Saint Overboard (17 page)

“I would rather like to come,” said
the Saint frankly, as he
poured out the whisky.

“Then we’ll expect you definitely.
Loretta is coming, too.”

“Who’s coming?”

“You know—Miss Page——
”

Simon eased a drop of liquid from the neck of
the bottle on
to the rim of the glass with a hand as steady as a rock,
and
looked up with a smile.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he murmured.
“Who is the lady?”

“She was with us——
I beg your
pardon,” Vogel said quickly.

“My memory is playing me tricks—I had an
idea she was with
us when we met this morning. Perhaps you will meet her in
Guernsey.”

“If she’s as pretty as her name, I hope I
do,” said the Saint
lightly.

He passed the glass over and sat down again,
feeling as if his stomach had been suddenly emptied with a vacuum pump.

“We shall be sailing about
eleven,” proceeded Vogel urbanely.
“But we shan’t
take long on the trip—we marine motorists have
rather an advantage in speed,” he
added deprecatingly. “I don’t
wonder
you thorough-going yachtmen despise us, but I’m
afraid I’m too old to learn your art.”

Simon nodded vaguely. But there was nothing
vague in his
mind. Every fibre of his being seemed to have been dissected
into an individual sentience of its own: he was conscious of the
vitality of every cell and corpuscle of his body, as though each separate atom
of him was pressed into the service of that super
charged aliveness.
His whole intellect was waiting, cat-like, for
Vogel to show his
hand.

Vogel gave him no sign. His smooth
aggressively profiled face
might have been moulded out of wax, with its
appearance of
hard and uniform opacity under the thin glaze of skin.
The
Saint’s keenest scrutiny could find no flaw in it. He had watched
Vogel
working up through a conspiracy of intricate and marvel
lously
juggled tensions towards a climax of cunning that had
been exploded like a
soap-bubble at the very instant of crisis; he
knew that even after
that Vogel must have taken a re-staggering
shock when he
discovered the vanishment of their prisoner and
the slumber of Otto
Arnheim; he could guess that even Vogel’s
impregnable placidity
must have felt the effect of a cumulation
of reverses that would have shaken any
other man to the begin
nings of fear; and yet
there was not a microscopical fissure in
the sleek veneer of that vulturine face. Simon admitted afterwards that
the realisation of all that was implied by that im
movable self-command
gave him a queer momentary supersti
tious
feeling of utter helplessness, like nothing else that he had
ever experienced in the presence of another human
being.

He took hold of the feeling with a conscious
effort and trod it
ruthlessly
down. Vogel was holding his drink up in one steady
hand, imperturbably surveying the details of the saloon, with the
eyelids drooping under the shadow of his black
overhanging
brows; and Simon watched
him without a tremor in the careless
good
humour of his gaze.

“But this is a charming boat,”
Vogel remarked idly. “What is
her tonnage?”

“About twenty-five.”

“Delightful …” Vogel got up and began to wander
around,
studying the panelling, touching
the fittings, investigating the
ingenious economy of space with all the
quiet pleasure of an
enthusiast. “I envy
you, really—to be able to have something
like this all to yourself, without bothering about crews and for
malities. If I were twenty years younger … Did
you have her
fitted out yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. And are all the other rooms
as attractive as this
one?”

So that was how it was coming. The Saint felt
a tiny pulse beginning to beat way back in the depths of his brain, like the
frantic
ticking of a distant clock racing with time.

“They’re pretty comfortable,” he
said modestly; and Vogel
caught him up without a second’s hesitation.

“I wish I could see them. I’m
tremendously interested—I had
no idea a small boat could be so luxurious.
You might even con
vert me!”

Simon, brought the tip of his cigarette to a
red glow, and
feathered a fading cloud of smoke through his lips.

He was for it. The fuse was lighted. There was
no excuse,
however plausible, no tactful way of changing the
subject, however fluent, from which Vogel would not draw his own conclu
sions.
Vogel had got him, exactly as he had got Loretta a few hours before. He had
paid that belated call, transparently, with the one object of discovering
whether the
Corsair
would yield
any connecting link with the night’s
disturbances, and he would
not be prepared to
go home satisfied after one brief confined
session in the saloon. Simon could see the man’s black unswerving eyes
fixed on him intently, outwardly with no more than the
ingenuous eagerness which made the granting of his
request a
favour that it would be
difficult in any circumstances to refuse—
inwardly with a merciless insistence of which no one without the
Saint’s knowledge would have been conscious. The
fuse was
lighted; and how soon the
mine would go up depended only on O
race’s
perception of the secondary uses of keyholes.

Now that the die was cast, Simon felt a
curious contented
relaxation.

“By all manner of means,” he said
amicably. “Let me show
you the works.”

3

He stood up, lighting a second cigarette from
the stub of the
first. The movement gave a few seconds’ grace in which
Orace, if
he had been listening, might prepare for the emergency as
best
he could. But it could not be prolonged a moment beyond the
requirements
of the bare physical facts; and with an inaudible
prayer to the
hardworked gods of all good buccaneers, the Saint flattened his discarded butt
in the ashtray and opened the com
municating door.

Simon Templar could rake over his memory at
any time and
comb out an impressive crop of moments which he had no
desire
to live over again. In spite of the ultimate balance of success
that
showed on the books of his meteoric career, his life had
contained its full quota of
occasions that definitely looked their
best
in distant retrospect. But of all that collection of unenjoyable
contingencies there were very few to which he
would so fer
vently have refused an
encore as those hectic instants during which the vista beyond the saloon
unrolled itself before the
opening
door. The spectacle of Orace sitting curled up in the diminutive galley, alone,
with a paper-covered detective story on his knee, was such a dizzy anti-climax
that it made the Saint feel
somewhat lightheaded. He could have raised
the protective cur
tain of Orace’s moustache
and kissed him.

Fortunately the presence of Kurt Vogel
precluded any such
regrettable demonstration. Simon cleared his throat and
spoke almost hesitatingly through the ecstatic glow which enveloped
him.

“This is the kitchen, where we heat the tins and open the bot
tles. On the right, the refrigerator, where we keep
the beer
warm
…”

He exhibited all the features of the galley with feverish pride;
and Vogel, as flatteringly impressed as any proud
owner could
want a guest to be,
admired them all in turn—the cunningly
fitted
glass and crockery racks, the planned compartments for all
kinds of provisions, the paraffin geyser that
provided hot water
at the turn of a
tap, the emergency stove slung in gimbals for
use when the weather was
too rough for a kettle to stand on the
ordinary
gas cooker, and all the other gadgets which had been
installed to reduce discomfort to the vanishing
point. All the
time Simon was casting
hopeful glances at Orace, searching for a
hint of what his staff had done to meet the situation; but the
staff had returned phlegmatically to its volume
of blood, and its
battle-scarred face
offered as many clues as a boiled pudding.

Eventually they had to move on. Beyond the
galley there was
a short alleyway, and Simon led the way briskly down it.

“That’s the bathroom and toilet,” he
explained casually, indic
ating the first door on the left as he went
by; and he would
have gone quickly on, but Vogel stopped.

“A bathroom—really? That’s even more remarkable on a boat
this size. May I look at it?”

Simon turned, with the glow of relief on him
dying down again
to
a cold resignation. Of all the places where Orace might have
been expected to dump his charge in a hurry, the
bathroom
seemed the most probable.
Simon looked innocently at Vogel;
and
the edge of his gaze, overlapping his guest, sought frantically for inspiration
over Vogel’s shoulder. But Orace was deep in his
sanguinary literature: only the back of his head could be seen,
and he had not moved.

“There’s nothing much to see,”
began the Saint diffidently;
but Vogel had already turned the handle.

Simon leaned sidelong against the bulkhead
and very deliber
ately
estimated the chances of a shot going unheard by the sea
man whom Vogel had left outside in charge of his
speedboat. He
also gave some consideration to the exact spot on Vogel’s
anat
omy where a bullet could be made to do
a regulated amount of damage without leaving any margin for an outcry to add
itself to
the noise. His left thumb
was tucked loosely into his belt; his
right
hand was a little behind his hip, the fingers hovering on the
opening of
the pocket into which he had slipped his gun. The
cigarette between his lips slanted out at a rakish angle that
would
have made certain people who knew him well stand very
still while they decided what scrap of cover they were going to
dive for when the storm broke loose. And yet there
was the
ghost of a smile lingering
on his mouth, and a shifting twinkle in
his blue eyes, which might have misled those who were not so
well informed.

“But that’s almost luxurious!”
came Vogel’s bland ingratiating
accents. “And a shower, too
…
I
certainly am learning a les
son—I almost wish I could find something that
you’ve
forgotten.”

Simon prised himself off the bulkhead and let
his right hand fall to his side. He didn’t take out a handkerchief and mop his
brow, but he wished he could have indulged in that sedative
gesture.
His shirt felt damp in the small of his back.

“I hope you won’t do that,” he said
earnestly. “Now, this is
just a small single cabin——
”

The tour went on. Vogel praised the small
single cabin. He studied the berth, the lockers under it, and peeped inside the
wardrobe.

The Saint began to wonder if he was simply
undergoing one of
Vogel’s diabolically clever psychological third degrees.
There was
something as nightmarish as a slow-motion avalanche about
Vo
gel’s patient thoroughness, a suggestion of feline cruelty in his
velvety
smoothness, that burred the edges of Simon’s nervous
system into crystals
of jagged steel. He felt an almost irresistible
temptation to throw
guile to the winds—to say: “Okay, brother. I have got Steve Murdoch here,
and he is the bird who paid you
a call earlier this evening; and so
what?”—to do any foolish
thing that would wipe that self-assured smirk off the other’s face
and bring the fencing match to a
soul-satisfying showdown. Only the knowledge that that might very well be what
Vogel was play
ing for eased the
strain of holding himself in check.

On the starboard side there was one double cabin. Vogel admired
this also. There were two fitted wardrobes for him to peer into, and also a
large recessed cupboard for storing blankets and
other dry gear, besides the usual lockers under the berths. As
Vogel
methodically opened each door in turn, to the accompaniment of a tireless flow
of approbation, the Saint felt himself
growing
so much older that it wouldn’t have surprised him to
look down and see a long white beard spreading
over his shirt.