Within seconds he had tossed her a ball of strong twine and brought out a large metal tank with a hose attached.
“What’s that?” Jenny asked.
“Some kind of pressure-spray — for spraying trees. It feels good and full.”
Simon aimed the hose away from them and squeezed the lever on the nozzle. A concentrated blast of foul-smelling spray carried for a range of ten feet or more.
“They’ll be on their way now,” he said. “Follow me.”
Carrying the pitchfork and spray device, he led her quickly and quietly along a tiny, winding, unpaved path into the most densely overgrown area he could find in that part of the grounds. It was comfortably dark there; the bright lights of the fence line and the immediate vicinity of the house scarcely penetrated the tangle of shrubs, bamboo, fragrant-flowered oleander bushes, and larger trees. “Won’t they find us here?” Jenny asked hopelessly. “And we can’t just keep running.”
“I don’t intend to sit here and do nothing but wait,” the Saint said. “We’re going to take the initiative.”
“How?”
“By using the only advantage we have — aside from our superior brains and moral character: the fact that they don’t know where we are.”
He was already tying the free end of the twine to the base of a tree, about six inches off the ground.
“I can hear them on the main path,” Jenny whispered.
“When they leave it, they’ll probably split up. In any case, they’ll be following little narrow paths like the one that leads through this thicket. They’d be stupid to go crashing through the undergrowth in hopes of stumbling over us. They’ll be listening and looking, feeling confident because we’re supposedly unarmed and they’ve got means of blasting us out of the bushes without even getting their trousers wrinkled.”
Simon had finished stretching the twine across the path and tying the balled end to a second tree. Steps sounded on the asphalt path about fifty feet away, moving very slowly from the direction of the house toward the docks.
“That’s only one of them,” the Saint whispered. “Their first mistake. Shows what overconfidence can do.”
“They’ve a right to be overconfident,” Jenny murmured. “But I still just can’t believe they’d really kill us.”
“You’ll soon have a chance to find out I’ll go a little way up this path toward the paved one, then make some noise and run back like the devil. You stay here hiding on this side with the pitchfork. I’ll jump to the other side. If he falls over the string, we’ve got him. If he comes around either side, one of us will at least have a chance to get him.”
“What if he... shoots at you?”
“He will eventually anyhow. We may as well get it over with. His chances of hitting a running target in the dark are about one in a million.”
They listened. The hesitant footsteps on the asphalt were nearer.
“Now,” the Saint said, and he crept up the unpaved path, leaving Jenny behind.
When he had gone some twenty feet toward the asphalt path he rounded a curve and spoke in a very loud and theatrical whisper.
“Is that you, Jenny?”
In answer, he heard the blast of a gun, and a bullet sang through the twigs and leaves not far above his head. Whirling, he raced back down the small path as another shot barked out and footsteps pounded behind him. There was no tune even for him to pick up the spray apparatus. He was scarcely hidden opposite Jenny when Joe Halston, his bullish form easily identifiable, came thudding around the nearest turn.
Just when it seemed he would surely trip over the tightly stretched twine, he stopped, listening, aware that his prey was no longer fleeing ahead of him. Breathing hard, he pulled a flashlight from his trousers pocket and aimed it up the path.
“Did you see them?” called Wyler’s voice from far on the other side of that end of the grounds.
“One,” Halston shouted. “I think he’s hidden in here somewhere.”
The Saint’s muscles tensed as the flashlight beam swung toward his side of the path. But it stopped suddenly and moved to Halston’s feet. Obviously he had just discovered the string.
“Okay,” he said in a low voice. “I know you’re in there.”
And the beam moved back toward Simon’s hiding place.
The Saint’s impression of the next two or three seconds was confuse,. There was a sudden rushing sound, like wind in leaves, and the light dropped as Halston cried out and staggered back. Simon instinctively seized his opportunity, without waiting to ask what he owed it to. He dove from the bushes, catching his hunter behind the knees with the full weight and force of his movement. Halston sprawled on his face, but before the Saint could administer a conclusive karate chop to the back of the thick neck he heard a crack like a stick hitting a stone and looked up to see that Jenny had just caressed Halston’s skull with a downward sweep of her pitchfork handle. Wyler was getting closer, calling for Halston.
“I just couldn’t stick it in him,” Jenny whispered humbly.
“I think you’ve done enough,” Simon said, turning off the flashlight. “What was that first thing that happened?”
“I pulled back a branch while you were up the path — and when I saw he wasn’t going to fall over the string I let it go in his face.”
Wyler had come as far as the asphalt path now, calling fruitlessly.
“Hide,” Simon whispered to Jenny. “We’ll just wait here this time.” He was feeling among the leaves. “Where’s that gun he was carrying?”
“I can’t see,” Jenny whispered.
Simon pushed her quickly back into the bushes.
“I think he’s heard us,” he said, abandoning his search for Halston’s gun. He picked up the flashlight and moved into the undergrowth at the other side of the path.
As he went, he could hear Wyler approaching cautiously, following the same route Halston had taken. Simon threw the flashlight low along the path in the opposite direction so that it bounced and skidded and possibly sounded like someone taking flight.
Wyler, however, was not so impetuous as his fallen partner. His steps quickened, but he did not run headlong down the path. Knowing that his prey might be armed now, since Halston no longer answered his calls, he moved quietly and showed no light. Then he came around the turn which brought him into Simon’s and Jenny’s view, and after another few cautious steps saw the motionless body lying in the path ten feet ahead of him.
His first reaction was to crouch low and dart behind a tree at the side of the path. For a long time he stayed there, apparently listening.
Then, for some reason, Jenny moved slightly in her hiding place and caused a rustle of branches. Grey fired in that direction, waited, fired again. Getting no answering shot, he was bold enough to step back onto the path and come quickly forward.
That was when Simon pushed the lever of the spray tank hose and sent a whitish blast of spray directly into Wyler’s face. He cried out, stumbling, blinded, wincing and clawing at his eyes with one hand as the stream blasted him again. But the other hand still desperately held the gun, and he fired aimlessly into the ground or the tops of the trees.
The Saint heaved the spray tank, and it caught Wyler across the midsection, sending him sprawling backwards into the bushes. Simon was on him in a second, wrenching the pistol from his hand, and then with the greatest zest and satisfaction planting a fist several times in the center of his foam-drenched face. Wyler’s nose, undoubtedly, would be much less suitable for arrogant upturning in the future than it had been in the past, but for some time he would not be aware of that fact, nor of anything else.
“Jenny!” Simon called in a low voice. “Are you all right?”