The Camelot Caper (7 page)

It was almost dark when they reached the parking lot, and Jess, barking her shins on a fender, cursed the economy-minded Salisbury City Council, or whatever body guided the affairs of the town. Why couldn't they put more lights in their parking lots? Then she saw that there were lamps, but that two of them had gone out. The lot was only half full by now. The weather, and the hour, had driven many shoppers and sightseers indoors.

Without thinking, Jess went to the wrong side of the car, and there was a brief altercation while David pointed out her error. Another car had parked in the space next to his, and the gap between the two was narrow; slim as she was, she had to squeeze sideways to reach her door. Always the perfect gentleman, David followed
her and bent over the lock, trying, with some difficulty in the dark, to insert his key.

Both doors of the adjoining car opened at the same time. Jess had only time enough to realize what a neat, tight little box was formed by the sides of the two cars and the door of the one when the dark shape beside her brought an arm down and the wet pavement beneath her feet dissolved into mist through which she fell into blackness.

 

She woke up to find David's feet in her face. There was no mistaking the clammy feel and smell of wet leather.

Her first reaction was relief that he was there, in any position or condition…

Which thought led her, after a hazy moment, to violent attempts at movement. David's feet were ominously still. Supposing he was…Her mind, still fogged by a splitting headache, recoiled from the word with a surge of terror.

The first attempt to move was as futile as the second, third, and fourth attempts. She subsided, gasping for breath behind the gag that muffled the lower part of her face. Her wrists and ankles were tied. She was lying on a surface which she thought must be the floor of a car, to
judge from the vibration and sense of movement. Most of David seemed to be on top of her; his weight, as well as her bonds, made movement impossible.

Dead weight. Now the word fought its way past her defenses, and she began to wiggle again.

This time her contortions produced results, though not the ones she had hoped for. A voice from the front seat of the car said, “One of them is awake.”

There was a squeak of springs and, after a moment, a second voice reported, “He's not.”

“What about her?”

“Can't tell.”

No wonder you can't, Jess thought furiously. Burying me down under here like a turnip…Then she froze, as the first voice said, with an indifference that chilled her more than the actual words, “Give her another tap on the head, why don't you?”

The second man made deprecatory noises.

Jess recognized this voice, though it lacked the artificial huskiness which had once disguised it. The dulcet tones were those of the man with the mustache, the one they had christened “Cousin John.” His companion must be
the thin dark man. They had never decided on a name for him. David had maintained that “X” or “the second villain” was too anonymous; he had suggested Algernon. Tears began to slide down Jessica's cheeks.

She wept in strangled silence for a time. The gag was wet anyhow; nasty, sloppy things, gags. Her headache had become an almost tangible weight on her head, and she lost track of time for a bit. Then the car jerked, banging her head painfully against a metal object on the floor. It jerked again, and jerked to a stop.

At first she assumed that this was the end of the road, and her other, more unselfish emotions were swamped under a wash of sheer terror. Then the voices took up a furious dialogue.

“…damned heap of rubbish! I told you the motor needed—”

“And just when, may I ask, have I had the time to take it to a garage?”

“Could be out of petrol.”

“Not bloody likely.”

The car door slammed, and Jess perked up, as much as she could perk under one hundred and eighty pounds of David. This was the sort of maddening accident that could only happen to very amateur crooks; and it was something the good guys ought to be able to take advantage of.
But how could she, with her bodyguard not only unconscious, but weighing her down like a tombstone?

Footsteps crunched on gravel, moving from the side to the front of the car. By straining her neck to the breaking point, Jess made out the wavering light of a flashlight. She also found two stars. They were, then, out in the country; there would be other lights visible in a town, and other sounds. That ended any hope of rescue by a policeman or inquisitive passerby.

The footsteps crunched again.

“Petrol. Tank absolutely dry. Of all the dam' fool, negligent—”

“Well, I am sorry.”

“That's a help. You'd best start hiking.”

“Oh—hell. I suppose I must. It must be all of four miles!”

“Would you rather I went?”

“Much rather,” said Cousin John candidly.

“Very well. If some fool of a do-gooder stops, and gets a look at those two, in the back…”

“Damn and blast! Do you think that's likely?”

“It's a possibility we must consider; and, frankly, old boy, I would rather not leave you to handle it. You haven't the sense of a cat or the courage of a rabbit. Now hop to it, and don't dawdle.”

“It's difficult for me to resist such effusive compliments.”

“You can beg a lift back, but it will take all of an hour to get there, unless you're fortunate enough to pick up a ride.”

“I daren't let anyone bring me back. Not with those two—”

“Precisely. That is why I shall, during your absence, shift the evidence temporarily. Another job which, I fancy, you'd rather not handle.”

The only answer was an eloquent sniff, followed by footsteps rapidly retreating out of earshot.

“Bloody fool,” the man in the front seat muttered. Jess heard a match scrape, and smelled cigarette smoke.

Jess was feeling sick enough without the addition of another unperfumed smell. The brief dialogue had told her a good deal about the characters of their abductors; of the two, she thought she preferred Cousin John. He was a rat, but at least he had human foibles and the rudiments of a sense of humor. The second man seemed to think of them as two unwieldy parcels; the very tones of his voice were as bloodless and inhuman as the click of a calculating machine.

When the car seat in front squeaked, she went
rigid, expecting murder. The front door opened, but the back door did not. The man's footsteps sounded gratingly on gravel, and then, abruptly, stopped. Was he standing by the car? She couldn't hear him breathe, or smell the cigarette any longer. Probably he had gone off into the fields. He would have to scout around a bit in order to find a hiding place for their bodies, in case Cousin John returned with a potential witness.

But he would soon be back. Nothing very complex in the way of a hole to hide in would be necessary at this hour, and in this place. If she had had Cousin John to deal with, Jess would have decided to wait until she had been dumped in a handy ditch before making any attempts at escape. Mr. X was another cup of tea. He seemed quite capable of silencing them, perhaps permanently, before he left them in the field.

She began to wrestle, ineffectually, with her bonds, and then went stiff as a board when a voice addressed her by name.

It was David's voice, breathless and soft, but unmistakably David's. He heard her gurgled response, and said quickly,

“Don't yell, for the love of God. Oh. Forgot. You can't yell. Turn your face this way, can you,
and excuse me if I hurt you, I've got to work fast.”

His bound hands banged her painfully on the nose before his fingers found the edge of the gag. He jerked it down with scant regard for the skin on her lips.

“Now turn over, get your hands up here. Can't you kneel?”

“Not with your feet on my stomach.”

“Always complaining. Is that better? All right, I've found your arm. There. Now, hold still….”

The process seemed to take forever, and at every second Jess expected to hear the man returning. She could see out the car window now, and the view she saw was that of a peaceful pastoral landscape, wooded and gently rolling, under a high, bright moon. It was deserted. Not a human form was visible, not a light showed, except for the round silver penny of the moon and the dreaming stars.

Then at last her hands fell free and she turned, rubbing them, and fumbled for David's wrists.

“Don't bother with that, get my back pocket. There's a knife. No, the left pocket.”

When she had sawed through the ropes on his hands he snatched the knife from her and swung his feet up on the seat. He was still hacking at the
ropes on his ankles when, in the bright moonlight, she saw the man coming back.

Her gasp alerted David. He muttered something blasphemous and slid down onto the seat in an approximation of his former position.

“Take the knife,” he hissed.

Four hands fumbled clumsily, and Jess found herself holding the knife. She had better sense than to try to free her feet then. Instead she subsided onto the floor, face down to hide the absence of a gag, her hands behind her. She had no idea what David was planning to do. Something clever, of course; a writer of thrillers ought to be overflowing with escape plans. Certainly his performance so far had been admirable. She couldn't blame him for not being on the alert in Salisbury; she hadn't expected any trouble either.

The rear door of the car was pulled open, and David propelled himself out onto the kidnaper.

Winded by the foot he had planted in her ribs, Jess lay still for a moment. The metal implement—jack, or wrench, or whatever it was—was jammed up against her hipbone, and she picked it up and tossed it onto the seat. She had just begun to saw at the ropes on her ankles—David's pocketknife felt like a relic from his school days, untouched since then—when the
car rocked wildly. One of the combatants had been tossed against it. Jess sawed harder. Her head emerged from the doorway just in time to see David aim a vicious judo chop at the other man's neck. It landed on a shoulder instead, as the man ducked; from David's pained expression Jess deduced that the shoulder was heavily muscled, or padded, or both. The other man hit David in the stomach and added a crack on the jaw that echoed through the windless night like a shot.

Jess reached back into the car and picked up the wrench. David had slumped to his knees and was embracing his opponent's legs. In the eerie light of the moon the two looked like priest and suppliant, or a king being begged for mercy, or a judge….. The tableau held just long enough for Jess to reach out and bring the wrench down, with annoyed precision, on the victor's head. She suspected it was the same wrench that had knocked her cold earlier, and appreciated fully, for the first time, the meaning of the phrase “poetic justice.”

David stood up, taking his time about it. Jess made no move to assist him; she just stood and shook, while her weapon slid out of her hand.

“Are you all right?” she squeaked.

David wiped his mouth meticulously with
the back of his hand and studied the result.

“I think,” he said, wheezing, “I broke my hand, when I hit him.”

“Hit him, indeed. I suppose you've been reading your own fiction. You have to practice that judo stuff. Or whatever that was supposed to be. Otherwise you just—”

“If you say one word—just one,” David said, taking her by the shoulders, “I am going to shake—you—till your teeth—rattle.”

“You haven't got the strength. Oh, David, please don't faint or anything; if you do I'll start screaming.”

David straightened and eyed her with a cool dignity which was only slightly marred by the blood on his chin and the extreme pallor of his face.

“Faint, nonsense; I'm trying not to be sick all over the road. The last time anybody hit me in that precise spot I was nine years old, and I…For the love of God, what are we standing here for? Let's run.”

“You can't walk, let alone run! You're leaning on me, hadn't you noticed? Can't we flag down a car?”

“If our other pal meets a kindly driver along the way, in or out, he could be back at any moment. And it would be just our luck if he
happened to be in the car we flagged down.”

He was right. They had hardly cleared the fence on the other side of the road when a truck pulled up by the car and the moonlight shone fair and free on the curling mustache of Cousin John.

Absentminded he might be, but he was not slow; from where she crouched behind the fence Jess saw his face tighten as he glanced at the suspiciously silent scene. The body of his fallen ally was not visible from where he stood, but he must have suspected that something was amiss. He turned and said something to the invisible driver of the truck, which promptly made a U-turn and roared back in the direction from which it had come. As soon as it was out of sight, Cousin John put down the gasoline can he was holding, and trotted around the car.

Jess understood why David had not rushed out to demand assistance from the driver of that truck. If cornered, both villains might turn violent; she could not be sure they were not armed. But when he pulled at her sleeve and gestured meaningfully toward the fields which stretched out behind them, she resisted.

“They'll see us,” she whispered. “And hear us.”

“If we squat here much longer, they will also
feel us,” was the critical reply. “With a club. Come along, while they're getting reorganized.”

She saw his point; still, it was an effort to raise herself up out of the comforting dip in the ground where she had at least had the illusion of shelter, and dash off, in full view, amid a crashing of dried leaves, sticks and loose stones. She heard a wordless bellow from the road, but never knew whether it was prompted by Cousin John's discovery of his fallen cohort, or his sight of them. But when she looked back, she saw the now familiar silhouette tumble over the fence, pick itself up, and dart after them.