this all about?” pleaded the cart-driver distractedly.
Simon faced his next problem. The old man would inevitably be grilled by the Mafia before long, and he was likely to have an uncomfortably hard time absolving himself of complicity in the Saint’s escape. Unless he was provided with evidence that would convince even the hard-boiled mafiosi that he was only another hapless fellow-victim of the Saint’s lengthening list of atrocities.
There was an inordinate number of five-thousand-lire notes in the wallet, besides other denominations, and Simon extracted four of them and tucked them away under a sack of melons in the cart, while the driver gaped at him.
“If I gave those to you now, they might search you and find them,” he said. “Say nothing about them, and leave them there until you get home. Also, when you are questioned, remember how I jumped on your cart and forced you to let me stay there. Now, I am sorry to repay you so unkindly, but it will hurt you less than if the Mafia thought you had helped me.”
“What is this talk of the Mafia?” muttered the other blearily, swaying a little.
“Look at those birds in the sky,” said the Saint, steadying him, and as the man raised his chin he hit him under it as crisply and scientifically as he knew how.
The driver crumpled without a sound into another peaceful siesta.
For a second time Simon was tempted by the scooter, purely for its ground-covering potential, and now he might be able to afford a little time to unravel its mechanical secrets. But nothing less than a major operation would silence it, and he was still in a situation where stealth seemed to offer more advantages than speed.
He fired a single shot into its gas tank to eliminate it from further participation in the pursuit, and set off again at a mile-eating trot that tried to ignore the heat.
The mountain road twisted and doubled back upon itself like a tortured serpent. At some of the turns, when no unscaleable cliff or other geological barrier intervened, a rough footpath short-circuited the loop for the benefit of pedestrians. The Saint took advantage of all of them without slackening speed, although some of them dropped at forty-five degree angles and any slip might have meant violent injury.
The slopes were broken and rough, with little but cactus and thorny bushes holding their superficial shale together, and twice he picked his own route across the pebble-strewn beds of gullies gouged by torrents of some mythical rainy season rather than following even the slightly more cautious trail worn by previous short-cutters.
He was in the middle of one of these when he heard the anguished whine of an automobile’s straining gear-box coming up the valley from below, and he did not need to call on his clairvoyant gifts to divine that no innocent tourist conveyance would be in such a screaming rush to get to the drab cittadina at the head of that forsaken gorge.
There was no cover in the flat stream bed, and he would be instantly noticeable from anything crossing the stone bridge forty yards away. The bridge itself offered the only possible concealment, but that meant running towards the approaching car with the certainty of being still more conspicuous if he failed to win the race. Simon sprinted with grim determination, the loose rocks spurting from under his feet and the shrill grind of the car coming closer with terrifying rapidity. He dived under the shadow of the bridge’s single arch only a heart-beat before the car rumbled over it and yowled on up the grade.
The Saint allowed himself half a minute to be sure it was out of sight, and to let the heaving of his lungs subside. Then he climbed the bank to the road above.
His decision not to try to help himself to the scooter had vindicated itself even more promptly than he had anticipated.
But now, through a gap in the hills ahead, he could see the benign blue Mediterranean less than a mile away.
It was only a question of whether he could reach it before the hunters turned around and overtook him again.
CHAPTER SIX:
HOW THE SAINT ENJOYED ANOTHER REUNION AND MARCO PONTI INTRODUCED REINFORCEMENTS
1
Simon knew how far he had come from where he had abandoned the cart, and could figure how long it would take the second automobile to climb to that spot. In his mind’s eye, as he ran, he saw the car braking, the examination of the sleeping scooterist, the reviving and questioning of the peasant. In that way he kept a sort of theoretical clock on the progress of developments behind him against which he could continuously measure his chances of reaching the coast before the pursuit turned their car around—in itself a substantially time-consuming maneuver on that narrow road—and set off to overtake him.
And his spirits rose with every stride as his glimpses of the sea came closer and the picture in his mind was still not frantically ominous.
Even in his athletic prime he would have had to leave the four-minute mile to the specialists, but on a downhill course and under the spur of life preservation he thought he could come close. And on the highway there would be buses and trucks, and beside it the coastal railway as well…
Every run of bad cards must have a break, however brief, as every gambler knows, and as the Saint reached the main road at last, and his visualization of the most imminent menace still had the warriors up the hill only now looking for a place to turn their oversize chariot, it seemed to him that his turn was veritably setting in. For less than a hundred yards away on his right, a heavily laden autobus was grinding noisily towards him, with the inspiring name “PALERMO” on the front to indicate its destination.
There were no other vehicles in sight at this moment, and no surly characters with artillery in their pockets to bar his way. The next steps towards escape only had to be taken across the highway, and called for no additional effort beyond flagging down the driver.
Brakes protested, and the bus lurched to a stop. Simon climbed in, the door slammed behind him, and he was on his way again.
But as he paid his fare, he felt that his arrival was causing a minor stir among the passengers. It was a local bus, and the riders seemed to consist mostly of regional habitants and their produce, progeny, and purchases. Perhaps that was the cause of their interest: the Saint was a stranger and obviously a different type, and for lack of anything better to do they would study and speculate about him. Yet there seemed to be an undercurrent of tension running counter to this simple bucolic curiosity. Unless he was excessively self-conscious, he felt as if the other passengers were allowing him far more room than they gave each other. In fact, he had a distinct impression that they were moving as far away from him as the packed conditions would allow.
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