Caravan to Vaccares by Alistair MacLean

felt he didn’t have time to knock. Le Grand Duc and Lila were still playing chess but Bowman again felt that he didn’t have time to worry about mildly surprising matters of that nature.
    â€˜For God’s sake, help me, hide me!’ The gasping, he thought, might have been slightly overdone but in the circumstances it came easily. ‘They’re after me!’
    Le Grand Duc looked in no way perturbed, far less startled. He merely frowned in ducal annoyance and completed a move.
    â€˜Can’t you see we’re busy?’ He turned to Lila who was staring at Bowman with parted lips and very large rounded eyes. ‘Careful, my dear, careful. Your bishop is in great danger.’ He spared Bowman a cursory glance, viewing him with distaste. ‘Who are after you?’
    â€˜The gypsies, that’s who. Look!’ Bowman rolled up his left sleeve. ‘They’ve knifed me!’
    The expression of distaste deepened.
    â€˜You must have given them some cause for offence.’
    â€˜Well, I was down there – ’
    â€˜Enough!’ He held up a magisterial hand. ‘Peeping Toms can expect no sympathy from me. Leave at once.’
    â€˜Leave at once? But they’ll get me – ’
    â€˜My dear.’ Bowman didn’t think Le Grand Duc was addressing him and he wasn’t. He patted Lila’s knee in a proprietorial fashion. ‘Excuse me while I call the management. No cause for alarm, I assure you.’
    Bowman ran out through the doorway, checked briefly to see if the terrace was still deserted. Le Grand Duc called: ‘You might close that door after you.’
    â€˜But, Charles – ’ That was Lila.
    â€˜Checkmate,’ said Le Grand Duc firmly, ‘in two moves.’
    There was the sound of footsteps, running footsteps, coming across the patio to the base of the terrace steps. Bowman moved quickly to the nearest port in the storm.
    Cecile wasn’t asleep either. She was sitting up in bed holding a magazine and attired in some fetching negligée that, in happier circumstances, might well have occasioned admiring comment. She opened her mouth, whether in astonishment or the beginning of a shout for help, then closed it again and listened with surprising calmness as Bowman stood there with his back to the closed door and told her his story.
    â€˜You’re making all this up,’ she said.
    Bowman hoisted his left sleeve again, an action which by now he didn’t much like doing as the coagulating blood was beginning to stick wound and material together.
    â€˜Including this?’ Bowman asked.
    She made a face. ‘It is nasty. But why should they – ’
    â€˜Ssh!’ Bowman had caught the sound of voices outside, voices which rapidly became very loud.
    An altercation was taking place and Bowman had little doubt that it concerned him. He turned the handle of the door and peered out through a crack not much more than an inch in width.
    Le Grand Duc, with Lila watching from the open doorway, was standing there with arms outspread like an overweight traffic policeman, barring the way of Ferenc, Koscis and Hoval. That they weren’t immediately recognizable as those three was due to the fact that they’d obviously considered it prudent to take time out to wrap some dirty handkerchiefs or other pieces of cloth about their faces in primitive but effective forms of masks, which explained why Bowman had been given the very brief breathing space he had been.
    â€˜This is private property for guests only,’ Le Grand Duc said sternly.
    â€˜Stand aside!’ Ferenc ordered.
    â€˜Stand aside? I am the Duc de Croytor – ’
    â€˜You’ll be the dead Duc de – ’
    â€˜How dare you, sir!’ Le Grand Duc stepped forward with a speed and coordination surprising in a man of his bulk and caught the astonished and completely unprepared Ferenc with a roundhouse right to the chin. Ferenc staggered