The car went on.
I sprang out of my hiding-place.
The car was suddenly gone from the empty road.
There was a grinding sound. A crash. The noise of metal folding on itself. The tinkle of glass.
I raced toward those sounds.
V
Out of a black pile where an engine sputtered, a black figure leaped—to dash off across the soggy lawn. I cut after it, hoping that the others in the wreck were down for keeps.
I was less than fifteen feet behind the fleeing man when he cleared a hedge. I’m no sprinter, but neither was he. The wet grass made slippery going.
He stumbled while I was vaulting the hedge. When we straightened out again I was not more than ten feet behind him.
Once I clicked my gun at him, forgetting I had emptied it. Six cartridges were wrapped in a piece of paper in my vest pocket, but this was no time for loading.
I was tempted to chuck the empty gun at his head. But that was too chancy.
A building loomed ahead. My fugitive bore off to the right, to clear the corner.
To the left a heavy shotgun went off.
The running man disappeared around the house-corner.
“Sweet God!” General Pleshskev’s mellow voice complained. “That with a shotgun I should miss all of a man at the distance!”
“Go round the other way!” I yelled, plunging around the corner after my quarry.
His feet thudded ahead. I could not see him. The general puffed around from the other side of the house.
“You have him?”
“No.”
In front of us was a stone-faced bank, on top of which ran a path. On either side of us was a high and solid hedge.
“But, my friend,” the general protested. “How could he have—?”
A pale triangle showed on the path above a triangle that could have been a bit of shirt showing above the opening of a vest.
“Stay here and talk!” I whispered to the general, and crept forward.
“It must be that he has gone the other way,” the general carried out my instructions, rambling on as if I were standing beside him, “because if he had come my way I should have seen him, and if he had raised himself over either of the hedges or the embankment, one of us would surely have seen him against …”
He talked on and on while I gained the shelter of the bank on which the path sat, while I found places for my toes in the rough stone facing.
The man on the road, trying to make himself small with his back in a bush, was looking at the talking general. He saw me when I had my feet on the path.
He jumped, and one hand went up.
I jumped, with both hands out.
A stone, turning under my foot, threw me sidewise, twisting my ankle, but saving my head from the bullet he sent at it.
My outflung left arm caught his legs as I spilled down. He came over on top of me. I kicked him once, caught his gun-arm, and had just decided to bite it when the general puffed up over the edge of the path and prodded the man off me with the muzzle of the shotgun.
When it came my turn to stand up, I found it not so good. My twisted ankle didn’t like to support its share of my hundred-and-eighty-some pounds. Putting most of my weight on the other leg, I turned my flashlight on the prisoner.
“Hello, Flippo!” I exclaimed.
“Hello!” he said without joy in the recognition.
He was a roly-poly Italian youth of twenty-three or -four. I had helped send him to San Quentin four years ago for his part in a payroll stickup. He had been out on parole for several months now.
“The prison board isn’t going to like this,” I told him.
“You got me wrong,” he pleaded. “I ain’t been doing a thing. I was up here to see some friends. And when this thing busted loose I had to hide, because I got a record, and if I’m picked up I’ll be railroaded for it. And now you got me, and you think I’m in on it!”
“You’re a mind reader,” I assured him, and asked the general: “Where can we pack this bird away for a while, under lock and key?”
“In my house there is a lumber-room with a strong door and not a window.”
“That’ll do it. March, Flippo!”
General Pleshskev collared the youth, while I limped along behind them, examining Flippo’s gun, which was loaded except for the one shot he had fired at me, and reloading my own.
We had caught our prisoner on the Russian’s grounds, so we didn’t have far to go.
The general knocked on the door and called out something in his language. Bolts clicked and grated, and the door was swung open by a heavily mustached Russian servant. Behind him the princess and a stalwart older woman stood.
We went in while the general was telling his household about the capture, and took the captive up to the lumber-room. I frisked him for his pocketknife and matches—he had nothing else that could help him get out—locked him in and braced the door solidly with a length of board. Then we went downstairs again.
“You are injured!” the princess, seeing me limp across the floor, cried.
“Only a twisted ankle,” I said. “But it does bother me some. Is there any adhesive tape around?”
“Yes,” and she spoke to the mustached servant, who went out of the room and presently returned, carrying rolls of gauze and tape and a basin of steaming water.
“If you’ll sit down,” the princess said, taking these things from the servant.
But I shook my head and reached for the adhesive tape.
“I want cold water, because I’ve got to go out in the wet again. If you’ll show me the bathroom, I can fix myself up in no time.”
We had to argue about that, but I finally got to the bathroom, where I ran cold water on my
