Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗

The footpath made a wide loop around Oudekraal Kop, then came back to the edge and ran along the cliff top past the head of Nursery Ravine until it intersected the bridle path half a mile farther on. There was another rough, littleused path that cut this side of the Kop, along the cliff top.

The beginning was difficult to find and a mistake would lead into a dead end against the precipice, but if he found it he could cut a quarter of a mile off the route.

He found the path and turned off onto it. At two places the track was overgrown and he had to struggle through interlaced branches, at anot. at a spot at the edge the track had washed away. He had to back up and take a run at it, jumping over the gap with five hundred feet of open drop below him. He landed on his knees, clawed himself to his feet and kept running.

He burst out unexpectedly into the main footpath and collided at full tilt with the blue-overalled killer coming in the opposite direction.

He had a fleeting impression of the man's size and the breadth of his shoulders, and then they were down together, locked chest to chest, grappling savagely, rolling down the slope of the path. The impact had knocked the rifle out of the killer's hand, but Shasa felt the springy hardness and the bulk of his muscle, and the first evidence of the man's strength shocked him. He knew instantly that he was out-matched. Against his fiercest resistance the man rolled him onto his back and came up on top of him, straddling him.

Their faces were inches apart. The man had a thick dark curling beard that was sodden with sweat, his nose was twisted and his brows were dense and black, but it was the eyes that struck terror into Shasa. They were yellow and somehow dreadfully familiar. However, they galvanized Shasa, transforming his terror into superhuman strength.

He wrenched one arm free and rolled the killer over far enough to yank the Beretta pistol from his own belt. He had not loaded a cartridge into the chamber, but he struck upwards with the short barrel, smashing it into the man's temple, and he heard the steel crack on the bone of the skull.

The man's grip slackened and he fell back. Shasa wriggled to his knees, fumbling to load the Beretta. With a metallic snicker the slide pushed a cartridge into the chamber, and he lifted the barrel. He had not realized how close they had rolled to the clifftop. He was kneeling on the very brink, and as he tried to steady his aim on that bearded head, the killer jack-knifed his body and drove both feet into Shasa's chest.

Shasa was hurled backwards. The pistol fired but the shot

went straight into the air, and he found himself falling free as he went over the edge of the cliff. He had a glimpse down the precipice; there was open drop for hundreds of feet, but he fell less than ten of those before he wedged behind a pine sapling that had found a foothold in a cleft of the rock.

He hung against the cliff face, his legs dangling free, winded and dazed, and he looked up. The killer's head appeared over the edge of the cliff, those strange yellow eyes glared at him for an instant and then disappeared. Shasa heard his boots scrabble on the pathway, and then the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt being loaded and cocked.

He is going to finish me off, he thought, and only then realized that he still had the Beretta in his right hand.

Desperately he hooked his left elbow over the pine sapling and pointed the Beretta up at the rim of the cliff above his head.

Once more the killer's head and shoulders appeared against the sky, and he was swinging the long barrel of the Mauser downwards; but the weapon was awkward to point at this angle and Shasa fired an instant before it could bear.

He heard the light bullet of the pistol strike against flesh, and the killer grunted and disappeared from view. A moment afterwards he heard someone else shout from a distance, and recognized Blaine's voim Then the killer's running footsteps moved swiftly away as he set off along the path once more, and a minute later Blaine looked down at Shasa from the clifftop.

Hold on! Blaine's face was flushed with exertion and his voice unsteady. He pulled the thick leather belt from his trouser top and buckled it into a loop.

Lying flat on his belly at the top of the cliff, he lowered the looped belt and Shasa hooked his arm through it. Even though Blaine was a powerful man with abnormal arm and chest development from polo practice, they struggled for minutes before he could drag Shasa over the top of the cliff.

They lay together for a few moments; and then Shasa pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and staggered off along the pathway in pursuit of the fugitive. Within a dozen paces Blaine pulled ahead of him, running strongly and his example spurred Shasa. He kept up, and Blaine gasped over his shoulder.

Blood! He pointed to the wet red speckles on a flat stone in the pathway. You hit him" They came out onto the wide bridle path, and started down, running shoulder to shoulder now, helped by the gradient of the descent, but they had not reached the first hairpin bend when they heard an engine start in the forest below.

He's got a car! Blaine panted as the engine whined into a crescendo, then the sound of it receded swiftly. They pulled up and listened to it dwindle into silence. Shasa's legs could hold him up no longer. He sank into a heap in the middle of the road.

There was a telephone at the Cecilia Forestry Station and Shasa got through to Inspector Nel at CID headquarters and gave him a description of the killer.

You'll have to move fast. The man has obviously got his escape planned. The mountain club kept a lightweight stretcher at the forestry station, for this mountain took many human lives each year. The forester gave them six of his black labourers to Carry it, and accompanied them back up the bridle path and along the mountain rim to the head of Skeleton Gorge.

The women were there. Centaine and Anna were in tears, clinging to each other for comfort. They had spread one of the rugs over the dead man.

Shasa knelt beside the body and lifted the corner of the rug. In death Sir Garry Courtney's features had fallen in, so that his nose was arched and beaky, his closed eyelids were in deep cavities, but there was about him a gentle dignity so that he resembled the death mask of a fragile Caesar.

Shasa kissed his forehead and the skin was cool and velvety smooth against his lips.

When he stood up, Field-Marshal Smuts laid a hand of comfort on his shoulder. I'm sorry, my boy, the old fieldMarshal said. That bullet was meant for me., Manfred De La Rey pulled off the road, steering with one hand. He did not leave the driver's seat of the Morris, and he kept the engine running while he unbuttoned the front of his overalls.

The bullet had entered just below and in front of his armpit, punching into the thick pad of the pectoral muscle and it had angled upwards. He could find no exit wound, the bullet was still lodged in his body, and when he groped gently around the back of his own shoulder, he found a swelling that was so tender that he almost screamed involuntarily as he touched it.

The bullet was lying just under the skin, it did not appear to have penetrated the chest cavity. He wadded his handkerchief over the wound in his armpit and buttoned the overalls. He checked his watch. It was a few minutes before eleven o'clock, just twenty-three minutes since he had fired the shot that would set his people free.

A sense of passionate soaring triumph overrode the pain of his wound. He pulled back onto the road and drove sedately around the base of the mountain, down the main road through Woodstock. At the gates of the railway yards he showed his pass to the gatekeeper and went through to park the Morris outside the restrooms for off-duty firemen and engine drivers.