Enter the Saint (18 page)

The plot would have been excellent if its object had been monkey-nuts or hot dogs—things of no irresistible interest to anyone but an incorrigible collector. Jewels that were readily convertible into real live dollars were another matter. Even then, they might have been dealt with in comparative safety on dry land. But when they and their owners were more or less marooned in the open sea, far beyond the interference of the policeman at the street corner, with a crew like that of the Corsican Maid, each of those dollars became not only an argument but also a very unstable charge of high explosive.

Thus mused Dicky Tremayne while he dressed, while he breakfasted and while he strolled round the deck afterwards with Sir Esdras Levy and Mr. Matthew Sankin. And the question that was uppermost in his mind was how he could possibly stall off the impending explosion until eleven or twelve o’clock that night.

He avoided Audrey Perowne. He saw her at breakfast, greeted her curtly, and plunged immediately into a discussion with Mr. George Y. Ulrig on the future of the American South-a point of abstract speculation which interested Dicky Tremayne rather less than the future of the Patagonian paluka. Walking round the deck, he had to pass and repass the girl, who was holding court in a shady space under an awning. He did not meet her eye, and was glad that she did not challenge him. If she had, she could have made him feel intolerably foolish.

The madness of the night before was over, and he wondered what had weakened him into betraying himself. He watched her out of the tail of his eye each time he passed. She chattered volubly, joked, laughed delightfully at each of her guests’ clumsy sallies. It was amazing-her impudent nerve, her unshakable self-possession. Who would have imagined, he asked himself, that before the next dawn she was proposing that those same guests that she was then entertaining so charmingly should see her cold and masterful behind a loaded gun?

And so to lunch. Afterwards-It was hot. The sun, a globe of eye-aching fire, swung naked over the yard-arm in a burnished sky. It made the tar bubble between the planks of the open deck, and turned the scarcely rippling waters to a sheet of steel. With one consent, guests and their wives, replete, sought long chairs and the shade. Conversation suffocated-died.

At three o’clock, Dicky went grimly to the rendezvous. He saw Hilloran entering as he arrived, and was glad that he had not to face the girl alone.

They sat down on either side of the table, with one measured exchange of inscrutable glances. Hilloran was smoking a cigar. Dicky lighted a cigarette.

“What have you done about that sailor?” asked Audrey.

“I let him out,” said Hilloran. “He’s quite all right now.”

She took an armchair between them. “Then we’ll get to business,” she said. “I’ve got it all down to a time-table. We want as little fuss as possible, and there’s going to be no need for any shooting. While we’re at dinner, Hilloran, you’ll go through all the cabins and clean them out. Do it thoroughly. No one will interrupt you. Then you’ll go down to the galley and serve out-this.”

She held up a tiny flash of a yellowish liquid. “Butyl,” she said, “and it’s strong. Don’t overdo it. Two drops in each cup of coffee, with the last two good ones for Dicky and me. And there you are. It’s too easy-and far less trouble than a gun holdup. By the time they come to, they’ll be tied hand and foot. We drop anchor off the Corsican coast near Calvi at eleven, and put them ashore. That’s all.”

Dicky rose. “Very neat,” he murmured. “You don’t waste time.”

“We haven’t to do anything. It all rests with Hilloran, and his job’s easy enough.”

Hilloran took the flask and slipped it into his pocket.

“You can leave it to me,” he said; and that reminder of the favourite expression of Dicky’s friend, Roger Conway, would have made Dicky wince if his face hadn’t been set so sternly.

“If that’s everything,” said Dicky, “I’ll go. There’s no point in anyone having a chance to notice that we’re both absent together.” It was a ridiculous excuse, but it was an excuse. She didn’t try to stop him.

Hilloran watched the door close without making any move to follow. He was carefully framing a speech in his mind, but the opportunity to use it was taken from him.

“Do you trust Dicky?” asked the girl.

It was so exactly the point he had himself been hoping to lead up to that Hilloran could have gasped. As it was, some seconds passed before he could trust himself to answer. “It’s funny you should say that now,” he remarked. “Because I remember that when I suggested it, you gave me the air.”

“I’ve changed my mind since last night. As I saw it-mind you, I couldn’t see very well because it was so dark-but it seemed to me that the situation was quite different from the way you both described it. It seemed,” said the girl bluntly, “as if Dicky were trying to throw you overboard, and the sailor was trying to stop him.”

“That’s the truth,” said Hilloran blindly.

“Then why did you lie to save him?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told the truth.”

“Why did the sailor lie?”

“He’d take his tip from me. If I chose to say nothing, it wasn’t worth his while to contradict me.”

The girl’s slender fingers drummed on the table.

“Why do you think Dicky should try to kill you?”

Hilloran had an inspiration. He couldn’t stop to give thanks for the marvellous coincidence that had made the girl play straight into his hands. The thanksgiving could come later. The immediate thing was to leap for the heaven-sent opening. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and leaned forward. “You remember me giving Dicky a letter yesterday evening before dinner?” he asked. “I opened it first and took a copy. Here it is. It looks innocent enough, but-“

“Did you test it for invisible ink?”

“I made every test I knew. Nothing showed up. But just read the letter. Almost every sentence in it might be a hint to anyone who knew how to take it.”

The girl read, with a furrow deepening between her brows. When she looked up, she was frowning. “What’s your idea?”

“What I told you before. I think Dicky Tremayne is one of the Saint’s gang. An arrangement.”

“That can’t be right. I don’t know much about the Saint, but I don’t imagine he’d be the sort to send a man off on a job like this and leave his instructions to a letter delivered at the last minute. The least delay in the post, and he mightn’t have received the letter at all.”

“That’s all very well, but-“

“Besides, whoever sent this letter, if it’s what you think it is, must have guessed that it might be opened and read. Otherwise the instructions would have been written in plain language. Now, these people are clever. The hints may be good ones. They may just as probably be phoney. I wouldn’t put it above them to use some kind of code that anyone might tumble to-and hide another code behind it. You think you’ve found the solution-in the hints, if you can interpret them-but I say that’s too easy. It’s probably a trap.”

“Can you find any other code?”

“I’m not a code expert. But that doesn’t say there isn’t one.”

Hilloran scowled. “I don’t see that that makes any difference,” he said. “I say that that letter’s suspicious. If you agree with me, there’s only one thing to be done.”

“Certainly.”

“He can go over the side, where he might have put me last night.”

She shook her head. “I don’t like killing, Hilloran. You know that. And it isn’t necessary.” She pointed to his pocket. “You have the stuff. Suppose there was only one coffee without it after dinner to-night?”

Hilloran’s face lighted up with a brutal eagerness. He had a struggle to conceal his delight. It was too simple-too utterly, utterly simple. Verily, his enemies were delivered into his hands… . But he tried to make his acknowledgment of the idea restraining and calculating. “It’d be safer,” he conceded. “I must say I’m relieved to find you’re coming round to my way of thinking, Audrey.”

She shrugged, with a crooked smile. “The more I know you,” she said, “the more I realize that you’re usually right.”

Hilloran stood up. His face was like the thin crust of a volcano, under which fires and horrible forces boil and batter for release. “Audrey-“

“Not now, Hilloran-“

“I’ve got a first name,” he said slowly. “It’s John. Why don’t you ever use it?”

“All right-John. But please … I want to rest this afternoon. When all the work’s done. I’ll-I’ll talk to you.”

He came closer. “You wouldn’t try to double-cross John Hilloran, would you?”

“You know I wouldn’t!”

“I want you!” he burst out incoherently. “I’ve wanted you for years. You’ve always put me off. When I found you were getting on too well with that twister Tremayne, I went mad. But he’s not taking you in any more, is he?”

“No-“

“And there’s no one else?”

“How could there be?”

“You little beauty!”

“Afterwards, Hilloran. I’m so tired. I want to rest. Go away now-“

He sprang at her and caught her in his arms, and his mouth found her lips. For a moment she stood passively in his embrace. Then she pushed him back, and dragged herself away. “I’ll go now,” he said unsteadily.

She stood like a statue, with her eyes riveted on the closing door, till the click of the latch snapping home seemed to snap also the taut cord that held her rigid and erect. Then she sank limply back into her chair. For a second she sat still. Then she fell forward across the table, and buried her face in her arms.

Chapter VIII
“VE VERE suppose’,” said the Countess Anusia Marova, “to come to Monaco at nine o’clock. But ve are delay’, and ze captayne tell me ve do nod zere arrive teel ten o’clock. So ve do nod af to urry past dinair to see ourselves come in ze port.”

Dicky Tremayne heard the soft accents across the saloon, above the bull-voice drawl of Mr. George Y. Ulrig, who was holding him down with a discourse on the future of the Japanese colony in California. Dicky was rather less interested in this than he would have been in a discourse on the future of the Walloon colony in Cincinnati. A scrap of paper crumpled in the pocket of his dinner-jacket seemed to be burning his side.

The paper had come under his cabin door while he dressed. He had been at the mirror, fidgeting with his tie, and he had seen the scrap sliding on to the carpet. He had watched it, half-hypnotized, and it had been some time before he moved to pick it up. When he had read it, and jerked open the door, the alleyway outside was deserted. Only, at the end, he had seen Hilloran, in his uniform, pass across by the alley athwarthships without looking to right or left. The paper had carried one line of writing, in block letters:
DON’T DRINK YOUR COFFEE.

Nothing else. No signature, or even an initial. Not a word of explanation. Just that. But he knew that there was only one person on board who could have written it. He had hurried over the rest of his toilet in the hope of finding Audrey Perowne in the saloon before the other guests arrived, but she had been the last to appear. He had not been able to summon up the courage to knock on the door of her cabin. His desire to see her and speak to her again alone, on any pretext, was tempered by an equal desire to avoid giving her any chance to refer to his last words of the previous night.

“The Jap is a good citizen,” George Y. Ulrig droned on, holding up his cocktail-glass like a sceptre. “He has few vices, he’s clean, and he doesn’t make trouble. On the other hand, he’s too clever to trust. He… Say, boy, what’s eatin’ you?”

“Nothing,” denied Dicky hastily. “What makes you think the Jap’s too clever to trust?”

“Now, the Chinaman’s the honestest man in the world, whatever they say about him,” resumed the drone. “I’ll tell you a story to illustrate that. …”

He told his story at leisure, and Dicky forced himself to look interested. It wasn’t easy. He was glad when they sat down to dinner. His partner was the less eagle-eyed Mrs. George Y. Ulrig, who was incapable of noticing the absent-minded way in which he listened to her detailed description of her last illness. But halfway through the meal he was recalled to attention by a challenge, and for some reason he was glad of it.

“Deeky,” said the girl at the end of the table. Dicky looked up. “Ve are in ze middle of an argument,” she said.

“Id iss this,” interrupted Sir Esdras Levy. “Der Gountess asks, if for insdance you vos a friendt off mine, ant bromised to tell nobody nothing, ant I see you vill be ruined if you don’t know off der teal, and I know der teal vill ruined be if you know off it-vot shoot I to?”

This lucid exposition was greeted with a suppressed titter which made Sir Esdras whiffle impatiently through his beard. He waved his hands excitedly. “I say,” he proclaimed magisterially, “dot a man’s vort iss his pond. I am sorry for you, bud I must my vort keep.”

‘Owever,” chipped in Mr. Matthew Sankin, and, catching his wife’s basilisk eye upon him, choked redly. “However,” said Mr. Matthew San-kin, “I ‘old by the British principle that a man oughter stick by his mates-friends-an’ he ain’t- ‘asn’t-hasn’t got no right to let “em down. None of ‘em. That’s wot.”

“Matthew, deah,” said Mrs. Sankin silkily, “the Countess was asking Mr. Tremayne the question, ay believe. Kaindly give us a chance to heah his opinion.”

‘What about a show of hands?” suggested Dicky. How many of you say that a man should stand by his word-whatever it costs him?” Six hands went up. Sankin and Ulrig were alone among the male dissenters. “Lost by one,” said Dicky.

No,” said the Countess. “I do not vote. I make you ze chairman, Deeky, and you ‘ave ze last vord. ‘Ow do you say?”

“In this problem, there’s no chance of a compromise? The man couldn’t find a way to tell his friend so that it wouldn’t spoil the deal for his other friends?”

“Ve hof no gompromises,” said Sir Esdras sternly.

Dicky looked down the table and met the girl’s eyes steadily. “Then,” he remarked, “I should first see my partners and warn them that I was going to break my word, and then I should go and do it. But the first condition is essential.”

“A gompromise,” protested Sir Esdras. “Subbose you hof nod der dime or der obbortunity?”