16 The Saint Overboard Read online

  "Honestly, it hasn't upset me," she said. "It's been quite an adventure. I'm just rather tired. Do you understand?"

  In that at least she was perfectly truthful. A reaction had set in that had made her feel mentally and physically bruised, as if her mind and body had been crushed together through machine rollers. Sitting beside him again in the cockpit of the speed ten­der, with a light sea breeze stirring refreshingly through her hair, it seemed as if a whole week of ceaseless effort had gone by since she set out to keep that dangerous appointment.

  She felt his arm behind her shoulders and his hand on her knee, and steeled herself to be still.

  "Will you come with us to-morrow?"

  She shook her head, with a little despairing breath.

  "I've been through too much to-night . . . You don't give a girl a chance to think, do you?"

  "But there is so little time. We go to-morrow——"

  "I know. But does that make it any easier for me? It's my life you want to buy. It mayn't seem very much to you, but it's the only one I've got."

  "But you will come."

  "I don't know. You take so much for granted——"

  "You will come."

  His hand on her shoulder was weighting into her flesh. The deep toneless hypnotic command of his voice reverberated into her ears like an iron bell tolling in a resonant abyss; but it was not his command which scarred itself into her awareness and told her that she would have to go. There had been danger, ordeal, respite; but nothing accomplished. She would still have to go.

  "Oh, yes . . . I'll come." She turned her face in to his shoul­der; and then she broke away. "No, don't touch me again now."

  He left her alone; and she sat in the far corner of the cockpit and stared out over the dark water while the tender came in alongside the quay. He walked up to her hotel with her in the same silence, and she wondered what kind of superhumanly im­mobilised exaltation was pent up in his obedience. She turned at the door, and held out her hand.

  "Goodnight."

  "Will half-past ten be too early? I could send a steward down before that to do your packing."

  "No. I can be ready."

  He put her fingers to his lips, and went back to the jetty. On the return journey he took the wheel himself, and sent the speedboat creaming through the dark with her graceful bows lifting and the searchlight blazing a clear pathway over the wa­ter. The man who had been in charge of the hunt a little while before stood beside him.

  "Where did you put him, Ivaloff ?" Vogel asked quietly.

  "In No. 9 cabin," answered the man in his sullen throaty voice. "He is tied up and gagged; but I think he will sleep for a little while."

  "Do you know who he is?"

  "I have not seen him before. Perhaps one of the men who has been watching on shore will know him."

  Vogel said nothing. Even if the captive was a stranger, it would be possible to find out who he was. If he carried no papers that would identify him, he would be made to talk. It never occurred to him that the prisoner might be innocent: Ivaloff made no mistakes, and Vogel himself had seen the canoe's significant swerve and first instinctive attempt to dodge the searchlight. He threw the engine into neutral and then into re­verse, bringing the tender neatly up to the companion, and went across the deck to the wheelhouse.

  Professor Yule was there. He glanced up from a newspaper.

  "I wish I knew what these gold mining shares were going to do," he remarked casually. "I could sell now and take a profit, but I'd like to see another rise first."

  "You should ask Otto about it—he is an expert," said Vogel. "By the way, where is he?"

  "I don't know. He went out to look for part of a broken cuff­link. Didn't you see him on deck?"

  Vogel shook his head.

  "Probably he was on the other side of the ship. Do you hold very many of these shares?"

  He selected a cigar from a cedarwood cabinet and pierced it carefully while Yule talked. So Arnheim hadn't been able to wait more than a few minutes before he tried to find out something about the man they had captured. Otto had always been impa­tient—his brain lacked that last infinitesimal milligram of poise which gave a man the power to possess himself indefinitely and imperturbably. He should have waited until Yule went to bed.

  Not that it was vitally important. The Professor was as unsus­pecting as a child; and No. 9 cabin was the dungeon of the ship —a room so scientifically soundproofed that a gun fired in it would have been inaudible where they were. Vogel drew steadily at his cigar and discussed the gold market with unruffled compo­sure for a quarter of an hour, until Yule picked himself up and decided to retire.

  Vogel stood at the chart table and gave the Professor time to reach his stateroom. In front of him was the chart with that lone position marked in red ink, the scraps of torn paper in the ashtray, the pencil lying beside it ... untouched. Loretta Page had stood over those things for a full minute, but from where he was watching he could not see her face. "When she turned away she had seemed unconcerned. And yet . . . there were more things than that to be explained. Kurt Vogel was not worried—his pas­sionlessly efficient brain had no room for such a futile emotion— but there had been other moments in his career, like that, when he knew that he was fighting for his life.

  He left the chart table without a shrug, and left the wheelhouse by the door at the after end. Between him and the saloon a com­panion ran down to the lower deck. He went aft along the alley­way at the bottom—the door of the Professor's cabin was close to the foot of the companion, and he paused outside it for a couple of seconds and heard the thud of a dropped shoe before he went on. His cigar glowed evenly, gripped with the barest necessary pressure between his teeth, and bis feet moved with a curious soundlessness on the thick carpet.

  No. 9 cabin was the last door in the passenger section. Just beyond it another companion sloped steeply up to the after deck, and abaft the companion a watertight door shut off the continua­tion of the alleyway on to which the crew's quarters opened. Vogel stopped and turned the handle, and a faint frown creased in between his eyebrows when the door did not move.

  He raised his hand to knock; and then for some reason He glanced downwards and saw that the key was in the lock on the outside. At the same time he became conscious of a cool damp­ness on his hand. He opened it under the light, and saw a glisten of moisture in the palm and on the inside of his fingers.

  For an instant he did not move. And then his hand went down slowly and touched the door-handle again. He felt the wetness of it under the light slide of his finger-tips, and bent down to touch the carpet. That also was damp; so were the treads of the com­panion.

  Without hesitation he turned the key silently in the lock, slipped an automatic out of his pocket, and thrust open the door. The cabin was in darkness, but his fingers found the switch in­stantaneously and clicked it down. Otto Arnheim lay at his feet in the middle of the floor, with his face turned whitely up to the light and his round pink mouth hanging vacuously open. There were a couple of lengths of rope carelessly thrown down beside him—and that was all.

  IV. HOW STEVE MURDOCH REMAINED OBSTINATE,

  AND SIMON TEMPLAR RENDERED FIRST AID

  IF THE quality of surprise had ever been a part of Orace's emo­tional make-up, the years in which he had worked for Simon Templar had long since exhausted any trace of its existence. Probably from sheer instinctive motives of self-preservation he had acquired the majestically immutable sang-froid of a jellied eel; and he helped Simon to haul his prize out on to the deck of the Corsair as unconcernedly as he would have lent a hand with embarking a barrel of beer.

  "How d'you like it?" asked the Saint, with a certain pardona­ble smugness.

  He was breathing a little deeply from the effort of life-saving Steve Murdoch's unconscious body through the odd half-mile of intervening water, and the shifting muscles glistened over his torso as he filled his chest. Murdoch, lying in a heap with the water oozing out of his sodden clothes, was consp
icuously less vital; and Orace inspected him with perceptible distaste.

  "Wot is it?" he inquired disparagingly.

  "A sort of detective," said the Saint. "I believe he's a good fellow at heart; but he doesn't like me and he's damned stub­born. He's tried to die once before to-night, and he didn't thank me when I stopped him."

  Orace sucked his moustache ghoulishly over the body.

  "Is 'e dead now?"

  "Not yet—at least I don't think so. But he's got a lump on the back of his head the size of an apple, and I don't expect he'll feel too happy when he wakes up. Let's try him and see."

  They undressed Murdoch out on the deck, and Simon wrung out his clothes as best he could and tied them in a rough bundle which he chucked into the galley oven when they took the still unconscious man below. He left Orace to apply the usual re­storatives, and went back into the saloon to towel himself vigorously and brush his hair. He heard various groans and thumps and other sounds of painful resuscitation while he was doing this; and he had just settled into a clean shirt and a pair of comfortable old flannel trousers when the communicating door opened and the fruit of Orace's labours shot blearily in.

  It was quite obvious that the Saint's prophecy was correct. Mr Murdoch was not feeling happy. The tender imprint of a skilfully wielded blackjack had established at the base of his skull a high-powered broadcasting station of ache from which messages of hate and ill-will were radiating in all directions with throbbing intensity, while the grinding machinery of transmission was set­ting up a roaring din that threatened to split his head. Taking these profound disadvantages into consideration, Mr Murdoch entered, comparatively speaking, singing and dancing; which he is to say that he only looked as if he would like to beat some­body on the head with a mallet until they sank into the ground.

  "What the hell is this?" he demanded truculently.

  "Just another boat," answered the Saint kindly. "On your left, the port side. On your right, the starboard. Up there is the forward or sharp end, which goes through the water first——"

  Murdoch glowered at him speechlessly for a moment; and then the team of pneumatic drills started work again under the roof of his skull, and he sank on to a bunk.

  "I thought it would be you," he said morosely.

  Orace came in like a baronial butler, put down a tray of whisky and glasses, sniffed loudly, and departed. Murdoch stared at the door which closed behind him with the penumbras of homi­cide darkening again on his square features.

  "I could kill that guy twice, and then drown him." Murdoch grabbed the whisky-bottle, poured three fingers into a glass, and swallowed it straight. He compressed his lips in a grimace, and looked up at the Saint again. "Well, here I am—and who the hell asked you to bring me here?"

  "You didn't," Simon admitted.

  "Didn't you tell me you'd keep out of the way next time?"

  "That was the idea."

  "Well, what d'ya think I'm going to do—fall on your neck and kiss you?"

  "Not in those trousers, I hope," said the Saint.

  The trousers belonged to Orace, who was taller but not so bulky. As a result, they were stretched dangerously across the seat, and hung in a graceful concertina over the ankles. Murdoch glared down at them venomously, and they responded with an ominous rending squeak as he moved to get hold of the whisky again.

  "I didn't ask you to pull me out, and I'm not going to thank you. If you thought I'd fall for you, you're wrong. Was that the idea, too? Did you think you might be able to get under my skin that way—make the same sort of monkey outa me that you've made outa Loretta? Because you won't. I'm not so soft. You can slug me again and take me back to the Falkenberg, and we'll start again where we left off; and that's as far as you'll get."

  Simon sauntered over to the table and helped himself to a measured drink.

  "Well, of course that's certainly a suggestion," he remarked. He sat down opposite Murdoch and put up his feet along the settee. "I've always heard that Ingerbeck's was about the ace firm in the business."

  "It is."

  "Been with them long?" asked the Saint caressingly.

  "About ten years."

  "Mmm."

  Murdoch's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  "What the hell d'you mean?"

  "I mean they can't be so hot if they've kept you on the over­head for ten years."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah—as we used to say in the movies. Stay where you are, Steve. If you try to start any rough stuff with me I shall hit your face so hard that you'll have to be fed from behind. Besides which, those pants will split."

  "Go on."

  Simon flicked open the cigarette-box and helped himself to a smoke. He slipped a match out of the ashstand and sprung it into flame with his thumb-nail.

  "Now and for the last time," he said, with the caress in his voice smoothed out until it was as soothing as a sheet of ice, "will you try to understand that I don't give a good God-damn how soon you have your funeral. Your mother may miss you, and even Ingerbeck's may send a wreath; but personally I shall be as miserable as a dog with a new tree. The only reason I interfered on the Falkenberg was because Vogel wasn't half so interested in shooting you as in seeing how Loretta would like it. The only reason I pulled you out again——"

  "Was what?"

  "Because if you'd stayed there they'd have found out more about you. You're known. Thanks to your brilliant strategy in tearing into the Hotel de la Mer and shouting for Loretta at the top of your voice, the bloke who was sleuthing her this after­noon knows your face. And if he'd seen you to-night on an identification parade—that would have been that. For Loretta, anyway. And that's all I'm interested in. As it is, you may have been recognised already. I had to take a chance on that. I could only lug you out as quickly as possible, and hope for the best. Apart from that, you could have stayed there and been massaged with hot irons, and I shouldn't have lost any sleep. Is that plain enough or do you still think I've got a fatherly interest in your future?"

  Murdoch held himself down on the berth as gingerly as if it had been red hot, and his chin jutted out as if Ms fists were itch­ing to follow it.

  "I get it. But you feel like a father to Loretta—huh?"

  "That's my business."

  "I'll say it is. There are plenty of greasy-haired dagoes making big money at it."

  "My dear Steve!"

  "I know you, Saint," Murdoch said raspingly. His big hands rolled his glass between them as if they were playing with the idea of crushing it to fragments with a single savage contraction, and the hard implacable lights were smouldering under the sur­face of his eyes. "You're crook. I've heard all about you. Maybe there aren't any warrants out for you at the moment. Maybe you kid some people with that front of yours about being some kind of fairy-tale Robin Hood trying to put the world right in his own way. That stuff don't cut any ice with me. You're crook—and you're in the racket for what you can get out of it."

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  "Aren't you?"

  "Yeah. I get one hundred bucks a week out of it; and the man who says I don't earn 'em is a liar. But that's the last cent I take."

  "Of course, that's very enterprising of you," murmured the Saint, in the same drawl of gentle mockery. "But we can't all be boy scouts. I gather that you think I wouldn't be content with one hundred bucks a week?"

  "You?" Murdoch was viciously derisive. "If I thought that, I'd buy you out right now."

  "Where's your money?"

  "What for?"

  "To buy me out. One hundred dollars a week—and that's more than I thought I was going to get out of it."

  The other stared at him.

  "Are you telling me you'll take a hundred a week to get out?"

  "Oh, no. But I'll take a hundred a week to get in. You'll have the benefit of all my brains, which you obviously need pretty badly; and I shall get lots of quiet respectable fun and a beautiful glow of virtue to keep me warm for the winter. I'm trying to convince you t
hat I'm a reformed character. Your loving sympathy has made me see the light," said the Saint brokenly, "and from now on my only object will be to live down my evil past——"

  "And I'm trying to convince you that I'm not so dumb that a twister like you can sell me a gold brick!" Murdoch snarled vio­lently. "You came into this by accident, and you saw your chance. You greased around Loretta till she told you what it was about, and you've made her so crazy she's ready to eat outa your hand. If I hadn't come along you'd of played her for a sap as long as it helped you, and ditched her when you thought you had a chance to get away with something. Well, you bet you're going to get out. I'm going to find a way to put you out—but it ain't going to be with a hundred dollars!"

  The Saint rounded his lips and blew out a smoke-ring. For a moment he did actually consider the possibilities of trying to convince Murdoch of his sincerity; but he gave up the idea. The American's suspicions were rooted in too stubborn an antagonism for any amount of argument to shake them; and Simon had to admit that Murdoch had some logical justification. He looked at Murdoch thoughtfully for a while, and read the blunt facts of the situation on every line of the other's grim hard-boiled face. Oh, well . . . perhaps it was all for the best. And that incorrigible imp of buffoonery in his make-up would have made it difficult to carry the argument to conviction, anyway . . .

  The Saint sighed.

  "I suppose you're entitled to your point of view, Steve," he conceded mildly. "But of course that makes quite a difference. Now we shall have to decide what we're going to do with you."

  "Don't worry about me," retorted Murdoch. "You worry about yourself. Give me my clothes back, and I'll be on my way."

  He dumped his glass on the table and stood up; but Simon Templar did not move.

  "The question is—will you?" said the Saint.

  His voice was pleasant and conversational, coloured only with the merest echo of that serene and gentle mockery which had got under Murdoch's toughened hide at their first encounter; and yet something behind it made the other stand momentarily very still.

  Murdoch's chunky fists knotted up slowly at his sides, and he scowled down at the slim languid figure stretched out on the settee with his eyes slotting down to glittering crevices in the rough-hewn crag of his face.