Saint Overboard (29 page)

After about a minute Vogel turned round and
came back.

“You are responsible for the loss of one
of my best men,” he said with peremptory directness. “It will be
difficult to replace
him, and it may take considerable time. Unfortunately, I cannot
afford to wait. But fortunately, I have you here instead.”

“So we can still play cut-throat,”
drawled the Saint.

Vogel stood looking down at him impassively,
the cigar glow
ing evenly between his teeth.

“Just now you wanted to know where we
were going, Templar.
The answer is that we are going to a point a
little way south
west
of the Casquet Lighthouse. When we stop again there, we
shall be directly over the wreck of the
Chalfont Castle
—you will
remember the ship that sank there in March. There are five mil
lion pounds’ worth of bullion in her strong-room
which I intend
to remove before the official salvage operations are
begun. The
only difficulty is that your
clumsiness has deprived me of the
only
member of my crew who could have been relied upon to
open the strong-room. I’m hoping that that is
where your interference will prove to have its compensations. I said that the
man
you killed was one of the best
safe-breakers in Europe. But I
have
heard that the Saint is one of the greatest experts in the
world.”

So that was it
…
Simon
dropped his cigarette-end into his
empty
glass, and took out his case to replace it. A miniature power plant was
starting up under his belt and sending a new
and different tingle along his arteries.

It was his turn to follow Vogel’s thoughts,
and the back trail
was blazed and signposted liberally enough.

“You want me to go down and give a
demonstration?” he said
lightly, and Vogel nodded.

“That is what I intend you to do.”

“In the bathystol?”

“That won’t be necessary. The
Chalfont
Castle
is lying in
twenty fathoms, and an ordinary diving suit
will be quite
sufficient.”

“Are you offering me a
partnership?”

“I’m offering you a chance to help your
partner.”

Something inside the Saint turned cold.
Perhaps it was not until he heard that last quiet flat sentence that he had
realised
how completely Vogel had mastered the situation. Every
twist
and turn of
strategy fitted together with the geometrical exacti
tude of a jigsaw puzzle. Vogel hadn’t missed one finesse. He had
dominated every move of the opposition with the
arrogant ease
of a Capablanca
playing chess with a kindergarten school.

Simon Templar had never known the meaning of
surrender;
but at that moment, in the full appreciation of the
supreme gen
eralship against which he had pitted himself, the final
under
standing of how efficiently the dice had been cogged, he was as
near to admitting the
hopelessness of his challenge as he would
ever
be. All he had left was the indomitable spirit that would
keep him smiling and fighting until death proved
to his satisfac
tion that he couldn’t
win all the time. It hadn’t been proved
yet … He looked fearlessly into the alabaster face of the man
in front of him, and told himself that it had still
got to be
proved.

“And what happens if I refuse?” he
asked quietly.

Vogel shrugged.

“I don’t need to make any melodramatic
threats. You are
intelligent
enough to be able to make them for yourself. I prefer to assume that you will
agree. If you do what I tell you, Loretta
will
be put ashore as soon as it is convenient—alive.”

“Is that all?”

“I don’t need to offer any more.”

The answer was calm, uncompromising;
blood-chilling in its
ruthless economy of detail. It left volumes
unsaid, and expressed every necessary word of them.

Simon looked at him for a long time.

“You’ve got all these situations down to
their lowest common
denominator, haven’t you?” he said, very slowly.
“And what
inducement
have I got to take your word for anything?”

“None whatever,” replied Vogel carelessly. “But you
will take
it, because if you refuse you will
certainly be dead within the
next
half-hour, and while you are alive you can always hope and
scheme and
believe in miracles. It will be interesting to watch a
few more of your childish manoeuvres.” He studied his watch,
and glanced out of the forward windows. “You
have about
fifteen minutes to make your choice.”

VII.
    
HOW SIMON AND LORETTA
TALKED
TOGETHER,
 

AND LORETTA CHOSE LIFE

“ONCE upon a time,” said the Saint,
“there was a lugubrious
yak named Elphinphlopham, who grazed on the
plateaus of Tibet and meditated over the various philosophies and religions of
the
world. After many years of study and investigation he eventually
decided
that the only salvation for his soul lay in the Buddhist faith, and he was duly
received into the Eightfold Path by the
Grand Lama, who was
fortunately residing in the district. It was then revealed to Elphinphlopham
that the approved method of
attaining Nirvana was to spend many hours a
day sitting in a
most uncomfortable position, especially for yaks, whilst
engaging
in an ecstatic contemplation of the navel. Dutifully
searching for
this
mystic umbilicus, the unhappy Elphinphlopham discovered
for the first time that his abdomen was completely overgrown
with the characteristic shaggy mane of his
species; so that it was physically impossible for him to fix his eyes upon the
prescribed
organ, or indeed for him to discover whether nature had ever
endowed him with this indispensable adjunct to the
Higher
Thought. This awful doubt
worried Elphinphlopham so
badly——
”

“Nothing worries you very much, does
it?” said Loretta
gently.

The Saint smiled.

“My dear, I gave that up after the
seventh time I was told I
had about ten minutes to live. And I’m still
alive.”

He lay stretched out comfortably on the bunk,
with his hands
behind his head and the smoke spiralling up from his
cigarette. It was the same cabin in which he had knocked out Otto Arnheim
not so
long ago—the same cabin from which he had so
successfully rescued
Steve Murdoch. With the essential difference that this time he was the one in
need of rescuing, and
there was no one outside who would be likely
to do the job. He
recognised it as Kurt Vogel’s inevitable crowning
master-stroke
to have sent him down there, with Loretta, while he made
the choice that had been offered him. He looked at the steady hu
mour in her grey eyes, the slim
vital beauty of her, and knew by
the
breathless drag of his heart how accurately that master-
stroke had been placed; but he could never let
her know.

She sat on the end of the bunk, leaning
against the bulkhead
and looking down at him, with her hands
clasped across her
knees. He could see the passing of time on her wrist
watch.

“How long do you think we shall live
now?” she said.

“Oh, indefinitely—according to Birdie.
Until I’m a toothless
old gaffer dribbling down my beard, and
you’re a silver-haired
duenna of the Women’s League of Purity. If I
do this job for
him, he’s ready to send us an affectionate greeting card
on our
jubilee.”

“If you believe him.”

“And you don’t.”

“Do you?”

Simon twitched his shoulders. He thought of
the bargain which
he had really been offered, and kept his gaze
steadfastly on the
ceiling.

“Yes. In a way I think he’ll keep his
word.”

“He murdered Yule.”

“For the bathystol. So that nobody else
should have it. But
no clever crook murders without good reason, because
that’s only
adding to his own dangers. What would he gain by getting
rid of
us?”

“Silence,” she said quietly.

He nodded.

“But does he really need that any more?
You told me that
some
people had known for a long time that this racket existed.
The fact that we’re here tells him that we’ve
linked him up with
it. And that means
that we’ve got friends outside who know
as much as we know.”

“He knows who I am, then?”

“No. Only that you’ve been very
inquisitive, and that you
tried to warn me. Doubtless he thinks you’re
part of my gang—
people always credit me with a gang.”

“So he’d let you go, knowing who you
are?”

“Knowing who I am, he’d know I wouldn’t
talk about him to
the police.”

“So he’d let you go to come back with
some more of your
gang and shoot him up again?”

Simon turned his head to cock an eye at her.
She must not know. He must not be drawn further into argument. Already,
with that
cool courageous wit of hers, she had him blundering.

“Are you cross-examining me,
woman?” he demanded quizzi
cally.

“I want an answer.”

“Well, maybe he thinks that I’ll have
had enough.”

“And maybe he believes in fairies.”

“I do. I saw a beautiful one in Dinard.
He had green lacquered
toe-nails.”

“You’re not very convincing.”

The Saint raised himself a little from the
pillow, and shook the
ash from his cigarette. He met her eyes
without wavering.

“I’m convinced, anyway,” he said
steadily. “I’m going to do
the job.”

She looked at him no less steadily.

“Why are you going to do the job?”

“Because it’s certain death if I don’t,
and by no means certain
if I do. Also because I’ll go a long way for a new sensation, and
this will be the first strong-room I’ve ever
cracked in a diving
suit.”

Her hands unclasped from her knees, and she
opened her bag to take out a cigarette. He propped himself up on one elbow to
light it
for her. Then he took her hand and held it. She tilted her golden-chestnut head
back against the bulkhead, and a shaft of
sunlight through the
porthole lay across her face so that she
looked like a fallen
angel catching the last light from heaven. He had no regrets.

“We have had one or two exciting
days,” she said.

“Probably we’ve had exciting
lives.”

“You have.”

“And you. If I can imagine all you
haven’t told me
…
You’re
not a bit like a
detective, Loretta.”
          

“What should I be?”

He shrugged.

“Tougher?” he said.
 

“Don’t you think I’m tough?”

“Yes. I know you are. But not all
through.”

“Ought I to be an ogre?”

“You couldn’t. Not with a mouth like
yours. And yet …”

“I oughtn’t to have a heart.”

“Perhaps.”

“I know. I must get rid of it. Do you
think there’d be any
second-hand market for it?”

“I could introduce you to a second-rate buccaneer who’d make
a bid.”

She laughed.

“And yet you’re not everything that a
second-rate buccaneer
ought to be—not as I’ve known them.”

“Tell me.”

She considered him for a while, with a shadow
of wistfulness in her mocking gaze that made him aware of his own hunger,
though her
parted lips still smiled.

“You’re kind,” she said simply,
“and you want so much that you can never have. You have an honour that
honest people couldn’t understand. You’re not fighting against laws: you’re
fighting
against life. You’d tear the world to pieces to find some
thing that’s only in your own
mind; and when you’d got it you’d
find it was
just a dream… . Besides, you don’t talk out of the
side of your mouth enough.”