Saint Overboard (23 page)

“It’s as good as finished,” he
said, with a flash of the old reck
less bravado.

“Kiss me.”

The lights of the ballroom struck them like a
physical blow.
The
orchestra was still playing. How long had they been away?
Ten minutes? Ten years? She slipped into his arms
and he went
on dancing with her, as if they had never stopped,
mechanically. He let the lights and the noise drug his senses, deliberately
sink
ing himself in a stupor into which
emotion could not penetrate.
He
would not think.

They completed a circle of the floor, and rejoined the others.
Vogel was just paying a waiter.

“We thought you would like another drink
after your efforts,
Mr
Tombs. It’s quite a good floor, isn’t it?”

4

Simon forced himself back to reality; and it
was like stepping
under a cold shower. And exactly as if he had stepped
under a
cold shower he was left composed and alert again, a passionless
fighting
machine, perfectly tuned, taking up the threads of the
adventure into which
he had intruded. The madness of a few
moments ago might never have lived in
him: he was the man
who had come out on to the deck of the
Corsair
at
the sound of
a cry in the night, the cynical cavalier of the crooked
world, steady-handed and steady-eyed, playing the one game in which death was
the unalterable stake.

“Not at all bad,” he murmured.
“If I’d been in the Professor’s
shoes I wouldn’t have missed
it.”

“I suppose it must always be difficult for the layman to
under
stand the single-mindedness of the
scientist. And yet I can sym
pathise
with him. If his experiments ended in failure, I’m sure I
should be as disappointed as if a pet ambition of
my own had
been exploded.”

“I’m sure you would.”

Vogel’s colourless lips smiled back with
cadaverous suavity.

“But that’s quite a remote possibility.
Now, you’ll be with us
to-morrow, won’t you? We are making a fairly
early start, and
the weather forecasts have promised us a fine day.
Suppose you came on board about nine
…”

They discussed the projected trip while they
finished their
drinks, and on the walk back to the harbour. Vogel’s
affability was at its most effusive; his stony black eyes gleamed with a
curious
inward lustre. In some subtle disturbing way he seemed
more confident, more
serenely devoid of every trace of impatience
or anxiety.

“Well—goodnight.”

“Till to-morrow.”

Simon shook hands; touched the moist warm paw
of Otto
Arnheim. He saluted Loretta with a vague flourish and the out-
line of a
smile.

“Goodnight.”

No more. And he was left with an odd feeling
of emptiness
and surprise, like a man who has dozed for a moment and
roused
up with a
start to wonder how long he has slept or if he has slept
at all. Anything that had happened since they
came in from that
enchanted garden
had gone by so quickly that that sudden
awakening was his first real awareness of the lapse of time. He
felt as if he had been whirled round in a giant
sling and flung into an arctic sea, as if he had fought crazily to find his
depth
and then been hurled up by a
chance wave high and dry on some
lonely peak, all within a space of
seconds. He remembered that he had been talking to Vogel, quietly, accurately,
without the slightest danger of a slip, like a punch-drunk fighter who has
remained master of his technique without conscious
volition.
That
was illusion: only the garden was real.

He shook himself like a dog, half angrily; but in a way the
sensation persisted. His thoughts went back
slowly and deliber
ately, picking
their footholds as if over slippery stepping-stones.
Loretta Page. She had come out of the fog over
Dinard and
disturbed his sleep. He
had been fascinated by the humour of her
eyes and the vitality of her
brown body. On an impulse he had kissed her. How long had he known her? A few
hours. And she had been afraid. He also had been afraid; but he had found her.
They had talked nothing except nonsense; and yet he had kissed
her again, and found in that moment a completer
peace than he
had ever known. Then
they had talked of love. Or hadn’t they?

So little had been said; so much seemed to have
been under
stood. His last glimpse of her had been as she turned
away, with Vogel tucking her hand into his arm; she had been gay and ac
quiescent.
He had let her go. There was nothing else he could do.
They were in the
same legion, pledged to the same grim code. So
he had let her go,
with a smile and a flourish, for whatever might
come of the fortunes
of war, death or dishonour. And he had
thought:
“Illusion
…”

Sssssh …

The Saint froze in the middle of a step, with
his mind wiped
clean like a slate and an eerie ballet of ice-cold
pinpricks skitter
ing
up into the roots of his hair. Once again he had been dream
ing, and once again he had been brought awake in
a chilling flash.
Only this time
there was no feeling of unreality about the gal
vanic arresting of all his perceptions.

He stopped exactly as he was when the sound
caught him, on
his toes, with one foot on the deck of the
Corsair
and
the other
reaching down into the cockpit, one hand on a stanchion
and the other steadying himself against the roof of the miniature wheel-
house, as
if he had been turned into stone. All around him was
the quiet dimness of
the harbour, and the lights of the port
spread up the slope
from the waterfront in scintillating terraces
of winking
brilliance in front of him; somewhere on one of the esplanades a couple of
girls were giggling shrilly at the inaudible
witticisms of their escorts. But for that
long-drawn moment the
Saint was marooned as
far from those outposts of the untroubled
commonplace as if he had been left on the last outlaw island of
the Spanish Main. And in that space of incalculable
separation
he stayed like the
inanimate imprint of a moving man on a pho
tographic plate, listening for a confirmation of that weird tor
tured hiss that had transfixed him as he began to
let himself
down over the coaming.

He knew that it was no ordinary sound such as
Orace might
have made in moving about his duties; otherwise it would
never have sent that unearthly titillation coursing over his spine. There
was a strained intensity about
it, a racking sibilance of frightful effort, that had crashed in upon his
dormant vigilance as effectively as an explosion. His brain must have analysed
it instinctively, in an instant, with the lightning intuition bred of all the
dangerous years behind him: now, he had to make a
laborious
effort to recollect the
features of the sound and work out exactly
why it had stopped him, when subconscious reaction had
achieved the same result in a microscopical
fraction of the time.

A few inches in front of his left foot, the
open door of the
saloon
stencilled an elongated panel of light across the cockpit.
The ache eased out of his cramped leg muscles as
he gently com
pleted his interrupted movements and finished the transfer
of his
weight down on to his extended toes.
And as both his feet ar
rived on the
same deck he heard a low gasping moan.

He touched the gun on his hip; but that might
be too noisy.
His left hand was still grasping the stanchion by which he
had been letting himself down, and with a silent twist he slipped it
out of its
socket. Then he took a long breath and stepped out
across the door of
the saloon, squarely into the light.

He looked down the companion into a room
through which a
young cyclone seemed to have passed. The bunks had been
opened and
the bedding taken apart; lockers had been forced
open and their
contents scattered on the floor; books had been
taken from their
shelves and thrown down anywhere. The carpet
had been ripped up and
rolled back, and a section of panelling
had been torn bodily
away from the bulkhead. The Saint saw all
this at once, as he
would have taken in the broad features of any
background; but his gaze was fixed on the
crumpled shape of a
man who lay on the
floor—-who was trying, with set teeth and
pain-wrinkled face, to drag himself up on to his hands and knees.
The man whose hiss of convulsive breathing had
shocked him
out of his sleep-walking
a minute ago. Orace.

Simon put a hand on the rail of the companion
and dropped into the saloon. He left his stanchion on the floor and hoisted
Orace up
on to one of the disordered couches.

“What’s the matter?”

Orace’s fierce eyes stared at him brightly,
while he clutched his
chest with one rough hand; and Simon saw that
the breast of
his shirt was red with blood. The man’s voice came with
a hoarse
effort.

“Ain’t nothink. Look out …”

“Well, let’s have a look at you, old
son——
”

The other pushed him away with a sudden
access of strength. O
race’s head was turned towards the half-closed
door at the
forward end of the saloon, and his jaw was clamped up
under the
pelmet of his moustache with the same savage doggedness
that
had been
carved into it when Simon had seen him making that heroic fight to get himself
up from the floor. And at the same
moment,
beyond the communicating door, Simon heard the faint
click of a latch and the creak of a board under a
stealthy
foot
…

A slight dreamy smile edged itself on to the
Saint’s mouth as
he stooped in swift silence to recover his stanchion.
Clubbed in
his left hand, an eighteen-inch length of slender iron,
it formed a
weapon that was capable of impressing the toughest skull
with a
sense of painful inferiority; and the thought that the sportsman
who had
turned his cabin upside down and done an unascer
tained amount of
damage to Orace was still on board, and might
come within reach of a
shrewd smack on the side of the head,
brought a comforting warmth of grim
contentment into his veins.

“Steady, me lad. We must get this coat
off to see what the trouble is
…
I never thought you’d go and hit the
bottle di
rectly I was out of sight, Orace. And I suppose the cap
blew off the ginger ale when you weren’t looking … There we are. Now if we
just change the cut of this beautiful shirt of yours
…”

He burbled on, as if he were still attending
to the patient,
while
he picked his way soundlessly over the littered floor. His eyes were fixed on
the door into the galley, and they were not
smiling.

And then he stopped.

He stopped because the half-open door had
suddenly jerked
wide open. Beyond it, the further end of the alleyway was
in
darkness; but in the shadowy space between the light of the
saloon and
the darkness beyond he could see the black
configuration of a man, and the gun in the
man’s hand was held
well forward so that the
light of the saloon laid dull bluish
gleams
along the barrel.

“Don’t come any closer,” said the
shadow.

The Saint relaxed slowly, rising from the
slight crouch to
which his cautious advance had unconsciously reduced him.
The
man facing him seemed to be of medium height, square and
thickset;
his voice had a throaty accent which was unfamiliar.

“Hullo, old cockroach.” Simon
greeted him in the gentlest of drawls, with the stanchion swinging loosely and
rather speculatively in his hand. “Come in and make yourself at home. Oh,
but
you have.
Never mind. There’s still some of the bulkhead you
haven’t pulled to pieces——
”

“I’ll finish that in a minute. Turn round.”