The Dagger Affair - McDaniel David (читать хорошую книгу полностью .TXT) 📗

"Time?"

"He's about four miles ahead of us. What does your gadget say?"

Illya listened, and frowned. He made an adjustment and listened again. "Very little. There is still unusual interference of some kind."

They sped on up the bridge and toward the island. After a minute or two Illya spoke again. "You did say four miles, didn't you?"

"Right. Why?"

"He may have been, but he's getting closer again."

"Oh, no! You don't suppose..." Irene began.

"He couldn't have seen us. And..." Illya paused. "Hm. He's not approaching very fast.... But he is below us." Then, just as they approached the face of the island, Illya said, "We just passed over him."

Irene looked sideways at him. "The way you said that, he didn't pass under us."

"I'm afraid he didn't. He's stationary, about two hundred feet below. In other words, he's on the bottom of the bay beneath the bridge."

"More likely just the tracer is," said Napoleon. "A body would be too obvious. But they could have flipped the pin out the window without even slowing down."

Illya said something rude. "That will tie up one channel for a month, until the battery runs down. I begin to understand your feelings of frustration, Napoleon. This entire affair seems to have become jinxed since we arrived in San Francisco."

"Please don't blame it on our city," Irene said. "You may not be used to working within the relatively open framework which the Hierarchy allows. Freedom does not come naturally, despite what your theorists would have you believe. Besides, while our subjects may have escaped our surveillance, we have by no means lost them — or vice versa. A little red car made the same highly unconventional U-turn we did at the east end of the bridge, and is presently about fifty yards behind us."

They knew better than to turn and look, but Napoleon shifted in his seat to take advantage of the side mirror. After a moment he smiled. "How considerate! But how do we induce them to let us reverse our positions so we can follow them back to their headquarters? That is, considering they are from DAGGER, and not from some other secret criminal organization dedicated to destroying the world — or just to destroying us."

"Napoleon," said Irene severely, "don't babble. Our first problem will be to lose them. It shouldn't be difficult."

By this time they were coming down the long slant toward the city. The tops of buildings loomed up on either side of them as they swung right to an escape ramp.

Irene continued happily, "Their car is smaller, faster, more maneuverable and less conspicuous than ours, but we have an advantage which outweighs this all. They are relative strangers to the city; I know it intimately. Pay attention, now — I have a special tour in mind which will prove educational as well as entertaining."

She swung left onto Mission Street and accelerated — and in two minutes Napoleon was hopelessly lost. Irene beat out stop-lights with fractions of a second to spare, made improbable turns, dodged up and down hills, into and out of alleys; ducked into cul-de-sacs and hid around corners. Once in a while he would recognize something like a corner of Chinatown going by, and occasionally Colt Tower would appear on a distant hill behind a building, but it never seemed to be in the same place. Whenever they crossed an open street, there would be a bridge far away down the hill at the end of it. And sometimes the street behind them would be clear, but never for very long. There was usually a little red car in it somewhere.

One long sweep through Golden Gate Park lost their tail entirely, but within three minutes after they came out on Nineteenth Avenue the little red car appeared around a corner three blocks away.

Irene did impossible things up and down Twin Peaks and north toward Corona Heights, and Napoleon's stomach did not recover until they were rolling smoothly up Divisadero alone. Irene was about to turn right on Fulton and go home, when Illya said, "Don't turn if you don't want them to know where were going. They just pulled out of Fell and are behind us again."

"Fell?" said Irene. "Then they couldn't have been following us. They were waiting for us. And I burned all that gasoline and rubber being a wild goose without even being chased!"

They continued up Divisadero at a leisurely pace. The hill became steep up, and then suddenly even steeper down, but Irene down-shifted like a truck driver and kept the red car a neat two blocks behind. Then they came into a broad divided street running through a business district and she turned right. Obeying all the traffic laws, she let the red car get closer.

A hill rose at the end of the street, and a few blocks away from the foot of it she began to pick up a little speed. "Illya, you may appreciate the fact that we will dispose of our little following on Russian Hill."

"I do. How?"

"Watch."

The hill did not seem especially steep from the bottom, but it rose exponentially. It narrowed to four lanes, then to two as it made the final precipitous climb to the top. Irene came over it at forty, and the red car was still three blocks behind.

"Now," she said, "hold onto something."

She slapped the car into low, and the transmission howled like a trodden cat as they nosed over the crest into what looked at first glance like a colorful rock-garden. But there was a street after all — a narrow brick single-lane winding like a path among the flowers.

Irene swung the wheel to the left, hard to the right, hard to the left, back and forth, with the tires squealing protest on the bricks, weaving through the maze of switchbacks until Napoleon felt quite dizzy. They were just past half way down when he heard a dull whump behind them. He looked back but could see nothing over the flowerbeds.

Before they came off the bottom there were two more banging crashes from up the hill. Irene made a short right on Leavenworth and pulled to the curb. The sounds continued, coming down the hill and getting louder.

Whump! Pause. Cranch! Pause. Blangk! Pause. Wunk! And the red car came off the bottom of the hill at about fifteen miles per hour. It wove madly as it crossed the street and missed the next hill down. It swerved drunkenly to the left at the last moment and came to rest at an angle, one wheel resting against a fire-hydrant in front of an apartment house.

Napoleon and Illya piled out of the Rolls and sprinted across the street as the two men climbed dizzily out of the car. The car itself was a sight to sadden a body-shop. Every fender was dented, both headlights shattered; great pieces of paint were missing from the sides, and the front bumper would need a complete replacement.

They surrounded the two shaken DAGGER agents, who were unable to put up more than token resistance, and hustled them into the Rolls, where Irene produced two sets of handcuffs from a door-pocket and clipped them to unobtrusive ringbolts in the back seat.

Meanwhile Napoleon had discovered a small buzzing box in the glove compartment of the red car. Holding it up, he announced to Illya, "I think we have the secret of their luck. We're carrying a tracer!"

"Unfair of them," Illya said, and continued looking around in the front seat.

Napoleon carried the box back to the Rolls, and began going over the body with it. In short order he had located a small black case about the size of a matchbox, clipped under the running board with a powerful magnet. He turned off the receiver, then called over to Illya, "Keep looking. I'll be back in a few minutes."