The Saint in Persuit (20 page)

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.