16 The Saint Overboard Read online

  "It looks like it," Peter said gloomily. "I might have known we couldn't afford to give you a start like this. If you're staking a claim on the heroine, I think I shall go home."

  "Is it a claim?" asked Roger seriously.

  Simon drew the last smoke of his cigarette deep into his lungs, and shed the butt into an ashtray.

  "I don't know," he said.

  He stood up abruptly and prowled over to the window, almost unconsciously triangulating its exact position in the exterior geog­raphy of the hotel, in case he should ever wish to find it with­out using the ordinary entrances. Automatically his mind put aside Roger's question, and went working on along the sternly practical lines for which he had convened the meeting.

  "Now—communications. We can't have a lot of these reun­ions. I had to ditch a shadow to make this one; and yesterday I did the same in Dinard. I think I was pretty smooth both times, but if I do it much more it'll stop looking so accidental. There's just a thin chance that Birdie is still wondering how smooth I am, and it's just possible I may be able to keep him guessing for another twenty-four hours; which might make a lot of difference. So we'll go back to splendid isolation for a while. Orace and I will get in touch with you here—one or the other of you must look in every hour, in case there's a message. If we can't send a message, we'll put a bucket on the deck of the Corsair, which means you look out for signals. Remember the old card code? We'll put the cards in one of the portholes. Those are general orders."

  "Anything more particular?"

  "Only for myself, at present. To-morrow they're going out to try Yule's new bathystol—and I've got an invitation."

  Peter sat up with a jerk.

  "You're not going?"

  "Of course I am. Any normal and innocent bloke would jump at the chance, and until there's any evidence to the contrary I've got to work on the assumption that I'm still supposed to be a normal and innocent bloke. I've got to go. Besides, I might find out something."

  "All about the After Life, for instance," said Peter.

  The Saint shrugged.

  "That's all in the kitty. But if it's coming to me, it'll come anyhow, whether I go or not. And if it happens to-morrow . . ." The Saintly smile was gay and unclouded as he buttoned his coat —"I looks to you gents to do your stuff."

  Roger pulled himself off the bed.

  "Okay, Horatius. Then for the time being we're off duty."

  "Yes. Except for general communications. I just wanted to give you the lie of the land. And you've got it. So you can go back to your own heroines, if they haven't found something better by this time; and don't forget your powder-puffs."

  He shifted nimbly through the door before the other two could prepare a suitable retaliation, and found his way back to the bar. His glass of beer was still on the counter; and the sleuth who had been watching it, who had been mopping his brow feverishly and running round in small agitated circles for some time past appeared to suffer a violent heart attack which called for a large dose of whisky to restore his shattered nerves.

  Simon lowered his drink at leisure. It went down to join a deep and pervading glow that had come into being inside him, in curious contrast to an outward sensation of dry cold. That brief interview with Peter and Roger, the knowledge that they were there to find trouble with him as they had found it before, had given a solid foundation to a courage which had been sustained until then by sheer nervous energy. And yet, as the feeling of cold separateness in his limbs was there to testify, their presence had not altered the problem of Loretta, or made her safe; and a part of him remained utterly detached and immune from the intoxicating scent of battle as he set out to find her.

  To find her ... if she was to be found. But he forced that fear ruthlessly out of his head. She would be found—he was becoming as imaginative as an overwrought boy. If Vogel had taken the risk of letting her sail on the Falkenberg at all, he must be interested; and if he was interested, there would be no point in murder until the interest had been satisfied. Vogel must be interested—the Saint had not watched that scene on the Falk­enberg's deck last night with his eyes shut. And Vogel's mathe­matically dehumanised brain would work like that. To play with the attractive toy, guarding himself against its revealed dangers, until all its amusing resources had been explored, before he broke it ... Surely, the Saint told himself with relentless insistence, Loretta would be found. The thing that troubled him most deeply was that he should be so afraid . . .

  And he found her. As he walked by the harbour, looking over the paling blue of the water at the inscrutable curves of the Falkenberg as if his eyes were trying to pierce through her hull and superstructure to see what was left for him on board, he became aware of three figures walking towards him; and some­thing made him turn. He saw the tall gaunt aquilinity of Kurt Vogel, the gross bulk of Arnheim, and another shape which was like neither of them, which suddenly melted the ice that had been creeping through his veins and turned the warmth in him to fire.

  "Good evening," said Vogel.

  3

  Simon Templar nodded with matter-of-faet cheeriness. And he wanted to shout and dance.

  "I was just going to look you up," he said.

  "And we were wondering where you were. We inquired on the Corsair, but your man told us you'd gone ashore. You had a good crossing?"

  "Perfect."

  "We were thinking of dining on shore, for a change. By the way, I must introduce you." Vogel turned to the others. "This is my friend Mr Tombs—Miss Page ..."

  Simon took her hand. For the first time in that encounter he dared to look her full in the face, and smile. But even that could only be for the brief conventional moment.

  ". . . and Mr Arnheim."

  "How do you do?"

  There was a dark swollen bruise under Arnheim's fleshy chin, and the Saint estimated its painfulness with invisible satisfaction as he shook hands.

  "Of course—you helped us to try and catch our robber, didn't you, Mr Tombs?"

  "I don't think I did very much to help you," said the Saint deprecatingly.

  "But you were very patient with our disturbing attempts," said Vogel genially. "We couldn't have met more fortunately—in every way. And now, naturally, you'll join us for dinner?"

  The great hook of his nose curved at the Saint like a poised scimitar, the heavy black brows arched over it with the merest hint of challenge.

  "I'd like to," said the Saint easily. And as they started to stroll on: "What about the Professor?"

  "He refuses to be tempted. He will be working on the bathy­stol for half the night—you couldn't drag him away from it on the eve of a descent."

  They had dinner at the Old Government House. To Simon Templar the evening became fantastic, almost frighteningly un­real. Not once did he catch Vogel or Arnheim watching him, not once did he catch the subtle edge of an innuendo thrust in to prick a guilty ear; and yet he knew, by pure reason, that they were watching. The brand of his fist on Arnheim's chin caught his eyes every time they turned that way. Did Arnheim guess— did he even know?—whose knuckles had hung that pocket earth­quake on his jaw? Did Vogel know? There was no answer to be read in the smooth colourless face or the black unwinking eyes. What did they know of Loretta, and what were their plans for her? If Murdoch had been identified while they had him on the Falkenberg she must have been condemned already; and it seemed too much to hope that Murdoch had not been seen by the sleuth who had observed his blatant arrival at the Hotel de la Mer the day before. How much had Loretta suffered al­ready? ... He could only guess at the answers.

  It was an uncanny feeling to be eating and drinking on terms of almost saccharine cordiality with two men who might even then be plotting his funeral—and whose own funerals he himself would plot without compunction in certain circumstances—with every warning of antagonism utterly suppressed on both sides. If he had not had last night's experience of Vogel's methods to acclimatise him, he would have suffered the same sensation of nightmare futility again, doubl
ed in intensity because Loretta was now with them; but his nerves had been through as much of that cat-and-mouse ordeal as they were capable of tolerating, and the normal reaction was setting in. Somehow he knew that that game could not be played much longer, and when the show­down came he would have his compensation.

  But meanwhile Loretta was there, beside him—and he could give her no more than the polite interest called for by their re­cent introduction . . . when every desire in his mind was taking both her hands and laughing breathlessly with her and talking the quick sparkling nonsense which was the measure of their predestined understanding. He saw the shifting gold in her hair and the softness of her lips when she spoke, and was tormented with a hunger that was harder to fight than all Vogel's inhuman patience.

  And then he was dancing with her.

  They had discovered that there was a dance at the hotel, and after the coffee and liqueurs they had gone into the ballroom. Even so, he had waited while first Vogel and then Arnheim danced, before he had looked at her and stood up as if only to discharge his duty to a fellow-guest.

  But he had her alone. He had her hand in his, and his arm round her; and they were moving quietly in their own world, like one person, to music that neither of them heard.

  "It's a long time since I've seen you-all, Mary Jane," he said.

  "Wasn't it before I put my hair up?"

  "I think it was the Sunday School treat when you ate too many cream buns and had to give them up again in the rhodo­dendrons."

  "You would remember that. And now you're such a big man, doing such big and wonderful things. I'm so proud of you, El­mer."

  "George," Simon corrected her, "is the name. By the way, did I ever give you the inside dope on that dragon business? This dragon, which was closely related to a female poet, a dowager duchess, and a prominent social reformer and purity hound, was actually a most mild and charitable beast, except when it felt that the morals of the community were being endangered. On those occasions it would become quite transformed, turning red in the face and breathing smoke and fire and uttering ferocious gobbling sounds like those of a turkey which has been wished a merry Christmas. The misguided inhabitants of the country, however, mistaking these symptoms for those of sadistic dyspep­sia, endeavoured to appease the animal—whose name, by the way, was Angelica—by selecting their fairest damsels and leaving them as sacrifices, stripped naked and tied to trees and shrub­bery in its path. Angelica, on the other hand, mistook these friendly offerings for further evidence of the depravity which had overtaken her friends, and was only raised to higher trans­ports of indignation and gobbling. The misunderstanding was rapidly denuding the country in every sense, and in fact the dearth of beautiful damsels was become so acute that certain citizens were advocating that their grandmothers should be used instead, in the hope that Angelica might be moved by intellectual endowments where mere physical charm had only aggravated the gobbling, when I came along and . . . Why haven't I told you how beautiful you are, Loretta?"

  "Because you haven't noticed?"

  "Because it's too true, I think. And so many other ridiculous things have been happening all the time. And I've been so stu­pid . . . They'd have tied you to a tree for Angelica if they'd seen you, Loretta."

  "With nothing on?"

  "And everyone would have been asking 'Where's George?' He was a Saint, too."

  There was a breath of cool night air on their faces; and as if there had been no voluntary movement they were outside. There must have been a window or a door, some steps perhaps, some mundane path by which they had walked out of the ballroom into the infinite evening; but it was as if mortar and stone and wood had melted away like shadows to leave them tinder the stars. Their feet moved on a soft carpet of grass, and the music whispered behind them.

  Presently she sat down, and he sat behind her. He still kept her hand.

  "Well," he said.

  She smiled slowly.

  "Well?"

  "Apparently it wasn't death," he said. "So I suppose it must have been dishonour."

  "It might be both."

  He counted over her fingers and laid them against his cheek.

  "You feel alive. You sound alive. Or are we both ghosts? We could go and haunt somebody."

  "You knew something, Simon. When we met on the waterfront——"

  "Was it as obvious as that?"

  "No. I just felt it."

  "So did I. My heart went pit-a-pat. Then it went pat-a-pit. Then it did a back somersault and broke its bloody neck. It still feels cracked."

  Her other hand covered his mouth.

  "Please. Simon. Every minute we stay here is dangerous. They may have missed us already. They may be talking. Tell me what you knew. What happened last night?"

  "They caught Steve—slugged him and hauled him out of his canoe. I went back to the Falkenberg and slugged Otto and brought home the blue-eyed boy. Otto never saw me, but I don't know how many other people had inspected the boy friend be­fore I butted in. If the same guy who heard him asking for you at the Hotel de la Mer yesterday had seen him, I knew you were in the book."

  "What about you?"

  "Vogel came over shortly afterwards and put on a great show of being shown over the Corsair, while I changed my nappies and did the honours. But he didn't find Steve. I'm still technically anonymous; Steve got away."

  "Who from?"

  "From me. In between Vogel going home and me congratulat­ing Orace on the hiding-place, Steve saw the dawn and set a course for it. I saw him again in the morning, when I was trying to reach you before Vogel did and warn you what might be wait­ing—as a matter of fact, he held me up just long enough to let Vogel get in first. I missed seeing you by about thirty seconds. Where Steve is now I don't know, but if you bet your shirt he'll bob up here to-morrow you won't run much risk of being left uncovered." The Saint turned his face to her, and she saw the dim light shift on his eyes. "He saw you this morning, didn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "Telling you I tried to kidnap him."

  "Yes."

  "And speaking as follows: 'This guy Templar is just a tough crook from Toughville, Crook County, and if you think he's turned Horatio Alger because you gave him a pretty smile you're crazy.' "

  "Were you listening?"

  He shook his head.

  "I'm a thought-reader. Besides, I did try to kidnap him, after a fashion. Anyway I tried to detain him. Obviously. He may be the hell of a good detective in some ways, but he doesn't fit into the game we're playing here. He'd done his best to break it up twice in one day, and I thought it'd be a good thing to keep him quiet for a bit. I still do."

  "And the rest?" she said.

  "What do you think?"

  Her hand slipped down over his hair, came to rest on his shoulder. For once the dark mischievous eyes were quiet with a kind of surrendered sadness.

  "I think Steve was right."

  "And yet you're here."

  "Yes. I'm a fool, aren't I? But I didn't tell you I was weak-minded. All Ingerbeck's people have to go through an intelligence test, and they tell me I've got the mentality of a child of five. They say I'll probably finish up in an asylum in another year or two."

  "May I come and see you in the padded cell?"

  "If you want to. But you won't. When you've had all you want from me——"

  He silenced her with his lips. And with her mouth he tried to silence the disbelief in his own mind that sat back and asked cold questions. There was a hunger in him, overriding reason, that turned against the weary emptiness of disbelief.

  He was a man, and human. He kissed her, touched her, held her face in his hands, and found forgetfulness in the soft sweet­ness of her body. He was aware of her with every sense; and of his own desire. There was no other answer he could give. He should have been thinking of so many other things; but he had stopped thinking. He was tired—not with the painful fatigue of ordinary exhaustion, but with the peace of a man who has come home from a long journey.
r />   Presently he lay back with his head in her lap, looking up at the stars.

  "Tell me something," she said.

  "I'm happy."

  "So am I. I've no reason to be, but I am. It doesn't seem to matter. You do love me, don't you?"

  He was in a dream from which he didn't want to wake. Some­where in his memory there was the cynical impress of a thought he had had so long ago, that if the need came she would use her fascination to tempt him as she had hoped to tempt Vogel. And there was his own thought that if that was her strategy he would meet her cheerfully with her own weapons. But that was so faint and far away. Must he be always thinking, suspecting, fighting— when there was so much comfort in the present?

  He said: "Yes."

  "Say it all."

  "I love you."

  "Dear liar . . ."

  She leaned over him. Her hair fell on his face. She kissed him.

  "I don't care." she said. "To-morrow I shall be wise—and sorry. You're going to hurt me, Saint. And I don't seem to mind. I'm happy. I've had to-night."

  "Is there any to-morrow ?"

  She nodded.

  "We must go in," she said.

  Again they walked under the glittering sky, hand in hand, towards reality. There was so much that should have been said, so little that they could say. This was illusion, yet it was more real than life.

  "What's your to-morrow?" he asked.

  "The Professor's making his trial descent. I don't know what happens afterwards, but next week they're going down to Ma­deira. Vogel asked me to stay with them."

  "And you said you would."

  "Of course."

  "Must you?"

  "Yes." The word was quick, almost brutal in its curtness. And then, as if she had hurt herself also, she said: "You don't under­stand. This is my job. I took it on with my eyes open. I told you. I gave my word. Would you think the same of me if I broke it?"

  Out of the sudden ache of madness in him he answered: "Yes, Just the same."

  "You wouldn't. You think so now, because you want me; but you'd remember. You'd always remember that I ran away once —so why shouldn't I run away again? I know I'm right." He knew it, too. "You must let me finish the job. Help me to finish it."