There was something eerie in the sough of the wind over these grey mountains, crowned with the decayed castles. Hallie suddenly shivered.
“I’m glad I’m American,” she said. “Here in Italy I feel that everybody’s dead. So many people dead and all watching from up on those hills—Carthaginians and old Romans and Moorish pirates and medieval princes with poisoned rings—”
The solemn gloom of the countryside communicated itself to all of them. The wind had come up stronger and was groaning through the dark massed trees along the way. The engine labored painfully up the incessant slopes and then coasted down winding spiral roads until the brakes gave out a burning smell. In the dark little village of Eboli they stopped for gasoline, and while they waited for their change another car came quickly out of the darkness and drew up behind.
Corcoran looked at it closely, but the lights were in his face and he could distinguish only the pale blots of four faces which returned his insistent stare. When the taxi had driven off and toiled a mile uphill in the face of the sweeping wind, he saw the lamps of the other car emerge from the village and follow. In a low voice he called Nosby’s attention to the fact—whereupon Nosby leaned forward nervously and tapped on the front glass.
“Piu presto !” he commanded. “Il sera sono tropo tarde !”
Corcoran translated the mutilated Italian and then fell into conversation with the chauffeur. Hallie had dozed off to sleep with her head on her mother’s shoulder. It might have been twenty minutes later when she awoke with a start to find that the car had stopped. The chauffeur was peering into the engine with a lighted match, while Corcoran and Mr. Nosby were talking quickly in the road.
“What is it?” she cried.
“He’s broken down,” said Corcoran, “and he hasn’t got the proper tools to make the repair. The best thing is for all of you to start out on foot for Agropoli. That’s the next village—it’s about two miles away.”
“Look!” said Nosby uneasily. The lights of another car had breasted a rise less than a mile behind.
“Perhaps they’ll pick us up?” asked Hallie.
“We’re taking no such chances,” answered Corcoran. “This is the special beat of one of the roughest gangs of holdup men in Southern Italy. What’s more, we’re being followed. When I asked the chauffeur if he knew that car that drove up behind us in Eboli, he shut right up. He’s afraid to say.”
As he spoke he was helping Hallie and her mother from the car. Now he turned authoritatively to Nosby.
“You better tell me what you got in that Naples bank.”
“It was ten thousand dollars in English bank notes,” admitted Nosby in a frightened voice.
“I thought so. Some clerk tipped them off. Hand over those notes to me!”
“Why should I?” demanded Nosby. “What are you going to do with them?”
“I’m going to throw them away,” said Corcoran. His head went up alertly. The complaint of a motor car taking a hill in second speed was borne toward them clearly on the night. “Hallie, you and your mother start on with the chauffeur. Run as fast as you can for a hundred yards or so and then keep going. If I don’t show up, notify the carabinieri in Agropoli.” His voice sank lower. “Don’t worry, I’m going to fix this thing. Good-bye.”
As they started off he turned again to Nosby.
“Hand over that money,” he said.
“You’re going to—”
“I’m going to keep them here while you get Hallie away. Don’t you see that if they got her up in these hills they could ask any amount of money they wanted?”
Nosby paused irresolute. Then he pulled out a thick packet of fifty-pound notes and began to peel half a dozen from the top.
“I want all of it,” snapped Corcoran. With a quick movement he wrested the packet violently from Nosby’s hand. “Now go on!”
Less than half a mile away, the lights of the car dipped into sight. With a broken cry Nosby turned and stumbled off down the road.
Corcoran took a pencil and an envelope from his pocket and worked quickly for a few minutes by the glow of the headlights. Then he wet one finger and held it up tentatively in the air as if he were making an experiment. The result seemed to satisfy him. He waited, ruffling the large thin notes—there were forty of them—in his hands.
The lights of the other car came nearer, slowed up, came to a stop twenty feet away.
Leaving the engine running idle, four men got out and walked toward him.
“Buona sera !” he called, and then continued in Italian, “We have broken down.”
“Where are the rest of your people?” demanded one of the men quickly.
“They were picked up by another car. It turned around and took them back to Agropoli,” Corcoran said politely. He was aware that he was covered by two revolvers, but he waited an instant longer, straining to hear the flurry in the trees which would announce a gust of wind. The men drew nearer.
“But I have something here that may interest you.” Slowly, his heart thumping, he raised his hand, bringing the packet of notes into the glare of the headlight. Suddenly out of the valley swept the wind, louder and nearer—he waited a moment longer until he felt the first cold freshness on his face. “Here are two hundred thousand lire in English bank notes!” He raised the sheaf of paper higher as if to hand it to the nearest man. Then he released it with a light upward flick and immediately the wind seized upon it and whirled the notes in forty directions through the air.
The nearest man cursed and made a lunge for the closest piece. Then they were all scurrying here and there about the road while the frail bills sailed and flickered in the gale, pirouetting like elves along the grass, bouncing and skipping from side to side in mad perversity.
From one side to the other they ran, Corcoran with them—crumpling the captured money into their pockets, then scattering always farther and farther apart in wild pursuit of the elusive beckoning symbols of gold.
Suddenly Corcoran saw his opportunity. Bending low, as if he had spotted a stray bill beneath the car, he ran toward it, vaulted over the side and hitched into the driver’s seat. As he plunged the lever into first, he heard a cursing cry and then a sharp report, but the warmed car had jumped forward safely and the shot went wide.
In a moment, his teeth locked and muscles tense against the fusillade, he had passed the stalled taxi and was racing along into the darkness. There was another report close at hand and he ducked wildly, afraid for an instant that one of them had clung to the running board—then he realized that one of their shots had blown out a tire.
After three-quarters of a mile he stopped, cut off his motor and listened. There wasn’t a sound, only the drip from his radiator onto the road.
“Hallie!” he called. “Hallie!”
A figure emerged from the shadows not ten feet away, then another figure and another.
“Hallie!” he said.
She clambered into the front seat with him—her arms went about him.
“You’re safe!” she sobbed. “We heard the shots and I wanted to go back.”
Mr. Nosby, very cool now, stood in the road.
“I don’t suppose you brought back any of that money,” he said.
Corcoran took three crumpled bank notes from his pocket.
“That’s all,” he said. “But they’re liable to be along here any minute and you can argue with them about the rest.”
Mr. Nosby, followed by Mrs. Bushmill and the chauffeur, stepped quickly into the car.
“Nevertheless,” he insisted shrilly,