Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (classic novels to read txt) 📕

"They've had hours," said Kintyre. "On the other hand, they had to meet each other too, and confer. They're not supermen, they would try to think of something, and argue about their plans, for a long time while they just drove aimlessly, surely not in this direction. We can hope."

"If they've done anything to her," said Guido, his face the mask of flayed Marsyas, "I myself will—"

"You'll let me off at Point Perro," said Kintyre. "Then burn up the motor getting to a phone. Don't waste time on any sheriff's office, call Berkeley headquarters direct. They can call the local authorities for you. It should actually be quicker that way."

"You, though," said Guido. "I can't leave you alone with them."

"Do you want to help Corinna, or do you want to get yourself sliced open for no purpose at all? You're a better driver, so you can get help sooner. I'll have a better chance of delaying matters down in the cove."

"I suppose so." Guido spoke it with difficulty.

"'One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves,'" recited Kintyre in Machiavelli's Italian. "'Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this.'"

Guido laughed shakily. "Modest fellow," he said.

Kintyre would have liked to clap his shoulder, but dared not. They were going seventy miles an hour on a winding road and it was becoming less visible each minute.

"Good for you," he said. "We'll salvage you yet." After another mile: "Or do you even need it any more?"

The fog had grown so dense that Kintyre knew his goal only by the car parked at the roadside. "Don't stop!" he cried, the moment it hove into view. "Brake easy. Let me out a hundred yards on." He began to open the door. "The nearest phone I remember is a gas station a few miles farther south. Don't raise your own posse and come back. They'd hear you and might shoot her first. Wait for the police. Good luck."

They rolled softly through a dripping gray swirl. Kintyre stepped from the car. Contact jarred in his feet. Almost, he fell, running alongside it in search of balance. Then the dark wet body slipped from him and was lost. He heard a muffled slam as Guido closed the door, the rising drone of speed, and now just his shoes thudding on pavement.

He stopped himself and jogged back. He was no track star, but he remembered to conserve his wind. The fog was moving with him, its eddies and streamers gave him the nightmare sense of a treadmill bound south. He could see the highway and something of the right-hand cliff that rose up and lost itself overhead. To his left there was nothing, world's edge and smoky endlessness. The air was chill.

Presently he regained the automobile. It was a new model, built for an impression of lowness and width; it sat and bared its teeth between blind headlights like some garish dinosaur defying the glaciers. Judas! Suppose this was only a harmless passer-by? But a signboard told him POINT PERRO, and who else would have come today? Kintyre tried the door. It wasn't locked. He eased it open to read the registration on the steering column.

Gerald R. Clayton. So. Kintyre felt his hands shaking. One more reassurance, before he went down the path. The dashboard thermometer showed the engine still warm. They hadn't been here long.

I do not wish for a God to help me, he thought. But I wish I had one to thank.

He filled his lungs and emptied them, filled and emptied them. Those were dank breaths, but they helped him ease up. He had three armed men to face; if he must also war with himself, it would be hopeless. Not that he felt any great conviction of winning. But—yes. He reached under the dash and yanked loose the ignition wires. After he was dead, that might delay their escape with Corinna.

He climbed the low barbed-wire fence. It guarded a jut of cliff maned with harsh yellow grass. You had to go to its very edge to see that there was a beach underneath. As he approached, he began to hear the surf. Incoming tide: breakers crashed among rocks, the water streamed down again with a roar, whirlpools gurgled in small grottoes. He did not think a human cry would be heard this far above.

When he came to the brink, he could just make out a sketch of jumbled crags and a laciness on the bull combers; then the rifted mist hid the sea from him again. There would be a highness to either side, the arms enclosing this inlet, but those were lost in the gray. He walked cautiously until he saw the path, a goat track plunging downward.

Its dirt was gritty under his feet. Despite himself, he loosed gravel showers now and again. After each he stopped, crouching and listening for voices. There were none: only the surf, snorting more loudly every time. The fog was his friend, could he have approached without it? Yes, he'd have found a way somehow, swum around a headland if he must, but the fog helped him. No proof of supernatural assistance, of course; this was a notoriously wet stretch of coast; however, he was advantaged thereby.

At the cliff's foot he stood among half-seen boulders and considered where his enemy might be. Not more than a hundred yards from him, but he had perhaps fifty feet of unclear vision. This pea soup was thickening by the minute. If the others arrived, say, twenty minutes ago, they would have been granted better visibility, could have selected a spot. Kintyre stretched his memory. The cliffs made a semicircular wall, with driftwood and great stones at its foot; the diameter was a narrow strip of sand, paralleled by a line of rocks. These latter were below high-water mark and would be drenched already. Kintyre could just glimpse the sleet-colored ocean breasting them. Okay. So his quarry was under the cliff. Was there some way to lure one of them out?

An idea came. It was hazardous, but no more so than blundering blind. And he was not afraid of what might happen to him. In a certain way, he had been given another chance to rescue Morna; he could not but take it.

Crouching in the rocks, he started to cough, as much like a sea lion's bark as he could manage. It was a bad imitation, but he dealt with pavement people. The noise went deep, wet, and ringing among the breakers.

"What's that?"

From the right! Kintyre fell on his stomach and began to eel his way over the rocks.

"A gahdam seal yet." Larkin's youthful whine. "Holy Moses, what a spot!"

"Better go see." It was an unfamiliar bass. Silenio.

"Ah, nuts, you go."

"You heard me, Terry," said Silenio.

"The girl knows this coast," said Clayton. Kintyre flowed over a bleached white tree trunk. It snagged his shirt, he had to stop and fumble for his liberty. And the fog talked and talked.

"It's just a seal, isn't it, Miss Lombardi?"

No answer.

"Silenio," said Clayton.

A tearing gasp: "Let go, you'll break my arm, let go!"

"I'm sorry to have to do this, Miss Lombardi," said Clayton. "But now that we've gotten settled here, such things will happen pretty continuously. Unless you cooperate. So to start with—that was a seal we heard barking, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Oh!"

"Go look, Terry," said Silenio.

Kintyre put his ear to the stones. He heard them rattle. If he could intercept Larkin, get him from behind without any noise....

He tried to judge whence the footsteps came. There were no more voices, no sound at all except Larkin and the sea. Kintyre followed, bent nearly double.

When he saw the vague shape, he changed course to intercept. Larkin was little more than a trench coat and a hat, fog-blurred. He was making no attempt to be silent, he slipped and stumbled, but his progress was quick. Kintyre decided he was going to get away, rose and sprinted the last few yards.

Larkin heard the hunter. He turned. "What—" Kintyre hit him. They went down together. Kintyre tried to get an arm around Larkin's throat. He didn't quite manage it. Larkin screamed.

That was a lost cause already. Kintyre wriggled free of threshing arms and legs, rolled away and bounded to his feet. Larkin was crawling to hands and knees. His face was a white blob with holes for eyes and mouth. He continued to scream.

Kintyre fled toward the sand. He heard Silenio curse. "What is it? What's going on out there?"

"It's a raid!" bawled Larkin. He reeled erect, the switchblade in one hand.

"Get back here!" said Silenio.

Kintyre whirled and threw himself prone. The sand was hard against his stomach. He could make out Larkin at the very edge of visibility, head weaving around. "Where did he go?" Larkin was crying. "Where is he?"

"Get back, I said, back here before I start shooting!" yelled Silenio.

Larkin groped a way toward the bodiless voice. Kintyre went on hands and feet this time, a quadruped rush. Larkin heard something and looked behind him. Kintyre went flat, simultaneously. Larkin faced back toward the cliff and resumed. Kintyre came after him again.

Three feet away, Kintyre stood up and leaped.

Larkin could not miss that. He spun on one heel, his knife already slicing. Kintyre moved in, presenting his left side, staying just out of reach. Larkin stepped forward. He was wary on the uncertain footing, too wary to be thrown hard. Kintyre feinted a blow with his left hand. Larkin slipped aside to avoid it. That took some of the rattlesnake speed off his striking blade. Kintyre's right hand chopped down, edge on, as he bent at the waist. The steel went half an inch past his belly. His hand connected with the arm behind. In that awkward stance it was not a blow of the real bone-cracking force, but Larkin moaned and went down on one knee.

Kintyre kicked at his neck. Larkin lowered his head and took the impact on the skull. This boy was good! It threw him onto his back, though. Kintyre circled for an opening. Larkin sat up, poised the knife in one hand, and threw it.

Kintyre felt a dull blow in his left biceps. He stared down. The knife stood in the muscle, blood was a red shout against skin and cloth. Larkin scrambled to his feet and pelted in the direction of Silenio's cries.

Kintyre knew little shock. Coolness at such moments was normal; he even had time to think that. The blood was simply oozing around the steel, no important vessel had been cut. He went after Larkin.

The boy slipped on a wet rock. There were shadows ahead, Clayton's lair? Kintyre sprang for him. To hell with defensive judo. Larkin had just gotten up. He heard the feet which followed, turned around and lifted his hands. "Help!" he shrieked.

"I'm coming!" cried Silenio in the gray.

Larkin flung himself into a clinch. His arms wrapped around Kintyre's waist with astonishing strength. Automatically, Kintyre's right arm went up to jam into his larynx. But Larkin's chin was down, guarding the throat. His right hand let go and reached after the knife in Kintyre's flesh.

Kintyre pressed a thumb into the boy's jugular. Larkin choked and pulled himself free. The knife came with him, in his grasp; blood runneled from the metal. He stepped in to rip. Kintyre's right hand traveled up. The heel of it struck Larkin at the root of the nose.

Larkin gurgled and flopped backward. His face was no longer quite human: the blow had driven his nasal bone into the brain. So much for him.

Silenio burst from cold clouds. He was a squat balding man with a round blue-cheeked face. There was an automatic in his hand. He looked a fractional second upon Kintyre and the body. Then he fired.

Kintyre was already running. He didn't hear the bullets, or even the ricochets, only the flat smack! smack! smack! as the gun went