16 The Saint Overboard Read online

  "You will go to your cabin below while I consider what is to be done with you."

  He left the Saint with a satirical bow, and went on to give further instructions to the two replacement divers who were waiting to have the straps tightened on their corselets. Simon sat on a stool and loosened the cords and straps of his boots, while his own breastplate was taken off. As he wriggled out of the cum­bersome twill and rubber suit he managed to get the instrument in his sleeve into his hand, and during the process of peeling off the heavy woollen sweater and pants with which he had been provided to protect him against the cold of the water he managed to transfer it undetected into an inside pocket of his clothes. He was not dead yet—not by a million light-years. . . .

  He fished out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and lighted one while he sought a sign from Loretta. The smoke caressed the hungry tissue of his lungs and sent its narcotic balm stealing gratefully along his nerves; and over by the rail he saw her, slim and quiet and desirable in her scanty white dress, so that it was all he could do not to go over and take her quietly into his arms. Even to see her and to desire her in helpless silence was a part of that supreme ecstasy of the return to life, a delight of sensual survival that had its place with the smell of the sea and the reddening retreat of the sun, a crystallisation of the voluptuous rapture of living; but she only looked at him for a moment, and then turned away again. And then he was seized by the arms and hurried down the companion.

  Loretta heard him go, without looking round. She heard the feet of men on the deck, and the whine of the winch as the sec­ond pair of divers were lowered. Presently she heard Arnheim's fat voice:

  "How much longer will this take?"

  And Vogel's reply:

  "I don't know. Probably we shall have to send Ivaloff down again, with someone else, when Orbel and Calvieri are tired. I expect it will be dusk before we can reach St Martin."

  "Are they expecting us?"

  "I shall have to tell them. Will you attend to the telephone?"

  Loretta rested her elbows on the rail and her chin on her hands. Her face slid down between her hands till her fingers combed through her hair. She heard without hearing, gazed over the sea and saw nothing.

  A touch on her shoulder roused her. She shivered and straight­ened up, shaking the hair out of her eyes. Her face was white with a sort of lifeless calm.

  Vogel stood beside her, with his hands in his pockets.

  "You are tired?" he said, in his cold grating voice.

  She shook her head.

  "Oh, no. It's just—rather dull, waiting, isn't it? I suppose you're interested in the work, but—I wish they'd be quick. We've been here for hours. . . ."

  She was talking aimlessly, for the sake of talking, for the sake of any distraction that would reassure her of her own courage. His thin lips edged outwards in what might have been a smile.

  "Would you like a drink?"

  "Yes."

  He touched her arm.

  "Come."

  He led her into the wheelhouse and pressed the bell for a stew­ard. As the man entered silently, he said: "A highball?—I think that would be your national prescription."

  She nodded, and he confirmed the order with a glance. He held out an inlaid cigarette-box and struck a match. She inhaled the smoke and stood up to him without recoiling, with her head lifted in that white lifeless pride. Her heart was beating in quick leaden strokes, but her hand was steady.

  Was it to be so soon? She wished it could be over before she was weakened by her fear; and yet the instinct of escape prayed for a respite, as if time could give cold logic a more crushing mastery of her revulsion. What did it amount to after all, this physical sacrifice, this brief humiliation? Her mind, her self that made her a living personality, her soul or heart or whatever it might be called, could not be touched. It was beyond reach of all the assailments of the body for so long as she chose to keep it so. "You don't burn your house down because a little mud has been trodden into the floor." She, her essential self, could triumph even in the defeat of the flesh. What a lot of exaggerated non­sense was talked about that one crude gesture. . . . And yet her heart throbbed with that leaden pulse before the imminent real­ity.

  "Excuse me a moment."

  Either he had observed nothing, or he was insensible to her emotions. Without touching her, he turned away and moved over to the bookcases at the after end of the room.

  She had her respite. The steward returned, and put down a tray on the table beside her; he poured out a drink and went out again without speaking. Loretta took up the glass and tasted it: after she had sipped, it occurred to her that it might be drugged, and she almost put it down. And then her lips moved in the ghost of a wry grimace. What did it matter?

  She looked to see what Vogel was doing. He had taken a chair over to the bookcase and sat down in front of it. The upper shelves had opened like a door, carrying the books with them, and in the aperture behind was the compact instrument panel of a medium-powered radio transmitting station. Vogel had clipped a pair of earphones over his head, and his long white fingers were flitting delicately over the dials—pausing, adjusting, tuning his station with quick and practised touches. Somewhere in the still­ness she could hear the faint whirr of a generator. . . . And then she heard a clearer, sharper, intermittent tapping. Vogel had found his correspondent, and he was sending a message.

  The staccato rhythm of the transmitter key pattered into her brain and translated itself almost automatically into letters and words. Like everyone else in Ingerbeck's, she had studied the Morse code as part of her general training: it was second nature to interpret the rattle of dots and dashes, as effortless a perform­ance as if she had been listening to Vogel talking. She did it so instinctively, while the active part of her mind was too turbulent with other thoughts to pay attention, that it was a few seconds before she coordinated what she was hearing.

  Dot-dot-dash-dot . . . dot-dot-dash . . . dash-dot-dash-dot . . . She searched through her memory: wasn't that the call signal of the radio station at Cherbourg? Then he was giving his own call signal. Then, with the swift efficiency of a professional operator, he was tapping out his message. A telegram. "Bau­dier, Herqueville. . . . Arrive ce soir vers 9 heures demi. Faites préparer phares ..."

  The names meant nothing to her; the message was unimpor­tant—obviously Vogel must have a headquarters somewhere, which he would head for at such a time as this. But the fact that was thundering through her head was the radio itself. It wasn't merely in touch with a similar station at his headquarters—it could communicate openly with Cherbourg, and therefore pre­sumably with any other wireless telegraph receiving station that it could reach. The Niton station in the Isle of Wight, for in­stance, might easily be within range; from which a telegram might be relayed by cable to St Peter Port . . . There seemed to be no question about the acceptance of the message. Ob­viously the Falkenberg was on the list of registered transmitters, like any Atlantic liner. She almost panicked for a moment in trying to recall the signal by which Vogel had identified himself, but she had no need to be afraid. The letters were branded on her memory as if by fire. Then, if she could only gain five minutes alone in the chair where Vogel was sitting . . .

  He had finished. He took off the headphones, swung over the main switch in the middle of the panel, turned out the light which illuminated the cupboard, and closed the bookshelf door. It latched with a faint click; and he came towards her again.

  "I didn't know you were so well equipped," she said, and hoped he would not notice her breathlessness. .

  He did not seem to notice anything—perhaps he was so confident that he did not care. He shrugged.

  "It is useful sometimes," he said. "I have just sent a message to announce that we shall soon be on our way."

  "Where?"

  "To Herqueville—below Cap de la Hague, at the northern end of the Anse de Vauville. It is not a fashionable place, but I have found it convenient for that reason. I have a chateau t
here where you can be as comfortable as you wish—after to-morrow. Or, if you prefer, we can go for a cruise somewhere. I shall be entirely at your service."

  "Is that where you'll put the Saint ashore?"

  He pressed up his under lip.

  "Perhaps. But that will take time. You understand—I shall have to protect myself."

  "If he gives you his word——"

  "Of course, that word of a gentleman!" Vogel smiled sarcastically. "But you must not let yourself forget the other knightly virtue: Chivalry . . . He might be unwilling to leave you."

  Loretta had put down her glass. Her head ached with the tumultuous racing of her brain; and yet another part of her mind was numb and unresponsive. She had reached a stage of nervous exhaustion where her thoughts seemed to be torn be­tween the turmoil of fever and the blank stupor of collapse. What did anything matter? She passed a hand over her forehead, pushing back her hair, and said hazily: "But he mustn't know."

  "Naturally. I should not attempt to reconcile him to our bar­gain. But he will want to know why you are staying with us, and we shall have to find a way to satisfy him. Besides, I have too much to risk . . ."

  She half turned her head towards a window, so that she need not look at his smooth gloating face. Her head was throbbing with disjointed thoughts that she could not discipline. Radio. Radio. Peter Quentin. Roger Conway. Orace. Steve Murdoch. The Corsair. At St Peter Port. The Royal Hotel, If only a mes­sage could get through to them . . . And Vogel was still talking, with leisured condescension.

  "You understand that I cannot go about with such a cargo as we shall have on board. And there have been other similar car­goes. The banks are no use to me, and they take time to dispose of. Therefore I have my own bank. Down at the bottom of the sea off Herqueville, under thirty feet of water, where no one could find it who did not know the exact bearing, where no one could reach it who did not possess equipment which would be beyond the understanding of ordinary thieves, I have such a treasure in gold and jewels as you have never dreamed of. When I have added to-day's plunder to it there will be nearly twelve millions; and I shall think that it may be time to take it away somewhere where I can enjoy it. It is for you to share—there is nothing in the world that you cannot have. To-night we shall drop anchor above it, and the gold of the Chalfont Castle will be lowered to the same place. I think that perhaps that will be enough. You shall go with me wherever you like, and queens will envy you. But I must see mat Templar cannot jeopardise this treasure."

  He was looking at her sidelong; and she knew with a horrible despair that all his excuses were lies. Perhaps she had always known it. There was only one way in which the Saint could cease to be a danger, by Vogel's standards, and that was the way which Vogel would inevitably dictate in the end. But first he would play with them while it pleased him: he would let the Saint live —so long as in that way she might be made easier to enjoy.

  "I suppose you must," she said; and she was too weary to argue.

  "You will not be sorry."

  He was coming closer to her. His hands touched her shoulders, slipped round behind her back; and she felt as if a snake had crawled over her flesh. He was drawing her up to him, and she half closed her eyes. It was a nightmare not to struggle, not to hit madly out at him and feel the clean shock of her young hands striking into his face; but it would have been like hitting a corpse. And what was the use? Even though she knew that he was mocking her with his promises and excuses, she must submit, she must be acquiescent, just as a man obeys the command of a gun even though he knows that it is only taking him to his death —because until the last dreadful instant there is always the delu­sion of life.

  His lips were an inch from hers; his black stony eyes burned into her. She could see the waxen glaze of his skin, flawless and tight-drawn as if it had been stretched over a skull, filling her vision. Something seemed to break inside her head—it might have been the grip of the fever—and for a moment her mind ran clear as a mountain stream. And then her head fell back and she went limp in his arms.

  Vogel held her for a second, staring at her; and then he put her down in a chair. She lay there with her head lolling sideways and her red lips open, all the warm golden life of her tempting and unconscious; and he gazed at her in hungry triumph for a moment longer before he rang the bell again for the steward.

  "We will dine at eight," he said; and the man nodded wood­enly. "There will be smoked salmon, langoustine Grand Duc, Suprême de volatile Bergerette, fraises Mimosa."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And let us have some of that Château Lafitte 1906."

  He dismissed the man with a wave of his hand, and carefully pierced the end of a cigar. On his way out on to the deck he stopped by Loretta's chair and stroked her cheek . . .

  All the late afternoon Simon Templar heard the occasional drone of the winch, the heavy tramp of feet on the deck over his head and the mutter of hoarse voices, the thuds and gratings of the incredible cargo coming aboard and being manhandled into place; and he also thought of Peter and Roger and Orace and the Corsair, back in St Peter Port, as Loretta had done. But most of all he was thinking of her, and tormenting himself with unanswerable questions. It was nearly eight o'clock when at last all the noises ceased, and the low-pitched thrum of the engines quivered again under his feet. He looked out of the port-hole, over the sheen of the oily seas streaming by, and saw that they were heading directly away from the purple wall of cloud rimmed with scarlet where the sun was dipping to its rest. A seaman guarded by two others who carried revolvers brought him a tray of food and a glass of wine; and half an hour later the same cortege came back for the tray and removed it without speaking. Simon lighted a cigarette and heard the key turn in the lock after them. For the best part of another hour he sat on the bunk with his knees propped up, leaning against the bulkhead, smoking and thinking, while the shadows spread through the cabin and deepened towards darkness, before he ventured to take out the instrument which Fortune had placed in his hands so strangely while he was opening the strong-room of the Chalfont Castle in the green depths of the sea.

  VIII. HOW SIMON TEMPLAR USED HIS KNIFE,

  AND KURT VOGEL WENT DOWN TO HIS TREASURE

  THE lock surrendered after only five minutes of the Saint's silent and scientific attack.

  Not that it had ever had much chance to put up a fight. It was quite a good reliable lock by ordinary domestic standards, a sound and solid piece of mechanism that would have been more than adequate for any conventional purpose, but it had never been constructed to resist an expert probing with the sort of tool which Simon Templar was using.

  Simon kissed the shining steel implement ecstatically before he put it away again in his pocket. It was much more than a scrap of cunningly fashioned metal. At that moment it represented the consummation of Vogel's first and only and most staggering mis­take—a mistake that might yet change the places of victory and defeat. By sending him down to open the strong-room, Vogel had given him the chance to select the instrument from the burglar's kit with which he had been provided, and to slip it under the rubber wristbands into the sleeve of his diving dress; by letting him come up alive, Vogel had given him the chance to use it; by giving him the chance to use it, Vogel had violated the first canon of the jungle in which they both lived—that the only enemy from whom you have nothing to fear is a dead enemy ... It was all perfectly coherent and logical, as coherent and logical as any of Vogel's own tactical exercises, lacking only the first cause which set the rest in motion. For two hours Simon had been trying to discover that first cause, and even then he had only a fantastic theory to which he trembled to give credence. But he would find out . . .

  A mood of grim and terrible exhilaration settled on him as he grasped the handle of the door and turned it slowly and without sound. At least, whatever the first cause, he had his chance; and it was unlikely that he would have another. Within the next hour or so, however long he could remain at large, his duel with Kurt Vogel must be settled
one way or the other, and with it all the questions that were involved. Against him he had all Vogel's generalship, the unknown intellectual quantity of Otto Arnheim, and a crew of at least ten of the toughest twentieth-century pirates who ever sailed the sea; for him he had only his own strength of arm and speed of wit and eye, and the advantage of surprise. The odds were enough to set his mouth in a hard fight­ing line, and yet there was a glimmer of reckless laughter in his eyes that would have flung defiance at ten times the odds. He had spent his life going up against impossible hazards, and he had the knowledge that he could have nothing worse to face than he had faced already.

  The latch turned back to its limit, and he drew the door stealth­ily towards him. It came back without a creak; and he peered out into the alleyway through the widening aperture. Opposite him were other doors, all of them closed. He put his head cau­tiously out and looked left and right. Nothing. The crew must have been eating, or recuperating from the day's work in their own quarters: the alleyway was an empty shaft of white paint gleaming in the dim lights which studded it at intervals. And in another second the Saint had closed the door of his prison si­lently behind him and flitted up the after companion on to the deck.

  The cool air struck refreshingly on his face after the stuffiness of the cabin. Overhead, the sky was growing dark, and the first pale stars were coming out; down towards the western horizon, where the greyness of the sky merged indistinguishably into the greyness of the sea, they were becoming brighter, and among them he saw the mast-head lights of some small ship running up from the south-west, many miles astern. The creamy wake stretched away into the darkness like a straight white road.

  He stood there for a little while in the shadow of the deck­house and absorbed the scene. The only sounds he could hear there were the churning rush of the water and the dull drone of the engines driving them to the east. Above him, the longboom of the grab jutted out at a slight angle, with the claw gear dan­gling loosely lashed to the taffrail; and all around him the wet wooden cases of the bullion from the Chalfont Castle were stacked up against the bulkheads. He screwed an eye round the corner and inspected the port deck. It was deserted; but the air-pump and telephone apparatus were still out there, and he saw four diving suits on their stretchers laid out in a row like steam­rollered dummies with the helmets gathered like a group of decapitated heads close by. Further forward he could see the lights of the wheelhouse windows cutting the deck into strips of light and darkness: he could have walked calmly along to them, but the risk of being prematurely discovered by some member of the crew coming out for a breather was more than he cared to take. Remembering the former occasion on which he had prowled over the ship, he climbed up over the conveniently arranged stairway of about half a million pounds on to the deckhouse roof, and went forward on all fours.