He was closest to me. I swung the Luger at the side of his head and connected. He grunted and fell against the compartment wall.
“You want to try again?” I asked.
The tall man was shocked and dazed. The other one spoke for him. “He is aboard,” he said. “But we don’t know where. We left him at the other end of the train.”
“This compartment is for one person,” I said. “Did you two take a separate compartment?”
The broken-nosed man hesitated while the tall one looked at him darkly. “Yes.”
“What’s the number?”
“Don’t tell him!” the tall man shouted loudly. I kicked him in the lower leg, and he yelled.
“Well?” I asked the other one.
“It’s the next compartment,” the man said softly, jerking his thumb toward a wall.
“Fool!” the tall man said through clenched teeth.
“Okay, let’s get going,” I said. “To the platform. Out.”
The one with the broken nose opened the door and went into the corridor, and I shoved the tall one after him. There was nobody in the corridor, so I kept the Luger out.
“Move,” I ordered, jamming the gun into the tall man’s ribs.
In a moment we reached the platforms between the cars. I stood well behind them and held the Luger on them. “Okay, jump,” I ordered.
They gave me hard looks.
“The train is moving very fast,” the broken-nosed gunman said.
“Not as fast as the slug from this gun,” I warned him.
After a brief hesitation, the broken-nosed thug opened the door and jumped. In the next instant, the tall man threw himself desperately at me. I met the assault with the barrel of the Luger, smacking it hard into his midsection. He groaned and fell heavily to the metal floor at my feet, unconscious. I holstered the Luger, dragged him to the open door, and threw him off the train.
I saw his limp form hit the gravel and then bound out of sight in tall grass. He was probably better off than if he had been conscious, but either way I would not have wasted much sleep over it After all, he had tried to blow me into little pieces.
Now there was Richter. He was on this train, and I had to find him. I was rather looking forward to it.
Thirteen
There was little choice left. The train would be nearing Dimitrovgrad and entering Bulgaria soon, and then my job would get much tougher. I could not just sit back and wait for Richter to show himself. I had to make a methodical search of the sleeping compartments, knocking on each and every door. The tactic might get me in trouble with the porter, but I had to chance that.
I decided to go to the far end of the first sleeping car, the one toward the front of the train. I would start my search at its far end and work my way back through both cars. But that plan became suddenly and dramatically unnecessary. As I reached a point about halfway through the first sleeping car, a compartment door opened, and there was Hans Richter in the corridor just a few feet from me, staring at me as if I were an apparition.
“You!” he hissed.
I noticed that he was carrying the radio.
“Call it quits, Richter,” I warned. “You’re not making it to Sofia now.”
But Richter had other ideas. He uttered something under his breath in German, then he whirled and started running down the corridor away from me.
He was heading toward the sleeping car I had just left, toward the end of the train. The train was too crowded to attempt a shot. Instead I gave chase.
A couple of moments later Richter was on the rear platform of the train. He had gone as far as he could go in that direction. When I got to the door, Wilhelmina out, he was waiting for me. The door slammed back against me as I tried to move through its opening on the platform. I almost lost my footing as the door struck my chest and arm. Richter had given it a hard shove. I stepped warily through the doorway and just got a glimpse of Richter disappearing up a ladder that led to the top of the car.
“Give up, Richter!” I shouted above the noise of the train. But he had disappeared from view.
There seemed little to do but follow him.
I leaned out over the tracks, looking up the ladder, and just in time I saw Richter aiming at my head with a small Belgian revolver. The gun barked out, I ducked back, and the slug spent itself on the speeding ground under the wheels. Then Richter was moving along the top of the car toward the front of the train.
I swung quickly onto the ladder and climbed it to the top of the car. Richter was already at the far end, leaping from the dining car to the last sleeper. He lost his balance momentarily, as he landed on the top of the next car, but he kept his footing.
I ran along the top of the dining car after him. When I reached the end of it, I leaped the distance between it and the sleeper without pausing and kept running.
Richter turned and fired two more shots at me. I saw him aim and ducked low. Both shots went wild, although the second one chewed at the car roof under my feet. I returned fire with Wilhelmina, but with the train moving under us, my aim was bad, too, and the slug sang harmlessly past Richter’s head. Then he was running again.
Richter jumped another space between cars. He was getting better at it. I followed; we ran and leaped the length of several more cars. Richter was now getting close to the front of the train.
As Richter made another jump between cars, the train swerved, and he fell to one knee. When he turned and saw me closing on him, he aimed the small revolver again and fired two more shots. I flattened myself on the top of the next car, and the slugs chewed up wood on the superstructure beside my head and arm. Richter pulled the trigger of the revolver a third time, but nothing happened. Then he angrily hurled the gun at me. It bounced off the car top and disappeared over the edge.
Richter was turning and running again. I rose, holstered the Luger, and followed. Then I saw a mountainside loom ahead and a black opening yawning in it — tunnel The train rocketed into the tunnel, and Richter flattened himself just in time as his car disappeared into the blackness. I threw myself face down, too, and then I was immersed in darkness. In a moment I saw the disc of light growing at the other end, and emerged from the black tube into daylight again.
Richter was already moving toward the engine. I got to my feet and ran after him. I wanted to prevent him from getting back down to the interior of the train. He jumped onto the first day coach behind the engine and kept going. When I made the jump, the train lurched around a sharp bend in the tracks. I fell to my right and almost slipped off the top of the car.
I waited until the tracks straightened again. Then I moved on toward Richter. The train swayed again over some uneven track as Richter neared the front of the car. He fell and dropped the radio. It slid to the edge of the car roof, but Richter grabbed it before it went over.
Richter was at the front end of the car now. He was looking at the engine as I moved to close the small distance between us. He decided against jumping to the engine and moved instead to the ladder leading over the side of the car. I reached him just as he got one foot on it.
I grabbed him with all my strength and pulled him up to the car roof. He glared at me as he struggled to break free.
“Let me go!” he yelled. “Do you think I have created all this for nothing?”
His words were almost whisked away by the wind before I could grasp what he was saying. But his eyes told me everything. I was succeeding where everybody else had failed, and Hans Richter was finally trapped. In a few short days, I had become his nemesis.
I slammed a fist into his square face and broke his nose.
Richter fell to the roof of the moving car. The countryside slipped past below us at a dizzying pace. I grabbed at him again, but he kicked out and knocked my legs from under me, and I fell beside him and rolled to the very edge of the roof.