They heard the horses take off after the sound of the falling rock, and Simon grinned again.
“The old tricks are sometimes the best.” He signalled her to go; and she saw in his eyes that steely light of battle which many had seen before her, and many had feared, and some had loved. And then he was gone, like a fluid shadow melting into the undergrowth, and she found herself doing, almost automatically, what he had told her. She ran as quickly and noisily as she could out into the open and marshy terrain that bordered the haras, following a line away from the buildings but at an oblique angle to the track.
They heard her at once. Bernadotti and Pancho and the other man came crashing through the bushes on their powerful mounts. Arabella glanced behind as she ran. She had perhaps a fifty-yard advantage. She saw those great horses with their lanced riders thundering after her like some unarmoured jousters of a longpast age; and she ran as she had never run before.
The ground was rankly swampy with patches of somewhat higher grassy ground at intervals, and she found she could mostly judge her paces to land on these higher stepping-stones — whereas the horses were slowed somewhat by having to plunge and plop their way though the viscous ooze of the swamp. There were bushes and young trees at intervals, too, so that she followed a zigzag course in which pursuers and pursued lost sight of each other for a few seconds at a time.
But the snorting and splashing of the horses grew steadily louder, and she knew that they were inexorably catching her up. Then came the moment when she had to change direction and head for the track farther along, striking it, with luck, beyond the point where Simon should have rejoined his car.
If it had been only Bernadotti and Gomez pursuing, she would certainly have made it. But the other man was clearly a far better horseman; he was well ahead of them and now bearing down on her at speed.
She made the change of direction abruptly, taking advantage of the cover given by some bushes. Still she heard the horses coming after her. But she heard another sound, too — one that sang in her ears as no sound of that kind ever had before.
It was the engine of the Saint’s Hirondel springing into throbbing life.
Arabella made straight for it, the endurance of her legs and lungs now close to their limits. The car must be, from the sound, a good fifty yards away, and that horseman, with his pic poised, could be no more than a few paces behind her. And then, still running with a speed and surefootedness that astonished her, she was suddenly out of the swamp and back into that narrow strip of scrubby undergrowth bordering the track. She could feel her legs giving way as she ducked and swerved between the bushes in a last desperate endeavour to evade the thundering hooves and the murderous-looking lance. But the horseman crashed straight on through, simply flattening the bushes in his path.
Now she could see the car ahead, the engine still running...
And there was no one at the wheel.
The horseman was now so close behind that she could all but feel the point of the lance already impaling her through the small of her back. And then her legs buckled under her, and she tripped — exhausted, gasping, and covered in muddy slime. She must have passed out for a few moments; but through a kind of fog she heard a sharp crack, followed by the sort of heavy thud that might be made by a man falling off a horse.
The fog cleared, and she saw that a man had indeed fallen off a horse. And she saw Simon Templar standing in front of her, an automatic in his steady hand and a smile of admiration in his equally steady gaze.
Ten seconds later she found herself, somehow, in the passenger seat of the Hirondel and travelling rapidly towards the main road.
The Saint grinned at the pathetically dirty and dishevelled figure beside him, and wrinkled up his nose.
“Nice perfume,” he remarked.
“Ho bloody ho!” she snorted, between gasping breaths. “Just look at me. And look at you! No dirt, no gook, no gunge — you’re not even puffed!”
The Saint, cool and debonair, grinned again.
“Sorry. It was the only way. It was you they wanted. They were bound to take off after you once they spotted you.”
“But just look at me!” she repeated. She grabbed the driving mirror and turned it to gaze in horror at her face. “All my things, my bag—” She wailed: “—they’re back there somewhere in my car. You found me. You could at least have found my bag.”
“Oh, you’re quite welcome,” Simon said cheerfully. “Think nothing of it. I’m always saving people’s lives.”
She digested that for a while.
“I guess I am incredibly lucky you found me,” she said finally, with conciliation in her voice. “But come to think of it, how on earth did you find me? What are you even doing in France, anyway?”
“Oh, you know, this and that,” he told her. “I thought I’d see if I couldn’t look up your husband’s murderer.”
“My husband’s — murderer?” She looked at him aghast. “Are you mad? Is everybody mad?”
Simon recoiled fastidiously as she leaned rather too near. He waved her away.
“Uh... would you mind? I’m still fairly clean.”
Her eyes blazed with anger at that.
“Yes, I sure damn well would mind,” she exploded. “And what on earth makes you think Charles was murdered?”
The Saint said: “There was a third person on the boat with him and Fournier. One who survived.”
“And who was that third person?”
“That remains to be seen. But one thing we can be pretty certain of. Charles must have talked before he was killed. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been killed. So the survivor — the murderer — is at least one person who knows where the gold is.”
“But how can you be so sure—” She stopped short, now very thoughtful. “Now you’re talking about this ‘gold’. Simon, how do you know all this? If Charles had some gold, how come they, and you, know all about it and I don’t? And how come you were able to turn up back there, in the proverbial nick of time?” Arabella stopped again, with suspicion clouding her features. “What is all this, Simon? I can’t even be sure of your part in it any more. So where’s the nearest police station around here?”
The Saint sighed patiently.
“Dear lovely Arabella, you’re understandably overwrought and suspicious, especially as I’ve had all the clean and heroic bits of the action today and you’ve had all the dirty, dangerous and the strenuous ones. But wouldn’t you like to know where there’s several million dollars in gold bullion?”
“Several mill—” She sat back and thought for a minute, as they sped through the landscapes of southern France, now on the main road for Marseilles. Then, looking no less confused, she shrugged and said: “I could get used to bullion.”
“Then you see why we’re not going to the police just yet.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Plenty of time to think — while you’re bathing.”
After they had installed themselves in twin communicating suites in one of the better hotels of Marseille, Arabella lost no time in making the acquaintance of the bathroom, while Simon went out on a rapid shopping trip.
He came in carrying assorted feminine garments in both the under- and the outerwear categories, as well as sundry toiletries. There was no end to the surprising range of knowledge he had picked up in his adventurer’s life, and the fact that he was capable of choosing well-matched feminine accoutrements to suit a woman’s taste should occasion neither surprise nor indelicate enquiry.