Enter the Saint (16 page)

The references to “eleven o’clock” and “twelve” were ambiguous. “It’ll be twelve by the time I’m there” might mean that, since the aëroplane would have to watch for signals from a considerable distance, to avoid being betrayed by the noise of the engines, it would be an hour from the time of the giving of the signal before the Saint could arrive on the scene. But why “eleven o’clock” and “twelve” instead of “twelve o’clock” and “one”-since they had previously arranged that signals were to be made either at midnight or four o’clock in the morning? Dicky pondered for an hour; and decided that either he was trying to read too much between the lines, or that a signal given an hour before the appointed time, at eleven o’clock instead of twelve, would not be missed.

“My eyes are red from weeping for you.” He interpreted that to mean that he was to signal with a red light if there seemed to be any likelihood of their having cause to weep for him. He had a pocket flash-lamp fitted with colour screens, and that code would be easy to adopt.

It was the last sentence that hit him fairly between the eyes. “I trust you.” A shrewd blow-very shrewd. Just an outside reminder of what he’d been telling himself for the past three days. Simon couldn’t possibly understand. He’d never met Audrey Perowne. And, naturally, he’d do his level best to keep Dicky on the lines.

Dicky crumpled the paper slowly into a ball, rolling it thoughtfully between his two palms. He picked up the envelope and rolled that into the ball also. Hilloran had steamed open that envelope and sealed it again before delivering the letter-Dicky was sure of that. He went to the porthole and pitched the ball far out into the dark waters.

He undressed and lay down in his bunk, but he could not compose his mind to sleep. The night was close and sultry. The air that came through the open porthole seemed to strike warm on his face, and to circulate that torrid atmosphere with the electric fan was pointless. He tried it, but it brought no relief. For an hour and a half he lay stifling; and then he rose, pulled on his slippers and a thin silk dressing-gown, and made his way to the deck.

He sprawled in a long cane chair and lighted a cigarette. Up there it was cooler. The ghost of a breeze whispered in the rigging and fanned his face. The soft hiss and wash of the sea cleft by the passage of their bows was very soothing. After a time, he dozed. He awoke with a curious sensation forcing itself through his drowsiness. It seemed as if the sea were rising, for the chair in which he lay was lurching and creaking under him. Yet the wind had not risen, and he could hear none of the thrash of curling waves which he should have been able to hear.

All this he appreciated hazily, roused but still half asleep. Then he opened one eye, and saw no rail before him, but only the steely glint of waters under the moon. Looking upwards and behind him he saw the foremast light riding serenely among the stars of a cloudless sky.

The convulsive leap he made actually spread-eagled him across the rail; and he heard his chair splash into the sea below as he tumbled over onto the deck.

Rolling on his shoulder, he glimpsed a sea-boot lashing at his head. He ducked wildly, grabbed, and kept his hold. All the strength he could muster went into the wrench that followed, and he heard the owner of the boot fall heavily with a strangled oath. An instant later he was on his feet-to find Hilloran’s face two inches from his own. “Would you!” snapped Dicky.

He slipped the answering punch over his left shoulder, changed his feet, and crammed every ounce of his weight into a retaliatory jolt that smacked over Hilloran’s heart and dropped the man as if his legs had been cut away from beneath him.

Dicky turned like a whirlwind as the man he lad tripped up rose from the ground and leaped at him with flailing fists.

Scientific boxing, in that light, was hopeless. Dicky tried it, and stopped a right swing with the side of his head. Three inches lower, and it would probably have put an end to the fight. As it was, it sent him staggering back against the rail, momentarily dazed, and it was more by luck than judgment that his shoulder hunched in the way of the next blow. He hit back blindly, felt his knuckles make contact, and heard the man grunt with pain.

Then his sight cleared. He saw the seaman recover his balance and gather himself for a renewed onslaught. He saw Hilloran coming unsteadily off the deck, with the moonlight striking a silvery gleam from something in his right hand. And he understood the issue quite plainly.

They had tried to dump him overboard, chair and all, while he slept. A quiet and gentle method of disposing of a nuisance-and no fuss or mess. That having failed, however, the execution of the project had boiled down to a free fight for the same end. Dicky had a temporary advantage, but the odds were sticky. With the cold grim clarity of vision that comes to a man at such moments, Dicky Tremayne realized that the odds were very sticky indeed.

But not for a second could he consider raising his voice for help. Apart from the fact that the battle was more or less a duel of honour between Hilloran and himself-even if Hilloran didn’t choose to fight his side single-handed-it remained to be assumed that, if Hilloran had one ally among the crew, he was just as likely to have half a dozen. The whole crew, finally, were just as likely to be on Hilloran’s side as one. The agreement had been that Audrey, Hilloran and Dicky were to divide equally three-quarters of the spoil, and the crew were to divide the last quarter. Knowing exactly the type of men of which the crew was composed, Tremayne could easily reckon the chance of their felling for the bait of a half share to divide instead of a quarter, when the difference would amount to a matter of about four thousand pounds per man.

And that, Tremayne realized, would be a pretty accurate guess at the position. He himself was to eliminated as Audrey Perowne’s one loyal supporter and a thorn in Hilloran’s side. The quarter share thus saved would go to bribe the crew. As for Hilloran’s own benefit, Audrey Perowne’s quarter share …

Dicky saw the whole stark idea staring him in the face, and wondered dimly why he’d never thought of it before. Audrey Perowne’s only use, for Hilloran, had been to get the millionaires on board the yacht and out to sea. After that, he could take his own peculiar revenge on her for the way she had treated him, revenge himself also on Tremayne for similar things, and make himself master of the situation and a half a million dollars instead of a quarter. A charming inspiration… . But Dicky didn’t have to think it all out like that. He saw it in a flash, more by intuition than by logic, in the instant of rest that he had while he saw also the seaman returning to the attack and Hilloran rising rockily from the ground with a knife in his hand. And therefore he fought in silence.

The darkness was against him. Dicky Tremayne was a strong and clever boxer, quicker than most men, and he knew more than a little about ju-jitsu; but those are arts for which one needs the speed of vision that can only come with clear light. The light he had was meagre and deceptive-a light that was all on the side of sheer strength and bulk, and all against mere speed and skill.

He was pretty well cornered. His back was against the rail. Hilloran was on his left front, the huge seaman on his right. There was no room to pass between them, no room to escape past either of them along the rail. There was only one way to fight: their own way. The seaman was nearest, and Dicky braced himself. It had to be a matter of give and take, the only question being that of who was to take the most. As the seaman closed in, Tremayne judged his distance, dropped his chin, and drove with a long left.

The sailor’s fist connected with Dicky’s forehead, knocking back his head with a jar that wricked his neck. Dicky’s left met something hard that seemed to snap under the impact. Teeth. But Dicky reeled, hazed by the sickening power of the two tremendous blows he had taken; and he could hardly see for the red and black clouds that swam before his eyes.

But he saw Hilloran and dropped instinctively to one knee. He rose again immediately under Hilloran’s knife arm, taking the man about the waist. Summoning all his strength, he heaved upwards, with some mad idea of treating Hilloran to some of his own pleasant medicine-or hurling the man over the rail into the glimmering black sea. And almost at once he realized that he could not do it-Hilloran was too heavy, and Dicky was already weakened. Nor was there time to struggle, for in another moment Hilloran would lift his right arm again and drive the knife into Dicky’s back. But Tremayne, in this desperate effort, had Hilloran off his feet for a second. He smashed him bodily against the rail, hoping to slam the breath out of him for a momentary respite, and broke away.

As he turned, the seaman’s hands fastened on his throat, and Dicky felt a sudden surge of joy. Against a man who knows his ju-jitsu, that grip is more than futile: it is more than likely to prove fatal to the man who employs it. Particularly was this fact proven then. For most of the holds in ju-jitsu depend on getting a grip on a wrist or hand-which, of course, are the hardest parts of the body to get a grip on, being the smallest and most swiftmoving. Dicky had been hampered all along by being unable to trust himself to get his hold in that light, when the faintest error of judgment would have been fetal. But now there could be no mistake.

Dicky’s hands went up on each side of his head, and closed on the seaman’s little fingers. He pulled and twisted at the same time, and the man screamed as one finger at least was dislocated. But Dicky went on and the man was forced sobbing to his knees. The surge of joy in Dicky’s heart rose to something like a shout of triumph-and died. Out of the tail of his eye, he saw Hilloran coming in again.

Tremayne felt that he must be living a nightmare. There were two of them, both far above his weight, and they were wearing him down, gradually, relentlessly. As fast as he gained an advantage over one, the other came to nullify it. As fast as he was able temporarily to disable one, the other came back refreshed to renew the struggle. It was his own stamina against their combined consecutive staminas-and either of them individually was superior in brute strength to himself, even if one left the knife out of the audit. Dicky knew the beginning of despair.

He threw the seaman from him, sideways, across Hilloran’s very knees, and leapt away. Hilloran stumbled, and Dicky’s hands shot out for the man’s knife wrist, found its mark, twisted savagely. The knife tinkled into the scuppers.

If Dicky could have made a grip with both hands, he would have had the mastery, but he could only make it with one. His other hand, following the right, missed. A moment later he was forced to release his hold. He swung back only just in time to avoid the left cross that Hilloran lashed out at his jaw. Then both Hilloran and the sailor came at him simultaneously, almost shoulder to shoulder.

Dicky’s strength was spent. He was going groggy at the knees, his arms felt like lead, his chest heaved terribly to every panting breath he took, his head swirled and throbbed dizzily. He was taking his licking. He could not counter the blows they both hurled at him at once. Somehow, he managed to duck under their arms, with some hazy notion of driving between them and breaking away into the open, but he could not do it. They had him cold.

He felt himself flung against the rail. The sailor’s arms pinioned his own arms to his sides; Hilloran’s hands were locked about his throat, strangling him to silence, crushing out life. His back was bent over the rail like a bow. His feet were off the ground.

The stars had gone out, and the moon had fallen from the sky. His chest was bound with ever-tightening iron bands. He seemed to be suspended in a vast void of utter blackness, and, though he could feel no wind, there was the roaring of a mighty wind in his ears.

And then, through the infinite distances of the dark gulf in which he hung, above even the great howling of that breathless wind, a voice spoke as a silver bell, saying: “What’s this, Hilloran?”

Chapter VI
DICKY seemed to awake from a hideous dream.

The fingers loosened from his throat, the iron cage that tortured his chest relaxed, the rushing wind in his ears died down to a murmur. He saw a star in the sky; and, as he saw it, a moon that had not been there before seemed to swim out of the infinite dark, back to its place in the heavens. And he breathed.

Also, he suddenly felt very sick. These things happened almost immediately. He knew that they must have been almost immediate, though they seemed to follow one another with the maddening slowness of the minute hand’s pursuit of the hour hand round the face of a clock. He tried to whip them to a greater speed. He could not pause to savour the sensations of this return to life. His brain had never lost consciousness. Only his body was dead, and that had to be forced back to activity without a pause.

One idea stood out distinctly from the clearing fog that blurred his vision. Audrey Perowne was there, and she had caused an interruption that was saving him, but he was not safe yet. Neither was she.

She slept, he remembered, in a cabin whose porthole looked out onto the very stretch of deck where they had been fighting, and the noise must have roused her. But, in that light, she could have seen little but a struggling group of men, unless she had watched for a time before deciding to intervene-and that was unlikely. And she must not be allowed to know the true reason for the disturbance.

Tremayne now understood exactly how things were, if Hilloran was prepared to dispose of him, he was prepared to dispose of the girl as well-Dicky had no doubt of that. But that would require some determination. The habit of obedience would remain, and to break it would require a conscious effort. And that effort, at all costs, must not be stimulated by any provocation while Hilloran was able to feel that he had things mostly his own way.

All this Dick Tremayne understood, and acted upon it in an instant, before his senses had fully returned. His feet touched the deck; and he twisted and held the seaman in his arms as he himself had been held a moment earlier. Then he looked across and saw Audrey Perowne.

She stood by a bulkhead light, where they could see her clearly, and the light glinted on an automatic in her hand. She said again: “Hilloran-” And by the impatient way she said it, Dicky knew that she could not have been waiting long for her first question to be answered.