The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (25 page)

It was only another twist in the imponderable thread that had begun to weave itself when the boom of the Claudette’s dinghy had swung over against Laura Berwick’s head that morning; but the twist was a short one. For Fate, masking behind the name which Galbraith Stride feared more than any other name in the world, had taken a full hand in the game that night.

There were two doors into the saloon. One of them opened into a microscopic vestibule, from which a broad companion gave access to the deck and an alleyway led out to other cabins and the crew’s quarters forward; the other opened into Stride’s own stateroom. In his restless pacing of the saloon, Stride had his back turned to the second door when he heard a sharp swish and thud behind him. He jerked round, raw-nerved and startled; and then he saw what had caused the sound, and his heart missed a beat.

Standing straight out from the polished woodwork of the door was a long thin-bladed knife with a hilt of exquisitely carved ivory, still quivering from the force of the impact that had driven it home.

His lungs seemed to freeze achingly against the walls of his chest, and a parching dryness came into his throat that filled him with a presentiment that if he released the scream which was struggling for outlet just below his wishbone it could only have materialized as a thin, croaking whisper. The hand that dragged the automatic from his pocket was shaking so much that he almost dropped it. The sudden appearance of that quivering knife was uncanny, supernatural. The opposite door had been closed all the time, for he had been pacing towards it when the thing happened; the ports and skylight also were fastened. From the angle at which it had driven into the door it should have flashed past his face, barely missing him as he walked; but he had not seen it.

If he had been in any state in which he could think coherently, he might have hit on the explanation in a few moments; but he was not in that state. It never occurred to him that the door behind him might have been opened, the knife driven home, and the door rapidly and silently closed again, with just that very object of misleading his attention which it had achieved.

Which was indubitably very foolish of Mr. Galbraith Stride.

Filled with the foreboding that a second attack would almost instantly follow the first unsuccessful one, trembling in the grip of a cold funk that turned his belly to water, he backed slowly and shakily towards the door where the knife had struck, facing in the direction from which he believed the danger threatened. Curiously enough, his only idea was that Abdul Osman had decided to take no chances on his regretting his bargain, and had sent one of his men stealthily to eliminate that possibility. If he had thought of anything else, it is possible that the scream which he ached to utter would not have been suppressed.

Back … back … three paces, four paces… . And then suddenly he saw the bulkheads on each side of him, and realized with an eerie thrill of horror that he was actually passing through them-that the door which should have come up against his back had been opened noiselessly behind him, and he was stepping backwards over the threshold.

He opened his mouth to cry out, turning his head as he did so; but the cry rattled voicelessly in his throat. A brown shirt-sleeved arm whipped round his neck from behind and strangled him in the crook of its elbow, while fingers like bars of steel fastened on his wrist just behind the gun. His head was dragged back so that he looked up into the inverted vision of twin blue eyes that were as clear and cold as frozen ultramarines; and then the intruder’s mouth spoke against his ear.

“Come and pay calls with me, Galbraith,” he heard; and then he fainted.

CHAPTER VII

ABDUL OSMAN had also been drinking, but with him it had been almost a festive rite. He had put on a dinner suit, with a red tarboosh; and his broad soft stomach, swelling out under the sloping expanse of a snowy shirt front, gave him the appearance of a flabby pyramid walking about on legs, as if a bloated frog had been dressed up in European clothes. His wide sallow face was freshly shaved and had a slightly greasy look around the chin. Although he wore Western clothes, cut by the best tailors in London, the saloon of his yacht, in which he was walking about, was decorated entirely in the Oriental style, which was the only one in which he felt truly comfortable. The rugs on the floor were Bokhara and Shiraz, virtually priceless; the tables ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl; the couches low, covered with dark silk brocades, heavily strewn with cushions. Even the prosaic portholes were framed with embroidered hangings and barred with iron grilles so that they should not clash with the atmosphere, and the dim concealed lights left corners full of shadows. Osman, in his dinner jacket and white starched shirt front, fitted into those surroundings with a paradoxical effect, like an ardent nudist clinging to his straw hat and pince-nez; but he was incapable of perceiving the incongruity.

He was preening himself before a mirror, a half emptied glass in one hand, the other smoothing an imperceptible crease out of his bow tie, a thin oval cigarette smouldering between his lips, when he heard the approaching sputter of a motor launch. He listened in immobile expectancy and heard the engine cut off and the sound of voices. Then the Arab seaman, Ali, knocked on the door and opened it, and Laura Berwick stood in the entrance.

Abdul Osman saw her in the mirror, from which he had not moved; and for a second or two he did not stir. His veins raced with the sudden concrete knowledge of triumph. Cold-blooded ? The corners of his mouth lifted fractionally, wrinkling up his eyes. At their very first meeting, the formal touch of her hand had filled him with a hunger like raging furnaces: now, seeing her gloriously modelled face and shoulders standing out brilliantly pale in the dark doorway, his heart pounded molten flame through his body.

He turned slowly, spreading out one arm in a grandiose gesture.

“So you have come-my beautiful white rose!”

Laura Berwick smiled hesitantly. The room was full of the peculiarly dry choky scent of sandalwood. Everything in her recoiled in disgust from its ornately exotic gloom. It seemed unhealthy, suffocating, heavy with an aura of horribly secret indulgence, like the slack puffy body of the man who was feeding his eyes on her. She was glad that Toby had come with her-his clear-cut Spartan cleanness was like an antiseptic.

“Mr. Stride asked me to bring a note over to you,” she said.

He held out his hand, without taking his eyes from her face. Unhurriedly he ripped open the envelope-it contained nothing but a blank sheet of paper. Deliberately he tore it into four pieces and laid them on a table.

“Perhaps,” he said, “it was more important that a note should bring you over to me.”

Then for the first time he saw Toby Halidom, and his face changed.

“What are you doing here?” he inquired coldly.

The young man was faintly taken aback.

“I just buzzed over with Miss Berwick,” he said. “Thought she might like some company, and all that.”

“You may go.”

There was an acid, drawling incisiveness in Osman’s voice that was too dispassionate to be rude. It staggered Halidom with the half-sensed menace of it.

“I asked Mr. Halidom to come with me,” said Laura, striving to keep a sudden breathlessness out of her voice. “We shall be going back together.”

“Did-er-your stepfather suggest that arrangement ?”

“No. Toby just thought he’d come.”

“Really!” Osman laughed softly, an almost inaudible chuckle that made the girl shiver unaccountably. “Really!” He turned away, a movement that came after his temporary motionlessness with a force that was subtly sinister. “Really!” The joke seemed to amuse him. He strolled away down the room, the cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and turned again at a place where the dim lights left him almost in darkness. The cigarette end glowed like a hot ruby against the grey smudge of his shirt front in the gloom -they could not see his thick fingers touching bells that had men always waiting to answer them. “How very romantic, my dear Halidom! The perfect knight-errant!”

Toby Halidom flushed dully at the sneer. Something in the atmosphere of the interview was getting under his skin, in spite of the healthy unimaginativeness of his instincts.

“Well, Laura, let’s be getting along,” he said, and heard the note of strain in his own assumed heartiness.

Osman’s ghostly chuckle whispered again out of the shadows, but he said nothing. Halidom turned abruptly to the door, opened it, and stopped dead. There were three of Osman’s crew outside, crowded impassively across the opening.

Toby faced the Egyptian with clenched fists.

“What’s the idea, Osman?” he demanded bluntly.

Abdul moved an inch or two from his position, so that his broad fleshy face stood out like a disembodied mask of evil under one of the rose-shaded light globes.

“The idea, Halidom, is that Laura is staying here with me-and you are not.”

“You lousy nigger —”

Halidom leapt at the mask like a young tiger-cat, but he was stopped short in less than a foot. Sinewy brown arms caught his arms from behind, twisted and pinioned them expertly.

Osman stepped forward slowly.

“Did you say something, Halidom?’

“I called you a lousy nigger,” retorted Toby defiantly. “You heard me all right. Shall I say it again?”

“Do.”

Osman’s voice was sleek, but his hands were shaking. His face had gone a dead white, save only for the scarred red circles on his cheeks. Toby swallowed, and flung up his head.

“You foul, slimy —”

Osman’s fist smacked the last word back into his teeth.

“If you had remembered your manners, Halidom, your fate might have been very different,” he said; and it was obvious that he was only controlling himself momentarily, by an effort of will that brought beads of perspiration to the whiteness of his forehead. ” But that is one word you cannot use. There was another man who used it many years ago-perhaps you would like to see him ?”

He spoke to Ali purringly, in Arabic, and the man disappeared. Halidom was struggling like a maniac.

“You can’t get away with this, you ugly swine —”

“No?”

Osman struck him again; and then, after a moment’s pause, deliberately spat in his face. Laura cried out and flung herself forward, but one of the men caught her instantly. Osman sauntered over to her and tilted up her chin in his bloated hands.

“You’re a spitfire too, are you, my dear? That makes it all the more interesting. I’m good at taming spitfires. In a moment I’ll show you one of my tamed ones.

You shall see me tame Halidom in the same way-and you too.”

He looked round as the seaman returned with his secretary. Clements was in a pitiful state-Osman had withheld the needle from him all that day, as he had threatened to do, and the slavering creature that tottered into the room made even Halidom’s blood run cold.

The man fell on his knees at Osman’s feet, slobbering and moaning unintelligibly; and Osman caught him by the hair and dragged him upright.

“Do you see this, Halidom? This is a man who used to call me a dirty nigger. Once upon a time he was just like you-strong, straight, insolent. He feared nothing, and despised me because I wasn’t another stupid Englishman like himself. But then, one day, someone introduced him to the needle-the little prick that brings so much courage and cleverness for a while. Have you ever tried it, Halidom? You haven’t even thought of it. You’ve been too busy playing cricket and being called a fine fellow because you could play it well. But you will try it. Oh, no, not voluntarily, perhaps-but the effects will be just the same. You will feel big, strong, clever, a fine fellow, until the drug wears off, and then you will feel very tired. Then I shall give you some more, and again you will feel fine and big and strong. And so we shall go on; you will want a little more each time, but I shall give you just the right amount, until”- in a sudden spasm of savagery he shook Clements by the handful of hair that he was still holding-“until you are bigger and stronger than ever-a finer fellow than you have ever been-like this thing here!”

He thrust the man away; but Clements was back as soon as he had recovered his balance, clutching Osman’s hand, kissing it, fawning over it in a trembling abject-ness that was nauseating.

“That will be pleasant for you, Halidom, won’t it?”

Toby was staring at Clements with an incredulous loathing that turned his stomach sick.

“You filthy swine —”

“I have found, Halidom,” said Osman, staring at him steadily, “that the needle is an excellent help for taming your kind. But my little whip also does its share-especially in the beginning, when there are moments of open rebellion. Would you like to see that as well?”

He touched a concealed spring, and a section of the panelling sprang open. Clements darted forward as he saw it, but Osman pushed the enfeebled body away easily with one hand and sent it sprawling. Inside the cupboard that was disclosed they could see a couple of hypodermic syringes set in gleaming nickelled racks, with a row of tiny glass phials beside them; but Osman left those alone. He took out a short leather whip, so thick at the base that it was difficult to see where it joined the handle, and tapering to a point in which there was a thin hard knot.

“An excellent instrument,” Osman said, “which has helped to drive a proper sense of respect into the man you see.”

He ran the lash through his fingers thoughtfully, gazing down at the grovelling creature by his feet. Something in the sight of that last triumph of his, that living completeness of humiliation, seemed to snap the thread of his gloating self-control. With his thick lips twisting back wolfishly, he leapt at Halidom and slashed twice at his face; then he turned and dragged Clements up again, holding him pinned against the wall with a hand grasping his throat.

“Look at them, Clements!” he screamed. “Look at them!” He forced the man’s livid face round towards Toby and Laura. “Can you see them-or are you too hungry for the needle? They’re white-white-the colour you were so proud of! And you’re not ashamed, are you? I’ve thrashed you often enough before my blacks-you’re used to that-but how do you like your own people to see what you’ve sunk to ? Look at them, I tell you. A white man and a white girl-staring at you- despising you-and even that doesn’t give you enough self-respect to stand up for yourself. Bah!”