Vendetta for the Saint. (34 page)

Ponti showed his
teeth in a vulpine grin.

“I can if you are not deceiving me, and unless
you let me down. In which case I would do worse
to you than I promised Niccolo. But on your testi
mony I have plenty to charge them with—assault,
kidnaping, attempted murder. Then there is a very
legalistic charge involving criminal
intentions,
which an assembly of
persons of bad repute can be
assumed
to be plotting, in certain circumstances.
But best of all would be if one of them does fire a
shot at
us—then we need no more excuses.”

“So, it is decided,” Olivetti said,
with ebullient
enthusiasm.
“The
tecnici
will go out first, in pairs, on motorcycles. Then,
look, the first and second
plotoni
—”

His subalterns and the sergeant crowded up
to
follow his pointings on the
map as he developed
the plan
in greater detail; and Ponti caught Simon’s
eye and beckoned him away from the briefing.

“I imagine you would like to go back to your
hotel and get some sleep, but that might be dangerous.
Let me give you the key to my apartment. The
Mafia will never look for you there. I will see you
there after all this is over. You will have to
identify
the ones that we capture,
and make a deposition to
support the charges. The address is—”

Simon had already begun to shake his head,
before he interrupted.

“There you go again, Marco, trying to
kill me
with kindness,” he murmured.
“It makes me feel
an ungrateful bum to
turn you down, but I have sat through too many acts of this opera to be eased
out
before the grand finale. I shall
come along and be
ready with more of
my brilliant advice in case the
military
needs it.”

“But you are a civilian. You do not
have to ex
pose
yourself—”

“Someone should have told me that a few
days
ago. But now I
still have those personal problems of my own which you know something about,
and
I want a chance
to straighten them out before some
trigger-happy
bersagliere
blasts away any hope of
getting the answers. If you refuse me that
little bit
of fun, I
might be so upset as to get an attack of amnesia, and be completely unable to
identify any of your prisoners. Such things can happen to hys
terical types like me.”

“Your blackmail is shameful. But I am
forced to
bow to it.
However, I take no responsibility for
your safety, or for any legal trouble you may get
into.”

“You never did, did you?” said the
Saint in
nocently.

The map-table conference broke up, and the
lieutenants and the sergeant hurried out.

“Well, the operation will be rolling in
eight
minutes,”
Olivetti said. “The Company was put on
full alert as soon as you telephoned,
Ponti—and
since then there has been no
telephoning.”

With a broad smile, he held up his huge hand
and clicked a pantomime wire-cutter.

“I, too, take no chances,” he said,
and looked at
the Saint.
“I am glad you are going with us. It will help to have someone who knows
the layout of this
castello.”

“He insists,” Ponti said wryly.
“He is afraid that
he
may become hysterical if he is left alone. He has
been through a lot, you know.”

“Now you try to explain that,
Marco,” Simon
grinned,
and went out.

He was checking the gas and oil in the
Bugatti
when the
advance scouts set out, the wasp-whine of
their Guzzi motorcycles splitting the still night.
They were followed by the snore of truck engines
grumbling into life.

Satisfied that his borrowed behemoth was
still fuelled for any kilometrage that it was likely to be
called on to cover, he was buckling down the
hood
when a Fiat
scout car skidded to a stop beside him with all four wheels locked. Major
Olivetti was at the wheel. In the rear seat, a lieutenant and the radio-man
braced themselves stoically, being no doubt inured to their commander’s
mercurial pilot
age; but
in the other front bucket Ponti had his
hands clamped to the dashboard with a pained
ex
pression which hinted that
he might have preferred
the vehicle which
brought him to the camp.

“Follow my column,” Olivetti bawled,
“and
join me when we
stop. Do you want a gun?”

He
proferred his own automatic.

“Thank you; but it must be illegal for
foreign
civilians in
this country to possess military fire
arms. And in any case I already have an illegal
weapon obtained from the Mafia. But don’t
tell
your
poliziotti
friends.”

Ponti opened his mouth, but whatever contribu
tion he may have had in mind was not forth
coming, at least in Simon’s hearing. For at
that
moment the
grinning major snapped in the clutch,
and the
scout car vanished into the night with a jolt
that
could have whiplashed the necks of its occu
pants.

A column of trucks growled after it while Simon
was winding up the Bugatti and turning it around.
He fell in after the scout car that brought up the
rear.

Strangely
or naturally, according to which
school of
psychology you favor, he was not won
dering
how Lily was making out, but what had happened to Gina. Gina with the dark
virginal eyes and the wickedly nymphic body and the young eagerness and
unsureness, who was another part of the intricate house of Destamio, and who
could be
destroyed with it—if it had
not already destroyed
her first.

VII

How the
Fireworks went Off

and Cirano
turned up his Nose

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 in
terior 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
mid
night, 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 cor
nice?
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 over
taking 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 in
stantaneous. 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 val
ley.

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 occu
pants 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 commen
dable 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 remorse
lessly
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 Si
mon.

“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?”