Vendetta for the Saint

1

It was a slow drive. Olivetti was obviously holding their speed down in order to give the engineers the half-hour’s lead he had allowed for them. If his timing was right, they should meet the motorcycle advance guard at the exact moment scheduled for the assault.

They saw nothing of the coast or the sea, since the Major had wisely chosen to use only the interior roads that wound their way through the mountains. For the most part these roads were bad, and frequently they were terrible. Sometimes when they branched off on to an unpaved track to avoid a town, clouds of dust billowed up and swept suffocatingly over the Bugatti. Simon stopped more than once to let the worst of the dust settle, and then caught up with the column again, having no fear of losing it while there was still a trail of powdery fog to trace it by.

This dilatory progress continued until after midnight, when Simon felt they could not be much farther from the Mafia headquarters. They ground through a darkened village, then up a precipitous track that appeared to have been scratched out of the face of a cliff.

Lights flashed in the Saint’s eyes from his rear-view mirror as a car came up behind and blinked its headlights to pass. He pulled courteously over to the side, and at the same instant was possessed by a prickling presentiment of danger.

What possible reason could an ordinary car have for being on such a road at this time of night — and in enough of a desperate hurry to risk trying to pass a convoy of trucks on such a dangerous cornice? Only an errand of more than ordinarily reckless urgency. This did not ineluctably mean that the car was driven by Mafia sympathizers. But with the telephone wires cut, anyone who wanted to warn the Mafia headquarters of the approaching column would have to go by road. This road.

This reasoning went through the Saint’s head in the brief moment during which the car was overtaking him, and as soon as it was past he swung out behind it and kicked on his high beams. They blazed out like twin searchlights and impaled a long open Alfa-Romeo, not new but obviously still capable of a good turn of speed. The driver kept his eyes on the road, but the man beside him turned, shading his eyes from the glare with the turned-down brim of a black hat.

Simon sounded a warning series of blasts on his horn to attract attention, and the officer in the scout car ahead was not stupid. He waved the Alfa-Romeo back as it started to pass him, and held up a gun to show that he meant business.

The reply from the Alfa-Romeo was instantaneous. The driver accelerated, and his companion produced a pistol and began firing at the scout car. The officer ducked down, and the Alfa-Romeo went safely by, staying in the scanty lane between the trucks and the sheer drop into the valley.

It was a long chance, but it looked as if they might get away with it. The trucks trundled stolidly along on the right-hand side of the trail, while the Mafia car tore up on their left, its wheels within inches of the unfenced verge. The scout car swung out of line behind it and raced in pursuit, the occupants of both cars exchanging shots, though neither seemed to be having any effect.

The end came with shocking suddenness as one of the truck drivers farther up the column became aware of what was occurring. He must have seen the flash of gunfire or heard the shots above the grinding of engines, and reacted with commendable intelligence and initiative. As the Alfa-Romeo came up to pass his truck, he edged out of line and narrowed the space between the flank of his vehicle and the edge of nothingness. The Mafia driver, crowded by the scout car immediately behind him, held down blaringly on his klaxon and made a frantic bid to squeeze through. The truck remorselessly held its course and hogged a little more. Finally the sides of the two vehicles touched, with much the same effect as a ping-pong ball grazing a locomotive. The Alfa-Romeo was simply flipped sideways off the road, and was gone. There was a delayed crash and a flash of fire from the ravine below, but the convoy had rolled on well beyond that point before the final reverberations could rumble up to its level.

This was the only crisis that disturbed the purely figurative smoothness of the trip. Within minutes the road levelled out, and brake-lights glowed as the column ground to a halt. Major Olivetti’s car roared back down the line and stopped beside Simon.

“The engineers are there, and report all the wires cut as ordered,” he said. “We’re ready to go in. According to the map, the house is only about a kilometer ahead. The scouts will go first and I will follow, and it would be best if you kept close to me. I must have positive identification of the house before there is any shooting.”

He was away again before the Saint could do more than half-salute in answer. Simon gunned the Bugatti after the Fiat scout car and followed it down the road, until a motorcyclist waved them to a stop. They pulled off into an open orchard, and with instinctive prospicience Simon backed his car into a position from which it would be free to take off again in any direction. After this they continued on foot through the orchard, until the trees thinned out to disclose a house looming ahead across a clearing, blacked out and silent.

“Is that the place?” Major Olivetti asked.

“It could be,” Simon answered. “I can’t be absolutely certain, because I never saw it from this side. It looks something like the right shape. Does the location fit the description I gave you, on the edge of a cliff?”

“Perfectly. And the scouts report no other house near here that fits it. You can see the beginning of the road there that leads down to the village, gravel surfaced as you described it. Another column is down there, blocking any escape that way. We can go into action as soon as you are absolutely certain that this is the right place.”

“Are all your men in position?”

“On all sides. The mortars should be down and sighted by now, the machine guns set up as well.”

“Shall I go and ring their front door bell?” Simon asked, straightening up and taking a few steps into the moonlit clearing.

“Don’t be a fool — get down! They can see you from the house!”

“That is precisely the idea,” Simon said. “The people inside must have heard your trucks, and if they have guilty consciences they should now be keeping a rather jittery lookout.”

He stood gazing intently at the building for several seconds, and then stepped back with exaggerated furtiveness behind a thick-trunked tree.

He had gauged the impression he would give, and its timing, with impudent accuracy. There was a rattle of gunfire from the house, and a covey of bullets passed near, some of them thunking into the tree.

“That seems to settle it,” Simon remarked coolly. “And now that they’ve started the shooting, you have all the justification you need for shooting back.”

With or without the reassurance of such legalistic argument, some of the deployed soldiers were already returning the fire. The house promptly sparkled with more flashes as its occupants accepted the challenge. Bullets whipped leaves from the trees and keened away in plaintive ricochets. Someone turned a spotlight on the building, and before it was shot out they could see that most of the heavy shutters on the windows were open for an inch or two to provide gun slits, and most of them seemed to be in use.

“Very nice,” Olivetti said, crouching beside Simon and Ponti, “You ask me to help you make a raid on some criminals, but you did not tell me we should be fighting a minor battle.”

“Mi despiace, Commandante,” Ponti said. “I did not plan it this way.”

“You are sorry? This is the best thing that could have happened! In the summer no skiing, and all they do is chase girls and drink. We shall sweat some of the wine out of them tonight! All I want to know is in what condition you want those men inside the house. If it is dead, it will be easy. Only there will be a certain amount of mortar fire necessary, and before entering rooms we would roll in a grenade or two. That way, there may be very few prisoners.”

“There are some that I want alive,” Ponti said. “The leaders only. The rest, your soldiers can practise their training upon, and save the courts much useless expense. But I want the men at the top, to identify them and bring them to a public trial which will focus the attention of the whole country. If they are only killed here they will become martyrs: the lesser leaders will take over, and the whole organization will soon be flourishing again.”

Simon thought of reminding them that Gina Destamio might also be in the house, for all he knew. But if she were, the mafiosi themselves would protect her as much as they could, if only until they could use her as a hostage. And as a mere possibility it was too speculative to justify holding up the assault.

“That is more difficult, but we can try,” Olivetti was saying. “I will blow open the front door and the ground floor windows, and we will rush them from three directions. We shall have some casualties, but—”

Suddenly headlights blazed on the far side of the house, and a car roared around the driveway and careened into the road. It was closely followed by another. Both were large sedans and apparently well manned, for their windows blazed with a crackle of small arms.

“Aim for the drivers!” bellowed the Major, in a voice that could be heard easily above the rising crescendo of gunfire. “Then we can take the others alive!”

The leading car drove straight at the front of the army truck which had been strategically parked across the road, without slackening speed, smashed into it, and burst into flame. Frantic men tumbled out and stumbled away from the flickering light. The second car braked violently, but not enough to lose all momentum as it crashed into the rear of the first. It then became clear that the whole sequence was deliberate: the first impact had slewed the truck around enough to leave a car’s width between its bumper and the bordering stone wall, and the second car was now ramming the burning wreck of its companion through the gap.

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 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, un-moving 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 have 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.

The hideout was almost certainly beyond the second turning at the end of the block, since that would have given the fugitives more time to disappear before the Bugatti could come in sight of them again, and somewhere within the fifty-yard stretch that had separated him from the limousine when he saw it again. The Saint moved more slowly from the corner, staying in the deepest shadows and assessing the buildings on each side, his eyes and ears straining to pick up any glimmer of light or whisper of sound that would betray a suspiciously early wakefulness within.

The houses were ranged shoulder to shoulder, but not in an even line, some having chosen to set farther back from the road than others. Simon prowled past two, then three, a small shop with living quarters above, another tall narrow building, none of them giving any sign of life. Then there was something only about two meters high which pushed out closer to the road than any of its neighbors, and in a moment Simon realized that it was not the projection of a ground floor but simply of a wall enclosing the front garden of a building which was itself set back quite a distance from the street.

And as he drifted wraith-like towards the angle, he heard from beyond it a soft scuff of footsteps, and his pulse beat a fraction faster at the virtual certainty that this must be the place where Destamio & Co had holed up.

As he flattened himself against the side wall, with his head turned to allow only one eye to peep around the corner, a black shape took one step out from a gateway in the front and stood to glance up and down the road. The firefly glow of a cigarette-end brightened to reveal the coarse cruel face of a typical subordinate goon, and to glint on the barrel of what looked like a shotgun tucked under his arm.

That was the obliging clincher. A large house, behind a walled garden — and an armed guard at the gate. Any skeptic who insisted on more proof would probably have refused to believe that an H-bomb had hit him until his dust had been tested with a Geiger counter.

So now all that Simon had to do was to withdraw as softly as he had come, meet Ponti and the soldiers outside the town, and lead them to the spot.

Except that such relatively passive participation had never been the Saint’s favorite role. And it would certainly have been an anticlimactic denouement to the enterprise which had brought him that far. Besides which, he had already been pushed around too much by the Mafia to complacently leave others to administer their comeuppance. Major Olivetti and his bersaglieri had been fine for a frontal attack on the castle fortress, the boom of mortar shells and the flicker of tracer bullets had made it a stirring production number worthy of wide-screen photography; but Simon felt that something more intimate was called for in his personal settlement with Al Destamio.

He waited motionless, with infinite patience, until finally the bored sentinel turned and went back into the garden.

With the fluid silence of a stalking tiger the Saint followed behind him, and sprang.

The first intimation of disaster that the sentry had was when an arm snaked over his shoulder and the braced thumb-joint of its circling fist thumped into his larynx. Paralyzed, he could neither breathe nor yell, and he never noticed the second blow on the side of his neck that rendered him mercifully unconscious.

The Saint caught the shotgun as it dropped, and with his other hand clutched the man’s clothing and eased his fall to the ground into a mere rustling collapse. Then he picked the limp form off the driveway and carried it to the shadow of a clump of bushes and rolled it under.

The driveway led straight to the doors of a garage, a status symbol which had obviously been cut into one corner of the ground floor of an edifice much older than the horseless carriage, and a flagged path branched from it to three steps which mounted to the front door. Simon tiptoed up the steps, and the door yielded to his touch — which was no more than he expected, for the Ungodly would hardly have been old-maidishly apprehensive enough to have locked the guard outside. The hallway inside was dark; but light came from a crack under a door at the back, and a deep murmur of male voices. With the shotgun in one hand, Simon inched towards the light with hyper-sensory alertness for any invisible obstacle that might catastrophically trip him.

The voices came through the door distinctively enough for him to recognize the hoarse rasp of Destamio’s; but the conversation was mostly in Sicilian dialect, mangled and machine-gun fast, which made it almost impossible for him to follow. Occasionally someone would slip into ordinary Italian, which was more tantalizing than helpful, since the responses instantly became as unintelligible as the context. There seemed to be a debate as to whether they should lie low there, or leave together in a car which appeared to be available, or disperse; the argument seemed to hinge on whether their assembly should be considered to have completed its business for the present, or to have only been adjourned. The controversy flowed back and forth, with Destamio’s voice becoming increasingly louder and more forceful: he seemed to be well on the way to dominating the opposition. But the next most persistent if quieter voice cut in with some proposal which seemed to find unanimous acceptance: the general mutter of approval merged into a scraping of chairs and a scuffle of feet, the inchoate clatter of men rising from a council table and preparing to fly the coop.

Which was precisely the move that Simon Templar had undertaken to deter.

He had no time to make any plan, he would have to play it entirely by ear, but at least he could give himself the priceless advantage of the initiative, of throwing them off balance and forcing them to react, while giving them the impression that he knew exactly where he was going.

Before anyone else could do it, he flung open the door and stood squarely in the opening, the shotgun levelled from his hip.

“Were you looking for me?” he inquired mildly.

Pure shock froze them in odd attitudes like a frame from a movie film stopped in mid-action, a ludicrous tableau of gaping mouths and bulging eyes. The apparition on the very threshold of their secret conclave of the man they had been trying to dispose of in one way or another for a day and two nights, who must have been responsible for their recent rout before the armed forces of justice, and who they had every right to believe had at least temporarily been shaken off, would have been enough to immobilize them for a while even without the menace of his weapon.

There were four of them: nearest the Saint, a stocky man with a porcine face and a scar, and a taller cadaverous one with thick lips which made him look like a rather negroid death’s-head, both of whom Simon had seen at the bedside of Don Pasquale, and behind them Al Destamio and the man called Cirano with the nose to match it. They had been sitting around a circular dining table on which were glasses and a bottle of grappa, under a single light bulb with a wide conical brass shade over it. Cigarette and cigar ashes and butts soiled a gilt-edged plate that had been used as an ashtray.

Destamio was the first to recover his wits.

“It’s a bluff,” he croaked. “He only has two shots with that thing. He dare not use it because he knows that even if he gets two of us the other two will get him.”

He said this in plain Italian, for the Saint’s benefit.

Simon smiled.

“So which two of you would like to be the heroes, and sacrifice yourselves for the other two?”

There was no immediate rush of volunteers.

“Then move back a bit,” ordered the Saint, swinging the shotgun. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Scarface and Skullface gave ground, not unwillingly; but Destamio kept behind Skullface, whose bulk was not quite sufficient to mask the protrusion of Destamio’s elbow as his right hand crept up his side. Simon’s restless eyes caught the movement, and his voice sliced through the smoky air like a sword.

“Stop him, Cirano! Or you may never find out why he is a bad security risk.”

“I would like to know about that,” Cirano said, and widened his mouth in a tight grin that made double pothooks on each side of his majestic nose.

He did more than talk; he caught hold of Destamio’s right wrist, arresting its stealthy crawl towards the hip. Their muscles conflicted for a second before Destamio must have realized that even the slightest struggle would nullify any advantage he might have sneaked, and hatred replaced movement as an almost equally palpable link between them.

“You would listen to anyone if he was against me, non è vero?” Destamio snarled. “Even to this—”

“A good leader listens to everything before he makes up his mind, Alessandro,” Cirano said equably. “You can be the first to sacrifice yourself when he has spoken, if you like, but there can be no harm in hearing what he has to say. You have nothing to cover up, have you?”

Destamio growled deep in his throat, but made no articulate answer. He abandoned his effort reluctantly, with a disgusted shrug that tried to convey that anyone stupid enough to accept such reasoning deserved all the nonsense that it would get him. But his beady eyes were tense and vicious.

“That’s better,” drawled the Saint. “Now we can have a civilized chat.”

He advanced to within reach of the bottle on the table, picked it up, and took a sampling swig from it, without shifting his gaze from his captive audience. He lowered the bottle again promptly, with a grimace and a shudder, but did not put it down.

“Ugh,” he said politely. “I don’t wonder that people who drink this stuff start vendettas. I should start my first one with the distiller.”

“How did you get here?” Cirano asked abruptly.

“A stork brought me,” said the Saint. “However, if you were wondering whether I had some connivance from your guard at the gate outside, forget it. He never drew a disloyal breath, poor fellow. But he had an acute attack of laryngitis. If he is still breathing when you find him, which is somewhat doubtful, I hope you will not add insult to his injuries.”

“At the least, he will have to answer for negligence,” Cirano said. “But since you are here, what do you want?”

“Some information about Alessandro here — for which I may be able to give you some in return.”

“He is playing for time,” Destamio rasped shrewdly. “What could he possibly tell any of you about me?”

“That is what I should like to know,” Cirano said, with his great nose questing like a bird-dog.

He was nobody’s fool. He knew that the Saint would not be standing there to talk without a reason, but he was not ready to jump to Destamio’s conclusion as to what the reason was. Even the remote possibility that there might be more to it than a play for time forced him to satisfy his curiosity, because he could not afford to brush off anything that might weight the scales between them. And being already aware of this bitter rivalry, Simon gambled his life on playing them and their partisans against each other, keeping them too preoccupied to revert to the inexorable arithmetic which added and subtracted to the cold fact that they could overwhelm him whenever they screwed up their resolve to pay the price.

“Of course you know all about his riper or even rottener years,” said the Saint agreeably. “But I was talking about the early days, when the Al we know was just a punk, if you will excuse the expression. Don Pasquale may have known — but doubtless he knew secrets about all of you which he took with him. But Al is older than the rest of you, and there may not be anyone left in the mob who could say they grew up with him. Not many of you can look forward to reaching his venerable old age: there are too many occupational hazards. So there can’t be many people around unlucky enough to be able to recognize him under the name he had before he went to America.”

“He is crazy!” Destamio choked. “You all know my family—”

“You all know the Destamios,” Simon corrected. “And a good sturdy Mafia name it is, no doubt. And a safe background for your new chief. On the other hand, in these troubled times, could you afford to elect a chief with an air-tight charge of bank robbery and murder against him on which he could not fail to be convicted tomorrow — or with which he might be black-mailed into betraying you instead?”

4

Simon Templar knew that at least he had made some impression. He could tell it from the way Skullface and Scarface looked at Destamio, inscrutably waiting for his response. In such a hierarchy, no such accusation, however preposterous it might seem, could be dismissed without an answer.

“Lies! Nothing but lies!” blustered Destamio, as if he would blast them away by sheer vocal volume. “He will say anything that comes into his head—”

“Then why are you raising your voice?” Simon taunted him. “Is it a guilty conscience?”

“What is this other name?” Cirano asked.

“It might be Dino Cartelli,” said the Saint.

Destamio looked at the faces of his cronies, and seemed to draw strength from the fact that the name obviously had no impact on them.

“Who is this Cartelli?” he jeered. “I told you, this Saint is only trying to make trouble for me. I think he is working for the American government.”

“It should be easy enough to prove,” Simon said calmly, speaking to Cirano as if this were a private matter between them. “All you have to do is take Al’s fingerprints and ask the Palermo police to check them against the record of Dino Cartelli. No doubt you have a contact who could do that — perhaps the maresciallo himself? Cartelli, of course, is supposed to be dead, and they would be fascinated to hear of someone walking around alive with his identical prints. It would call for an urgent investigation, with the whole world looking on, or it might pop the entire fingerprint system like a pin in a balloon. But I’d suggest keeping Al locked up somewhere while you do it, or a man at his time of life might be tempted to squeal in exchange for a chance to spend his declining years in freedom.”

Destamio’s face turned a deeper shade of purple, but he had more control of himself now. He had to, if he was going to overcome suspicion and maintain his contested margin of leadership. And he had not climbed as high as he stood now through nothing but loudness and bluster.

“I will gladly arrange the fingerprint test myself,” he said. “And anyone who has doubted me will apologize on his knees.”

It was the technique of the monumental bluff, so audacious that it might never be called — or if it was, he could hope by then to have devised a way to juggle the result. It was enough to tighten the lips of Cirano, as he felt the mantle of Don Pasquale about to be twitched again from hovering over his shoulders.

“But that will not be done in these two minutes,” Destamio went on, pressing his counter-attack. “And I tell you, he is only trying to distract you for some minutes, perhaps until more soldiers or police arrive—”

His black button-eyes switched to a point over the Saint’s shoulder and above his head, widening by a microscopic fraction. If he had said anything like “Look behind you!” Simon would have simply hooted at the time-worn wheeze, but the involuntary reaction was a giveaway which scarcely needed the stealthy creak of a board from the same focal direction to authenticate it.

The Saint half turned to glance up and backwards, knowing exactly the risk he had to take, like a lion-tamer forced to take his eyes off one set of beasts to locate another creeping behind him, and glimpsed on the dimness of a staircase disclosed by the light that spilled from the room a fat gargoyle of a woman in a high-necked black dressing-gown trying to take two-handed aim at him with a shaky blunderbuss of a revolver — the wife or housekeeper of Cirano or Skullface or Scarface, whoever was the host, who must have been listening to everything since the dining-room door opened, and who had gallantly responded to the call of domestic duty.

In a flash Simon turned back to the room, as the hands of the men in it clawed frantically for the guns at their hips and armpits, and flung the grappa bottle which he still held up at the naked light bulb. It clanged on the brass shade like a gong, and he leapt sideways as the light went out.

The antique revolver on the stairs boomed like a cannon, and sharper retorts spat from the pitch blackness which had descended on the dining room, but the Saint was out in the hall then and untouched. He fired one barrel of the shotgun in the direction of the dining-room door, aimed low, and was rewarded by howls of rage and pain. The pellets would not be likely to do mortal damage at that elevation, but they could reduce by one or two the number of those in condition to take up the chase. He deliberately held back on the second trigger, figuring that the knowledge that he still had another barrel to fire would slightly dampen the eagerness of the pursuit.

Another couple of shots, perhaps loosed from around the shelter of the dining-room door frame, zipped past him as he sprinted to the front door and cleared the front steps in one bound, but respect for his reserve fire-power permitted him to make a diagonal run across the garden to the gate without any additional fusillade.

Outside the gate he stopped again, listening for following footsteps, but he did not hear any. He could have profited by his lead to run on down the road in either direction, leaving the Ungodly to guess which way he had chosen; but that would also have left them one avenue of escape where he could not hinder them or see them go. Now if two of them came on foot, he worked it out, he would have to slug the nearest one with his gun barrel and hope he would still have time to fire it at the second; if there were three or more, the subsequent developments would be very dicey indeed. On the other hand, if they came by car, he would have to shoot at the driver and hope that the glass was not tough enough to resist buckshot.

He waited tensely, but it seemed as if the pursuers had paused to lick their wounds, or were maneuvering for something more stealthy.

Then he heard something quite different: a distant sound of machinery rumbling rapidly closer. It was keyed by the throaty voice of the Bugatti, but filled out by an accompaniment of something more high-pitched and fussy. Lights silhouetted the bend from the village and then swept around it. The Bugatti, with Ponti at the wheel and Lieutenant Fusco beside him, was plainly illuminated for a moment by the lights of the following scout car, before its own headlights swung around and blinded him. Simon ran towards them, holding both hands high with the shotgun in one of them, hoping that it would stop any trigger-happy warrior mistaking him for an attacking enemy.

The Bugatti burnt rubber as it slowed, and Simon side-stepped to let it bring Ponti up to him.

“You took long enough,” he said rudely. “Did I forget to show you how to get into top gear?”

“Lieutenant Fusco would not abandon his scout car, and I had to hold back for them to keep up with us,” said the detective. “Did you have any luck?”

“Quite a lot — and in more ways than one.” Simon thought the details could wait. “There are at least six of them in that house behind the wall: four live ones, big shots, a guard whom I may have killed, and a woman who would make a good mother to an ogre.”

Fusco jumped out and shouted back to his detachment: “Report to the Major where we are and that we are going in after them, then follow me.”

“A good thing we’re not trying to surprise them,” Simon remarked. “But they already know they’re in trouble. The only question is whether they will surrender or fight.”

They went through the gate and up the short driveway together. The three soldiers from Fusco’s scout car followed, their boots making the noise of a respectable force before they fanned out across the lawn.

Ponti produced a flashlight and shone it at the front door which Simon had left half open.

“Come out with your hands up,” he shouted from the foot of the steps, “or we shall come in and take you.”

There was no answer, and the beam showed no one in what could be seen of the hall.

“This is my job,” Ponti said, and shoved Simon aside as he ran up the steps.

Fusco ran after him, and Simon had to recover his balance before he could get on the Lieutenant’s heels. But no shots greeted them, and the hall and staircase showed empty to the sweep of Ponti’s flashlight. A flickering yellow luminance came from the door of the dining room, however, and when they reached it they saw Skullface and Scarface lying on the floor groaning, while the woman of the house tried to minister to their bloodstained legs by the light of a candle.

Cirano also lay on the floor, but he was not groaning. There was a single red stain on his shirt, and his eyes were open and sightless. His magnificent nose stood up between them like a tombstone.

Ponti bent over him briefly, and looked up at the Saint.

“Did you do this?”

Simon shook his head.

“No. The others, yes — with this.” He broke the shotgun, extracting one spent and one unused shell. “I didn’t have a pistol. But Destamio did, and so did these two, and so did Florence Nightingale. I broke the light” — he pointed to it — “and they were all blazing away in the dark. It could have been an accident. You will have to try matching bullets to guns. But there is one gun missing.” He turned to the woman. “Dov’é Destamio?”

She glared at him without answering.

“There must be a back way out,” Simon said. “Or else—”

He turned and pushed two of the bersaglieri who were crowding at the door.

“Go and watch the garage,” he snapped. “And one of you block the driveway with you car.”

He went on across the hall and opened the door on the opposite side. It led to the kitchen, which was lit by a weak electric bulb over the sink. He strode across it to another door, which was ajar. Ponti was following him. They stepped out into darkness and fresh air.

“Your back way,” Ponti said. “We should have looked for it before we came in at the front.”

“If Al used it, he was probably gone before you got here,” said the Saint. “Now, is he holed up somewhere else in the village, or would he try to make it out of here on foot? If Olivetti and his troops catch up soon enough, you might still be able to cordon off the area.”

The detective was shining his flashlight this way and that. They were in a small walled courtyard with an old well in one corner, garbage cans in another, and an opening to a narrow alley in a third. The light swung to the fourth corner, and a brief pungent malediction dropped from Ponti’s lips.

“I think we are already much too late,” he said.

In the fourth corner, a short passage led back to a pair of large wide-open doors, beyond which was a bare-walled emptiness, and at the back of that the inside of another pair of doors, which were closed.

“God damn and blast it, the garage!” Simon gritted. “With doors at both ends, and a back alley to drive out. What every Mafia boss’s home should have. And if there was a boss-grade car in it, he could be twenty kilometers away already.”

They returned through the house, and Simon went on out of the front door and across to the gate. Ponti stayed with him.

“The guard I incapacitated is under those bushes,” Simon said, pointing as he passed them.

“Where are you going?” Ponti asked.

Simon squeezed past the scout car which had been moved into the opening.

“I’m taking back my car and going home, thanking you for a delightful evening,” said the Saint. “There’s nothing more I can do here. But if I happen to run into Al again I will let you know.”

“I think you have an idea where to look for him, and I ought to forbid you to try anything more on your own,” Ponti grumbled. “But since you would only deny it, I can only ask you to let me see him alive if possible. The two whose legs you peppered, I know them, and they will be good to see in the dock, but Destamio would make it still better.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” said the Saint ambiguously. He cranked up the Bugatti and climbed in. “Which is the way to the coast road?”

“Turn to the right on the main street, and take the next fork on the left. It is not very far. Arriverderci.”

“Ciao,” said the Saint, and backed the great car around and gunned it away.

It was in fact less than ten minutes to the coast highway, and it was with a heartfelt sigh of relief that he greeted its firm paving and comparatively easy curves. In spite of his steel-wire stamina, the accumulated exertions and shortage of sleep of the last few days had taken their inevitable toll, and he was beginning to fight a conscious battle with fatigue. Now it was less of a strain to make speed, and in the next miles he broke all the speed limits and most of the traffic laws; but fortunately it was still too early for any police cars or motorcycles to be abroad.

The sky was paling when he roared into the outskirts of Palermo and slowed up to thread through back roads that were already becoming familiar. There was just one piece of evidence that he had been cheated of, which he still needed before this adventure could be wound up; and when he finally brought the Bugatti to a stop, the gates of the cemetery which he had visited the night before had just slid past the edge of its headlights before he switched them off.

The gates were not locked, but the padlock on the Destamio mausoleum had been fastened again. He had no key this time, but he had brought a jack handle from the car which would do just as well if more crudely. He inserted it and twisted mightily. Metal grated and snapped, and the broken hasp fell to the ground.

He knew that there was no fallacy like the cliché that lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but for someone else to be lurking there to attack him again, as he had been waylaid on his previous visit, would have been stretching the plausibilities much farther than that. Secure in the confidence that no biographer could inflict such a dull repetition on him, he walked inside without hesitation or trepidation, aiming for the tomb that he had so narrowly missed seeing before.

His pocket flashlight had long since vanished, but he had found a book of matches in the glove compartment of the Bugatti. He struck one that flared high in the windowless vault. There was a bronze casket almost at his eye level which looked newer than the others, though it was itself well aged and coated with dust. He bent close, and brought the match near the tarnished bronze plate on the side.

It read: