Saint Overboard (38 page)

God knows what thoughts, what roaring
maelstroms of incred
ulous understanding, must have gone
thundering through his
brain in those infinite seconds. He must have
known even then
that the death which he had meted out to others had found
him
in his turn, but he would never know how it had come about. He
had been on the peaks of
triumph. He had won every point; and this last descent should have been no more
than a stereotyped
epilogue to a finished
history. He had left Simon Templar a prisoner, outwitted and disarmed and
beaten, locked up to await the
moment
when he chose to remove him forever from the power
of interference. And
yet the Saint was there, smiling at him with
set
lips and bleak steel-blue eyes, where Ivaloff should have been.
The Saint had come back, not beaten, but free and
inescapable. The crew had dressed him and sent him down without a word.
That was the last bitter dreg of realisation which
he had to ac
cept. The Saint had
reversed their weapons. But how it had been done, how the crew had been bribed
or intimidated, by what
inconceivable
alchemy the Saint had turned the tables, remained
a riddle that he would never solve.

He fought. As if the shock had wiped away the
last fragments
of that more than human self-control, his hand shot out
and
clawed at the Saint’s shoulder. His fingers slipped on the coarse
twill, and the Saint grasped his wrist and twisted it away.

From the distance of a foot, which might have
been the
breadth of the Atlantic, Simon Templar looked at him
through the wall of water which cut them off, and his blue eyes smiled
with a
soundless and terrible laughter into the wild distorted
face. And
he brought down the stone he was holding in a fearful
blow on the fingers
of Vogel’s right hand where they clung to the
rock.

A spasm of agony crawled across Vogel’s
features. And as the
crushed hand released its hold, Simon slashed
his knife clean
through Vogel’s air pipe and pushed him away.

Vogel fell, absurdly slowly, toppling backwards from the lad
der very gradually and deliberately, with his arms
waving and his
hands clutching spasmodically
at the yielding water. He went
down,
and the darkness of his own treasure-cave closed on his
gleaming helmet. A slender trickle of bubbles
curled up out of
the gloom.
…

The Saint climbed lumberingly to his feet.

“Otto,” he said curtly, still imitating Vogel’s voice;
and in a
moment Arnheim answered.

“Yes?”

“Bring me up alone.”

Vogel’s life-line, knotted around his waist,
tightened against his body. And at once he slashed through the telephone wires
which
were his last link with his own line.

His feet dragged off the ground, and he rose
up through the
light, past the lamp, up through the deep green
shadowiness be
yond. The circle of illuminated sea floor dwindled below
him.
Down in the darkness of the crypt into which Vogel had fallen
he seemed to catch a glimpse of
a moving sheen of metal, as if Vogel was trying to fight his way up again. But
all that was very
far away. He went up
alone, up through the darkening shadows
and the silence.

4

Coming up from that depth, there was no need
for a gradual decompression. In three minutes he was getting his feet on to the
rungs of the ladder. There was the sudden release of pressure
from his
body, and the pull of the weights on his shoulders. He climbed up into the
light.

Hands helped him up on to the deck, tapped on
his helmet and
pointed, guiding him to the stool that was placed behind
him. He sat down, facing the sea, and they unscrewed the porthole in the front
of his helmet. He felt the sweet freshness of the natural air
again.

The round opening where the porthole had been
slid sideways
across
his vision as the helmet was released. He bent his head for
it to be lifted off, and at the same time he
slipped his knife out
of its sheath
into his left hand. As the helmet came off, he kept
his head bowed and felt for the automatic inside
his collar. He
found it; and the
knife flashed momentarily as he cut through
the tie on which he had
slung the gun. Then he turned round and
faced
the deck.

“I think this is the end, boys,” he said quietly.

At the sound of his voice, those who had not
been looking at
him turned round. Calvieri, who was putting down the
helmet,
dropped it the last six inches. It fell with a deep hollow thud. And
then
there was utter stillness.

Arnheim had got up out of his chair and had
been advancing
towards him. He stopped, as if a brick wall had suddenly
materi
alised in front of his toes; and his pink fleshy face seemed to
turn
yellow. His gross paunch quivered. A glassy film spread over
his small
pig eyes, turning them into frozen buttons of ink; and
his soft moist mouth
drooped open in a red O of fluttering unbe
lief. The Saint spoke
principally to him.

“Kurt Vogel is dead. Or he soon will be.
I believe there’s
enough
air in a diving suit to last a man about five minutes after
his air-line is cut. That is my justice…
.” The Saint paused for
a
moment, and his calm gaze swept over the rest of them there
with the timeless impassivity of a judge. “As
for the rest of
you,” he said,
“some of you may get away with a nice long rest
in prison—if you live long enough to stand your
trial. But to do
that you will have to put your hands high up above your
heads
and take great care not to annoy me,
because if any of you give
me a
scare——
”

The automatic in his hand cracked once, a sudden sharp splash
of sound in the persuasive flow of his words; and
Otto Arnheim,
with his hand halfway to his pocket, lurched like a
drunken man. A stupid blankness spread across his face, and his knees folded.
He went down limply on to the deck, rolled over,
and lay still,
with his staring eyes
turned to the winking stars.

“——
this gun is liable to
go off,” said the Saint.

None of the men moved. They looked down at
the motionless
body of Otto Arnheim, and kept their hands stretched well
above their heads. And the Saint smiled with his lips.

“I think we shall have to put you away
for a while,” he said. “Calvieri, you take some of that life-line and
tie your playmates
together. Lash ‘em by the waists about a yard apart, and
then
add yourself to the string. Then we’ll all go below, with you
leading
the way and me holding the other end of the line, and see
about rounding up the rest of
the herd.”

“That’s already been done, old boy,”
murmured Roger Con-
way, stepping out on to the deck from the after
companion, with
a gun in each hand and Steve Murdoch following him.

IX
.
      
FINALE

“IT was quite easy really,” said Roger Conway patronisingly.
“When
we got Loretta’s radiogram we set off at once, straight
for here.
We nearly piled your boat up on several rocks on the
way, but Orace
managed to see us through. Took us about three
hours. The
Falkenberg
passed us about halfway, somewhere in
the distance, and we
just managed to keep her in sight. Luckily
it was getting dark,
so we turned out our lights after a bit and
crept up as close as
we dared. We dropped our hook about a
quarter of a mile away, and as soon as
we’d given the
Falkenberg
time to get well settled in we manned the
dinghy and paddled
over to reconnoitre. Everybody on deck seemed to be
pretty
busy with the diving business, so we came aboard on the other
side and
went below. We collected seven specimens altogether on
the round-up,
including a bloke who seems to have got a broken jaw. Anyway he’s still asleep.
The rest of ‘em we gagged and tied
up and left for inspection. We made a
pretty thorough job of it,
if I may say so.”

With which modest summary of his activities, Roger helped
himself to one of Vogel’s cigars, threw another
to Peter Quentin, and subsided exhausted into the most comfortable armchair.

Simon Templar regarded them disparagingly.

“You always were frightfully efficient
at clearing up the bat
tlefield after all the troops had gone
home,” he remarked appre
ciatively. “And where did you collect
the American Tragedy?”

“Oh, him? He crashed on to the
Corsair
while we were
having a drink with Orace, earlier in the afternoon,” Peter explained.
“Seemed to be all steamed up about something, and flashed a lot of badges
and things at us, so we brought him along. He seemed
to be very excited about Loretta batting off on this party, so I
suppose he’s her husband or something. Are you the
co-re
spondent?”

Steve Murdoch dug his fists into his coat
pockets and glowered
round with his square jaw thrust out. His
rugged hard-boiled
face made the luxurious furnishings of the wheelhouse seem
faintly effeminate.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he stated
truculently. “And this time I’m
stayin’. I guess I owe you something for helpin’ me clean
up this
job, Saint; an’ maybe it’s good
enough to account for those two punches you hung on me. But that’s as far as it
goes. I’ll see that
Ingerbeck’s hear
about what you’ve done, and probably they’ll
offer you a share of the reward. If they do, you can go up an’
claim
it honest. But for the time being I’ll look after things my
self.”

Simon looked at the ceiling.

“What a lot of modest violets there are
around here,” he
sighed. “Of course I wouldn’t dream of trying to steal your
cur
tain, Steve, after all the brilliant
work you’ve put in. But what
exactly
are you going to do?”

“I’m goin’ to ask one of you boys to go
ashore an’ see if you
can knock up the gendarmerie. If you can find
a telegraph office,
you can send one or two cables for me as well. The gendarmes
can grab this guy
Baudier before he skips, an’ come on down to
post
a guard on board here. That’ll do till I can start things
movin’ from the top. But until I’ve got that guard
posted I’m going to sit over the diving gear myself, in case one of you
thought he might go down an’ see what he could
pick up. I guess
you’ve done enough
diving for one day, Saint, an’ you’re not goin’
down again while I can
stop you. An’ just in case you’re thinkin’
you
can put me to sleep again like you did before, let me tell you
that if you did get away with anything like that
you’d have to
shoot me to stop me
puttin’ every police organisation in the
world on your trail as soon as I woke up. Do you get it?”

“Oh, I get you, Steve,” said the Saint thoughtfully.
“And I did
tell Loretta I was tempted
to come in for a share of the commis
sion. Although it does sort of go
against the grain to earn money
honestly.
It’s such an anti-climax …”

He slid off the edge of the table and stood
up, stroking his
chin meditatively for a moment. And then, with a rueful
shrug,
he turned
and grinned cheerfully at the detective.

“Still, it’s always a new experience; and
I suppose you’ve got
to earn your living the same as I have,”
he drawled. “We’ll let
you have your fun. Peter, be a good boy and
toddle along and do
what
Mr Murdoch asks you to.”

“Right-ho,” said Peter doubtfully.

“Roger, you can keep Steve company on
his vigil. You’ll have
lots of fun telling each other how clever you
are, but I’d much rather not listen to you.”

The ineradicable suspicion darkened again in
Murdoch’s eyes.

“If you think you’re goin’ to talk
Loretta round again,” he
began growlingly, “let me tell you——
”

“Write it all down and post it to me in the morning, dear old
bird,” said the Saint affably and
opened the door for them.