Robbie knew that his enemy was carrying two pistols—his own and Stephanie's—and neither of them had been fired. They must contain anything from a dozen to eighteen bullets. To attempt, weaponless, to face Barak would, Robbie felt certain, be to throw away his life. The only alternative was to take to his heels while there were still several hundred yards between them. As he turned to run, a sudden thought struck him. While he had been struggling with Cepicka, the Czech had dropped his pistol.. Stephanie's murder, so soon after, had put it right out of his mind. Now he swerved, dashed for the place where they had fought, and began frantically to hunt for it.
The pistol was nowhere on the barren platform of stone, so it must have fallen among the long grass and scrub growing at the head of the chimney. Going down on his knees, Robbie thrust his fingers agitately in among the greenery, unheeding the tears in his hands made by the long thorns of a low bush that had little yellow flowers on it. The knowledge that Barak was coming up the slope behind him made him half choke with fear. At any moment, his enemy might breast the rise and put a bullet through his back. Turning this way and that, he scrabbled in the undergrowth like a maniac, but to no avail. The automatic must have fallen further off, and to give more time to searching would prove fatal.
As he jumped to his feet, he cursed the thought that had led him to giving precious time hunting for Cepicka's gun. By so doing, he had greatly lessened his chances of remaining alive. Had he run for it directly he saw Barak leave the road, he would have had a good lead, well out of pistol-shot, and might have got away. Now he would be easily in range when Barak appeared over the crest, and could have little hope of escaping some of the many shots with which Barak would attempt to maim, then kill, him.
His eyes staring, his mouth hanging open, he jerked his head from side to side. For a moment he even thought of jumping over the parapet of low boulders, but he knew that there could be little hope of surviving the twenty-foot drop. He would either break his neck, or break both his legs, fracture a dozen other bones and die soon after from an internal haemorrhage. It was then that his eye lit on the tangle of great boulders only thirty yards away, separated here and there by gaps. Without losing another second, he dashed up the slope and threw himself headlong into a narrow opening between two of them.
Most of the tumbled rocks were no more than six feet high; so the places where they were not actually touching were narrow tunnels, rather than caves, and these formed a small, irregular maze. Some were impassable, others partly obstructed by scrub, and most of them could have been looked down into by anyone patient enough to clamber over the top of the whole area.
Robbie wriggled in for about eight feet, then found that the cleft he was in led to a small open space, where there grew a fine crop of stinging nettles; so, panting heavily, he stayed where he was. He could only pray that Barak had not seen him dive in among the rocks, but he thought it unlikely that he had. They would not have been in view until Barak had breasted the rise and, had he caught sight of Robbie, it seemed certain that he would have taken a pot shot at him.
When Robbie's breathing eased he lay very still, listening intently. After a few minutes he heard the sound of footsteps brushing through scrub, then, to his amazement, voices. Barak's came quite clearly; he was speaking in Greek and said: 'He can't be far away. He must be in among these rocks somewhere.'
The voice that replied also spoke in Greek, but it was rough and so near a patois that Robbie had difficulty in understanding it. After a moment, it flashed upon him that the speaker must be the goat-herd whom he had seen in the distance just after he had thrown Cepicka down into the road. Evidently, during the past quarter of an hour, he had made his way down the mountainside to find out what was going on.
As far as Robbie could understand, he was saying that, had he had his dog, it would have been easy to flush out the man they were after; but he had left his dog to look after the goats. By the time he had been up to fetch him, it would be sundown. There was some further discussion; but Robbie did not catch it as the two men moved away, presumably to skirt the tangle of rocks and see if they could find any traces of him.
It occurred to him then that, now Barak was no longer alone, it would be safe to come out, as his enemy would not dare to shoot him in front of the goat-herd. But, on second thoughts, he decided that to be a rash assumption. Only by killing him could
Barak save himself from being charged with Stephanie's murder. To escape that he might well be prepared, after shooting Robbie, to shoot the goat-herd, too. Afterwards, he would have only to carry their two bodies into the middle of the tangle of rocks, wedge them into two of the narrow tunnels and block up the entrances; then, in that incredibly desolate country, the odds would be a hundred to one against anyone finding them until they had long since become unidentifiable skeletons. Restrained by this grim possibility, Robbie remained where he was for the next ten minutes.
When he did crawl to the. entrance of his tunnel and peep out, he could not see Barak; but on emerging a little further, he caught sight of him and the goat-herd going over the crest of the rise in the direction of the Mercedes. Having given them another few minutes, Robbie crawled through the scrub on his hands and knees until he could see over the crest. By that time, the two men had nearly reached the car; then, much to Robbie's surprise, the goat-herd got into it with Barak and it drove off in the direction of Tripolis.
At last, Robbie was freed from the fear that he was fated to die out there on that lonesome mountain-side, riddled with bullets. But, mentally, he was still in a state of distress that defied description. Although Cepicka had been gunning for him and he had acted in self-defence, the fact that he had actually killed a fellow human being had, as he had stared down on the twisted body in the road, appalled him. Yet even that had faded into insignificance beside the tragedy that had followed so swiftly upon it. He felt that his dreams would for months be harrowed by that terrible scene in which he had been powerless to intervene, and that to his dying day he would be unable to blot out from his mind the terror on Stephanie's face as the earth gave way beneath her and she slid down the side of the precipice. That he was marooned there without transport, miles from anywhere and with night coming on, seemed by comparison of no consequence.
Instead of risking a slip and fall by going down the chimney, he walked down the slope, the way Barak had gone, and, on reaching the road, turned back along it till he came to the place where the Ford had gone over. The sideways marks the front wheels had made in the dust as the car had been forced towards the precipice were quite clear, but he did not think they would provide evidence that Barak had rammed it three times. The marks might just as well have been made had it been a genuine accident and he had crashed into the Ford when taking the corner at a fair speed.
Kneeling down, Robbie nerved himself to look over the edge. From it, evidently as part of the road's construction, there was a slope, about ten feet wide, at an angle of forty-five degrees. Below that, the cliff dropped sheer for some two hundred feet, then the ground sloped again, but very steeply; so the car would have bounced on the lower slope, probably several times, before it was finally dashed to pieces in the distant bottom of the ravine.
To the west, the sun was now setting in a glory of gold, rose and crimson; so the bottom of the valley was already in deep shadow. Even in full daylight it might have been difficult to spot the wreckage of the car at that distance; but Robbie thought he could detect a smear of smoke lingering down there from its having been burnt out.