He scarcely seemed to aim, but the gun barked five times and glass flew from the driver’s window. The man slumped over the wheel, and the car careered wildly down the road and smashed into a tree. Two passengers scrambled out and fled into the darkness.
“I want every one of those thugs,” Olivetti shouted. “But only wounded. They can recuperate in a prison hospital.”
“I don’t think any of the leaders were in those cars,” Simon said, coming up beside him. “They were only creating a diversion or clearing a way. We must look out for another break.”
The accuracy of his hunch was proven at that instant by the black bulk of a third automobile that surged out of the driveway. It had obviously been parked around the same angle of the building as the first two cars, in a courtyard probably flanked by former stables, and its occupants had been able to embark with impunity during the distraction caused by the first sortie. In the light of the burning wrecks Simon recognized the car that had tried to chase him down the road after his escape: it had reminded him then of a bootlegger’s limousine from the brawling days of Prohibition, and this resemblance turned out to be more than superficial. As it plunged forward the soldiers had a perfect target, and streams of automatic fire converged on it; but the windows were all shut and there were no answering shots.
“It’s bullet-proof!” the Major howled in frustrated rage. “The tires — shoot off the tires!”
But even there the bullets had no effect: the tires must have been solid rubber. Not designed to give a featherbed ride, perhaps, but an excellent insurance against inopportune deflation. The car aimed at full speed for the space between the wall and the interlocked truck and trail-blasting sedan, and hurtled through with only a scraping of fenders. A storm of bullets dimpled its high square stern but did not penetrate. It rocketed away down the road.
“Tenente Fusco, take my scout car and get after that thing!” yelled the Major, jumping up and down with wrath. “Stop it with grenades if you can, but at least stay with it and keep in touch with me by radio. You others — how much longer must I wait for you to clean out that rats’ nest?”
Men with trained reflexes leapt obediently to their assignments. A mortar, already ranged in, exploded a shell against the front of the building, and a yawning hole appeared where one of the shuttered windows had been. The scout car was already bouncing on to the road when Simon grabbed hold of Ponti, who seemed momentarily petrified with indecision as to which unit he should be joining.
“Come with me!” snapped the Saint. “The soldiers will take care of the house — but I bet nobody is left there who would interest you much.” He hustled the dazed detective into a run as he talked. “The big shots are in the car that got away — and the Bugatti has more chance of catching it than a Fiat.”
The Bugatti growled with delight as he aroused it to life again, and as soon as Ponti was beside him he slammed it forward in a bank-robber’s take-off, using the violent acceleration to swing the doors shut. He went on to justify his boast of its speed by thundering past Lieutenant Fusco’s command car while still in third gear, turning to wave mockingly as he went by.
The escaping limousine, for all its armored weight and overworked springing, was harder to catch, thereby vindicating at least a part of the Saint’s prognosis, but after several minutes he caught it in his headlights as he came around a corner. As he started to overhaul it he saw something else, and switched his foot abruptly to the brake as little tongues of flame spat towards him and were followed by the whip-crack reports of cordite.
“Very neat,” Simon said. “Real gang-war stuff. There is a firing port just under the rear window, I saw the gun muzzle when it poked out. Luckily the road is too bumpy for them to have much chance of scoring at this range, but they could do better if we came much closer. Now we shall just have to keep them in sight from a safe distance while you think of some plan to stop them.”
2
Ponti muttered curses under his breath, but not far enough under to deprive Simon of some of the more picturesque imprecations. He looked back for the scout car, but they had already left it far behind and were almost certainly increasing their lead.
“We need grenades, at least. On one of these hairpin bends, we might lob one ahead of them. Perhaps we should slow down and wait for Lieutenant Fusco.”
“And maybe never see our quarry again,” retorted the Saint. “Have you noticed that the speedometer is reading around a hundred and fifty kilometers most of the time? At that speed, they only have to be out of sight for a couple of minutes at any crossroads, and we should be flipping coins to help us guess which way they went. That car may look as if it belongs in a museum, but so does this one, and you can see how un-decrepit we are. We simply can’t afford to fall any farther behind than we have to to avoid stopping a bullet.”
Ponti answered with a short pungent phrase which summed up the situation more succinctly than anything printable.
“I thoroughly agree,” said the Saint sympathetically. “But it still leaves us nothing to do except follow them. So you might as well relax on this luxurious upholstery until your fine mind comes up with something more constructive.”
There was obviously no simple solution. They were in something like the classic predicament of the man who had the tiger by the tail. There seemed to be no way to improve the hold; and although letting go might be less disastrous, it was an alternative which neither of them would consider for a moment.
“Eventually they must run out of gas,” Ponti said, not too optimistically, as he watched the tail light weaving down the road ahead of them.
“And so must we. Of course, if it happens to them first, you and I can surround them.”
Simon Templar was in much better spirits, perhaps because he had had more opportunities in his life to become acclimated to tiger-tail-holding. From his point of view, the night so far had been a howling success. The Ungodly were on the run, and he was right behind them, goosing them along. The next move might be a problem; but so long as nothing as yet had positively gone wrong, everything should be considered to be going well. The dying autocrat whom he had seen was probably dead by now: even if nature had not taken its course, he would have been in no condition to be moved, and could likely have been helped over the last step out of this vale of tears rather than left to be captured. Certainly the men in the scudding carriage ahead could only be the most vigorous and determined aspirants to the throne. And among them was surely Al Destamio — or Dino Cartelli — the man who was the main reason for Simon’s involvement in the affair.
He refused to believe that Fate would cheat him of a show-down now...
There was a faint smile on the Saint’s lips, and a song in his throat that only he could hear above the drone of the motor.
Crossroads flashed by, and occasional tricky forks, but Simon followed the limousine through them all. It could not outdistance him or shake him off. Most of the time he stayed maddeningly just out of hand-gun range, but he always managed to creep up when it counted most and when the rough-riding swings of the pursued car made it least risky. What he feared most was a lucky hit on a tire or the Bugatti’s radiator, but none of the fugitive’s erratic shots found such a mark. It did not seem to occur to the Saint that he could be hit himself, though one bullet did nick the metal frame of the windshield and whine away like a startled mosquito with hi-fi amplification.
Another village loomed up, lining a straight stretch of road that the limousine’s headlights showed clear for a quarter of a mile ahead. The limousine seemed to slacken speed instead of accelerating, and Simon eased up on the throttle and fell even farther behind.