Saint Overboard (16 page)

“You?” Murdoch was viciously
derisive. “If I thought that,
I’d buy you out right now.”

“Where’s your money?”

“What for?”

“To buy me out. One hundred dollars a
week—and that’s more
than I thought I was going to get out of it.”

The other stared at him.

“Are you telling me you’ll take a
hundred a week to get out?”

“Oh, no. But I’ll take a hundred a week
to get in. You’ll have
the benefit of all my brains, which you
obviously need pretty
badly; and I shall get lots of quiet
respectable fun and a beauti
ful glow of virtue to keep me warm for the
winter. I’m trying to convince you that I’m a reformed character. Your loving
sympa
thy has made me see the light,” said the Saint brokenly, “and
from now on
my only object will be to live down my evil
past——
”

“And I’m trying to convince you that I’m not so dumb that a
twister like you can sell me a gold brick!”
Murdoch snarled vio
lently. “You
came into this by accident, and you saw your
chance. You greased around Loretta till she told you what it was
about, and you’ve made her so crazy she’s ready
to eat outa your
hand. If I hadn’t
come along you’d of played her for a sap as
long as it helped you, and
ditched her when you thought you had a chance to get away with something. Well,
you bet you’re going
to get out. I’m going to
find a way to put you out—but it ain’t
going
to be with a hundred dollars!”

The Saint rounded his lips and blew out a
smoke-ring. For a
moment he did actually consider the possibilities of
trying to
convince Murdoch of his sincerity; but he gave up the
idea. The
American’s suspicions were rooted in too stubborn an
antagonism
for any amount of argument to shake them; and Simon had
to
admit that Murdoch had some logical justification. He looked at Murdoch
thoughtfully for a while, and read the blunt facts of the
situation on every line of the
other’s grim hard-boiled face. Oh,
well …
perhaps it was all for the best. And that incorrigible
imp of buffoonery in his make-up would have made
it difficult to
carry the argument to
conviction, anyway …

The Saint sighed.

“I suppose you’re entitled to your point of view,
Steve,” he
conceded mildly. “But
of course that makes quite a difference.
Now we shall have to decide what we’re going to do with you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” retorted
Murdoch. “You worry
about yourself. Give me my clothes back, and
I’ll be on my
way.”

He dumped his glass on the table and stood
up; but Simon
Templar did not move.

“The question is—will you?” said
the Saint.

His voice was pleasant and conversational,
coloured only with
the merest echo of that serene and gentle mockery which
had got
under Murdoch’s toughened hide at their first encounter; and yet
something behind it made the
other stand momentarily very still.

Murdoch’s chunky fists knotted up slowly at
his sides, and he
scowled down at the slim languid figure stretched out on
the
settee with his eyes slotting down to glittering crevices in the
rough-hewn
crag of his face.

“Meaning what?” he demanded
grittily.

“I’m not so thrilled with your promise
to put me out,” said
the Saint. “And I don’t know that we can
let you go on getting into trouble indefinitely. Twice is all right, but the
third time
might be unlucky. I may be a boy scout, but I’m not a
nurse
maid. One way and another, Steve, it looks as if we may have to
shut you
up where you won’t be able to get into mischief for a
while.”

2

Murdoch hunched over him as if he couldn’t
believe his ears.
There
was stark pugnacious incredulity oozing out of every pore
of him; and his jaw was levered up till his under
lip jutted out
in a bellicose ridge under his nose. His complexion had
gone as
red as a turkey-cock’s.

“Say that again?”

“I said we may have to keep you where
you won’t get in the
way,” answered the Saint calmly.
“Don’t look so unhappy—
there’s another bottle of whisky on board,
and Orace will bring
you your bread and milk and tuck you up at night.”

“That’s what you think, is it?”
grated Murdoch. “Well, you
try to keep me here!”

The Saint nodded. His right hand, with the half-smoked ciga
rette still clipped between the first two fingers,
slid lazily into the
shelf beside
the settee, under the porthole. It came out with the
automatic which he had put down there when he
began to dress.

“I’m trying,” he said, almost
apologetically.

Murdoch shied at the gun like a startled
horse. His screwed-up
eyes opened out in two slow dilations of
rabid unbelief.

“Do you mean you’re trying to hold me up?” he barked.

“That was the rough idea, brother,”
said the Saint amiably.
“I’m not very well up in these things,
but I believe this is the
approved procedure. I point a rod at you,
like this; and then you
either do what I tell you or try to jump on me
and get shot in
the
dinner. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

The bantering serenity of his voice lingered
on in the air while
Murdoch stared at him. The Saint was smiling faintly, and
the
sheen of sapphire in his eyes was alive with irrepressible
humour; but the automatic in
his hand was levelled with a per
fectly
sober precision that denied the existence of any joke.

Murdoch blinked at it as if it had been the
first specimen of
its kind which he had ever seen. His gaze travelled
lingeringly up
from
it to the Saint’s face, and the incredulity faded out of his
features before a spreading hardness of cold
calculating wrath.
He swallowed
once, and his chin settled down on his chest.

“You think you can get away with that,
do you?”

“I’m betting on it.”

Simon met the other’s reddened glare as if he hadn’t a shadow
on his horizon, and wondered what the odds ought to
be if it
were a betting proposition.
And he became reluctantly aware
that
any prudent layer would consider them distinctly hazardous. There was something
consolidating itself on Murdoch’s thinned-
out lips which stood for the kind of raging foolhardy fearlessness that
produces heroes and tombstones in cynically unequal proportions.

And at the same time something quite
different was thrusting
itself towards the front of the Saint’s
consciousness. It had
started like the hum of a cruising bee away
out in the far
reaches
of the night, a mere stir of sound too trivial to attract attention. While they
were talking it had grown steadily nearer,
until
the drone of it quivered through the saloon as a definite
pulse of disturbance in the universe. And now, in
the silence
while he and Murdoch
watched each other, it suddenly roared
up
and stopped, leaving a sharp void in the auditory scale
through which came the clear swish and chatter of
settling wa
ters.

Simon felt the settee dip gently under him,
and Murdoch’s
glass tinkled on the table as the wash slapped against the
side.
And then an
almost imperceptible jar of contact ran through the
boat, and a voice spoke somewhere outside.

“Ahoy,
Corsair!”

The Saint felt as if a starshell had burst
inside his head. Un
derstanding dawned upon him in a blinding light that
showed
him the meaning of that sequence of sounds, the owner of the
voice that
had hailed them, and everything that had led up to
what lay outside, as
clearly as if they had been focused under a
batten of sun arcs. If he had not been so
taken up with the im
mediate problem that had
been laid in front of him, he might
have
guessed it and waited for it all down to the last detail; but now it came to
him as a shock that electrified all his faculties as
if he had taken a shot of liquid dynamite.

It could hardly have taken a second to
develop, that galvanic
awakening of every nerve; but in the latter
half of that scorch
ing instant the Saint reviewed the circumstances and
realised
everything that had to be done. Murdoch was still half
arrested
in the stillness which the interruption had brought upon
him: his
head was turned a little to the left, his mouth a little
open, his gaze fractionally diverted. At that moment his train of thought
was
written across him in luminous letters a yard high. He also
was
considering the interruption, working over its bearing on his own predicament,
while the simmer of fighting obstinacy in him
was boiling up to
outright defiance. The Saint knew it. That
chance event was
wiping out the last jot of hesitation in the American’s mind. In another split
second he would let out a yell
or try to jump the gun—or both. But his powers of comprehen
sion were functioning a shade less rapidly than
the Saint’s, and
that split second
made as much difference as twenty years.

Simon let go the automatic and unfolded
himself from the
settee. He came up like the backlash of a cracked whip,
and his
fist hit Murdoch under the jaw with a clean crisp smack that
actually
forestalled the slight thud of the gun hitting the carpet. Murdoch’s eyes
glazed mutely over, and Simon caught him expertly as he straightened up on his
feet.

“Ahoy,
Corsair!”

“Ahoy to you,” answered the Saint.

The communicating door at the end of the
saloon was opening, and Orace’s globular eyes peered over his moustache through
the gap. There was no need of words. Simon heaved Murdoch’s in
animate
body towards him like a stuffed dummy, with a dozen
urgent commands
sizzling voicelessly on his gaze, and followed it
with the glass from
which Murdoch had been drinking. And then,
without waiting to
assure himself that Orace had grasped the situation to the full, he snatched up
his gun and leapt for the
companion in one continuous movement, slipping the automatic
into his hip pocket as he went.

He started with lightning speed, but he emerged into the after
cockpit quite leisurely; and everything else had
been packed into
such a dizzy
scintilla of time that there was no undue hiatus
between the first hail and his appearance. He turned unhurriedly
to the side; and Kurt Vogel, standing up in the
speedboat,
looked up at him with his
sallow face white in the dim light.

“Hullo,” said the Saint genially.

“May I come aboard for a moment?”

“Surely.”

Simon reached out an arm and helped him up.
Again he exper
ienced the peculiar revulsion of the other’s strong
clammy grip.

“I’m afraid this is a most unseemly hour
to pay a visit,” said
Vogel, in his suave flat voice. “But I
happened to be coming by,
and I hoped you hadn’t gone to bed.”

“I’m never very early,” said the
Saint cheerfully. “Come on
below and have a drink.”

He led the way down to the saloon, and pushed
the cigarette-
box across the table.

“D’you smoke?” Vogel accepted; and
Simon raised his voice.
“Orace!”

“As a matter of fact, I only called in
in case you’d made up
your mind about to-morrow,” said Vogel,
taking a light. “Per
haps you didn’t take my invitation seriously,
but I assure you
we’ll be glad to see you if you care to come.”

“It’s very good of you.” Simon looked up as Orace came
in,
“Bring another glass, will you,
Orace?”

He put the match to his own cigarette and
lounged back on
the opposite berth while Orace brought the glass. He
rested his
finger-tips on the edge of the table and turned his hand
over
with a perfectly natural movement that brought his thumb
downwards.
With his back turned to Vogel, Orace set down the
glass. His face was
always inscrutable, and the fringe of his luxuriant moustache concealed any
expression that might ever have
touched his mouth; but without moving another muscle of his
features he drooped one eyelid deliberately
before he retired, and
the Saint felt comforted.