Saint Overboard (30 page)

He was silent for a moment.

“I expect I could cultivate that,”
he said at length, and sat up
so that he could put her hand to his lips.
“Otherwise, we aren’t so different. We both wanted something that wasn’t
there, and
we set out to find it—in our own ways.”

“And now we’ve found plenty.” She
glanced out of the port
hole, and turned back to him thoughtfully. “We’ll probably
both be down somewhere in the sea before the sun comes up again,
Saint… . It’s a funny sort of thought, isn’t
it? I’ve always
thought it must be
so exasperating to die. You must always leave
so much unfinished.”

“You’re not afraid.”

“Neither are you.”

“I’ve so much less to be afraid
of.”

She closed her eyes for a second.

“Oh, dishonour! I think I should hate
that, with death after
it.”

“But suppose it had been a
choice,” he said conversationally.
“You know the old
story-book formula. The heroine always
votes for death. Do
you think she really would?”

“I think I should like to live,” she
said slowly. “There are
other things to live for, aren’t there? You
can keep your own honour. You can rebuild your pride. Life can go on for a long
while. You don’t burn your house down because a little mud has
been
trodden into the floor.”

Simon looked over his shoulder. The sea had
turned paler in
the glassy calm of the late afternoon, and the sky was
without a
cloud, a vast bowl of blue-tinted space stretching
through leagues
of
unfathomable clearness beyond the sharp edge of the horizon.

“Meanwhile,” he said flippantly,
“we might get a bit more
morbid if I told you some more about the
horrible dilemma of
Elphinphlopham.”

She shook her head.

“No.”

“You’re right,” he said soberly.
“There are more important
things to tell you.”

“Such as?”

“Why I should fall in love with you so
quickly.”

“Weren’t you just taking advantage of
the garden?” she said,
with her grey eyes on his face.

“It may have been that. Or maybe it was the garden taking
advantage of me. Or maybe it was you taking
advantage of both.
But it happened.”

“How often has it happened before?”

He looked at her straightly.

“Many times.”

“And how often could it happen
again?”

His lips curved with the fraction of a
sardonic grin. Vogel had
never promised him life—had never even troubled to help him
delude himself that his own life would be included
in the bar
gain. Whether he opened the strong-room of the
Chalfont
Castle
or not, Vogel had given his
sentence.

Simon Templar had had the best of outlawry.
He had loved
and
romanced, dreamed and philandered and had his fling, and
loved again; and he had come to believe that love
shared the
impermanence of all
adventures. Of all the magnificent mad
nesses of youth he had lost only
one—the power to tell himself,
and to
believe, that the world could be summed up and com
pleted in one love.
Yet, for the first time in his life, he could tell
the lie and believe that it could be true.

“I don’t think it’ll happen again,” he said.

But she was laughing quietly, with an
infinite tenderness in her
eyes.

“Unless a miracle happens,” she
said. “And who’s going to
provide one?”

“Steve Murdoch?” he suggested, and glanced round the
bare
white cabin. “This is the dungeon
I fished him out of. He really ought to return the compliment.”

“He’ll be in St Peter Port by now.
…
But this
boat is the
only address he’s got for me, and he won’t know where
we’ve
gone. And I suppose Vogel won’t be going back that way.”

“Two friends of mine back there have
some idea where we’ve
gone. Peter Quentin and Roger Conway.
They’re staying at the Royal. But I forgot to bring my carrier pigeons.”

“So we’ll have to provide our own
miracle?”

“Anyway,” said the Saint, “I
don’t like crowds. And I
shouldn’t want one now.”

He flicked his cigarette-end backwards through
the porthole
and turned towards her. She nodded.

“Neither should I,” she said.

She threw away her own cigarette and gave him
both her
bands. But she stayed up on her knees, as she had risen,
listening
to the sounds which had become audible outside. Then she
looked
out; and he pulled himself up beside her.

The
Falkenberg
was hove to, no more
than a long stone’s
throw from the Casquet Rocks. The lighthouse, crowning the
main islet like a medieval castle, a hundred feet above the water,
was so
close that he could see one of the lighthouse-keepers
leaning over the
battlements and looking down at them.

For a moment Simon was puzzled to guess the reason for the
stop; and then the sharp clatter of an outboard
motor starting
up, clear above the
dull vibration of the
Falkenberg’s
idling en
gines, made him glance down towards the water,
and he under
stood. The
Falkenberg’s
dinghy had been lowered, and it was
even then stuttering away towards the landing stage, manned
by Otto Arnheim and three of the crew. As it drew
away from
the side the
Falkenberg
got
under way again, sliding slowly
through
the water towards the south.

Simon turned away from the porthole, and Loretta’s eyes met
him.

“I suppose the lighthouse overlooks the
wreck,” she said.

“I believe it does,” he answered,
recalling the chart which he
had studied the night before.

Neither of them spoke for a little while. The
thought in both their minds needed no elaborating. The staff on the lighthouse
might see too much—and that must be prevented. The Saint
wondered
how drastically the prevention would be done, and had
a grim suspicion of
the answer. It would be so easy for Arnheim,
landing with his crew
in the guise of an innocent tripper asking to be shown over the plant… .

Simon sat down again on the bunk. His lips were drawn hard
and bitter with the knowledge of his helplessness.
There was
nothing that he could, do. But he would have liked, just once,
to
feel the clean smash of his fists on
Vogel’s cold sneering
face… .

“I guess it’s nearly time for my
burglary,” he said. “It’s a
grand climax to my career as a
detective.”

She was leaning back, with her head on his
shoulder. Her
cheek was against his, and she held his hands to her
breasts.

“So you signed on the dotted line,
Simon,” she said softly.

“Didn’t you always know I would?”

“I hoped you would.”

“It’s been worth it.”

She turned her face a little. Presently she
said: “I told you I
was afraid, once. Do you remember?”

“Are you afraid now?” he asked, and
felt the shake of her
head.

“Not now.”

He kissed her. Her lips were soft and
surrendering against his.
He held her face in his hands, touched her
hair and her eyes, as
he had done in the garden.

“Will you always remember me like
this?” she said.

“Always.”

“I think they’re coming.”

A key turned in the lock, and he stood up.
Vogel came in first,
with his right hand still in his side pocket, and two of his crew
framed themselves in the doorway behind him. He
bowed faintly to the saint, with his smooth face passive and expectant and the
great hook of his nose thrust forward. If he was
enjoying his
triumph of scheming and
counter-plot, the exultation was held in
the same iron restraint as all his emotions. His black eyes re
mained cold and expressionless.

“Have you made up your mind?” he
asked.

Simon Templar nodded. In so many ways he was
content.

“I’m ready when you are,” he said.

2

They were settling the forty-pound lead
weights over his
shoulders, one on his back and one on his chest. He was
already
encased in the heavy rubber-lined twill overall, which covered
him
completely from foot to neck, with the vulcanised rubber
cuffs
adjusted on his wrists and the tinned copper corselet in position; and the
weighted boots, each of them turning the scale
at sixteen pounds, had been strapped on
his feet. Another mem
ber of the crew,
similarly clad, was explaining the working of the
air outlet valve to him before the helmet was put
on.

“If you screw up the valve you keep the
air in the dress and
so you float. If you unscrew it you let out
the air, and you sink.
When you get to the bottom, you adjust the
valve so that you
are comfortable. You keep enough air to balance the
weights
without lifting you off your feet, until it is time to come up. You
understand?”

“You have a gift for putting things
plainly,” said the Saint.

The man grunted and stepped back; and Kurt Vogel stood in
front of him.

“Ivaloff will go down with you—in case
you should be tempted
to forget your position,” he explained. “He will also
lead you, to
the strong-room, which I have
shown him on the plans of the
ship. He
will also carry the underwater hydro-oxygen torch,
which will cut through one and a half inches of
solid steel—to be used as and when you direct him.”

Simon nodded, and drew at the cigarette he
was smoking. He
fingered an instrument from the kit which he had been
examin
ing.

“Those are the tools of the man you
killed,” said Vogel. “He
worked well with them. If there is
anything else you need, we
will try to supply you.”

“This looks like a pretty adequate outfit.”

Simon dropped the implement back in the bag from which he
had taken it. The brilliance of the afternoon had
passed its
height, and the sea was
like oiled crystal under the lowering sun. The sun was still bright, but it had
lost its heat. A few streaks of
cloud
were drawing long streamers towards the west.

The Saint was looking at the scene more than at Vogel. There
was a dry satirical whim in him to remember it—if
memory went
on to the twilight where
he was going. Death in the afternoon.
He
had seen it so often, and now he had chosen it for himself.
There was no fear in him; only a certain cynical
peace. It was
his one regret that
Vogel had brought Loretta out on to the deck with him. He would rather have
been spared that last reminder.

“I shall be in communication with both
of you by telephone
all the time, and I shall expect you to keep me informed
of your
progress.”
Vogel was completing his instructions, in his invaria
ble toneless voice, as if he were dealing with some ordinary mat
ter of business. “As soon as you have opened
the strong-room,
you will help Ivaloff to bring out the gold and load it
on to the
tackle which will be sent down to
you.
…
I think that is all?”

He looked at the Saint inquiringly; and
Simon shrugged.

“It’s enough to be going on with,”
he said; and Vogel stood aside and signed to the man who waited beside him with
the
helmet.

The heavy casque was put over the Saint’s head, settled in the
segmental neck rings on the corselet, and secured
with a one-
eighth turn; after which a catch on the back locked it
against
accidental unscrewing. Through the
plate-glass window in the
front Simon
watched the same process being performed on
Ivaloff, and saw two seamen take the handles of the reciprocat
ing air pump which had been brought out on deck.
His breathing
became tainted with a
faint odour of oil and rubber… .