Authors: Eric Ambler
He spoke in French, doubtless for Marassin’s benefit. A slight movement of the man’s lips showed that the remark had got home. The Countess had gone pale, but she betrayed no emotions.
“Was there anyone killed?” she asked quietly.
“In the actual explosion, Madame, I believe no. But in the fracas that followed the Colonel’s attempt to stage an execution, a civilian named Kassen was shot dead.”
I heard her draw in her breath sharply. She glanced at Marassin. His face was expressionless; the hand holding his heavy gun was rock steady, his eyes were fixed unblinkingly on us.
“I see,” said the Countess at last. She walked to the window, and stood for a moment or two looking into the darkness. Then she turned to us again.
“What exactly have you been attempting to do?” she said.
“To prevent the use of Kassen’s discovery and to destroy all evidence of its existence,” he answered promptly.
“Why?”
“To preserve civilisation, Madame,” said Carruthers; rather pompously, I thought.
She gave an exclamation of irritation.
“You talk like a politician. This so-called civilisation of yours, what does it amount to? A conspiracy of mediocrity. In what have you progressed from the barbarian? You have made life a little more comfortable for your unlovely bodies and a thousand times more uncomfortable for your minds. You have made virtues of humility and mercy because the majority of you are humble and weak and fear the few who are stronger. The slave desired weakness in his master and created moral superstitions to bind him. ‘All men are equal in the sight of God’—the tyrant insanity of impotence that animates the small men who crawl about the earth calling upon those who live on the heights to descend and share the stinking air of democracy lest they imperil their immortal souls.”
She curled the last words round her tongue and almost spat them out.
“Are we to understand,” said Carruthers, “that Ixania’s place in your scheme of things was on the summit of the heights?”
“Ixania,” she answered him, “is a small nation. You do not belong to a small nation, Professor, nor you, Mr. Casey,” she added, acknowledging my presence for the first time; “therefore you do not know what that means. Without colonies, without natural resources, without money to buy more than a bare livelihood, we struggle for existence. It is many years since a great house was built in Ixania, the peasants starve, the population is decreasing, our export trade is failing. We need capital and we have none. The very fact of our independence is proof of our innate poverty. If we had possessed one valuable asset, our territory would long ago have been annexed by one of the powers. The time has come when Ixania must take what she wants by force or starve. A miracle gave us the means. You, the member of a state that has always taken what it wanted by
force, have, out of your absurd notions of the sanctity of human life, destroyed those means. You have much to answer for.”
“If your peasants were lusty and well-fed; if your population were increasing; if your trade were overwhelming and your streets flowed with capital, you would still possess the craving for conquest,” answered Carruthers. “Ixania is unproductive because you make it so. Your business men suck the country’s life blood so that there is none to feed the body. Your soil is for the most part uncultivated because the wealth that should fertilise it maintains an army that is as unnecessary as it would be inadequate as a means of defence. I believe that the peasant Government will alter these things. They will make mistakes, it is true, but they will never make the mistake of believing that war can accomplish anything but destruction and misery. A man for whom I have no respect once told me that you were a patriot. Patriotism in high places is another name for personal ambition, intellectual dishonesty and avarice.”
The Countess did not seem to have been listening. She waved a vague and impatient hand.
“Under other circumstances,” she said, “I might find this discussion diverting. At the moment we shall, I regret, have to leave you. Colonel Marassin is anxious to kill you. I am indifferent to your fates.”
She spoke rapidly to Marassin. He answered with two high-pitched monosyllables and raised his gun suggestively. She turned to us.
“The Colonel is insistent. You will excuse me.”
She was about to sweep past us when Carruthers intercepted her.
“If we are to be shot in cold blood, Madame,” he said calmly, “custom, I think, entitles us to make one request.”
“What is that, Monsieur?” She was clearly in a hurry.
“That you produce the copy of the Kassen conditioning process which is in your possession and burn it in our presence.”
My heart sank. The fatuity of this attempt to obtain a respite was pitifully obvious. I tried to realise that in less than two minutes’ time a bullet would crash into my skull. Marassin was probably a dead shot. It would, I comforted myself, be painless. I wondered how the news would be received in the
Tribune
office in New York.
“Your request, as you must realise, is absurd,” said the Countess.
“Consider, Madame,” said Carruthers urgently, “you do not, I think, appreciate the position. This house is surrounded by armed parties. If you succeed in getting through their cordon you would be in no better case. No one will be allowed to leave Zovgorod for the next twelve hours without a special pass signed by Toumachin.”
“I am grateful for the information, Monsieur,” she answered quietly, “but I am afraid that I cannot alter my plans for a mob of thick-skulled peasants. As for the Kassen secret, Professor, I shall take that with me and nothing will stop me. The stupid have always preyed enviously upon great men, but those men’s work has gone on. You have killed Jacob Kassen, the most brilliant man the age has produced, but his work, too, shall live. That I promise you.”
With a thrill of hope, I noticed that, as she had been speaking, Carruthers had been edging ever so slightly to his left, so that now she was almost between him and Marassin. The latter could not fire without taking careful aim for fear of hitting the Countess. I saw him move hesitantly to cover us from a different angle. Carruthers caught him in the fraction of a second in which he was off his guard. Opening his mouth as if he were about to reply to the Countess, Carruthers suddenly bent double and launched himself in a flying tackle at Marassin’s legs.
Marassin fired once and a shower of plaster fell from the ceiling above my head as the two crashed to the floor, struggling
fiercely. I, I regret to say, lost my head completely for a moment and stood stock-still, unable even to think. Then I heard a rustle beside me and remembered the Countess. Before I could do anything, however, she had switched the lights out and was through the door. As I grasped the handle I heard the key turn. There were sounds of a desperate struggle from the opposite corner of the room and I fumbled desperately for the switch. In the inky light which came through the window, I caught a momentary glimpse of the two men locked together, saw them sway and then fall again. There was the faint sound of a car starting in front of the house. At that moment, my fingers found the switch and I pressed it. As the light went up, Carruthers was staggering to his feet again, and I saw Marassin’s automatic in his hand. A second later I saw Marassin himself, his face ludicrously distorted with rage, grasp a small bronze that stood on the desk and draw back his arm to throw it. I shouted to Carruthers, but almost before the sound was out of my throat he had fired twice.
For a moment Marassin seemed turned to stone. His arm was at the summit of the uncompleted movement and stayed there for a second or two. Then he started coughing gently and the arm fell loosely. The bronze tumbled heavily to the floor. The man crumpled, still coughing, beside it.
Carruthers looked at Marassin for a moment, then at me. He was panting and licked his lips feverishly.
“Are you all right?” I said.
He nodded. “Where’s she gone?”
“She locked the door. While you were on the floor I heard the car start. She can’t get far, though, so we needn’t worry.”
He dropped the automatic into his pocket and went to the window.
“This way for us,” he said. “You can jump down without using your arm. That woman might get past anything and I
shan’t be satisfied until I’ve seen that last copy burnt with my own eyes.”
He flung the window open and, with a glance at the now silent Marassin, stepped on to the balcony. I followed and a minute later we were sprinting as if the entire Society of the Red Gauntlet were behind us.
By the time we had reached the place where we had parked Groom’s car I was glad to slump into the seat beside Carruthers who had the motor running by the time I caught up with him.
We stopped for an instant when we reached the picket. No explanations were needed. One man was nursing a broken arm, another lay on the pavement with a bad head injury. The Countess had driven the Mercedes straight through the cordon drawn across the road. They had had no time to scatter. The leader reported that she had taken the road leading to the western exit from the city.
We reached the barricade on the west road five minutes later. Nothing had been seen there of either the Countess or her car.
“She must have doubled back,” said Carruthers as he turned the car round. “The nearest road to the frontier goes south-east and I think she’d make for the frontier rather than try to reach Grad or Kutsk. That south-east road, as they call it, is little better than an oxen track, I believe, and covers some rough hill country. The rain will have cut it up badly in places, but she might decide to risk it. At all events she’s got a good start of us and we can’t afford to do anything but hope for a lucky guess. We’ll make for the south-east road.”
We started off again at a tremendous pace. Groom’s car was a fast one and Carruthers drove like a dirt track racer. Our tyres screamed almost continuously as we wound through the narrow streets on the fringe of the city. It took twelve minutes by
the clock on the instrument board for us to reach the barricade on the south-east road.
Our headlights showed us that our guess had been correct. The trestles that had composed it were still being dragged back into position across the road. Several of them were smashed. Carruthers slowed and flashed the headlights five times as we approached.
The men on the barricade dropped the trestle they were holding and crowded by the side of the road. As we drew level a chorus of shouts hailed us and hands pointed excitedly in the direction we were heading. We crept through the gap in the barricade and then accelerated again.
“She must have doubled twice,” said Carruthers as we got into top gear once more. “It can’t have been more than ten minutes since she rammed that barricade.”
We flew on. The road was passable for a time, but as soon as we started to climb the foothills our troubles began. The road rose in a series of steps—short, sharp hills, then stretches of level. It is difficult to say which were the worst, hills or levels. On the former we had bad wheel-spin and skidded wildly. On the levels we ploughed through miniature lakes of mud that frequently threatened to bog us down. At times it was difficult to follow the road at all, but the sky was lightening ahead of us, and after a while we were able to do without the headlights which, with the shadows they created, were more of a hindrance than a help. The only human habitations we saw were a cluster of stone hovels at the base of one of the steps. Then, for some time, we ran across a rolling plain, surprising on the way some scraggy mountain sheep.
There was still no sign of our quarry, but as the contour of the land probably hid the road more than a hundred metres ahead, we could hardly expect to see any. Our headlights blazing again, we continued across the plain for about twenty minutes. The road then took another sharp turn upwards
and changed appreciably in character. Mud gave place to stones. Regardless of springs, Carruthers put on speed and the car leapt about madly as we climbed all-out in low gear. Jamming my back against the seat and my feet against the sloping floor-boards I hung on for dear life as we ground upwards. There were terrifying bends where the camber ran the wrong way towards sheer drops of anything from ten to twenty metres. Carruthers drove amazingly well and beyond having to reverse once to get round a particularly suicidal corner we did not pause. The radiator was boiling long before we reached the highest point of the road, but we made it at last. We were about halfway down a long descent and had been going for just over an hour by the clock when we first saw the Mercedes.
Ahead, the dark mass of hill dimly outlined against the blue-black beginnings of the dawn was broken by a pinpoint of light. It was moving slowly in a diagonal path across the hill and I guessed that the Mercedes was ascending a corkscrew road similar to the one we had just climbed. Carruthers nodded when I suggested it.
“We can’t estimate how far she is away,” he said. “It may be the distance that makes it look slow, but it’s far more likely that the road’s too bad for speed. In any case, the frontier’s only an hour and a half away now if she travels fast. Don’t forget we’re going across Ixania at the narrowest point. We’ve got to catch up soon.”
By this time we were again climbing and the light disappeared from view. If Carruthers had driven fast before, now he drove like a maniac. I shut my eyes and held on. Then I felt as if we were falling sideways as we took a corner and decided that it was better to keep my eyes open.
I could see as we neared the hillside two or three minutes later that the view we had had of it when we had spotted the Mercedes had been illusory. For one thing, it was not nearly
so high as it had appeared then and the road ran to the side of it. The slow transverse movement of the lights of the Mercedes that we had observed was due neither to the distance nor to a steep corkscrew gradient but to a long encircling curve. The Mercedes had been moving round it and we had seen the reflection of its headlights from the rear.
Carruthers had obviously arrived at the same conclusion. “We can’t be more than three minutes behind now,” I heard him mutter.