Saint Overboard (39 page)

They filed out, Murdoch going last and most
reluctantly, as if
even then he couldn’t believe that it was safe to let the
Saint out
of his sight. But Simon pushed him on, and closed the
door after
them.

Then he turned round and came towards Loretta.

She sat in her chair, rather quiet and still,
with her lips
slightly parted and the hint of mischief hushed for the
moment
into the changing shadows of her grey eyes. The lines of her slim
body fell
into a pattern of unconscious grace that made him
almost hold his breath in case she moved,
although he knew that in moving she would only take on a new beauty. He knew
that,
when all was said and done, in the
last reckoning it was only the
queer
hunger which she could give a man that had tempted Kurt
Vogel into his first and fatal mistake. She had so
much that a
man dreams about sometimes
in the hard lonely trails of out
lawry.
She had so much that he himself had desired. In the few
overcrowded hours since they had been thrown
together, they
had met in an understanding which no words could cover.
They
had walked in a garden, and talked
together before the doors of
death.
He had known fear, and peace.

He stood looking down at her, half smiling.
And then, with a sudden soft breath of laughter, she took both his hands and
came
up into his arms.

“So you don’t like your dotted
line?” she said.

“Maybe it grows on one.”

She shook her head.

“Not on you.”

He thought for a moment. Between them, who
had lived so
much, a lie had no place.

“This job is finished,” he said.
“Steve Murdoch’s mounting
guard over the diving gear, and I promise I won’t touch him. We
can start again. Wash out the dotted line.”

“And then?”

“For the future?” he said
carelessly. “I shall still have the fun
of being chivvied by
every policeman in the world. I shall steal
and fight, win and lose, go on—didn’t you
say it?—wanting so
much that I can never
have, fighting against life. But I shall live.
I shall get into more trouble. I may even fall in love again. I
shall end up by being hanged, or shot, or stabbed
in the back, or
something—if I don’t
find a safe berth in prison first. But that’s
my life. If I tried to live any other way, I’d feel like a caged
eagle.”

“But to-morrow?”

He laughed.

“I suppose I’ll have to dump Peter and Roger somewhere. But
the
Corsair’s,
still ready to go anywhere.
She’s not so luxurious as
this, but
she’s pretty comfortable. And about a hundred years
ago I was in the middle of a vacation.”

His hands were on her shoulders; and she smiled into his eyes.

“What do either of us know about the day
after to-morrow?”
she said.

Nearly an hour later he came out on deck, as
half a dozen palpitating gendarmes were scrambling up the gangway. Mur
doch had
met the leader of them and was struggling to converse
with him in a
microscopical vocabulary of French delivered in a
threatening voice
with an atrocious accent. Simon left him to
perspire alone, and
drew Peter and Roger to one side.

“We’re going back to the
Corsair,”
he said.

“Without the heroine?” protested
Peter. “Why, I was only
just getting to know her.”

The Saint took him by the arm.

“You’ll be able to improve the
acquaintance to-morrow,” he
said kindly. “For as long as it takes us
to sail back to St Peter
Port and get rid of you. On your way.”

They dropped into the dinghy; and Simon
settled himself
lazily in the stern, leaving the others to take the oars.
He lighted
a cigarette and gazed up at the star-dusted sky.

The lights of the
Falkenberg
drifted
away behind them, and the cool quietness of the night took them in. The voices
died
away, and
there was only the creak of the rowlocks and the gen
tle plash of the water. The Saint watched his smoke floating in
gossamer veils across the stars, and let his mind
stray through
the lanes of memory.
There was the only real knowledge, and all
other doubt and disbelief
could steal nothing from it. What did
either
of them know about the day after to-morrow? …

Roger’s voice broke into his thoughts.

“Well, that’s goodbye to those millions
you promised us,” he
remarked glumly; and Simon sat up with the
old buccaneering
glint wakening in his eyes.

“Who said goodbye? My dear Roger, we’re
not going to bed
yet! We’re going to bring the
Corsair
up closer
and unpack those
nice new diving suits we’ve got on board. And then one of
you
drawing-room heroes is coming down with me on a little treas
ure-hunt.
Steve and his gendarmes can mount guard over Vogel’s
diving gear all night
for all I care. But they don’t know how
much boodle is stowed
away down there, and what they don’t
know about they’ll never miss. We’re
going to make sure of our share of the reward to-night,” said the Saint.