Near his feet there was a tentative stir.
“Have we stopped?” Vicky quavered.
She was still rolled into a frightened ball underneath the dashboard, and Simon could see by the light of the dome bulb which had proved Uzdanov’s undoing that her eyes were not yet open.
“We’ve stopped temporarily, at any rate,” he answered. “But don’t move until I tell you to.”
Vicky’s eyes popped open.
“Don’t move?” she objected with a sudden bravado born of the simple realization that she was still alive. “Don’t move? Why not?”
“Ill tell you in a minute.”
Vicky looked less brave and stared towards the back of the car.
“Is that commie out cold? I think you killed him.”
“Anyway, he’s resting in peace at the moment,” Simon told her, after a cautious twist and a downward glance.
Vicky’s expression became a little happier again.
“You almost knocked his head off. It was wonderful.”
The Saint was paying much more attention to the precarious position of his car than to his desultory dialogue with Vicky, which was mainly designed to keep her occupied while he decided what to do. If she suddenly realized how close the car might be to losing its balance and dropping over the cliffside, she would be liable to panic and trigger just that undesirable event.
“He almost cut my head off, which wouldn’t have been so wonderful,” he mentioned abstractedly.
“He’s still got my letter!” Vicky remembered aloud.
Before she could unwind herself from the floor the Saint stopped her with a gentle but undeniably firm hand on her shoulder.
“I asked you not to move,” he said in a voice that had all the smooth poise of a tightrope-walker’s bearing.
“Not move?” Vicky asked indignantly, albeit impressed by his tone. “I want out. From now on I travel by bicycle or I don’t travel at all.”
“I think you’ll be travelling by foot for quite a distance, if we get out of here.”
He had chosen the last phrase deliberately.
“If?” Vicky echoed uneasily. “Aren’t we safe? We’re alive and that red rat or whatever he is has got his knife out of our backs. Don’t tell me something else can go wrong now?”
Simon nodded and held her eyes magnetized with the intense translucency of his blue ones as he measured his next words.
“What else can be wrong is the fact that the parking place I’ve ended up in is something less than ideal. Our rear wheels, my dear, are hanging over the void, and it may be only that extra bit of strudel you ate for dinner that’s keeping our front end anchored to the road. I recommend that we open our respective doors carefully and jump out simultaneously on the count of three.”
Vicky’s eyes were very, very wide.
“You’re kidding me,” she complained weakly.
“If you think so, let me get out first,” Simon answered.
“Oh, no! I’ll take your word for it.”
“Okay, then. Get out when I say ‘three’. One...”
“Wait!” she said. “What about him?”
“You mean Boris the back-seat driver? We’ll let Father Marx worry about him. After all, the car may not go over even after we get out.”
Vicky’s fingers were touching the streak of blood on her cheek.
“I’m not worried about his health,” she said. “But he’s got that letter he took away from me a few minutes ago. He’s got my ten million dollars!”
“We might shift the balance too much if we tried to get it. Worry about saving yourself first, and then worry about your loot.” His voice became imperative, still without losing its firm core of calmness. “Now pay attention to what I’m telling you! It’s important that we both get out of here at the same time, just in case it takes the two of us weighting down the front of this beetle to keep it from tangling with the thick end of this alp. Open your door while I count, and jump exactly when I say ‘three’.”
A fresh gust of wind seemed to make the car tremble as he spoke; and Vicky’s face, pale in the dim yellow dome light, became rigid with fear.
“Jump,” she repeated huskily, her lips barely moving.
“Yes, and be sure you don’t jump towards the back of the car or you’ll probably go over the edge. The rear end is sticking out into space.”
“All right,” she responded faintly.
“Good. Get ready, and when I say ‘three’ get out fast. One...”
Simon opened his door slowly, and Vicky timidly did the same.
“Two...”
Vicky moved from her kneeling position on the floor to a half-sitting crouch that would let her move quickly out of the car when the last number was called. Her shift of weight, combined with sail-effect of the open doors as they were caught by the wind, made the car sway like a distressed canoe. Her facial hue had become more green than white.
“Oh, we can’t!” she whimpered.
Even the Saint felt as if some intestinal quicksand was sucking down the floor of his stomach, but he managed to keep any hint of his sensations out of the timbre of his voice.
“We can,” he said resolutely. “Ready? Starting back at one... two... three!”
He gave Vicky a moment’s handicap, and then as she threw herself out of her open door he leaped from the driver’s seat on to the tumbled stones of the safety wall that the back end of the Volkswagen had smashed through. Just inches from his feet was the deeper blackness of the void which would have welcomed him down if he had slipped. He scrambled away from the lip of the cliff around the front of the car, where Vicky stumbled into his arms. Her whole body trembled against him.
“I almost fell over,” she panted. “I didn’t know we were so close to the edge.”
She was staring up at him with eyes like luminous saucers, and abruptly he was reminded that they were standing in the full brilliance of the Volkswagen’s headlights. He turned, helping the girl stay on her feet in spite of her shaky knees, to see what would happen next to the car.
To his surprise, nothing was happening. Even with all the weight of Uzdanov and the engine in its rear, and with the ballast of two bodies removed from its front, the little automobile still clung like a determined insect to the ledge. It is possible that the malevolent spirit of Mischa Ruspine, still smarting from recent intrusion of Comrade Uzdanov’s dagger between the shoulder-blades of his mortal clay, was hovering somewhere nearby, and that he had some influence with the wind, for another hefty puff of night air came around the side of the mountain and made the metal underbelly of the car creak shrilly against the rock on which it rested.
But even that was not enough, and the car still stuck on the verge of the precipice.
“What’ll we do?” Vicky asked desperately, not loosening her hold on him.
“About Uzdanov?”
“About my money,” she corrected him impatiently.
“Well, I’m not one to ignore the call of ten million dollars in distress,” he conceded. “Wait here.”
“No, you can’t — it’s too dangerous!” she cried; but she stood back and watched, making no move to stop him.
He walked around the passenger’s side of the car so as to get the glare of the headlights out of his eyes, studied the situation, and picked up a large slab of rock which had been knocked loose from the shattered guard wall. He carried it back to the front of the car and wedged the sixty-pound piece of granite on top of the bumper. The counterweight might help to balance the car on its uncertain fulcrum, or at least it would do something to steady it.