Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Pursuit

“Hurry up!” Uzdanov snapped as Simon took his time pulling the letters from inside his jacket. “And why are you slowing down?”

“The horses are getting tired,” Simon explained. “But we’ll try to oblige you. I think the rest of the trip will be downhill.”

The car had reached the crest, and a road sign indicated a steep curvaceous descent for the next several kilometres. As Simon produced the letters, but still being careful to keep them out of Uzdanov’s reach, the Volkswagen began to purr with relief as it built up speed on the first downhill stretch.

“Two can play the carrot-and-the-stick game, comrade,” Simon said in a tone that had new firmness in it. “Don’t do anything hasty — and cling to the hope that I won’t drop these.” He thrust the letters out the window, clutching them at arm’s length, as he steered the car with his right hand only. “If I let them go, that’s fifty million dollars that may not land this side of Lake Como.”

Uzdanov was considerably less calm than he had been a few seconds before, and his voice shifted into a new hysterical key that made the extent of his discomfiture pleasantly unmistakeable.

“Bring those letters inside or I’ll kill her!” he yowled.

The Saint’s voice was more placid in precisely inverse ratio to the raised pitch of Uzdanov’s.

“You’d better not hurt her, because then I wouldn’t care what I did.”

The car’s speed was up to sixty now, and the wind tore at the papers in the Saint’s hand. They seemed alive and fighting to be free. Uzdanov ground his teeth audibly and switched the aim of his stiletto from Vicky’s throat to the back of the Saint’s neck.

“I think you must care what happens to yourself!” he shouted. “Bring those letters inside!”

“Don’t make me nervous, pal, or I might run over a cliff. In this kind of country the man at the wheel has to keep his mind on the road, and of all the back-seat drivers I’ve ever had the misfortune to travel with, you’re the most distracting.”

Simon could feel the point of Uzdanov’s knife against his skin, squarely in the centre of the back of his neck. One slip and the blade could plunge forward through flesh and bone, severing the connection of spinal cord and brain stem. But at least he felt sure that his enemy would not sink the dagger into him on purpose at the moment, since the consequences for the Russian would have been as disastrous as for himself.

The car was careening down into the darkness at a hundred and twenty kilometres on a narrow road that seemed to writhe like a living reptile around the side of the mountain. Rubber shrieked against paving as the tires skidded through turn after turn. Simon dreaded the possibility of a curve so tight that he would be forced to slow down enough to allow Uzdanov to risk driving the knife into his neck and grabbing for the wheel himself.

But so far luck was on the Saint’s side. The curves were hair-raising but banked enough to let him keep up a good speed, and as long as that lasted Uzdanov would be forced to wait.

Simon pulled the Volkswagen out of a particularly stomach-twirling loop, and said breezily: “We could all sing songs, I suppose. Anything to while away a dull trip. Why don’t you teach us the Internationale?”

“Templar!” screamed Uzdanov impotently.

“Oooh,” Vicky moaned.

She was leaning forward, clutching the handgrip on the dashboard as if to brace herself in case of a crash.

“Vicky, get down on the floor where he can’t reach you!” Simon told her in a suddenly sharp voice. “Now!”

She scrambled off her seat and huddled in the narrow space under the dashboard on her side of the car, ready to fend off Uzdanov with her leather purse if he tried to lean over and take a jab at her.

“Don’t try anything,” the Saint ordered her. “Just keep away from that pig-sticker of his.”

“What about you?” she cried.

“I’ve got him in the palm of my hand — can’t you see?” Simon replied brightly. “I think he may be ready to make a deal. Is that right, Boris?”

To increase the impact of his words he jammed his foot down on the accelerator with a vehemence that seemed certain to send the car shooting straight out into space.

“Slow down!” Uzdanov screeched in a panic as the Volkswagen lurched into another bend.

“I thought you were the one who got such a kick out of speed,” drawled the Saint.

Uzdanov’s face must have achieved an expression of particular ferocity at that moment; Vicky, looking back at him, whimpered: “Hell kill you, Simon!”

“If he tries making shish kebab out of me he’ll end up in the sauce himself, because we’ll all three be taking a half-mile short-cut — straight down!”

Uzdanov cleared his throat as the car sailed down a relatively straight stretch. The needle-sharp point of his stiletto was as firmly as ever against Simon’s neck.

“Perhaps... we can bargain,” he said hoarsely.

“For a start you can throw that bodkin out of the window,” the Saint told him. “Somehow I don’t enjoy talking business when a strip of steel may be poking between my vertebrae at any second.”

“No!” Uzdanov retorted. “You think I’m crazy? Slow down first, and then I will throw away the knife.”

“In that case, I can see the three of us meandering along the road of life like this for ever,” Simon said unconcernedly.

Wind whistled through the windows as the car zoomed on down the mountainside. The Russian grunted, obviously at a loss for any new form of persuasion. But while the deadlock was complete, it was becoming apparent that it could only be temporary.

“Sooner or later you will have to slow down, Templar,” he said, with a gradual recovery of much of his former composure. “In the meantime, there is nothing you can do — and I can wait.”

The Saint riposted with a blase insouciance that was deliberately meant to be infuriating.

“When I do have to slow down, chum, it’ll probably be because of traffic or a village cop — which’ll be no time for you to start slaughtering your fellow-passengers. The dome light will still be on, remember, which will give you about as much privacy for your butchering as a goldfish in a public aquarium.”

Uzdanov was not a man to be easily discouraged, nor to let trivia stand in his way.

“The light does not have to be on,” he said.

As he leaned to one side and reached for the switch, to clinch his argument, Simon could feel the welcome detachment of the dagger’s point from direct contact with his flesh.

This was the moment he had planned for, to which all his verbal sparring had been subtly directed.

Now he suddenly shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal. He could only hope that the knife was not poised directly behind him.

“Thanks, sucker,” he said simultaneously. “Now I will slow down!”

He jammed his foot down, virtually freezing the rear wheels of the automobile on the spot. Uzdanov, off balance and without his unarmed hand to brace himself, was catapulted forward, his dagger stabbing past the Saint’s head. Simon ducked as the sliver of steel shot past his jaw, and then he straightened galvanically up again like a released spring, smashing the back of his head into Uzdanov’s face with something very close to the force and effect of a cannon ball.

The Saint had no time to appreciate the devastation his skull had inflicted on Uzdanov’s physiognomy. The sudden grab of the brakes had made the car swerve wildly and had hurled the Russian so violently forward that he might have continued on through the windshield if he had not been brought to a halt by Simon’s head. He went heavily limp across the Saint’s shoulders, his dagger clattering down among the foot controls, one of his forearms thrust between the spokes of the steering wheel, and the Saint struggled for control of the wheel as the car skidded with a scream of scorching rubber. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vicky still balled on the floor next to his feet, her own eyes squeezed tightly shut. She let out a terrified gasp as she felt the car veer.