12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal)

Simon Templar glanced at the altimeter and edged the stick forward again along his right thigh. Five thousand feet. ... A gentle pressure of his right foot on the rudder, and the Tiger Moth swung round and levelled off. The country beneath him was flattened out like a painted map, the light green of fields, the darker green of woods, white ribbons of road, and a white ribbon of surf along the edge of the grey-green sea. The transport plane was slipping across the map half 'a mile under him, cruising at ninety miles an hour air-speed--a lumbering slow-motion cargo boat of the skies. His eagle's eyesight picked out the letters painted across the upper fabric of the wing: G-EZQX. His own air-speed indicator showed .1 hundred and eighty. It went through his mind that Renway must have watched him coming up. Renway must have seen the Tiger Moth warming up outside the barn and seen it take off. Renway must have guessed that something had gone wrong --must, even then, have been staring down with glazed eyes and twitching fingers, realizing that there was an obstacle in his path that must he blotted out.

Simon wondered when the attack would tonic.

And at that moment it came.

His machine quivered slightly, and he saw an irregular line of punctures sewing itself diagonally across his left wing. Even above the roar of his own engine he heard the Hawker's guns cackling their fierce challenge down the sky. He kicked the rudder and hauled the stick back into his groin, and grinned mirthlessly at the downward drag of his bowels as the nose of the Moth surged upwards, skew-eyed, like the prow of a ship in a terrific sea, and whipped over in a flick roll that twisted into the downward half of a tight loop.

XI

Renway came about in a skidding turn and plunged after him. Screwed round to watch him over the tail, Simon led him down in a shallow dive, weaving deftly from side to side against the efforts of the Hawker's nose to follow him. Little hiccoughs of orange flame danced on the muzzles of Renway's guns; gleaming squirts of tracer went rocketing past the Moth, now wide on the right, now wide on the left. The Saint went on smiling. Aiming an aeroplane is a fine art, and Renway hadn't had the practice--it was the only factor which Simon could count on his side.

A chance swerve of the Hawker sprayed another line of pockmarks across the fuselage; and Simon drew back on the stick and went over in a sudden loop. Renway shot past under his tail and began to pull round in a belated vertical bank. The Saint put a curve in the fall of his loop and went to meet him. They raced head-on for a collision. Simon held his course till the last split second, lifted his nose slightly for a hint, and zoomed over the Hawker's prop on the upturn of a switchback that carried him clear of death by shaved inches.

He looked down on the swing-over of the stalling turn that ended his zoom, and saw Renway's ship sloping down, wobbling erratically. And his fine-drawn hell-for-leather smile opened out wickedly as he opened out the throttle and went down on the Hawker again in a shrieking power dive.

Down . . . down . . . The engine howling and the wires moaning shriller and shriller as the air-speed indicator climbed over three hundred and twenty miles an hour. His whole body tensed and waiting fearfully for the first vibration, the first shiver of the wing tips, that would spell the break-up of the machine. The Tiger Moth wasn't built for that sort of work. It was the latest, strongest, fastest thing of its kind in the air; but it wasn't designed for fighting aerobatics. He saw the Hawker dodging in hesitant clumsy efforts to escape; saw Renway's white goggled face staring back over the empennage, leaping up towards him at incredible speed. He set his teeth and pulled back the stick. . . . Now! The Moth seemed to squat down in the air, momentarily blinding him as the frightful centrifugal force sucked the blood down from his head; but the wings held. He peered over the side and saw the Hawker diving again, veering wildly in the trembling control of its pilot.

Simon looped off the top of his zoom and went down again.

That was the only thing he could do, the only hope he had of beating the Hawker's guns. Dive and zoom, loop and dive again. Wipe the Moth's undercarriage across the Hawker's upper wing every time. Split-arch and dive again. Ride the Hawker down by sheer reckless flying. Wing-over and dive again, wires screaming and engine thundering. Smash down on Renway from every angle of the sky, pitting nerve against nerve, judgment against judgment; make him duck and push the stick forward a little more, every time, with the wheels practically rolling over his head with every hairbreadth miss. Beat him down five hundred feet, a thousand, fifteen hundred. Loop and dive again. . . .