Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

Beyond it the ground dropped away a good two hundred feet to a rock-pile with a canal crossing the field beyond. Vanek ran back to the Renault, switched on the ignition again from outside the car, released the hand-brake, slammed the door shut as the car started moving backwards slowly, and then guided it with his hand on the steering-wheel through the open window.

He had stopped the car on a reasonably level patch of tarmac before the highway went into a further steep ascent so it moved back quite gently for a few seconds as he walked alongside; then the road began to slope down and the car picked up momentum. Vanek had withdrawn his hand from the wheel and the Renault was moving faster when it hit the white- painted fence-erected only to define the edge-broke through and dropped out of sight. He heard it hit the rock-pile with a crunch of disintegrating metal but unlike the Mercedes it did not burst into flames. Satisfied that he had given himself a temporary breathing-space, the Czech left the highway, climbing up into the forest above and began moving back at a trot towards the craggy bluff where Lansky had died.

Making his way through the woods, following the road below to guide him, Vanek arrived back at a knoll which overlooked the bluff in time to see Madame Devaud being escorted by a squad of men to a patrol-car. There had been a delay while she was guarded in the barn until more patrol-cars, summoned by radio, arrived with men who made a quick search of the wooded area surrounding the bluff. It was Lennox, still conscious and now inside an ambulance, who had warned Boisseau that these men were professional killers that no chance must be taken with the life of Madame Devaud.

By the time Vanek reached the wooded knoll looking down on the bluff the convoy of patrol-cars was ready to leave. Using the small but powerful monocular glass he always carried, hidden behind a clump of pines, the Czech watched while Annette Devaud was escorted to one of the cars. The glass brought her up so close that he saw her head and shoulders clearly in his lens and he reflected that had he been equipped with a telescopic rifle she would be dead by now. Then as though his thought had travelled down to them, the police escort huddled round her and she disappeared behind a wall of uniforms. The range was far too great for him to even contemplate using his Luger.

Crouching on his haunches, Vanek waited as the patrol-cars disappeared down the track, led by the ambulance, and later reappeared on the highway where the mist had now dissolved. Even so, in the late afternoon light the cars were no more than a blur but it was the direction they took which interested him. Towards Saverne.

`The second killer went off the road and down to the edge of a canal,' Boisseau reported to Marc Grelle over the phone from Saverne police headquarters. 'Men should be arriving at the point of the crash just about now. And the Englishman, Lennox, has appeared. It was he, in fact, who shot the first assassin, and was then shot himself…'

`He is dead?' the prefect inquired from Paris.

`No, he will be all right, but he will be in hospital for a few days. He has a message for you. A very cautious man, Mr Lennox-I had to show him my card before he would pass on the message through me. He says he believes Madame Devaud can identify the Leopard…

`You have Madame Devaud with you?'

`I can see her from where I am sitting… '

Boisseau broke off as the Saverne inspector who had just taken a call on another line signalled to him. Listening for a moment, Boisseau resumed his call to Paris. 'This may be bad news. The Renault-the assassins' car-which went off the highway has now been examined. There was no trace of anyone inside and it appears it may have been tipped off the road deliberately to throw us off the scent. One of the assassins is still at liberty…'

The motor-barge chugged slowly forward out of the mist towards Vanek where he stood waiting for it by the edge of the lonely canal. His breathing was still a trifle laboured from his exertions when he had come down the mountainside from the knoll, making his way through the woods until he cautiously crossed the highway and negotiated the lower slope which brought him to the edge of the canal. He had been walking along the deserted tow-path-keeping well clear of the highway -when he heard the chugging motor coming up behind him.

Gesturing to the man in yellow oilskins and peaked cap behind the wheel at the rear of the barge, Vanek called out `Police' several times, then waited until the barge was steered close enough to the bank for him to jump on board. He showed the leathery-faced bargee his Surete card. 'Are you alone?' The man assured him he was and pointed out he had already been stopped higher up by policemen who were examining a crashed car. 'How far to the next lock?' Vanek demanded, ignoring the question. It was six kilometres. ' I'll travel with you,' Vanek told the man. 'I'm looking for the murderer who escaped from that car…'

For several minutes Vanek stood behind the man, pretending to watch the fields they were passing through while he observed the way the bargee handled the controls. Idly, as though to pass the time, he asked one or two technical questions as the barge chugged on through a remote section of the canal fogged with drifting mist. Clearing off the mountains, the mist was now settling in the narrow gulch through which the canal passes on its way to the Strasbourg plain. 'Your cap looks like a chauffeur's,' Vanek remarked. 'But then, fair enough, instead of a car you drive a barge…' He was still talking when he took out his Luger and shot the man in the back.

Before he threw him overboard Vanek took off his oilskin coat and put it on himself, then he donned the bargee's cap. He used a heavy chain lying on the deck of the barge to weight the body, bringing it up between the legs and over the shoulders. The barge, which he had stopped, was drifting gently as he heaved the weighted corpse over the side; pausing only to watch it sink out of sight under the grey, murky water. He re-started the engine and took up station behind the wheel. A few minutes later a bridge appeared out of the mist with a patrol-car parked in the middle and a policeman leaning over the parapet. The policeman waited until the barge was close.

`Have you seen a man by himself as you came along the canal?' he shouted down.

`Only a lot of your friends checking a car which drove off the highway,' Vanek shouted back.

The policeman waited, staring down from the parapet as Vanek, looking straight ahead, guided the barge through the archway and continued down the canal. A few minutes later the bridge behind him had vanished in the mist as he saw the faint outline of another bridge ahead. Vanek reckoned he had now moved out of the immediate area where they would be searching for him and in any case he had to leave the barge before he reached the lock. Passing under the bridge, he stopped the barge, hid the oilskin under a coil of rope and climbed the muddy path which took him up to a country road. The cap he had tucked away inside his coat.

Walking a short distance along the road away from the highway, he found a convenient hiding-place behind a clump of trees where he stood and waited. During the space of fifteen minutes he let two tradesmen's vans pass and then he saw a BMW saloon approaching from the direction of the highway. There was only one man inside and the vehicle stank of money. Stepping into the middle of the road, he flagged down the car, calling out, 'Police, police…'

Again he showed his Surete card to the suspicious driver who protested he had been stopped on the highway. 'I don't believe you,' Vanek said, taking back his card. 'How far away was that?' One kilometre away, the driver informed him. A man in his late fifties, expensively suited, he had an arrogant manner which amused Vanek. Producing the Luger, he made the man move across to the passenger seat and got in behind the wheel. He put on the cap which he had taken from the dead bargee. `I am your chauffeur,' he announced. 'If we are stopped by a police patrol you will confirm that. If you make one mistake I will shoot you three times in the stomach and you will die slowly.'