Лесли Чартерис - Salvage for the Saint

“You can still be saved,” came the voice of Descartes. “Quickly!”

Arabella saw that she had only one chance.

“All right, all right!” she gasped. “I’ll tell you!”

But the bull had already begun to charge the board again. This time it crashed into it with frontal force. Some of the wood splintered away and those horns at their nearest were less than a foot and a half from where she crouched.

She heard the sounds of the door being unlocked — the door to at least temporary freedom. That last time-gaining bluff had been her only hope; she had only to invent some plausible location for the gold, which would have bought her a day or two in which, possibly, to find some other way out of this whole mess. But she had left it too late. She was trapped behind the burladero, and there was no way she could get to that door past the bull, which was already beginning the charge that would surely now take him through the rotting board which was her only remaining protection. All of this was borne in upon her, not by any calm process of ratiocination, but by the directly experienced realities of that September morning in the bull-ring of Jacques Descartes. There was the sun, not yet hot, but already warm as it climbed in the east; the dust of the ring; the snorting of the bull as it thundered towards her; the flimsy board that would not, could not, hold out. And most of all, there was the painful physical reality of that door to freedom only yards away; of the infinitely tantalising noise it had made, a rusty metallic scraping noise; and of the fact that there was no way she would ever reach it.

And so she gave up the fight, stood up bravely, crossed her arms in front of her eyes, and waited for annihilation.

Arabella smelt the bull’s hot breath, and heard the final splintering of the board which was all that stood between her and those lethal horns.

And in the same instant, and abruptly, she felt herself gripped by some altogether miraculous force that hoisted her straight up into the air, and she heard, as in a dream, the horns of the bull smashing into the perimeter fence only inches below the point in space where her feet now seemed to be dangling. After which the same miraculous force performed a second-stage hoist and she found herself standing on the first tier of the bull-ring stand, blinking at the realisation that she had just not been battered to smithereens.

“May I interest you in living?” enquired the miraculous force — which wore the outward semblance of Simon Templar.

Arabella was far too shaken and shattered and dumb-struck and relieved to attempt a reply. Besides which, even as she began to make sense of what had happened, she became more definitely aware that her escape was as yet far from being a complete fait accompli. An outraged bellowing from the opposite side of the ring reminded her that Descartes and the others were only yards away. Arabella made a feeble, dazed gesture towards the bellowing voices, and the Saint nodded.

“I think that’s a very intelligent suggestion,” he said earnestly. “Shall we?”

He grabbed her hand and jumped down the eight-foot drop off the outside of the bull-ring, from the upper tier, pulling her after him and helping to ease her landing. As they began to run, the bellowing crystallised itself into two urgent syllables in Descartes’ voice.

“Get them!”

Simon and Arabella had only the few seconds’ start given to them by the element of surprise. Simon knew they had to exploit that slender advantage for all it was worth; Arabella herself was in no state to know anything, and was more than content to take her cue from him. He paused just long enough to face her for a moment, with his hands on her shoulders and the gaze of his level blue eyes holding hers.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I know you’ve just had the scare of a lifetime, but now you’re going to have to find the strength for the run of a lifetime.” And then the Saint’s long legs took him skimming across the stony courtyard with Arabella in tow, somewhat unsteadily on her shorter ones.

They made straight for the rough track leading to the main road. He had left his car about halfway along that track, well short of the haras itself, to be sure of making a discreet approach. Now, with several hundred yards between them and the Hirondel, he wished he had risked bringing it nearer.

As they sped past one side of a high-fenced corral, they caught a glimpse of Bernadotti and Pancho entering hurriedly by a gate on the other side. Within seconds they heard the sound of several sets of hooves giving chase behind them.

They glanced behind as they ran. Bernadotti, Pancho and another man, presumably one of the haras hands, were the pursuers. They were mounted on hefty picador horses; and they were armed with the murderous-looking eight-foot lances known as pics.

The Saint knew at once that they would not make it in a straight dash for the car. A lightning piece of strategic thinking was needed, and as usual when the chips were down, Simon Templar delivered.

He had three resources to work with, and he used them all to the full. The first was their lead, no more than thirty seconds, over the pursuers; the second was a godsent bend in the scrub-edged track; and the third was the rough mental map of the surrounding territory with which he had thoughtfully forearmed himself on his arrival.

As soon as they had rounded the bend and were out of sight, Simon ducked off into the narrow belt of scrub, still pulling Arabella by the hand.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to separate for a while,” he told her in an urgent whisper, his mouth against her ear. “You’ll have to decoy long enough for me to get to the car, farther along.”

He pointed. She nodded her understanding, and he pointed again.

“Skirt the swamp, then strike back to the road.”

“Swamp?” She silently mouthed the word. Simon grinned and nodded. Then he picked up a large rock and lobbed it, in a high trajectory, into the undergrowth on the far side of the driveway. By now their mounted pursuers would have rounded the bend and realised that the fugitives had left the track.

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.