The Angry Mountain (24 page)

Then Hacket had Maxwell by the shoulder. “Because the guy's killed someone, it doesn't entitle you to third degree him.”

“You keep out of this,” Maxwell said sharply.

“Then leave the guy alone.”

“This isn't the first man he's murdered. You heard what Farrell said.”

“I've heard a lot of nonsense about doctors and assumed identity and I've heard the man who made that accusation laughing like a maniac. Now you just leave the guy alone and I'll telephone the carabinieri. It's their responsibility.”

“Listen, Hacket. This man lias kidnapped Hilda Tu
č
ek's father.”

“I don't believe it.”

“I don't care whether you believe it or not. Go out and telephone the carabinieri. Meanwhile—”

It was at this moment that the lights dipped. They did it twice and then they faded away. For a moment we could see the filaments in the candle bulbs of the chandelier glowing faintly and then they vanished and the room was a red glare full of moving shadows. “The plant must have run out of gas,” Hacket said. At the same moment Maxwell shouted. A figure slid by me. The door opened and slammed shut. Maxwell dashed past me, had it open in a flash and disappeared into the darkness of the hall. I got my torch out and followed him.

The front door was still bolted. “Through the servant's quarters,” I said.

We dived into a passage. It led to the kitchen. Beyond were outhouses and here we found a door hanging open. We went out, sinking to our ankles in soft ash. We could see his footsteps in the ash leading out of the shadow of the villa into the red glare towards some outhouses. As we ran over the sifting surface of the ground there was the roar of a motor and Zina's cream cabriolet came slithering round the corner of the house, the back wheels sending up twin sprays of ash that caught the light so that they looked like firemen's hoses in the glow of a fire.

I had a brief glimpse of Sansevino at the wheel, then the big car was charging straight at us and we were jumping for our lives. He just missed us and I heard him change gear as he rounded the corner of the villa. “Quick! See which way he goes.” I followed Maxwell as fast as I could to the front of the building. The car's headlights cut a swathe through the red night as it hurtled down the track through the vineyards. We could see carts and people straggling along the road to Avin and Maxwell's car shrouded in ash
standing by the open gateway. With blaring sirens Sansevino nosed out on to the refugee-strewn road and turned right. “He's going up to Santo Francisco. Come on! We've got to follow.”

Hacket and Hilda had joined us now and as we started off down the track to where the cars were parked, Zina came flying after us. “Don't leave me,” she whimpered, clutching hold of my arm. “Please don't leave me. I'll show you where they are.”

Maxwell heard her and turned. “You know where Tu
č
ek is?” he asked her.

“I do not know anything about Tu
č
ek,” she replied. “But I know where he kept the others you speak about. It is in the old monastery of Santo Francisco.”

“Come on then.”

By the time I caught up with them Max had the car turned and he was waiting for me with the door open and the engine running. The stream of refugees seemed already to be thinning. Most of those who had fled on foot had already passed. Only those who had stopped to salvage some of their belongings were still on the road. We passed bullock cart after bullock cart piled to a crazy height with furniture, bedding, children and livestock. As we forced them off the road, with the blare of our horn the loads canted over at a crazy angle.

Zina was in the front beside Max. I could see the shape of her head against the white swathe of the headlights and the glare of the lava streams. “Hurry. Hurry, please.” She was getting scared again. It was hardly to be wondered at. The scene was like something out of the Bible—the bullock carts and the terror-stricken people fleeing from the wrath of the Lord. And then I caught a glimpse of the village of Santo Francisco, a black huddle of ancient houses outlined against the blazing wrath of Vesuvius. The red glare of the lava streams was ahead of us and on either side of us. Santo Francisco was doomed and I thought of the fire and brimstone
that had put an end to the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. It must have been very like this.

“Pray God we're not too late.” It was Hilda who had spoken and I realised suddenly that she was clutching my hand.

On the far side of the back seat Hacket said, “This is the craziest thing I've ever been mixed up in.” He leaned towards me across Hilda. “Farrell. Do you mind telling me what it's all about?”

Hilda answered for me. “It's my father. This man Sansevino has shut him up somewhere in Santo Francisco.” I think she wanted to talk, for she went on, telling him about her father's escape from Czechoslovakia. I looked at my watch. It was just after four. In little over an hour it would be light. A great shower of sparks rose out of the crater glare and lifted to the black cloud above that was shot with intermittent stabs of forked lightning.

“Any moment that damned mountain's gonna blow its top,” Hacket muttered. His voice trembled slightly. But it wasn't fear. It was because he was excited. He had come all the way from America to see this volcano and I think he was as near to being happy as he'd ever be.

We were entering the village now. The crimsoned stucco fronts of the houses closed in on us, throwing back the roar of the car's engine and blocking out the sight of Vesuvius. The streets were quite deserted. The last of the refugees had left. There wasn't a cat or a dog, not even a chicken, to be seen. It was as though we were entering a lost town.

We passed a shop where a candle still guttered on the counter and vegetables piled the shelves. The doors of the houses gaped open. In a small piazza a cart stood forlornly, abandoned because one of the wheels had broken under the strain of the furniture heaped on top of it. By the village pump a small child sucked its thumb and stared at us with big, frightened eyes.

“Did you see that kid?” Hacket asked as we swept by
“We mustn't forget him when we leave. The poor little beggar must have been deserted by his parents.”

“
Ecco!
” Zina was pointing to a big stone archway. The gates were open and we drove into a stone-paved courtyard. And there was the cabriolet. “Thank God!” Hilda breathed.

Maxwell slammed on the brakes and we piled out. “Where now?” he asked.

“Through here,” Zina cried. She made for a low stone doorway. A gleam of metal showed in Maxwell's hand. At least he was armed. But I hung back. I was thinking what I'd do if I were Sansevino. If he could blot us out—all of us—he'd be safe then. The lava would obliterate Santo Francisco and there'd be no trace of us. I caught Hilda's hand. “Wait,” I said.

She wrenched herself free. “What are you afraid of?”

The contempt in her voice stung me. I caught her arm and twisted her round. “Max told you my story, did he?”

“Yes. Let me go. I must get to my—”

“You won't reach your father any quicker than Maxwell,” I said. “And if we go in a bunch we may walk straight into it.”

“Into what? Let me go, please.”

“Have some sense,” I snapped at her. “Sansevino got here ahead of us. He knew we'd follow him. And if he could kill us all—”

“He would not dare. He is afraid now.”

“He's as cunning as the devil,” I said. “And cruel. He'll use your father as a bait.”

She was trembling again now as she realised all the possibilities. “Perhaps he has come up here to kill him,” me breathed.

“I don't think so,” I said. “So long as we're alive he may need your father in order to bargain with us.”

“Bargain with us?”

I nodded. “I have something that he wants. You see that
doorway over there?” I pointed to an opening in the stone wall on the far side of the courtyard. “Go and wait for me there.” I turned to the Fiat. As I lifted the bonnet I heard her crunching through the ash of the courtyard. I removed the rotor arm and closed the bonnet again. I immobilised Maxwell's Buick in the same way. Then I joined Hilda in the doorway. “If the others are successful—” I shrugged my shoulders. “If not, then we've still got a chance.”

The courtyard was full of vague shadows that seemed to move with the varying intensity of the glare. It was an incredible scene, like a stage setting of the sunset glow on Dunsinane. “Do you still think me a coward?” I asked her.

I could see her face against the red glare of the upper half of the monastery buildings. It was like a cameo—the firm set of the jaw, the little tip-tilted nose. She hadn't moved. She was watching the doorway through which the others had disappeared. Then her hand found mine and gripped it as she had done in the car coming up. It seemed an age that we stood there, waiting and watching that doorway.

“Will they never come?” The words seemed forced out of her and her grip on my hand had tightened.

There was nothing I could say. I just held her hand and stood there in the shadow of the doorway, knowing what hell she was going through and unable to do anything to help her. At last she said, “I think you are right. Something has happened.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly half-past four. The had been gone well over a quarter of an hour. Why hadn't Sansevino come out to the car? But I knew why. He was watching, waiting for us to make the first move. “I'm afraid it is going to be a cat-and-mouse game.”

She turned her head. “How do you mean—cat-and-mouse game?”

“Whoever moves first must give away his position.”

The glare in the courtyard suddenly deepened as thougl Hell's flames had been banked up. Shadows moved and
flickered. “I do not think we have too much time,” Hilda said.

I nodded. I wished I could see what the lava was doing. “I think we must go in search of the others,” I said. The blood was hammering in my head and my foot and my hands felt cold. I was quite convinced now that Sansevino was watching that courtyard just as we were watching it. I gripped her hand, nerving myself for the dash to the doorway, for the groping along endless corridors and through huge, silent rooms expecting every shadow to materialise into that damnable doctor. I had that void in the very core of me that I'd had on my first solo, on my first combat flight.

And then Hilda said, “Listen!”

Somewhere out in the unnatural stillness of the village was a murmur of sliding stones. It vas like a coal truck being tipped and it went on and on. Then suddenly everything was still again—unnaturally still. It was as though the whole village, all the living stone of it, held its breath, waiting for the thing it dreaded. “There it is again,” Hilda whispered. It was like clinker falling in a huge grate. And then there was a crumbling sound. A shower of sparks flew up beyond the monastery towards the billowing column in the sky that marked Vesuvius. “What is it?”

I hesitated. Some instinct told me what it was and I didn't want to tell her. But she'd have to know soon. A haze of rubble dust was rising, the particles reflecting the flickering gleam of flames below. “The lava is entering the village,” I told her. She was so close to me that I felt the tremor that ran through her body. The heat was becoming intense. It hung over us like the heat from the open door of a furnace. “We must do something.” Her voice was on the edge of panic.

“Yes,” I said.

I was just about to tell her to run for the doorway through which the others had gone when she cried out, “Look!” She was pointing to the roof of the monastery buildings
opposite. For an instant I saw the figure of a man outlined against another shower of sparks. He was running along the roof. “Is that him?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “The lava's scared him. He's coming for the car.” I got out the little automatic Zina had given me, loaded it and stood there waiting.

He wasn't long. He flung out through the doorway and jumped into the Fiat. I heard the starter buzz. Then the sound was drowned in the crumbling roar of another building going down. The dust rose as the sound died. Sansevino was still pressing the starter button. Then he abandoned it and dived into the Buick. Again the buzz of a starter. I could see his face in the dashboard light. The eyes glittered with panic and I suddenly wanted to laugh. I'd have stood in the very path of a thousand streams of lava to see fear so stamped on the man's face.

When he realised it wouldn't start he got out and went back to the Fiat. He tried the starter again. Then he opened the bonnet. It didn't take him long to realise what the trouble was. He straightened up, looking about him as though sensing our presence. For an instant he stared at the doorway where we were standing. His hand reached to his pocket and he began to come towards us.

At that moment a great vomit of fire sprawled into the sky. He turned and glanced upwards, his body crouched as though to ward off a blow. He stayed like that as though petrified while the arch of flame spread over the under-belly of the black, billowing gases that covered the sky and the roar of the mountain shook the ground under our feet. There was a whistling sound and something fell with a thud into the courtyard sending up a little puff of ash. Then he straightened up and at the same moment a rain of stones descended on the courtyard, hot stones that smouldered where they fell. They clattered against the stone of the monastery building and rolled to our feet, smouldering and stinking of sulphur.

Sansevino was running now, slithering and stumbling on
the loose ash. In the ruddy glare I could see his face twisted with terror. He almost made the main gateway, but then suddenly he was struck down. It seemed to catch him by the shoulder and send him sprawling in the ash. Above the sound of the mountain and the thump of falling stones I heard his squeal of fear. He twisted over and over, his body contorted, and then he was up again, limping painfully and making for the archway. He reached it and disappeared into the shadows.