As Gerhardt was heading toward Beverly Hills, Tom was heading toward Giuseppe Lambozza’s place. There were a dozen or more cars following him in the far distance, their headlights just a glimmer in his rearview mirror. He’d raced out of Doc’s fast, once he’d got the directions from the old man, and was now trying to remember them. Obviously, due to the cars following, Doc had told others of Tom’s hunch, that Giuseppe might be holding Maggie. And they were just as determined to find Maggie as was Tom.
The directions given Tom by Doc had him first following Mailbu Road and then up into Topanga Canyon. He wondered if Doc had sent him on a wild goose chase. But he stayed with it. What choice did he have? Eventually, after four or so miles of twists and turns Tom saw two jutting rocks Doc had pointed out as a landmark. So perhaps Doc had been on the level, after all. And then there was the mile or more of unpaved road, full of potholes and foot-deep craters that Tom expertly avoided.
The Lambozza place was a grim and desolate wasteland with a field behind it that was barren and untended. It appeared not to have been farmed for at least a dozen years. At the entrance of the house was a sign warning visitors that they were not welcome.
Fifteen minutes before Tom’s arrival, another car had approached the rickety looking farmhouse, the driver having ignored the warning sign. He stopped the car and blasted the horn, though he needn’t have bothered.
Giuseppe Lambozza had been pacing back and forth on the ramshackle verandah for quite awhile and had seen the car’s lights as they grew brighter and nearer.
Bundling a still bound and gagged Maggie over his shoulder, he left the house and headed toward the car, a pre-war fastback.
He placed Maggie on the back seat of the car with as much care as he would a sack of potatoes.
Maggie lay there in terror. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her but she had no illusions that it would be pleasant.
Giuseppe got into the front seat of the car and for the first time spoke to the driver.
“Gotta get her near where her car went off the road. Throw her down a ravine. If that don’t kill her, the wolves down there will. Let the search party discover what’s left of her in a day or two,” Giuseppe said.
Bradford, who’d been ordered out of the public eye by the “Head” for fear that Erne might have spilled some incriminating information linking him to the organization, drove wildly along the treacherous road, disregarding the holes.
Maggie, trying to stay on the seat during the bumpy ride, could hold on no longer and was thrown painfully onto the floor of the car. With the noise of the engine, she was at least spared having to hear the two men planning her murder.
As Bradford was turning onto the main road, he and Giuseppe sighted a car coming toward them. Giuseppe removed his gun from an inner pocket of his coat. He was prepared to use it if necessary. It wasn’t necessary. The car driven by Tom passed in front of them and sped along.
Finding the house, Tom and Douglas entered the front door. It was wide open as if someone had left in haste. There was a musty smell inside coming from the furnishings and lack of cleaning. Tom lit a match and looked around.
On the floor in front of him woman’s scarf with little red hearts on it. It was obvious it had been worn by someone glamorous and that someone was, no doubt, Maggie Graym.
With Douglas right behind him, Tom jumped back in the car and went in pursuit of the car they’d passed about ten minutes before. He avoided the holes in the road as best he could, and was glad to be back on the paved roadway.
“I hope we haven’t lost them,” Douglas said, suddenly getting down in his seat as dozens of cars came from the opposite direction. These were the people on their way to Giuseppe Lambozza’s. If there had been time, Tom would have stopped them and told them that Maggie was possibly in the car he was chasing. But there was no time.
The road was nothing but curves, but Tom had the gas pedal to the floor. There was no sign of the fastback for at least a mile. Then Tom spotted the twinkle of red tail lights and just hoped that they were those of the right car.
He kept his foot on the accelerator and noticed that the other car had suddenly put on speed, also.
The fact that the driver ahead was trying to put distance between them told Tom that Maggie was in that car. Or, at least, there was somebody in that car who could tell him where she was.
The road now changed character so that both cars were moving amongst high boulders. Any driver, misjudging the curves on the road, might smash into one of those rocks like an insect onto a moving windshield. Soon, both cars were traveling at a high speed through an area where the houses were built on rocky terrain, still in Topanga Canyon..
The strata of the rock was piled high like shelves atop one another, and due to erosion, each terrace ended abruptly with a drop of some thirty feet, usually into the garden of a house that might be situated below.
The two cars were intermittently visible to one another as they traveled on different plateaus. Tom didn’t realize at first that Giuseppe was firing a gun out of his window until his windshield cracked, spraying glass over him and Douglas.
The next moment, Giuseppe managed to put a bullet into Tom’s front right tire. The Packard went out of control and out of commission. Tom practically swerved off the road several times but was able to bring the car to a halt before it plowed into a tree.
Jumping out of the car along with Douglas, Tom tried to figure out what to do. He felt totally powerless in the situation. There won’t be any saving Maggie Graym this time, he thought. It hit him with a powerful force that he’d ultimately failed in keeping this woman, whom he hadn’t any real regard for, out of the jaws of death.
No real regard for, he thought. Just another Hollywood redhead who’d been lucky. Very lucky. Until now.
“We’ve got to save her,” Douglas yelled, “look...”
Leaning against a wall not twenty feet away were two bicycles.
“Let’s go,” Tom shouted in response.
He and Douglas ran to where the bikes were leaning and jumped on them, pedaling as fast as they could down several levels of terrace. But there was no sign of the fastback which had to be traveling at an extremely slow rate due to the many curves in the road.
Continuing to pedal, they entered the open drive of a terraced residence. Neither Tom nor Douglas had any definite plan, just a shared instinct as they rode furiously on the paved path to the side of the house. In back%of it, facing west, people in evening dress sat on the patio having drinks. The area was ringed with colorful paper lanterns and in the distance, Tom could hear the tinkle of a piano.
“Hey,” someone yelled. “You can’t come in here.” But Tom, with Douglas following, whizzed past the people and headed for the abrupt edge of the garden and over.
Douglas, who some time earlier had taken off the heavy overcoat he’d been wearing now appeared in the Imperial Japanese Army uniform.
“Banzai,” he shouted as he flew past this distinguished group.
“I knew there were enemy soldiers on this coast,” an elderly woman said softly and seemed to faint. For a moment no one moved and then all at once they began running, some toward the house, some toward their cars. “Let’s get out of here,” a man yelled. “There’s bound to be more of them following. We’ll all be killed.”
Meanwhile, both Tom and Douglas seemed to hang in space, twenty feet above the next terrace. The drop was then rapid and the landing watery as they found themselves in a swimming pool directly below, having barely missed a late-evening swimming party. One of the bikes landed smack onto a buffet table.
Tom and Douglas were out of the pool in an instant and running fast. The car possibly carrying Maggie was on its way down this terrace.
Tom saw it from where he was running and was considering leaping onto it as it passed. He’d just about be able to do it with the time he had.
He was no stranger to leaping. He’d had his share of horses to leap upon as well as the backs of cars and trains, and even from one plane to another. Sprinting across a vast lawn, he now felt that all this training he’d had was something that would really serve its purpose. And he had to do it now if he was going to do it at all.
By virtue of the curving road. Bradford had been forced to slow to a crawl, but he was able to speed up when the road straightened as it did now. It would soon be past the estate gates and gone.
It was at this time that Tom found a second and far more effective way to stop the car.
Parked in the crescent-shaped drive was a Pierce Arrow limousine. Tom raced to the car with Douglas just a few feet behind. As they reached the car, Tom yanked open the driver’s-side door and released the emergency brake.
“Let’s get this baby on the road,” he shouted to Douglas who now understood what Tom had in mind.
Together, they pushed the car from the drive onto the road where it would block Giuseppe and any accomplices he might have with him.
The fastback Bradford was driving came along the road at high speed tearing up gravel in its path.
Tom assumed that whomever was driving the fastback would be forced to slow down and come to a halt. He and Douglas stood on the side of the road and watched the driver attempt to do just that.
But he didn’t slow down in time.
The sound of the crash was deafening. The fastback collided with the Pierce Arrow, and immediately two heads, those belonging to Giuseppe and Bradford, emerged through the windshield followed by their upper torsos. Both men, streaming blood, appeared to be dead.
It then occurred to Tom that by his actions, he might have caused the deaths of two innocent men. After all, he had never had any definite proof that they’d abducted Maggie. It had all been a hunch.
And then came the thought that if she was in the car, she, too, would be dead. Or badly injured. The collision, which Tom had never intended to happen, had been pretty fierce.
Running to the crashed fastback, Tom gripped the handle to the trunk and twisted it so that the trunk opened. Aside from a spare tire and some tools, the space was empty.
There was only one other place Maggie could be, Tom opened the passenger side door. Giuseppe’s lower torso and legs hung grotesquely off the dashboard. Pulling the seat forward, Tom found Maggie on the floor. She didn’t move. He didn’t know if she was dead or alive.
Until he heard her groan. Her body had been cushioned between the front and back seats during the collision. While Douglas held the front seat forward. Tom gendy removed Maggie from the floor of the car. Neither Tom nor Douglas seemed to notice the group of people, including the irate owner of the house and the Pierce Arrow, running toward them.
Someone shone a light on Maggie as Tom untied her hands and feet and removed the gag that was around her mouth. It was precisely at that moment that two things happened.
First of all, Maggie opened her eyes and saw Tom’s face.
And secondly, a horrible moan of pain came from Giuseppe Lambozza showing that he, like Maggie, was still alive.