find a way to resist. My opposition was reported to Fordamp, and I was locked up here with Mr. Statler, who refused to sell his circus.'

I nodded and walked over to the window. As I'd suspected, we were locked up in one of the castles. I leaned out the window and looked down; the tops of a grove of pine trees were a hundred feet below. As I watched, a thrush winged her way to a nest built in the crevices between the stones that comprised the tower. I tried not to think of the fact that we were sitting on a charge of dynamite that could probably blow us all over the mountainside.

'Why do you suppose they haven't killed the two of you?'

'I'm not sure,' Bonatelli said.

'I'm thinking he hasn't gotten around to it,' Phil said around his cigar. 'Besides, having us locked up here gives him a little added insurance in case he has to start threatening again.'

I turned back to Phil and the Regent. 'Assuming one of us could get out of here, what do you think would happen to the other two?'

Phil shrugged. 'Things could get hairy, I suppose, but it would still be better to have one of us on the outside with a shot at Fordamp. As it is, we're simply sitting here waiting for the place to blow.'

'That's obvious,' Bonatelli said. There was a trace of impatience in his voice. 'But the discussion is academic.'

Phil removed the cigar from his mouth and spat into a corner. 'Nothing's academic with Mongo.'

'The door is two feet thick, and it's bolted. We are more than a hundred feet off the ground. How-'

'I think I can get out of here,' I said. 'Down the wall. But I'll be wasting my time unless there's some way I can convince the Italian authorities that we need them. Mr. Bonatelli, do you have anything I could show them as proof that I've been in contact with you?'

'I have my Regent's ring,' Bonatelli said. 'They would recognize that I suppose, but you couldn't possibly climb down that wall. You'd fall to your death.'

'He might make it,' Phil said, eyeing me. He sounded as if he might be auditioning new talent. 'I've seen him do even more amazing things in his act.'

'Act?'

'Forget it,' I said curtly. 'Mr. Bonatelli, may I have your ring?'

The Regent slipped a gold, crested ring off his right hand and handed it to me. His hand trembled, and he had the air of an inexperienced prison warden giving a condemned man his last meal. I put the ring in my pocket, went to the window and climbed out.

Balance and timing, two skills that I had once had in abundance, were essential for the descent I planned to make; I hoped they hadn't atrophied in the five years I'd spent away from the circus.

A cold breeze was blowing off the top of the mountain, drying the rivulets of sweat that had already broken out on my body. I kept my head level, staring straight ahead at the niches in the rocks where I gripped with my fingers as I groped below me with my feet for the next toehold. Finding it, I would brace, then bring one hand down the wall until I found another handhold.

The thrush exploded in a whir of wings somewhere below and to my right. My peripheral vision caught the faces of Phil and Bonatelli at the window above me; Bonatelli was bone white, his mouth gaping open as if the air at the top of the castle was too thin for him; Phil had the calmer expression of a man who has lived with the risks of death and maiming for a long time.

'Take it easy, Mongo,' Phil growled softly. 'There ain't no net under you.'

'Wait until you get my bill for this exercise,' I said without looking up. I'll be able to buy a dozen nets, all fine-spun gold.'

'You got a blank check, Mongo. A blank check. Just don't forget that I don't owe you nothin' if you get killed.'

I cut the banter short; I was going to need my breath. I was barely a quarter of the way down and already the pain was spreading from the small of my back, around my rib cage through my arms and fingers, numbing them. I'd gashed my right hand, and the blood was welling between my fingers.

Despite the risks of slipping, I was going to have to speed my descent. Otherwise, I was going to run out of strength long before I reached the bottom, which meant that there'd be a neat, dwarf-sized hole at the base of a castle in San Marino.

I started taking chances, accepting toeholds that felt spongy, digging my fingers into dusty pockets in the wall that could give way as soon as I touched them. One did, and for a few brief moments that felt like years I found myself dangling by one hand that had no feeling.

Phil's soft oath wafted down to me. I kept my eyes level, sucked in my breath, and swung back again. My other hand found a grip and my feet found solid footing. The muscles in my belly crawled, as if reaching out by themselves in an attempt to grasp the smooth rocks on the face of the wall. I didn't want to move; I wanted to stay there until all the feeling left and I dropped. I convinced myself that that wasn't positive thinking; I forced myself to calm down and continue groping. Then I could see the tops of trees out of the corner of my eye. I scurried down another twenty feet and fell the rest of the way, banging into the ground with a force that momentarily dazed me.

I half expected to hear a chorus of boos from some circus gallery. All I got was the croaking of a frog in the forest behind me. I shook my head to clear it, then took a quick mental inventory and decided nothing was broken.

I glanced up toward the window. Bonatelli might have been a dead man; he was in exactly the same position-with the same expression on his face-that he'd been in when I'd gone over the window ledge. Phil was standing with his hands clasped over his head.

I got to my feet and slipped into the forest.

It was a clear day, and I could see Italy below me, through breaks in the trees. I needed a messenger. It was only a matter of a few hours before Fordamp would discover that I was missing, and things would start to come apart. On the positive side, Fordamp obviously didn't feel that secure of his position, or he wouldn't have felt the need to cut off the telephones and seal the country.

Regardless of what I did or didn't do, the fact that I had escaped from the castle would increase the pressure on Fordamp. I decided that I'd have to risk upping the ante some more, and hope that things in San Marino wouldn't start exploding.

That decision was given added urgency by a discovery I made in a small glen a few yards in from the tree line. Whoever had shot Danny Lemongello hadn't even bothered to dig a hole for him. Apparently Fordamp had found out that Danny had talked to me; more probably, the boy simply knew too much. Whatever the reason, Danny's body lay sprawled on the grass. His glazed eyes were crossed, as if trying to see into the hole someone had put in the center of his forehead.

Petrocelli didn't look exactly overjoyed to see me. His jaw dropped open when I walked into the police station. He was still fumbling for his gun when I hit him on the side of the head with the heavy glass ashtray he kept on his desk. He slumped forward and his face smacked into the desk top with the satisfying sound of cracking egg shells. I took his keys and went back into the cell block.

Jandor was standing, gripping the bars of his cell, when I came through the connecting door. His eyes widened. He'd put on some weight since I'd last seen him, and it all looked like muscle. He was a broad-shouldered man with surgeon's hands that could flick a blade of steel and shave a rose petal at fifty feet.

'Mongo!'

I grinned and unlocked the cell door. 'Exercise time, Jandor.'

'What?'

'No time now to tell you how I got here, Jandor. We've got a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it in.'

I opened the door of the cell. Jandor didn't move. He seemed dazed; he stared at the open space between us as if it was a barrier he couldn't ever cross.

'You must know about Roscoe and my knife in his neck. How do you know I didn't kill him?'

'I've got a better suspect.'

'Petrocelli killed him,' Jandor said defensively.

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