The Last Frontier Read Online Free PDF Page A

this car, inside the next hour.

There was no window winding handle on the door -- the colonel had thoughtfully removed all such temptations: even if the window had been open he couldn't have reached the handle on the outside. His hands couldn't reach the wheel; he had already measured the arc of radius of the chain and his straining fingers would have been at least two inches away.

He could move his legs to a certain extent, but couldn't raise them high enough to kick in the windscreen, shatter the toughened glass throughout its length and perhaps cause a crash at fairly high speed. He could have placed his feet against the dashboard, and he knew of some cars where he could have heaved the front seat backwards off the rails. But everything in this car spelt solidity, and if he tried and failed, as he almost certainly would, all he'd probably get for his pains would be a tap on the head that would keep him h ' quiet till they got to the Andrassy Ut. All the time he deliberately compelled himself to keep his mind off what was going to happen to him when he got there: that way lay only weakness and ultimate destruction.

His pockets -- had he anything in his pockets he could use? Anything solid enough to throw at Szendro's head, shock him for a length of time necessary to lose control and crash the car: Reynolds was aware that he himself might be hurt as seriously as the colonel, even though he had the advantage of preparation: but a fifty-fifty chance was better than the one in a million he had without it. He knew exactly where Szendro had put the key to the handcuffs.

But a rapid mental inventory dismissed that hope: he had nothing heavier in his pocket than a handful of forints. His shoes, then -- could he remove a shoe and get Szendro in the face with it before the colonel knew what he was doing? But that thought came only a second ahead of the realisation of its futility; with his wrists handcuffed, the only way he could reach his shoes in any way unobtrusively was between his legs -- and his knees were lashed tightly together.... Another idea, desperate but with a chance of success, had just occurred to him when the colonel spoke for the first time in the fifteen minutes since they had left the police block.

'You are a dangerous man, Mr. Buhl,' he remarked conversationally. 'You think too much -- Cassius -- you know your Shakespeare, of course.'

Reynolds said nothing. Every word this man said was a potential trap.

'The most dangerous man I've ever had in this car, I should say, and a few desperate characters have sat from time to time where you're sitting now,' Szendro went on ruminatively. 'You know where you're going, and you don't appear to care. But you must, of course.'

Again Reynolds kept silent. The plan might work -- the chance of success was enough to justify the risk.

"The silence is uncompanionable, to say the least,' Colonel Szendro observed. He lit a cigarette, sent the match spinning through the ventilation window. Reynolds stiffened slightly -- the very opening he wanted. Szendro went on: 'You are quite comfortable, I trust?'

'Quite.' Reynolds' conversational tone matched Szendro's own. 'But I'd appreciate a cigarette too, if you don't mind.'

'By all means.' Szendro was hospitality itself. 'One must cater for one's guests -- you'll find half a dozen lying loose inside the glove compartment. A cheap and undistinguished brand, I fear, but I've always found that people in your -- ah -- position do not tend to be over-critical about these things. A cigarette -- any cigarette -- is a great help in times of stress.'

'Thank you.' Reynolds nodded at the projection on top of the dashboard at his own side. 'Cigar lighter, is it not?'

'It is. Use it by all means.'

Reynolds stretched forward with his handcuffed wrists, pressed it down for a few seconds then lifted it out, its spiral tip glowing red in the faint light from above. Then, just as it cleared the fascia, his hands fumbled and he dropped it on the