Soldiers were running in from all sides now, firing as they came. It seemed impossible that the second car could still move: two of its tires were flat, and gasoline was pouring from its tank. Yet its rear wheels spun and gripped and it managed somehow to plough on, pushing the first car through with a horrible groaning and clanking of metal and making an open path for itself.
“Give me that!” roared the Major, and snatched an automatic rifle from a trooper.
He scarcely seemed to aim, but the gun barked five times and glass flew from the driver’s window. The man slumped over the wheel, and the car careered wildly down the road and smashed into a tree. Two passengers scrambled out and fled into the darkness.
“I want every one of those thugs,” Olivetti shouted. “But only wounded. They can recuperate in a prison hospital.”
“I don’t think any of the leaders were in those cars,” Simon said, coming up beside him. “They were only creating a diversion or clearing a way. We must look out for another break.”
The accuracy of his hunch was proven at that instant by the black bulk of a third automobile that surged out of the driveway. It had obviously been parked around the same angle of the building as the first two cars, in a courtyard probably flanked by former stables, and its occupants had been able to embark with impunity during the distraction caused by the first sortie. In the light of the burning wrecks Simon recognized the car that had tried to chase him down the road after his escape: it had reminded him then of a bootlegger’s limousine from the brawling days of Prohibition, and this resemblance turned out to be more than superficial. As it plunged forward the soldiers had a perfect target, and streams of automatic fire converged on it, but the windows were all shut and there were no answering shots.
“It’s bullet-proof!” the Major howled in frustrated rage. “The tires—shoot off the tires!”
But even there the bullets had no effect: the tires must have been solid rubber. Not designed to give a featherbed ride, perhaps, but an excellent insurance against inopportune deflation. The car aimed at full speed for the space between the wall and the interlocked truck and trail-blasting sedan, and hurtled through with only a scraping of fenders. A storm of bullets dimpled its high square stern but did not penetrate. It rocketed away down the road.
“Tenente Fusco, take my scout car and get after that thing!” yelled the Major, jumping up and down with wrath. “Stop it with grenades if you can, but at least stay with it and keep in touch with me by radio. You others—how much longer must I wait for you to clean out that rats’ nest?”
Men with trained reflexes leapt obediently to their assignments. A mortar, already ranged in, exploded a shell against the front of the building, and a yawning hole appeared where one of the shuttered windows had been. The scout car was already bouncing on to the road when Simon grabbed hold of Ponti, who seemed momentarily petrified with indecision as to which unit he should be joining.
“Come with me!” snapped the Saint. “The soldiers will take care of the house—but I bet nobody is left there who would interest you much.” He hustled the dazed detective into a run as he talked. “The big shots are in the car that got away—and the Bugatti has more chance of catching it than a Fiat.”
The Bugatti growled with delight as he aroused it to life again, and as soon as Ponti was beside him he slammed it forward in a bank-robber’s take-off, using the violent acceleration to swing the doors shut. He went on to justify his boast of its speed by thundering past Lieutenant Fusco’s command car while still in third gear, turning to wave mockingly as he went by.
The escaping limousine, for all its armored weight and overworked springing, was harder to catch, thereby vindicating at least a part of the Saint’s prognosis, but after several minutes he caught it in his headlights as he came around a corner. As he started to overhaul it he saw something else, and switched his foot abruptly to the brake as little tongues of flame spat towards him and were followed by the whip-crack reports of cordite.
“Very neat,” Simon said. “Real gang-war stuff. There is a firing port just under the rear window, I saw the gun muzzle when it poked out. Luckily the road is too bumpy for them to have much chance of scoring at this range, but they could do better if we came much closer. Now we shall just have to keep them in sight from a safe distance while you think of some plan to stop them.”
2
Ponti muttered curses under his breath, but not far enough under to deprive Simon of some of the more picturesque imprecations. He looked back for the scout car, but they had already left it far behind and were almost certainly increasing their lead.
“We need grenades, at least. On one of these hairpin bends, we might lob one ahead of them. Perhaps we should slow down and wait for Lieutenant Fusco.”
“And maybe never see our quarry again,” retorted the Saint. “Have you noticed that the speedometer is reading around a hundred and fifty kilometers most of the time? At that speed, they only have to be out of sight for a couple of minutes at any crossroads, and we should be flipping coins to help us guess which way they went. That car may look as if it belongs in a museum, but so does this one, and you can see how un-decrepit we are. We simply can’t afford to fall any farther behind than we have to avoid stopping a bullet.”
Ponti answered with a short pungent phrase which summed up the situation more succinctly than anything printable.
“I thoroughly agree,” said the Saint sympathetically. “But it still leaves us nothing to do except follow them. So you might as well relax on this luxurious upholstery until your fine mind comes up with something more constructive.”
There was obviously no simple solution. They were in something like the classic predicament of the man who had the tiger by the tail. There seemed to be no way to improve the hold, and although letting go might be less disastrous, it was an alternative which neither of them would consider for a moment.
“Eventually they must run out of gas,” Ponti said, not too optimistically, as he watched the tail light weaving down the road ahead of them.
“And so must we. Of course, if it happens to them first, you and I can surround them.”
Simon Templar was in much better spirits, perhaps because he had had more opportunities in his life to become acclimated to tiger-tail-holding. From his point of view, the night so far had been a howling success. The Ungodly were on the run, and he was right behind them, goosing them along. The next move might be a problem, but so long as nothing as yet had positively gone wrong, everything should be considered to be going well. The dying autocrat whom he had seen was probably dead by now: even if nature had not taken its course, he would have been in no condition to be moved, and could likely have been helped over the last step out of this vale of tears rather than left to be captured. Certainly the men in the scudding carriage ahead could only be the most vigorous and determined aspirants to the throne. And among them was surely Al Destamio—or Dino Cartelli—the man who was the main reason for Simon’s involvement in the affair.
He refused to believe that Fate would cheat him of a show-down now…
There was a faint smile on the Saint’s lips, and a song in his throat that only he could hear above the drone of the motor.
Crossroads flashed by, and occasional tricky forks, but Simon followed the limousine through them all. It could not outdistance him or shake him off. Most of the time he stayed maddeningly just out of hand-gun range, but he always managed to creep up when it counted most and when the rough-riding swings of the pursued car made it least risky. What he feared most was a lucky hit on a tire or the Bugatti’s radiator, but none of the fugitive’s erratic shots found such a mark. It did not seem to occur to the Saint that he could be hit himself, though one bullet did nick the metal frame of the windshield and whine away like a startled mosquito with hi-fi amplification.
Another village loomed up, lining a straight stretch of road that the limousine’s headlights showed clear for a quarter of a mile ahead. The limousine seemed to slacken
speed instead of accelerating, and Simon eased up on the throttle and fell even farther behind.
“What’s the matter?” Ponti fumed. “This is your chance to pass them!”
“And have them nudge us into the side of a building?” Simon said. “Either that, or have a nice steady shot at us as we catch up. No, thank you. I think that’s just what they want to tempt us to do.”
But for the first time his intuition seemed to have lost its edge.
The car in front braked suddenly, and swung into a turning in the middle of the village which made a right-angle junction with the main road—if such a term could be applied to the one they were on.
Simon raced the Bugatti towards the corner, but slowed up again well before he reached it and made the turn wide and gently, for it was an ideal spot for an ambush. The side road was empty, but in a hundred yards it made another blind curve to the left, and again Simon negotiated the turning with extreme caution. Again there was no ambush, but the black limousine was less than fifty yards ahead and putting on speed up a grade that started to wind up into the mountains. Simon could judge its acceleration by his own, as he revved up in pursuit and yet at first failed to narrow the gap between them.
Then as he whipped the Bugatti around another bend, and began to gain a yard or two, something clicked in his mind, and he laughed aloud with exultation.
Ponti stared at him in amazement.
“May I ask what is so funny?”
“The weird whims of Providence, and the philosophical principle of the Futility of Effort,” said the Saint. “Here we are racking our brains to find a way to end the stalemate, and forgetting that the Ungodly must have been doing the very same thing. Now they have made their move, and I think I know what it was. Let us catch up and make sure.”
“You are crazy! Just now you would not catch up because they would fill us with bullets!”
“But now I don’t think they will. However, the only way to be sure is to try it—as the actress said to the bishop.”
“I was a fool to ever have anything to do with you,” Ponti said, taking out his gun and preparing to die with honor.
In a minute they screamed out of another turn only a couple of lengths behind the limousine, but there were no shots and the firing port remained closed. The full beam of the Bugatti’s headlights blazed into the rear window of the car ahead as the road straightened.
“They are gone!” Ponti shouted incredulously. “It is empty except for the driver! Unless they are crouching down—”
Taking advantage of the straight stretch, Simon poured on the gas, and the Bugatti surged forward as if a giant hand had slapped it from behind.
“No, there is only the driver,” he said calmly, as they thundered alongside. “And I think he is making the fatal mistake of lowering his window so he can shoot at us.”
Ponti was prepared. He sat sideways, his left hand cupped under his right elbow to steady it, and took careful aim. When the bullet-proof glass had dropped far enough, while the driver was still raising his own gun, Ponti’s pistol barked once. The driver’s head was slammed sideways and he flopped over the wheel. Simon braked quickly as the limousine veered wildly across the road, rolled over, and somersaulted crazily out of sight.
Still braking, Simon spotted a cart track on his right, spun into it, and backed out to face the way they had come. He stopped again, and got out.
“You can send for the body later,” he said. “But now slide over and take the wheel. You are getting a second chance to enjoy driving this marvelous car.”
“Why?” Ponti asked blankly, as Simon got in on the other side.
“Because two can play the trick that they thought of. Did you notice that it took them entirely too long to make that double jog out of the village, and how close we were behind them even though I deliberately slowed up? That was because they stopped for a moment while they were out of sight, and the passengers piled out, counting on the driver to lead us on a wild-goose chase through the hills.”
Ponti had the Bugatti in gear and moving again by that time.
“Then they are probably still hiding in the village! We only have to locate the house—”
“And get mowed down when we do it. At one time I saw at least four passengers in that car, and wherever they went to earth is bound to be a nest of more mafiosi. No, you will have to go back and meet Fusco’s scout car, and radio for reinforcements.”
“And give those fannulloni time to slip away!”
“That is why I made you take the wheel. You will go through the village in low gear, making a terrific noise, and skidding your tires around the corners, so that they will hear everything and have no doubt that you went through without stopping. But actually as you come into the main street you will only be doing about fifteen kilometers an hour, and that is when I shall leave you. If they do try to slip away, I shall either follow them or try to detain them.”
“It is an insane plan. What chance would you have?”
“What better chance do we have? Try to apply the power of positive thinking, Marco mio. Look on the bright side. This may be where the Ungodly are delivered right into our hands. And I feel lucky tonight!”
Running downhill, the dark outskirts of the village were before them surprisingly quickly, and the curve into the side street that would intersect the main road.
“Down into second gear,” snapped the Saint. “Give them the full sound effects. With enough tire-squealing, exhaust-roaring, and gear-grinding, they should be convinced that you went through here like a maniac, and it will never occur to them that we are plagiarizing their brainstorm.”
“I only hope,” Ponti said gloomily, “That you know some rich industrialist who will give a job to an ignominiously discharged police officer, if there is not a happy ending to this night’s work.”
But he obeyed his instructions, taking the bend on two protesting wheels and slipping the clutch to get an extra howl out of the engine. Simon unlatched the door on his side and braced himself, holding it ready to let it fly open at the right moment as they blatted down the narrow street. With the main street junction rushing towards them, Ponti added the extra touch of a blast on the horn which raised stentorian echoes from the sleepy walls, and which Simon could only hope would give pause to any other vehicle which might happen to be on a collision course on the main road. Then came another screech of rubber, and the Bugatti broadsided around the corner.
Ponti took the clutch out again as soon as he had steadied the car, but kept the throttle open to maintain the level of exhaust noise, and during that instant of minimum speed Simon threw the door open and jumped. He had not touched the ground when Ponti let the clutch in again and set the red monster racing away.
The Saint landed running, the slap of his feet drowned in the departing reverberations of the motor, and in five long strides he was sheltered in the darkness of a doorway. The Bugatti vanished down the road, its uproar died away, and stillness descended again like a palpable blanket.
3
He was alone once more, in a citadel of potential enemies.
For five minutes he stood in the doorway, unmoving and silent as the ancient walls. He saw no lights and heard no sounds, and the windows of the buildings opposite from which he might have been observed remained shuttered and dark. A scrawny cat stalked down the sidewalk, paused to gaze at him speculatively, and hurried on. Other than that there was no sign of life. It was impossible that the tumultuous passage of automobiles had not disturbed anyone, but either the inhabitants had learned that discretion was the better part of curiosity in those Mafia-dominated hills or they were more bucolically interested in getting back to sleep for the last hour or two of rest before another morning’s toil.
With the luminous dial of his watch turned to the inside of his wrist so that its glow would not betray him to any hidden watcher, if there were one, he verified that it was twenty minutes past three. So much had happened that night that it seemed as if it should already ha
ve been completely spent, yet he estimated that there must still be about an hour of darkness left. An hour which would give him the most concealment, before the early risers began to stir and the gray pre-dawn exposed him to their view.
Which was either plenty of time, or nothing like enough…
At first impression, it might have seemed an impossible task, to locate the hideout of Al Destamio and his buddies among all those barred and silent buildings. But actually it was by no means a search without clues. In the first place, by far the greater part of the village, through which Simon had had the limousine in sight, could be ruled out. Secondly, his quarry’s choice of that particular town had not been dictated by its cultural amenities or picturesque charm, nor would it have been picked on the spur of the moment: the Ungodly must have known exactly what refuge they were going to dive into when they hopped out of their car, without trusting that blind luck would let them blunder into something suitable. Nor would this merely be the home of some known sympathizer, since this would have involved an impossible delay for banging on the door to rouse him and waiting for him to open up. It had to be a place that they could get into at once, and since the telephone lines to the chateau had been cut long before their flight, they could not have called ahead to announce their arrival and prepare anyone to receive them. Therefore it would have to be a place to which they had a key, or where they knew that some door was always unlocked. Therefore it was most probably the home of one of them. And to qualify as the domicile of such an exalted member of the Mafia, it would have to be perceptibly more pretentious than the average of its neighbors. So that again a greater part of the remaining theoretical possibilities could be eliminated.
Satisfied now that he was not being observed, Simon Templar eased himself out of the doorway and made his way back up the side street as soundlessly as the cat.
Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 21
