Saint Overboard (22 page)

It was an uncanny feeling to be eating and
drinking on terms of almost saccharine cordiality with two men who might even
then be
plotting his funeral—and whose own funerals he himself would plot without
compunction in certain circumstances—with
every warning of antagonism
utterly suppressed on both sides. If
he had not had last night’s experience of Vogel’s methods
to
acclimatise him, he would have suffered
the same sensation of
nightmare
futility again, doubled in intensity because Loretta
was now with them; but his nerves had been
through as much of
that cat-and-mouse
ordeal as they were capable of tolerating,
and the normal reaction was setting in. Somehow he knew that
that game could not be played much longer, and
when the show
down came he would
have his compensation.

But meanwhile Loretta was there, beside
him—and he could
give her no more than the polite interest called for by
their re
cent
introduction … when every desire in his mind was taking
both her hands and laughing breathlessly with her
and talking
the quick sparkling
nonsense which was the measure of their
predestined understanding. He saw the shifting gold in her hair
and
the softness of her lips when she spoke, and was tormented
with a hunger that was harder to fight than all
Vogel’s inhuman
patience.

And then he was dancing with her.

They had discovered that there was a dance at
the hotel, and
after the coffee and liqueurs they had gone into the
ballroom.
Even so, he had waited while first Vogel and then Arnheim
danced, before he had looked at her and stood up as if only to
discharge
his duty to a fellow-guest.

But he had her alone. He had her hand in his,
and his arm
round her; and they were moving quietly in their own
world, like
one person, to music that neither of them heard.

“It’s a long time since I’ve seen
you-all, Mary Jane,” he said.

“Wasn’t it before I put my hair
up?”

“I think it was the Sunday School treat
when you ate too
many cream buns and had to give them up again in the
rhodo
dendrons.”

“You would remember that. And now
you’re such a big man,
doing such big and wonderful things. I’m so
proud of you, El
mer.”

“George,” Simon corrected her,
“is the name. By the way, did I ever give you the inside dope on that
dragon business? This
dragon, which was closely related to a
female poet, a dowager
duchess, and a prominent social reformer and
purity hound, was
actually a most mild and charitable beast, except when it
felt
that the morals of the community were being endangered. On
those
occasions it would become quite transformed, turning red
in the
face and breathing smoke and fire and uttering ferocious gobbling sounds like
those of a turkey which has been wished a
merry Christmas. The
misguided inhabitants of the country,
however, mistaking these symptoms for
those of sadistic dyspep
sia, endeavoured to appease the animal—whose
name, by the
way, was Angelica—by selecting their fairest damsels and
leaving
them as sacrifices, stripped naked and tied to trees and shrub
bery in
its path. Angelica, on the other hand, mistook these friendly offerings for
further evidence of the depravity which
had overtaken her friends, and was only
raised to higher trans
ports of indignation
and gobbling. The misunderstanding was rapidly denuding the country in every
sense, and in fact the
dearth of
beautiful damsels was become so acute that certain
citizens were advocating that their grandmothers
should be used instead, in the hope that Angelica might be moved by
intellectual endowments where mere physical charm had only aggravated the
gobbling, when I came along and … Why haven’t I
told you
how beautiful you are, Loretta?”

“Because you haven’t noticed?”

“Because it’s too true, I think. And so many other ridiculous
things have been happening all the time. And
I’ve been so stu
pid … They’d
have tied you to a tree for Angelica if they’d
seen you, Loretta.”

“With nothing on?”

“And everyone would have been asking
‘Where’s George?’ He was a Saint, too.”

There was a breath of cool night air on their
faces; and as if
there had been no voluntary movement they were outside.
There must have been a window or a door, some steps perhaps, some
mundane
path by which they had walked out of the ballroom
into the infinite
evening; but it was as if mortar and stone and
wood had melted away
like shadows to leave them tinder the
stars. Their feet moved on a soft
carpet of grass, and the music
whispered behind them.

Presently she sat down, and he sat behind
her. He still kept her
hand.

“Well,” he said.

She smiled slowly.

“Well?”

“Apparently it wasn’t death,” he
said. “So I suppose it must
have been dishonour.”

“It might be both.”

He counted over her fingers and laid them
against his cheek.

“You feel alive. You sound alive. Or
are we both ghosts? We
could go and haunt somebody.”

“You knew something, Simon. When we met
on the water
front——”

“Was it as obvious as that?”

“No. I just felt it.”

“So did I. My heart went pit-a-pat. Then
it went pat-a-pit.
Then
it did a back somersault and broke its bloody neck. It still
feels cracked.”

Her other hand covered his mouth.

“Please. Simon. Every minute we stay
here is dangerous. They may have missed us already. They may be talking. Tell
me what you knew. What happened last night?”

“They caught Steve—slugged him and
hauled him out of his
canoe. I went back to the
Falkenberg
and
slugged Otto and
brought home the blue-eyed boy. Otto never saw me, but I
don’t
know how many other people had inspected the boy friend be
fore I
butted in. If the same guy who heard him asking for you
at the
Hotel de la Mer yesterday had seen him, I knew you were
in the book.”

“What about you?”

“Vogel came over shortly afterwards and
put on a great show
of being shown over the
Corsair,
while I changed
my nappies and
did the honours. But he didn’t find Steve. I’m still
technically anonymous; Steve got away.”

“Who from?”

“From me. In between Vogel going home
and me congratulat
ing Orace on the hiding-place, Steve saw the dawn and set
a
course for it. I saw him again in the morning, when I was trying
to reach
you before Vogel did and warn you what might be wait
ing—as a matter of
fact, he held me up just long enough to let
Vogel get in first. I missed seeing you by
about thirty seconds.
Where Steve is now I
don’t know, but if you bet your shirt he’ll
bob up here to-morrow you won’t run much risk of being left
uncovered.” The Saint turned his face to her,
and she saw the
dim light shift on his
eyes. “He saw you this morning, didn’t
he?”

“Yes.”

“Telling you I tried to kidnap him.”

“Yes.”

“And speaking as follows: ‘This guy
Templar is just a tough
crook from Toughville, Crook County, and if
you think he’s
turned Horatio Alger because you gave him a pretty smile
you’re
crazy.’ “

“Were you listening?”

He shook his head.

“I’m a thought-reader. Besides, I did
try to kidnap him, after
a fashion. Anyway I tried to detain him.
Obviously. He may be
the hell of a good detective in some ways, but he doesn’t fit into
the game we’re playing here. He’d done his
best to break it up
twice in one
day, and I thought it’d be a good thing to keep him
quiet for a bit. I still do.”

“And the rest?” she said.

“What do you think?”

Her hand slipped down over his hair, came to
rest on his
shoulder.
For once the dark mischievous eyes were quiet with a
kind of surrendered sadness.

“I think Steve was right.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Yes. I’m a fool, aren’t I? But I didn’t
tell you I was weak-
minded. All Ingerbeck’s people have to go through an
intelligence
test, and they tell me I’ve got the mentality of a child
of five.
They say I’ll probably finish up in an asylum in another
year or
two.”

“May I come and see you in the padded
cell?”

“If you want to. But you won’t. When
you’ve had all you
want from me——
”

He silenced her with his lips. And with her
mouth he tried to
silence the disbelief in his own mind that sat back and
asked cold
questions. There was a hunger in him, overriding reason,
that
turned against the weary emptiness of disbelief.

He was a man, and human. He kissed her,
touched her, held
her
face in his hands, and found forgetfulness in the soft sweet
ness of her body. He was aware of her with every
sense; and of
his own desire. There
was no other answer he could give. He
should
have been thinking of so many other things; but he had
stopped thinking. He was tired—not with the
painful fatigue of
ordinary
exhaustion, but with the peace of a man who has come
home from a long journey.

Presently he lay back with his head in her
lap, looking up at
the stars.

“Tell me something,” she said.

“I’m happy.”

“So am I. I’ve no reason to be, but I am.
It doesn’t seem to
matter.
You do love me, don’t you?”

He was in a dream from which he didn’t want
to wake. Some
where in his memory there was the cynical impress of a
thought he had had so long ago, that if the need came she would use her
fascination to tempt him as she had hoped to tempt Vogel. And
there was
his own thought that if that was her strategy he would meet her cheerfully with
her own weapons. But that was so faint
and far away. Must he
be always thinking, suspecting, fighting— when there was so much comfort in the
present?

He said: “Yes.”

“Say it all.”

“I love you.”

“Dear liar …”

She leaned over him. Her hair fell on his
face. She kissed him.

“I don’t care.” she said.
“To-morrow I shall be wise—and
sorry. You’re going to hurt me, Saint. And I don’t seem to
mind.
I’m happy. I’ve had to-night.”

“Is there any to-morrow ?”

She nodded.

“We must go in,” she said.

Again they walked under the glittering sky,
hand in hand,
towards reality. There was so much that should have been
said,
so little that they could say. This was illusion, yet it was more
real than
life.

“What’s your to-morrow?” he asked.

“The Professor’s making his trial
descent. I don’t know what
happens afterwards, but next week they’re
going down to Ma
deira. Vogel asked me to stay with them.”

“And you said you would.”

“Of course.”

“Must you?”

“Yes.” The word was quick, almost
brutal in its curtness. And
then, as if she had hurt herself also, she said: “You don’t
under
stand. This is my job. I took it on
with my eyes open. I told
you. I
gave my word. Would you think the same of me if I broke
it?”

Out of the sudden ache of madness in him he
answered: “Yes,
Just the same.”

“You wouldn’t. You think so now,
because you want me; but
you’d remember. You’d always remember that I
ran away once
—so why shouldn’t I run away again? I know I’m
right.” He
knew it, too. “You must let me finish the job. Help
me to finish
it.”