Saint Overboard (7 page)

“You’re getting old,” he reproached
himself solemnly. “At this very moment, you’re trying to persuade yourself
to work for an
insurance company. Just because she has a body like an old
man’s dream, and you kissed her. An insurance company!”

He shuddered.

And then he turned his eyes to study a speck of movement on the
borders of his field of vision. The speed tender was moving
away from the side of the
Falkenberg,
heading
towards the Bee
de la Vall
é
e. For a moment he watched it idly,
calculating that
its course would take it within a few yards of the
Corsair:
as it
came nearer he recognised Kurt
Vogel, and with him a stout
grey-bearded
man in a Norfolk jacket and a shapeless yellow
Panama hat.

Simon began to get up from his chair. He began slowly and
almost uncertainly, but he finished in a sudden
rush of decision.
Any action, however
vague its object, was better than no action
at all. He skated down the
companion with something like his
earlier
exuberance, and shouted for Grace.

“Never mind about lunch,” he said, scattering silk
shirts and
white duck trousers out of a
locker. “I’m going on shore to take
up ornithology.”

2

One of the vedettes from St Malo was coming
in to the jetty when the Saint scrambled back on deck, and the
Falkenberg’s
tender was
still manoeuvering for a landing. Simon dropped
into his dinghy and
wound up the outboard. Fortunately
the
Corsair
had swung round on
the tide so that she screened his
movements from any chance backward
glances from the quay,
and he started off up-river and came round in
a wide circle to
avoid identifying himself by his point of departure. Not
that it
mattered much; but he wanted to avoid giving any immediate impression
that he was deliberately setting off in pursuit.

He cruised along, keeping his head down and
judging time and
distance as the
Falkenberg’s
tender squeezed in
to the steps and Vogel and his companion went ashore. Looking back, he judged
that with any luck no curious
watcher on the
Falkenberg
had observed his hurried departure, and by
this time he was too far
away to be
recognised. Then, as Vogel and the grey-bearded man
started up the causeway towards the Grande Rue, the
Saint
opened up his engine and scooted
after them. He shot in to the
quay
under the very nose of another boat that was making for
the same objective, spun his motor round into
reverse under a
cloudburst of Gallic
expostulation and profanity, hitched the
painter deftly through a ring-bolt, and was up on land and away
before the running commentary he had provoked had
really
reached its choicest
descriptive adjectives.

The passengers who were disembarking from
the ferry effec
tively screened his arrival and shielded his advance as
he hustled
after his quarry. The other two were not walking quickly,
and
the grey-bearded man’s shabby yellow Panama was as good as a
beacon.
Simon spaced himself as far behind them as he dared
when they reached the
Digue, and slackened the speed of his
pursuit. He ambled along with his
hands in his pockets, submerg
ing himself among the other promenaders with
the same happy-
go-lucky air of debating the best place to take an
aperitif be
fore lunch.

Presently the yellow Panama bobbed across the
stream in the
direction of the Casino terrace, and Simon Templar
followed. At
that hour the place was packed with a chattering
sun-soaked
throng of thirsty socialites, and the Saint was able to
squeeze himself about among the tables in the most natural manner of a
lone man
looking for a place—preferably with company. His
route led him quite
casually past Vogel’s table; and at the pre
cise moment when the
hook-nosed man looked up and caught his
eye, Simon returned
the recognition with a perfect rendering of polite interest.

They were so close together that Vogel could
scarcely have
avoided
a greeting, even if he had wished to—which the Saint
quietly doubted. For a moment the man’s black expressionless
stare drilled right through him; and then the
thin lips spread in a smile that had all the artless geniality of a snake’s.

“I hope you didn’t think I was too
unceremonious about disturbing you last night,” he said.

“Not at all,” said the Saint
cheerfully. “I didn’t leave the
baccarat rooms till pretty late, so I was only just
settling in.”

His glance passed unostentatiously over the
grey-bearded man.
Something
about the mild pink youthful-looking face struck him
as dimly familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“This is Professor Yule,” said the
other, “and my name is V
ogel. Won’t you join us, Mr—er——
”

“Tombs,” said the Saint, without
batting an eyelid, and sat
down.

Vogel extended a cigarette-case.

“You are interested in gambling, Mr
Tombs?” he suggested.

His tone was courteous and detached, the tone
of a man who was merely accepting the obvious cue for the opening of a con
ventional
exchange of small talk; but the Saint’s hand hovered
over the proffered case for an
imperceptible second’s pause be
fore he slid
out a smoke and settled back.

“I don’t mind an occasional flutter to
pass the time,” he mur
mured deprecatingly.

“Ah, yes—an occasional flutter.” Vogel’s eyes, like two
beads
of impenetrable jet, remained fixed on
his face; but the cold
lipless smile
remained also. “You can’t come to much harm that way. It’s the people who
play beyond their means who come to
grief.”

Simon Templar let a trickle of smoke drift
down his nostrils,
and that instantaneous instinctive tension within him
relaxed
into a pervasive chortle of pure glee which spread around his inside like
a sip of old brandy. Kurt Vogel, he reflected, must
have been taking a
diet of the kind of mystery story in which
the villain always
introduces himself with some lines of sinister
innuendo like that—and
thereby convinces the perhaps otherwise
unsuspecting hero that something
villainous is going on. In the
same type of
story, however, the hero can never resist the
temptation to respond in
kind—thereby establishing the fact that
he
is the hero. But the Saint had been treading the fickle tight
ropes of piracy when those same romantic
juveniles were cooing in their cradles, and he had his own severely practical
ideas of
heroism.

“There’s not much chance of that,”
he said lightly, “with my
overdraft in its present state.”

They sat eye to eye like two duellists baffled for an opening;
and the Saint’s smile was wholly innocent. If Kurt
Vogel had
hoped to get him to betray himself by any theatrical
insinuations
of that sort, there were going
to be some disappointed hearts in
Dinard
that fine day. But Vogel’s outward cordiality never wav
ered an iota. He gave away nothing, either—the
innuendo was
only there if the Saint
chose to force it out.

“Are you staying long?”

“I haven’t made any plans,” said
the Saint nebulously. “I
might dart off at any moment, or I might
hang around until they
make me a local monument. It just depends on
how soon I get
tired of the place.”

“It “doesn’t agree with
everybody,” Vogel assented purringly.
“In fact, I have
heard that some people find it definitely un
healthy.” Simon
nodded.

“A bit relaxing, perhaps,” he admitted. “But I
don’t mind that. Up to the present, though, I’ve found it rather dull.”

Vogel sat back and stroked the edge of the
table with his finger-tips. If he was disconcerted, the fact never registered
on his face. His features were a flat mask of impassively regulated
scenery
behind that sullen promontory of a nose.

A waiter equilibrating under a dizzy tray of
glasses swayed by
and snatched their order as he passed. At the same time an
ad
joining table became vacant, and another party of thirst-
quenchers
took possession. The glance of one of them, sweeping round as he wriggled his
legs in, passed over the Saint and then
became faintly fixed.
For a brief second it stayed set; then he
leaned sideways to
whisper. His companions turned their heads
furtively. The name
of Yule reached the Saint clearly, but after
that the surrounding
buzz of conversation and the glutinous
strains of the Casino
band swallowed up the conversation for a
moment. And then,
above all interfering undertones, the electric
sotto voce of a
resplendently peroxided matron in the party
stung his eardrums
like a saw shearing through tin: “I’m sure it
must be!
…
You know,
my dear—the bathy-something
man.
…”

Simon Templar’s ribs lifted under his shirt
with the deep
breath that he drew into his lungs, and the twirtle of
bliss within
him rose to a sweet celestial singing. He knew now why the
name
of Professor Yule had seemed familiar, and why he had tried to
place that
fresh apple-cheeked face over the trim grey beard.
Only a few months ago
the newspapers had run their stories and
the illustrated
weeklies had carried special pictures; the
National
Geographic
Magazine
had brought out a Yule Expedition num
ber. For
Wesley Yule had done something that no man on earth
had ever done before.
He had been down five thousand feet into
the Pacific Ocean,
beyond any depth ever seen before by human eyes—not in any sort of glorified
diving bell, but in a fantastic
bulbous armour built to withstand the
terrific pressure that
would have crushed an unprotected man like a
midge on a window-pane, in which he was able to move and walk about on
the ocean
floor nearly a mile below the ship from which he was
lowered. He was the
man who had perfected and proved a deep-
sea costume compared
with which the “iron men” of previous
diving experiments
were mere amateurish makeshifts, a combina
tion of metallic
alloys and scientific construction that promised to revolutionise the exploring
of the last secrets of the sea… .
And now he was in Dinard, the guest of
Kurt Vogel, arch hi
jacker of Davy Jones!

That long pregnant breath floated back
through the Saint’s lips
and carried a feather of cigarette-smoke with
it—the pause during which he had held it in his lungs was the only physical
index
of his emotion. He became aware that the Professor was joining
in with
some affable common-place, and that Vogel’s black eyes
were riveted on him
unwinkingly. With a perfectly steady hand
he tilted the ash off
his cigarette, and schooled every scrap of
tension out of his
face as he turned his head.

“Of course you’ve heard about Professor
Yule?” said Vogel
urbanely.

“Of course… .” Simon’s
rendering of slight apologetic confusion was attained with an effort that no
one could have felt but
himself. “Now I know who he is.
…
But I
hadn’t placed him
until that lady said something just now.” He looked
at Yule with
a smile of open admiration. “It must have been an
amazing
experience, Professor.”

Yule shrugged, with a pleasant diffidence.

“Naturally it was interesting,” he
replied frankly. “And rather
frightening. Not to say uncomfortable.
… Perhaps you know
that the temperature of the water falls
rapidly when you reach
really great depths. As a matter of fact, at
five thousand feet it
is only a few degrees above freezing point. Well, I had been so
taken up with the other mechanical details of pressure and lighting and air
supply that I actually forgot that one. I was damned
cold!” He chuckled engagingly. “I’m putting an electrical
heating
arrangement in my improved
bathystol, and I shan’t suffer that
way
next time.”