Saint Overboard (2 page)

And then he saw her. A shift of the air moved
the mist-cur
tains capriciously at the very limit of his vision, and
he saw her
suddenly in the down-seeping nimbus of his riding
lights.

Her.

It was that realisation of sex, guessed rather than positively
asserted by the dimly-seen contour of her
features and the glis
tening curve of a green bathing cap, which sent a
skin-deep tin
gle of intuition plunging into
profound and utter certainty. If it
had
been a man, he would not have lost interest; but he could
have produced half a dozen commonplace theories
to assimilate
that final fact, with a
regretful premonition that the adventure
would not be likely to run for long. But a girl swimming stealth
ily through a fogbound sea at three o’clock in the
morning
could not be associated with
yells and shooting in the dark by
any
prosaic theory; and his pulses, which up to that moment had
been ticking over as steadily as clockwork,
throbbed a shade
faster at the
knowledge. Somewhere out there in the leaden haze
big medicine was seething up, and inevitably it
was ordained that he must dip his spoon in the brew.

He was standing so motionless, half cloaked by
the deep
shadow of the deckhouse, that she had taken three more
long
strokes towards the ketch before she saw him. She stopped swim
ming
abruptly, and stared up—he could almost read the wild
thought tearing through her mind that she
was caught in a trap,
that in such a
situation he could not help challenging her. And
then, as the monotonous chugging of the outboard circled round and came
closer, he caught in her upturned eyes a frantic forlorn-hope appeal, a
desperate voiceless entreaty that placed the ultimate seal on his destiny in
that adventure.

He leaned over the side and grasped her wrist;
and her first
revelation
of his steel-wire strength was the amazing ease with which he lifted her
inboard with one hand. Without a word he
pushed
her down on the floor of the cockpit and unhitched a
fender, dipping it
in the water to repeat the faint splash she had
made as she came out.

At that moment the outboard loomed up through
the mist and
coughed itself to silence. Dropping the fender to water
level once
again, so that there should be no doubt left in any
interested
minds about the origin of whatever noise had been heard
from
that quarter,
he adjusted it under the gunwale of his dinghy and made it fast to the
stanchion from which he had slipped it. The
other
boat was gliding up under its own momentum while he did
so, and he was able to make a swift summary of its
occupants.

There were three of them. Two, in rough seamen’s jerseys, sat
in the sternsheets, one of them holding the
tiller and the other
rewinding the
starter lanyard. The third man was sitting on one
of the thwarts
forward, but as the boat slid nearer he rose to his
feet.

Simon Templar studied him with an interest
that never ap
peared
more than casual. From his position in the boat, his well-
cut reefer jacket and white trousers, and the way
he stood up, he
was obviously the
leader of the party. A tallish well-built man
with one hand resting rather limply in his coat pocket—a typical
wealthy yachtsman going about his own mysterious
business.
And yet, to the Saint, who had in his time walked out alive
from
the bright twisted places where men
who keep one hand in a side
pocket
are a phenomenon that commands lightning alertness,
there was something in the well-groomed
impassivity of him as
he rose there
to his full height that touched the night with a new
tingling chill that was nevertheless a kind of
unlawful ecstasy.
For a couple of
seconds the Saint saw his face as the dinghy
hissed under the lee of the
Corsair,
a long swarthy black-browed
face with a great eagle’s beak of a nose.

Then the beam of a powerful flashlight
blazed from the man’s
free hand, blotting out his face behind its
dazzling attack. For a
moment it dwelt on Simon’s straightening
figure, and he knew
that in that moment the dryness of his hair and his
pyjamas
were methodically noted and reduced to their apparent place in
the scheme of things. Then the
light swept on, surveyed the lines
of the
ketch from stern to bow, rested for another moment on
the name lettered there, and went flickering over
the surrounding
water.

“Lost something?” Simon inquired
genially; and the light
came back to him.

“Not exactly.” The voice was clear
and dispassionate, almost lackadaisical in its complete emptiness of
expression. “Have you
seen anyone swimming around here?”

“A few unemployed fish,” murmured
the Saint pleasantly. “Or
are you looking for the latest Channel
swimmer? They usually
hit the beach further east, towards Calais.”

There was a barely perceptible pause before
the man
chuckled; but even then, to the Saint’s abnormally sensitive ears,
there was
no natural good humour in the sound. It was simply an
efficient adaptation
to circumstances, a suave getout from a situation that bristled with question
marks.

“No—nothing like that. Just one of our
party took on a silly
bet. I expect he’s gone back.”

And with that, for Simon Templar, a flag
somewhere among
the
ghostly armadas of adventure was irrevocably nailed to the
mast. The mystery had crept out of the night and
caught him.
For the tall hooknosed
man’s reply presumed that he hadn’t
heard
any of the other sounds associated with the swimmer; and,
presuming
that, it stepped carefully into the pitfall of its own surpassing smoothness.
More—it attempted deliberately to lead him astray. A swim on a foggy night that
included gun-play and
.the peculiar kind of
shout that had awakened him belonged to a
species of silly bet which the Saint had still to meet; and he
couldn’t help being struck by the fact that it
disposed so adequately of the obvious theory of an ordinary harbour theft, and
the hue and cry which should have
arisen from such an explana
tion.
Even without the glaring error of sex in the last sentence,
that would have been almost enough.

He stood and watched the search party
vanishing on their way
into the fog, the flashlight in the hooknosed
man’s hand blinking
through the mist until it was lost to sight; and then he
turned
and slid
down the companion into the saloon, switching on the
lights as he did so. He heard the girl follow him down, but he
drew the curtains over the portholes before he
turned to look at
her.

2

She had pulled off the green bathing cap, and
her hair had tumbled to her shoulders in ,a soft disorder of chestnut rippled
with spun
gold. Her red mouth seemed to be of the quality that
triumphs even over
salt water; and the purely perfunctory
covering of her
attenuated bathing costume left room for no
deception about the
perfection of her slender sun-gilt figure. Her
steady grey eyes held
a tentative gleam of mischief, soberly
checked at that
moment and yet incorrigibly seeking for natural expression, which for one
fleeting instant worked unpardonable
magic on his breathing.

“A bit wet in the water to-night, isn’t
it?” he remarked coolly.

“Just a little.”

He pulled open a drawer and selected a couple
of towels. As an
afterthought, he detached a bathrobe from its hook and
dropped
that also on the couch.

“D’you prefer brandy or hot
coffee?”

“Thanks.” The impulse of mischief
in her eyes was only a
wraith of itself, masked down by a colder
intentness. “But I
think I’d better be getting back—to collect my
bet. It was awfully good of you to—understand so quickly—and—and help
me.”

She held out her hand, in a quick gesture of
final friendliness,
with
a smile which ought to have left the Saint gaping dreamily
after her until she was lost again in the night.

“Oh, yes.” Simon took the hand, but
he didn’t complete the
action by letting go of it immediately as he
should have done.
He put one foot up on the couch and rested his forearm on
his
knee; and the
quiet light of amusement that twinkled in his sea-
blue eyes was suddenly very gay and disturbing. “Of course, I
did hear something about a bet——
”

“It—it was rather a stupid one, I
suppose.” She took her hand
away, and her voice steadied itself and
became clearer. “We were
just talking, about how easy it would be to
get away with any
thing on a foggy night, and somehow or other it got
around to
my
saying that I could swim to Dinard and back without them
finding me. They’d nearly caught me when you pulled
me on board. I don’t know if that was allowed for in the bet, but——
”

“And the shooting?”

Her fine brows came together for a moment.

“That was just part of the make-believe. We were pretending
that I’d come out to rob the
 
ship——
”

“And the shouting?”

“That was part of it, too. I suppose it
all sounds very idi
otic——
”

The Saint smiled. He slipped a cigarette out
of a packet on the shelf close by and tapped it.

“Oh, not a bit. I like these games
myself—they do help to pass
away the long evenings. Who did the
shooting?”

“The man who spoke to you from the
dinghy.”

“I suppose he didn’t shoot himself by
mistake? It was a most
realistic job of yelling.” Simon’s voice
expressed nothing but
gentle interest and approval; his smile was
deceptively lazy. And
then he left the cigarette in his mouth and
stretched out his hand again. “By the way, that’s a jolly-looking
gadget.”

There was a curious kind of thick rubber
pouch strapped on
the belt of her swim suit, and he had touched it before
she could
draw back.

“It’s just one of those waterproof
carriers for cigarettes and a vanity case. Haven’t you seen them before?”

“No.” He took his foot down, again
from the couch, rather
deliberately. “May I look?”

The note of casual, politely apologetic
inquisitiveness was
perfectly done. They might have been carrying on an idle
con
versation on
the beach in broad sunlight; but she stepped back
before he could touch the case again.

“I—I think I’d better be getting back.
Really. The others will
be starting to worry about me.”

He nodded.

“Perhaps they will,” he admitted.
“But you can’t possibly go swimming about in this mess. You don’t know
what a risk you’re
taking.
It’s a hundred to one you’d miss your boat, and it’s cold
work splashing around in circles. I’ll run you
back.”

“Please don’t bother. Honestly, the
water isn’t so cold——
”

“But you are.” His smiling eyes
took on the slight shiver of
her brown body. “And it’s no
trouble.”

He passed her with an easy stride, and he was on the compan
ion when she caught his arm.

“Please! Besides, the bet doesn’t——
”

“Damn the bet, darling. You’re too
young and good-looking to
be washed up stiff on the beach. Besides,
you’ve broken the rules
already by coming on board. I’ll take you
over, and you can just
swim across if you like.”

“I won’t go with you. Please don’t make
it difficult.”

“You won’t go without me.”

He sat down on the companion, filling the
narrow exit with his
broad shoulders. She bit her lip.

“It’s sweet of you,” she said
hesitantly. “But I couldn’t give
you any more trouble. I’m not
going.”

“Then you ought to use those towels and
decide about the
brandy and/or coffee,” said the Saint amiably.
“Of course, it
may compromise you a bit, but I’m broad-minded. And if
this is
going to be Romance, may I start by saying that your mouth is
the
loveliest——
”