On the other hand there was little enough to be said for staying where he was. The simile of the lavatory didn't apply there; it was literal. The Château's sewage system was extremely primitive and, in Glodstone's opinion, typically French. Everything it carried issued from some encrusted pipe in the cliff above and was discharged into the river. In practice, a good deal of it landed on Glodstone and he was just wondering if it wouldn't be preferable to risk drowning than be treated as a human cesspit when he became aware that something more substantial was bouncing down the cliff. For a moment it seemed to hang on the pipe and then slid forward out into the river. With the demented thought that this would teach Peregrine not to be such a stupid idiot as to climb cliffs in the middle of the night, Glodstone reached for the body and dragged it onto the ledge. Then he groped for its mouth and had already given it the kiss of life for half a minute before it occurred to him that there were one or two discrepancies between whatever he was trying to resuscitate and Peregrine. Certainly Peregrine didn't have a moustache and wasn't entirely bald, added to which it seemed unlikely that he had suddenly developed a taste for brandy and cigars.
For a moment or two Glodstone stopped before his sense of duty forced him to carry on. He couldn't let the bastard die without doing anything. Besides, he'd begun to have a horrid suspicion what had happened. Peregrine must have assumed he'd been drowned while trying to cross the river and instead of coming to his rescue had somehow got into the Château and was evidently bent on murdering everyone he could lay his hands on. Glodstone wanted to dissociate himself from the process. Rescuing Countesses was one thing, but bunging bald-headed men off the top of cliffs was quite another. In any case the blithering idiot would never make it. He'd get himself killed and then...For the first time in his life Glodstone had a glimmering sense of reality.
That was more than could be said for Professor Botwyk. Thanks to Peregrine's gruesome handling he had been unconscious during his fall and his limpness had saved him. Now he began to come round. It was a doubtful relief. For all his convictions that the future of the world depended on stock-piling weapons of mass, not to say universal, destruction, the Professor was an otherwise conventional family man and to find himself lying soaked to the skin being inflated by someone who hadn't shaved for three days and stank like a public urinal was almost as traumatic as being strangled with a lungful of cigar smoke still inside him. With a desperate effort he tore his mouth away from Glodstone's.
'What the fucking hell do you think you're doing?' he snarled feebly. Glodstone recoiled. He knew exactly what he'd been doing, reviving one of the most dangerous gangsters in the world. It didn't seem the time to say so.
'Now just take it easy,' he muttered and hoped to hell the swine wasn't carrying a gun. He should have thought of that before. 'You've had a nasty fall and you may have broken something.'
'Like what?' said Botwyk, peering at his shape.
'Well, I don't really know. I'm not an expert in these things but you don't want to move in your condition.'
'That's what you fucking think,' said Botwyk, whose memory of some of the horrors he had been through was slowly returning.
'Just wait till I lay my hands on the bastard who strangled me.'
'That's not what I mean,' said Glodstone, who shared his feelings about Peregrine. 'I'm just advising you not to move. You could do yourself an injury.'
'When I get out of here I'm going to do more than an injury to that son of a bitch. You'd better believe me. I'm going to '
'Quite,' said Glodstone to prevent hearing the gory details. He didn't want any part of that retribution. 'Anyway, it was a good thing I happened to be passing and saw you fall. You'd have been dead by now if I hadn't rescued you.'
'I guess that's so,' said Professor Botwyk grudgingly. 'And you say you saw me fall?'
'Yes. I dived in and swam across and managed to pull you out,' said Glodstone, and felt a little better. At least he'd established an alibi. Professor Botwyk's next remark questioned it.
'Let me tell you something, brother. I didn't fall. I was pushed.'
'Really?' said Glodstone, trying to mix belief with a reasonable scepticism. 'I mean, you're sure you're not suffering from shock and concussion?'
'Sure I'm not sure,' said Botwyk, whose latent hypochondria had been understandably aroused, 'the way I feel I could have anything. But one thing's certain. Some goon jumped me and the next thing I'm down here. In between being strangled, of course.'
'Good Lord,' said Glodstone, 'and did you...er...see who...er...jumped you?'
'No,' said Botwyk grimly, 'but I sure as shit mean to find out and when I do...'
He tried to raise himself onto an elbow but Glodstone intervened. It was awful enough to be stranded on a ledge with a murderous gangster without the swine learning there was nothing much the matter with him.
'Don't move,' he squawked, 'it's vital you don't move. Especially your head.'
'My head? What's so special about my head?' asked Botwyk, 'It's not bleeding or something?'
'Not as far as I can tell,' said Glodstone, edging round towards the Professor's feet. 'Of course, it's too dark to see exactly but I'd '
'So why the spiel about not moving it?' said Botwyk eyeing him nervously.
'I'd rather not say,' said Glodstone, 'I'm just going to...'
'Hold it there,' said Botwyk, now in a state of panic, 'I don't give a dimestore damn what you'd rather not say. I want to hear it.'
'I'm not sure you do.'
'Well, I fucking am. And what the hell are you taking my shoes off for?'
'Just making a few tests,' said Glodstone.
'On my feet? So what's with my head? You start yapping about my fucking head and not moving it and all and now you're doing some tests down there. Where's the goddam connection?'
'Your spine,' said Glodstone sombrely. The next moment he was having to hold the Professor down. 'For Heaven's sake, don't move. I mean...'
'I know what you mean,' squealed Botwyk. 'Don't I just. Sweet Jesus, I've got to. You're telling me...oh my God!' He fell back on the rock and lay still.
'Right,' said Glodstone, delighted that as last he'd gained the upper hand. 'Now I'm going to ask you to tell me if you feel anything when...'
'Yes, I do,' screamed Botwyk, 'Definitely.'
'But I haven't done anything yet.'
'Guy tells me he hasn't done anything yet! Just tells me my spine's broken. And that's nothing? How would you feel if you'd been strangled and dropped over a cliff and some limey at the bottom gives you mouth-to-mouth and men says you've got a broken spine and not to move your fucking head? You think I don't feel nothing? And what about my fucking wife? She's going to love having me around the house all day and not being able to get it up at night. You don't know her. She's going to be hot-tailing it with every...' The prospect was evidently too much for him. He stopped and glared up at the sky.
'Now then,' said Glodstone, getting his own back for being called a limey, 'if you feel...'
'Don't say it,' said Botwyk, 'no way. I'm going to lie here and not move until it's light enough for you to swim back over there and get an ambulance and the best medical rescue team money can buy and...'