Codeword Golden Fleece (41 page)

De Richleau had purposely refrained from giving his final instructions till the last few moments in order to take Simon’s mind off the dangers that lay ahead. When the taxi slowed down Simon saw that four men were still posted outside the Legation gate, but suddenly he had lost all sense of fear and found himself completely calm and collected.

As the taxi drew up two of the men walked purposefully towards it, but when they saw Simon get out they halted, gave him only a casual glance and strolled back to their companions.

With his eyes cast piously on the pavement, Simon, now playing his part to perfection, went forward with short, firm steps. The sidewalk was a wide one, and to his surprise he realised that he had already covered three-quarters of its width without any of the men making a move to stop him. Another few measured steps and the men parted to let him through while two of them murmured a ‘
God be with you’.

He bowed slightly in acknowledgement. His heart was steady now and high with elation. He was so near the gate that whatever happened they could not possibly stop him throwing the Golden Fleece over it. He had got it out while still in the taxi and had it clutched firmly in his left hand, which was thrust into the wide sleeve of his robe. In his right hand he grasped his pistol, similarly hidden.

Suddenly there was a shout behind him. Automatically he faltered and looked round. A man dressed as a taxi-driver was running diagonally across the street and yelling wildly as he pointed at the number-plate of the taxi at the wheel of which the Duke was sitting.

In an instant Simon grasped what had happened. By an almost inconceivably ill chance the taxi-driver whose cab the Duke had taken earlier that morning had been walking down the street, and had recognised his stolen taxi.

The gibberish the man was shouting meant nothing to Simon, but it did to the passerby, and to the men posted on the Legation gate.

The second they realised the cause of the man’s excitement two of them dashed forward towards the taxi. The other two closed up in front of Simon.

He stepped aside and tried to pass, his eyes still desperately fixed on the ground. One of them grasped his arm. It was that of the hand that held the packet. He wrenched his arm free, but in doing so his hand was pulled from his sleeve. The other man saw that he was trying to conceal something and with a cry of triumph grabbed at it.

Simon snatched his hand away. A shot rang out somewhere behind his back—another and another. Both the men now flung themselves at him.

Suddenly he heard a loud smack. The forehead of the man who had grabbed his arm seemed to cave in, and blood gushed out over his left eye. With splendid marksmanship the Duke, ignoring his own attackers, had put a bullet through the man’s head.

As Simon jumped aside the man fell against his companion, who staggered back, then recovered; but only to lurch again with a second bullet from the Duke’s gun in his body.

The dead man now lay sprawled upon the pavement, the other was reeling back against the wall. De Richleau’s shooting had freed Simon for the moment. Spinning round, he thrust the precious packet into the pocket of his robe, grabbed it up and ran towards the car. Then he remembered that he must not go to it and, swerving, dashed off in another direction.

But he had glimpsed it as he started forward. Four other men, all with pistols in their hands, had suddenly sprung up from somewhere. All six of them were blazing away at de Richleau, who, crouching over his wheel, was blazing back at them.

Even as he glimpsed the Duke he saw him jerk as a bullet hit him. Another had sent his chauffeur’s cap flying, and there was blood streaming down his face.

As Simon ran an awful thought came to him. He was still grasping the accursed Golden Fleece. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten to throw it over the Legation gate. But it was too late now; he was twenty paces past the end of the Legation garden.

He turned to throw one desperate glance over his shoulder as he ran. The police had now come on the scene and were firing at the Iron Guards. The crash of firearms and the whizz of bullets
seemed to come from every side. Three men were now writhing on the pavement, but some of the Iron Guards were still firing at the taxi, and de Richleau now lolled out of its side, his gun dropped from his hand, limp and deathly still.

Simon’s every instinct was to dash back to the Duke; to pull his gun, which he had not yet even used, and shoot down some of the assassins who were still blazing at the limp body in the taxi, before he himself was killed or captured. But even as his footsteps faltered he knew that to do so would be to betray his friend’s last trust.

In an agony of self-reproach he cursed himself for having bungled his part in the affair. After the Duke had disposed of his two assailants for him he had had a clear thirty seconds in which he could have thrown the packet into the Legation garden. It was addressed to Sir Reginald and marked ‘Most Urgent’. As de Richleau must have foreseen, the sound of firing outside would immediately attract the attention of the people in the Legation; and that had proved the case. The first shots had scarcely echoed down the street when the porter on duty had opened the door; Simon had even glimpsed him as he came out on to the top step. If the packet had been thrown in he would have picked it up, and even the Iron Guard would have hesitated before actually attacking a servant of the Legation on his own ground.

Yet, once the real taxi-driver had raised the alarm and the shooting had started, everything else had followed with such frightful swiftness. As the Iron Guards had grabbed at Simon every thought had gone out of his head, except to keep the packet from them. When he should have thrown it to the porter he had made the mistake of turning round, and lost precious seconds stumbling towards the taxi. The sight of the Duke, crouching
over the wheel, hatless, wounded, fighting for his life, had recalled to him the order to run for it if there were trouble. Now he had his wits about him again and knew that his paramount duty lay in retrieving his blunder by saving the option from capture.

Half blinded by tears, which had welled up into his eyes at the sight of the limp, bullet-riddled body of the Duke, he raced on. As he swerved round the first corner that he came to he cast one glance back. The police and the Iron Guards were still shooting it out. Most of the passersby had run for cover in gateways and behind trees; and their horrified attention was riveted on the street battle that had begun so suddenly. It seemed as though those who had noticed him had taken him for a frightened old woman rurnning, as many of them were themselves, to get out of danger. No one was now looking in his direction, except the survivor of the two Iron Guards who had stopped him getting into the Legation.

The Duke’s second shot had only winged him, and he was staggering along behind Simon, supporting himself with one hand against the wall. In the other he grasped his pistol. As Simon turned the corner the man raised his weapon and fired, but the bullet whistled harmlessly over Simon’s shoulder.

He was thinking fast now. He had a good hundred yards’ start, but, encumbered with skirts as he was, he knew that he would never be able to keep it. The wounded man knew that he had been trying to smuggle a paper into the Legation. Although he could only stagger along himself, he would soon succeed in attracting the attention of some of his comrades and send them careering after the pseudo nun. In the use of his wits and not his legs lay Simon’s only hope of excaping capture.

Fifty yards down the street he had entered he saw a small box-van. Its driver was just going into a house to deliver some vegetables. He must have heard the firing but could see nothing of it and probably thought that it was none of his business. The half-door at the back of the van was open. Everyone else at that end of the street had run to the corner and was cautiously peering round it at the fracas outside the Legation. As Simon passed them he had dropped into a quick walk, as though, now that he was out of danger of a stray bullet, there was no longer any need for him to hurry. On reaching the van he gave a quick glance behind him. No one was looking in his direction. The delivery man was now hidden by the shrubs which bordered the tradesmen’s entrance.

Quick as thought Simon slipped in through the open half of the van door and, making himself as small as he could, curled behind the still closed half. With his heart pounding in his chest he crouched there, waiting.

A minute later he caught the sound of running feet. They stopped on the pavement just beside the van. Several voices were all talking excitedly in Rumanian. Simon guessed that it was the Iron Guards and part of the little group of onlookers that he had passed on the corner. It was probable that the delivery man had just come out of the tradesman’s entrance and they were asking him if he had seen a nun. A nervous shudder shook Simon. He knew that his life hung on his not being discovered in the next few moments.

For what seemed an age, but was actually only the time it would have taken him to light a cigarette, he sat doubled up, straining his ears for sounds that meant life or death to him.

The patter of running feet came again. Suddenly, without warning, an empty crate crashed on the boards beside him as the greengrocer’s roundsman threw it into the back of the van. The door was slammed to. The bright daylight gave place to sudden semi-darkness. There was a moment’s silence, then the engine of the van was started, and with a jerk it drove off.

Simon let out a long sigh of pent-up emotion. But he knew that he was still very far from being out of the wood. If the roundsman had another call to make in the same street he would open his van to get out the goods and almost inevitably discover his stowaway passenger. Then the hue-and-cry would start up all over again.

The van ran on smoothly and turned a corner. His nerves strained to breaking-point, Simon strove to calculate the distance they were covering as it sped along. It turned another corner, and he began to breathe more freely. Then it stopped.

Simon’s nature revolted at every form of violence. He positively loathed the desperate encounters in which his friends always seemed to be getting themselves involved. De Richleau was a born fighter who never sought to disguise the fact that he got as much joy out of shooting an enemy as in outwitting him by some skilful plan. Rex always enjoyed an opportunity to use his great physical strength. Even the mild, good-natured Richard seemed to derive a quiet satisfaction from delivering a well-aimed blow; but to poor Simon the very sound of crunching bone or sight of bleeding flesh was purgatory.

If he had been able to speak Rumanian he would have attempted to fool the roundsman by some plausible story concocted as he went along, or, if necessary, protest that he was an innocent party and plead with him for continued sanctuary from the pursuing killers. But he was not capable of doing that, and the man, even if, like most Rumanians of the working classes, he feared and hated the Iron Guards, was probably under the impression that a criminal dressed as a nun was wanted by the police; so he would raise an outcry the second he set eyes on his passenger.

Simon knew there was only one thing for it. Taking out his gun, he reversed it and clutched it tightly by the barrel.

The door opened, and the man thrust his head and arms inside, reaching in the semi-darkness for his next delivery of fruit and vegetables. His forward movement ceased abruptly as his downcast eyes lit on the skirts of Simon’s robe. At that second Simon let him have it with the gun-butt, hard on the back of the head.

With a little moan the man pitched forward half in and half out of the van, his head bumping with a loud knock on the empty crate that he had thrown in after his last call.

Suddenly Simon felt himself shaking all over with silent semi-hysterical laughter. The phrase to ‘stick out one’s neck’ had just flashed into his mind, and there could rarely have been a better example of the dire consequence likely to follow such an act than that which had just occurred.

Fighting down his absurd, unnatural giggles, Simon pocketed his gun, grabbed the unconscious roundsman by the coat collar and, exerting all his strength, hauled him inside.

Having covered the man’s feet with two potato sacks that lay handy, Simon waited for a moment, then cautiously peered out through the still open half-door. The van was in a side street. There was a coalcart standing stationary outside an open gateway about a hundred paces behind the van, and on the opposite side of the road two small boys, somewhat nearer but with their backs turned, were walking away from it. No one else seemed to be about, so, gathering his courage. Simon slipped out and swung the door to behind him.

He spent a moment adjusting his robe, then peeped round the corner of the van on the pavement side. A fat, stupid-looking woman carrying a heavy shopping bag was just level with the bonnet. She gave him a startled glance, but he stepped out,
piously lowered his glance, and, controlling his gait to a slow, measured pace, walked past her down the street.

After passing two cross-roads he came to a broader thoroughfare in which buses were running. Taking the first that was going towards the centre of the city, he sank down on one of its seats more dead than alive from heartrending distress about the Duke and nervous exhaustion from the appalling half-hour he himself had just experienced.

While he was in the bus he knew that he should be thinking of the future and trying to formulate some new plan for getting the option safely into Sir Reginald Kent’s hands, but his mind refused to function on those lines. The one fact which hammered in it repeatedly, to the exclusion of all else, was that their Great Planner was now out of the game for good.

Simon could not yet bring himself to accept it that never again would he look upon that charming debonair face and that the master mind that lay behind it would fashion no more subtle schemes for the discomfiture of their enemies; although the evidence of his eyes told him that de Richleau was dead. It had all come about with such appalling suddenness. It was still too close to be fully realised; yet one thing was quite certain—the Duke could not aid them now. Richard was crippled and out of it altogether. Little Marie Lou and Lucretia, both of whom had so often helped in the past with good ideas, were out of it too. Poor Jan, who might have proved a useful standby, if he had still been with them, was dead. The whole battle, both its direction and its waging, lay now with him and Rex, and even Rex was wounded.