“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Her right hand was hovering. I let go, trying to keep my balance without a handhold momentarily, and grabbed fast again, over her hand and the rock, as soon as she’d taken a hold. I said: “Same deal, the other hand. And then, for just a few seconds, you’re on your own. Ready?”
“Ready.”
I let go and she grabbed hard, and I put all my weight on that belt and tested it for a moment. I could feel it stretching a trifle, which was all to the good; if it was going to snap, this was the moment.
I said: “Hold tight, I’m going past you. Just clutch on with both hands for all you’re worth, it’s not too difficult. And, whatever you do, don’t look down.”
“My eyes are shut tight.”
“Good.”
She said, her voice horrified: “Did you say...past me?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. There’s a bit of ironwork up there, all that’s left of an old bridge across here, or a handrail or something. I’m hooked onto it now. Hold tight.”
I swung up and over her, and heaved my body onto the broad green swathe above us. Before I even rolled over I had hold of her wrists with my left hand, and only just in time too. A hundred pounds or a thousand, she couldn’t hold it, and she lost her grip; but I had her arms firmly and let her dangle there just for one minute to collect her wits. I said: “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. Now.”
I pulled hard and swung her bodily up, clear off the overhang, and plonked her down beside me. We lay side by side for a moment, panting, and she looked at me with something like amazement and said:
“I’d never have believed it possible. Any more of the same?”
I whispered: “I think not. It should be easy going now.”
“Thank God.”
We were on a broad plateau now, not much more than twenty or thirty feet below the top of the cliff. It was sheer and steep and quite unscalable above us, and I knew that from up there, there wasn’t likely to be any danger. Below, the ground sloped quite gently for a few yards, and then dropped down abruptly for the remaining seventy or eighty feet to the sea.
I whispered: “I think not. It should be easy going bushes.”
Together, we crawled on, feeling every inch of the way for loose rocks that could betray our presence.
Far down below there, below and to my left, I could see Estrilla. She was running swiftly along the sand in the lea of the cliff, climbing quickly over the jagged, broken rocks, splashing in and out of the surf and not stopping. And there was something wrong; she’d gone much further than I would have expected.
I whispered to Astrid: “Where, precisely, was the Colonel when he fell?”
She pointed: “That pinnacle there.”
“Then she’s passed the point where he would have landed.”
Puzzled, Astrid watched for a moment. Then: “She has, too. Why?”
I said: “She’s going for her gun. And that means she’s seen something we haven’t. She’s seen Van Reck, and she’s going for the purse she left in the rocks. Over there, wasn’t it?” I pointed.
“Yes, there by the little hut.”
“God damn her eyes, she’s committing suicide.”
“She’s...she’s what?”
I said: “Van Reck’s out there searching for me, without a doubt. And, without a doubt, he’s seen her purse lying among the rocks there with a gun in it. And it’s equally certain that he’ll know she’ll come back for it, sooner or later. Come on!”
I jumped up and ran, and heard her following me, falling behind and trying to catch her breath. It wasn’t far, no more than a hundred yards, to bring us directly above the broken-down shack, and I covered it over the rough ground in a little under ten seconds. I threw myself flat on my face with my head close to the edge and looked over. Estrilla was running more or less below me now, getting close to the high-piled rocks where the two girls had sheltered. I saw her climb quickly up over them and down, out of my sight, on the other side.
I had a dreadful foreboding. I felt for a moment the keen need for a gun, the need that drives a man who gets into as much trouble as I sometimes do to carry one with him always, and then do all the wrong things with it. It’s one thing to be able to protect yourself without one, but it’s something else again to stand helplessly by and see someone you like being murdered.
I groped around for the oldest weapon in history—for something to throw. My fingers closed on a stone, a smooth round stone the size of a grapefruit. It weighed about ten pounds, I judged, and though I’d have preferred something a little heavier, this was not the time to be meticulous. It was the kind of stone you can crack open with a sharp tap from a sledgehammer, to produce pretty pictures of the strata inside for kids. I moved over quietly a distance of twenty feet or so to see if I could relocate her; and I could. I saw her bend double and pick up something from among the rocks, a black silk purse with beads on it that caught the light brightly, just the kind of thing to give your position away if you wanted someone to take a shot at you.
I realized that she was up to exactly that; she’d seen him, then, seen him and ignored him, running on to make him wonder what she was up to, knowing that he didn’t have to fire until she was almost out of range, if she ever went that far. She’d have been in the sights of his deadly little bow for...how far now? It didn’t matter at all.
What mattered was that she’d seen him. She was shaking that damned purse about in the sunlight, letting the reflected light shine all over the place, just in case he couldn’t see her clearly; she didn’t know him as well as I did!
I moved again, just a few feet, out from under cover, signaling Astrid for absolute silence. I stood up slowly, my age-old weapon in my hand and ready, and I covered every inch of the view.
And there he was.
He was standing well away from the face of his particular piece of cliff, his back towards me, not more than fifty feet away and twenty feet or so below. That put him roughly the same distance from Estrilla; she was below him, and he was below me, both of them at a three-quarter angle to the watcher above. He was holding his bow loosely, watching her as she delved into her bag and came out with the gun. And I knew then that she was absolutely certain about precisely where he was.
It was all so unbelievably casual. At one moment, she was rummaging through her bag, a housewife who’s lost the keys to the station wagon, waving it around in impatience. And then, suddenly, she dropped the bag, swung round, aimed the little gun high at the end of a straight arm, all very professional, with her feet firm and wide apart and her body slightly crouched; and she fired.
Or rather, she pulled the trigger; but nothing happened. I didn’t expect it to.
Either he’d removed the shells already, or more probably (because of the delicate question of the difference in weight), had merely snapped off the firing pin. And now, as she stared in disbelief at the little gun, standing there in her professional stance, a sitting duck, I saw him raise the little bow quite slowly and pull back on the string. He didn’t have to be so slow; he was fast and accurate, and she was only fifty feet away from him, a target so easy as to be practically unsporting.
But he wasn’t thinking of the sport. He wanted her to turn and run, so that he could let her sweat it out for a while till she was sure that she was out of range. And then, then, then he’d use his expertise and revel in it. Out of range? How far did she think that might be? I’d seen how he used the Mongolian draw for maximum strength, a thumb-powered draw that’s necessary with a bow so strong it can’t be pulled back with the fingers. The unofficial record range for a handheld bow has been unbroken, even by modern methods and with modern equipment, ever since 1798, when the Sultan of Turkey sent a shaft for the incredible distance of nine hundred and seventy-two yards—a hundred yards more than the half-mile. And he used the Mongolian draw too.
