The Saint in Pursuit

VI: How Simon Templar continued to be helpful.

The Saint had no time to appreciate the devastation his skull had inflicted on Uzdanov’s physiognomy. The sudden grab of the brakes had made the car swerve wildly and had hurled the Russian so violently forward that he might have continued on through the windshield if he had not been brought to a halt by Simon’s head. He went heavily limp across the Saint’s shoulders, his dagger clattering down among the foot controls, one of his forearms thrust between the spokes of the steering wheel, and the Saint struggled for control of the wheel as the car skidded with a scream of scorching rubber. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vicky still balled on the floor next to his feet, her own eyes squeezed tightly shut. She let out a terrified gasp as she felt the car veer.

“Stay where you are!” Simon told her.

Somehow he kept the Volkswagen on the road in a swerving course that allowed no more sharp applications of the brake. It was all he could do to hold the car on the steep downgrade while he used all the leverage of his back to shrug and push the unconscious Uzdanov away, disengaging his fat arm from the steering wheel and dumping him off his shoulders and neck into the rear of the car.

As the Russian slid heavily back on to the floor behind, Simon had a more urgent problem to monopolize his attention. The headlights of the car, spearing out into the darkness, suddenly showed nothing at all. A hairpin turn was going its own way directly to the left, threatening to leave the Volkswagen with no more support under its wheels than several hundred feet of fresh and very dark mountain air. The Swiss highway authorities had reckoned that the bend could be negotiated at fifty kilometres an hour and had put up a sign marking it safe at forty. The Saint had just entered into it at a speed of almost eighty.

Only the instincts and skill of a Monte Carlo Rally driver, combined with a favorable nod from whatever gods concern themselves with such crises in the wee hours of the night, could have saved the car and its occupants from a graceful but rapidly drooping trajectory straight off the side of a cliff. By some miraculous combination of just the right amount of pressure on the brake and precise turns of the steering wheel Simon persuaded the car to keep its smoking tires more or less on the pavement.

A ton and more of metal responded to his delicate touch like a living thing. The highway and the rough shoulder to which it clung were a heaving blur as the machine, in a final fantastic pirouette, swung its engine-heavy rear to the fore with a wail like a riot of bagpipes. A partial spin had finally been the Saint’s only choice. Any other end to his manoeuvres would have sent him rolling over the low safety wall and plummeting into the valley below.

The car slid to a crashing stop, half on and half off the road. The engine stalled and died, and suddenly the world seemed terribly quiet. There was a sensation of extreme remoteness, and the only sound was the wind, which strangely made the car seem to sway and quiver.

Simon sat very still, his senses acutely tuned to judge the extent of the Volkswagen’s continuing predicament. It was not just vertigo or imagination which told him that the brisk Alpine breeze was making the car quiver. Straight ahead of him from where he sat in the driver’s seat, the car’s headlights illuminated the sheer wall of rock which rose straight up from the inner side of the road. Behind him, the rear of the car sagged ominously.

Near his feet there was a tentative stir.

“Have we stopped?” Vicky quavered.

She was still rolled into a frightened ball underneath the dashboard, and Simon could see by the light of the dome bulb which had proved Uzdanov’s undoing that her eyes were not yet open.

“We’ve stopped temporarily, at any rate,” he answered. “But don’t move until I tell you to.”

Vicky’s eyes popped open.

“Don’t move?” she objected with a sudden bravado born of the simple realization that she was still alive. “Don’t move? Why not?”

“Ill tell you in a minute.”

Vicky looked less brave and stared towards the back of the car.

“Is that commie out cold? I think you killed him.”

“Anyway, he’s resting in peace at the moment,” Simon told her, after a cautious twist and a downward glance.

Vicky’s expression became a little happier again.

“You almost knocked his head off. It was wonderful.”

The Saint was paying much more attention to the precarious position of his car than to his desultory dialogue with Vicky, which was mainly designed to keep her occupied while he decided what to do. If she suddenly realized how close the car might be to losing its balance and dropping over the cliffside, she would be liable to panic and trigger just that undesirable event.

“He almost cut my head off, which wouldn’t have been so wonderful,” he mentioned abstractedly.

“He’s still got my letter!” Vicky remembered aloud.

Before she could unwind herself from the floor the Saint stopped her with a gentle but undeniably firm hand on her shoulder.

“I asked you not to move,” he said in a voice that had all the smooth poise of a tightrope-walker’s bearing.

“Not move?” Vicky asked indignantly, albeit impressed by his tone. “I want out. From now on I travel by bicycle or I don’t travel at all.”

“I think you’ll be travelling by foot for quite a distance, if we get out of here.”

He had chosen the last phrase deliberately.

“If?” Vicky echoed uneasily. “Aren’t we safe? We’re alive and that red rat or whatever he is has got his knife out of our backs. Don’t tell me something else can go wrong now?”

Simon nodded and held her eyes magnetized with the intense translucency of his blue ones as he measured his next words.

“What else can be wrong is the fact that the parking place I’ve ended up in is something less than ideal. Our rear wheels, my dear, are hanging over the void, and it may be only that extra bit of strudel you ate for dinner that’s keeping our front end anchored to the road. I recommend that we open our respective doors carefully and jump out simultaneously on the count of three.”

Vicky’s eyes were very, very wide.

“You’re kidding me,” she complained weakly.

“If you think so, let me get out first,” Simon answered.

“Oh, no! I’ll take your word for it.”

“Okay, then. Get out when I say ‘three’. One...”

“Wait!” she said. “What about him?”

“You mean Boris the back-seat driver? We’ll let Father Marx worry about him. After all, the car may not go over even after we get out.”

Vicky’s fingers were touching the streak of blood on her cheek.

“I’m not worried about his health,” she said. “But he’s got that letter he took away from me a few minutes ago. He’s got my ten million dollars!”

“We might shift the balance too much if we tried to get it. Worry about saving yourself first, and then worry about your loot.” His voice became imperative, still without losing its firm core of calmness. “Now pay attention to what I’m telling you! It’s important that we both get out of here at the same time, just in case it takes the two of us weighting down the front of this beetle to keep it from tangling with the thick end of this alp. Open your door while I count, and jump exactly when I say ‘three’.”

A fresh gust of wind seemed to make the car tremble as he spoke; and Vicky’s face, pale in the dim yellow dome light, became rigid with fear.

“Jump,” she repeated huskily, her lips barely moving.

“Yes, and be sure you don’t jump towards the back of the car or you’ll probably go over the edge. The rear end is sticking out into space.”

“All right,” she responded faintly.

“Good. Get ready, and when I say ‘three’ get out fast. One...”

Simon opened his door slowly, and Vicky timidly did the same.

“Two...”

Vicky moved from her kneeling position on the floor to a half-sitting crouch that would let her move quickly out of the car when the last number was called. Her shift of weight, combined with sail-effect of the open doors as they were caught by the wind, made the car sway like a distressed canoe. Her facial hue had become more green than white.

“Oh, we can’t!” she whimpered.

Even the Saint felt as if some intestinal quicksand was sucking down the floor of his stomach, but he managed to keep any hint of his sensations out of the timbre of his voice.

“We can,” he said resolutely. “Ready? Starting back at one... two... three!”

He gave Vicky a moment’s handicap, and then as she threw herself out of her open door he leaped from the driver’s seat on to the tumbled stones of the safety wall that the back end of the Volkswagen had smashed through. Just inches from his feet was the deeper blackness of the void which would have welcomed him down if he had slipped. He scrambled away from the lip of the cliff around the front of the car, where Vicky stumbled into his arms. Her whole body trembled against him.

“I almost fell over,” she panted. “I didn’t know we were so close to the edge.”

She was staring up at him with eyes like luminous saucers, and abruptly he was reminded that they were standing in the full brilliance of the Volkswagen’s headlights. He turned, helping the girl stay on her feet in spite of her shaky knees, to see what would happen next to the car.

To his surprise, nothing was happening. Even with all the weight of Uzdanov and the engine in its rear, and with the ballast of two bodies removed from its front, the little automobile still clung like a determined insect to the ledge. It is possible that the malevolent spirit of Mischa Ruspine, still smarting from recent intrusion of Comrade Uzdanov’s dagger between the shoulder-blades of his mortal clay, was hovering somewhere nearby, and that he had some influence with the wind, for another hefty puff of night air came around the side of the mountain and made the metal underbelly of the car creak shrilly against the rock on which it rested.

But even that was not enough, and the car still stuck on the verge of the precipice.

“What’ll we do?” Vicky asked desperately, not loosening her hold on him.

“About Uzdanov?”

“About my money,” she corrected him impatiently.

“Well, I’m not one to ignore the call of ten million dollars in distress,” he conceded. “Wait here.”

“No, you can’t — it’s too dangerous!” she cried; but she stood back and watched, making no move to stop him.

He walked around the passenger’s side of the car so as to get the glare of the headlights out of his eyes, studied the situation, and picked up a large slab of rock which had been knocked loose from the shattered guard wall. He carried it back to the front of the car and wedged the sixty-pound piece of granite on top of the bumper. The counterweight might help to balance the car on its uncertain fulcrum, or at least it would do something to steady it.

The Saint returned to the driver’s side of the car. When he had exited from the driver’s seat there had only been about two feet of ground available to him between the open door and the edge of the precipice. Now it looked even less. The door shook in a fresh gust of wind. He touched it delicately, putting no pressure on it, and edged between it and the border of the cliff. Stones displaced by his feet clattered over the side and continued to fall for so long that there was no sound of their landing.

The dome light of the car was still on, and the reflected illumination of the headlights made the interior even brighter. Uzdanov was slumped face down, half on the back seat and half on the floor, his head towards Simon. On the back seat was a piece of unfolded paper, the letter of credit that the Russian had snatched from Vicky.

Simon did not need to get all the way into the car in order to retrieve it, but if the Volkswagen should decide to let go and fall he would be swept over with it by the open door. For that reason he gently closed the door again, grateful that the letter was in no less accessible a place. Bracing himself carefully, not wanting to touch the car at all if he could help it, he leaned in through the open window, over Uzdanov’s back, until he could catch the letter between the tips of two fingers.

Then, as he was pulling away, Uzdanov suddenly came to clumsy life. The portly Russian heaved himself up, his round face a swamp of blood, and stabbed out for Simon’s eyes with two stiff spread fingers.

Simon jumped back, dodging the jab, and instinctively grasped the side of the open window as his feet slipped in the loose rubble on the road shoulder. He used that hold to regain his balance and haul his body around away from the chasm and back towards the road. And he would always be able to claim that he had no time to ponder the Newtonian corollary that the action which saved him would produce an equal and opposite reaction on the combined mass of the car and Comrade Uzdanov...

His swing back from the treacherous rim of the shoulder had a torque effect on the door which overbalanced the weight of the rock he had placed on the front bumper, and as he stumbled crabwise to safety the Volkswagen shuddered and shrieked metallically against stone, sliding away like a ship launched into nowhere.

Its headlight beams hove suddenly skyward, and it slipped away into the dark void in somehow amazing silence. A long time seemed to pass after it disappeared before the brief sounds of crumpling metal and exploding glass announced its arrival in regions far below.

It was very dark where Simon stood now, and he inched forward cautiously to peer over the cliffside.

The view was more spectacular than he had expected. The car had apparently plunged through some high-tension electric lines as it cracked up at the bottom of the ravine. Its brave headlights still unbelievably on, it was enveloped in blue sparks and orange flashes, like a medium-sized Catherine wheel giving a solo fireworks display at the far end of somebody’s garden, for several seconds before the scintillations coalesced into one expanding ball of fire...

Simon heard Vicky’s awed voice not far behind him.

“You’d have to be a Saint to live through more than one experience like this in a lifetime,” she said. “I don’t care about the money anymore. Just get me down off this mountain.”

“You’ll feel a little more materialistic after a ten mile hike and a hot bath.” He could see her now in the light of the stars and a rising moon. “Don’t waste any remorse on Comrade Uzdanov. He only got something like he’d certainly have dished out to us after he’d gotten all he wanted.”

He handed her the piece of paper he had retrieved from the car and then put his arm around her shoulders and gave her an encouraging squeeze.

“Here’s your ten million dollars back — but be more careful this time. If you lose this, I’ll have to cut down your allowance.”

“What’ll the police think when they find the car?”

“Let’s see... It could possibly still be identified as the one I hired, but I’ll already have reported it stolen. All we have to do is get back to Geneva without attracting attention. What Inspector Edval thinks then won’t really matter. The only evidence shows that Uzdanov, the car thief, had an unfortunate accident, and there’s no proof that we were there.”

They began to walk slowly down the mountain road.

“Simon,” Vicky said wickedly. “Why couldn’t we keep all the letters for ourselves?”

He took his arm from around her.

“My dear girl! I’m shocked. My ethics may be rather, shall we say, specialized, but they’re the only ones I’ve got — and I might add among the last genuine handmade ones in the world. Besides which, when I hand them over to Colonel Wade’s corresponding number here, the Embassy will have to help us cover any awkward time we can’t account for.”

She sighed and they went on walking.

A minute later she spoke again.

“Simon,” she said worriedly.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know what to do with ten million dollars.”

The Saint threw back his head and laughed, as only one with a fresh ten million dollars of his own can laugh.

“You’re the first female I ever heard thinking of that as a problem,” he said.

“But I’m going to have to account for how I got it.”

“You’ve got some good practical Middle Western sense behind that pretty face, after all,” he said soberly. “You can’t suddenly start throwing it around like a drunken oil heiress. It’ll take a bit of patient organization to give it a nice legitimate background. But don’t worry. I’ll be glad to help you work something out, at no extra charge.”

He took her arm again, and they walked more quickly down the mountain towards the glow of Geneva in the distance.