Saint Overboard (35 page)

Simon rolled over on his back, listening
with half an ear to the
spasmodic mutter of absurdly banal
conversation, and considered
the problem. Almost certainly they were
heading for Vogel’s local, if not his chief, headquarters: the stacks of
bullion left openly on the after deck, and the derrick not yet lashed down
and covered
with its tarpaulin, ruled out the idea that they were
putting into any
ordinary port. Presumably Vogel had a house or
something close to
the sea; he might unload the latest addition to his loot and go ashore himself
that night, or he might wait
until morning. The Saint realised that he
could plan nothing
until
he knew. To attempt to burst into the wheelhouse and capture the brains of the
organisation there without an alarm of any
sort
being raised was a forlorn hope; to think of corralling the
crew, one by one or in batches as he found them,
armed only with his knife, without anyone in the wheelhouse hearing an
outcry, was out of the question even to a man
with Simon Tem
plar’s supreme faith in his own prowess. Therefore he
must wait
for an opportunity or an
inspiration; and all the time there was
a thread of risk that some member of the crew might have been
detailed to keep an eye on him and might discover
that he had
vanished out of his prison
…

“The lights, sir.”

A new voice jarred into his divided attention, and he realised
that it must be the helmsman speaking. He turned
over on his
elbow and looked out
over the bows. The lights of the shore were
very close now; and he saw that two new pairs of lights had
appeared on the coast ahead, red and very bright,
one pair off the port bow and one pair off the starboard. He guessed that
they had been set by Vogel’s accomplices on shore
to guide the
Falkenberg
between the tricky reefs and shoals to
its anchorage.

“Very well.” Vogel was answering;
and then he was addressing
Loretta: “You will forgive me if I send
you below, my dear? I
fear you might be tempted to try and swim ashore, and you gave us
a lot of trouble to find you last time you did that.”

“Not with the Saint?”

There was a sudden pleading tremor of fear
in her voice which the Saint had never heard there before, and Simon hung over
the
edge again to see her as Vogel replied.

“Of course, that would be difficult for
you. Suppose you go to your own cabin? I will see that you are not locked in
any longer than is necessary.”

She nodded without speaking, and walked past
the steward
who
had appeared in the doorway. Before she went, Simon had seen the mute embers of
that moment’s flare of fear in her eyes,
and
the veiled smirk which had greased through Vogel’s reassur
ance of her told him the rest. Once again he stood
before the
open strong-room of the
Chalfont
Castle,
twenty fathoms down
under
the tide, wondering why the death that he was expecting did not come; and all
the questions that had been fermenting in
his mind since then were answered. He could no longer shut out
belief from what his brain had been telling him. He
knew; and
his bowels turned to water.
He knew; and the understanding
made
his knuckles whiten where they gripped the edge of the
roof, and burned in his mind like molten lead as
he crushed his
eyes for a moment into
his arm. He was bowed down with an
unutterable
humility and pride.

He half rose, with the only thought of
following and finding
her. She at least must be free, whatever he
did with his own
liberty …

And then he realised the madness of the idea.
He had no
knowledge of where her cabin was, and while he was
searching
for it he was just as likely to open a cabin occupied by
some
member of the
crew—even if no steward or seaman caught sight
of him while he was prowling about below decks. And once he
was discovered, whatever hope the gods had given
him was gone
again. Somehow he must
still find the strength to wait, though) his muscles ached with the frightful
discipline, until he had a
chance to
take not one trick alone but the whole grand slam.

“Will you unload the gold
to-night?”

It was Arnheim’s fat throaty voice; and
Simon waited breath
lessly
for the reply. It came.

“Yes—it will be safer. The devil knows
what information this
man Templar has given to his friends. He is
more dangerous
than
all the detective agencies in the world, and it would be fatal
to underrate him. Fortunately we shall need to do
nothing more
for a long time
…
It
will be a pity to sink the
Falkenberg,
but
I think it will be wise. We can easily fit out a
trawler to recover the gold
…
As for disposing of it, my dear Otto, that will
be
your business.”

“I made the final arrangements before
we left Dinard.”

“Then we have very little cause for
anxiety.”

Vogel’s voice came from a different quarter;
and the Saint
treated himself to another cautious glimpse of the
interior set.
Vogel had taken over the wheel and was standing up to the
open
glass panel in the forward bay, a fresh cigar clipped between his
teeth and his aquiline
black-browed face intent and complacent.
He
pushed forward the throttle levers, and the note of the en
gines faded with the rush of the water.

Simon glanced forward and saw that they were
very near the shore. The granite cliffs loomed blackly over them, and he could
see the
white line of foam where they met the sea. The lights of
a village
were dotted up the slope beyond, and to the left and right the pairs of red
lights which he had noticed before were
now nearly in line.
Closer still, another light danced on the wa
ter.

So unexpectedly that it made the Saint
flatten himself on the
roof like a startled hare, a searchlight
mounted close to his head sprang into life, flooding the foredeck and the sea
ahead with its
blazing
beam. As they glided on over the black water, the danc
ing light which he had observed proved to be a lantern standing on one
of the thwarts of a dinghy in which a solitary man was
leaning over the
gunnel fishing for a cork buoy. The helmsman
came
forward into the drench of light and took the mooring
from him with a boathook, making it fast on one
of the forward
bollards; and the
dinghy bumped along the side until the boat
man caught the short gangway and hauled himself dexterously on
board,
while the
Falkenberg’s
engines roared for a moment in
reverse. Then the engines stopped, and the
searchlight went out
again.

“Ah, mon cher Baudier!”
Vogel
greeted his visitor at the door
of the wheelhouse.
“
Ç
a va bien? Entrez, entrez——
”

He turned to the helmsman.

“Tell Ivaloff to be ready to go down in a
quarter of an hour.
And
tell Calvieri to have a dress ready for me. I shall be along in
a few minutes.”

“Sofort.”

The seaman moved aft along the deck, and Vogel
rejoined
Baudier and Arnheim in the wheelhouse. And the Saint drew
himself up on his toes and fingertips and shot after the helms
man like
a great ghostly crab.

Only the Saint’s own guardian angel could have said what was
in the Saint’s mind at that moment. The Saint
himself had no
very clear idea. And
yet he had made one of the wildest and
most
desperate decisions of his life in an immeasurable fraction
of a second—a decision that he probably would not
have dared to make if he had stopped to think about it. He hadn’t even got the
vaguest idea of the intervening details between the first
movement and the final result which he had
visioned in that
microscopical
splinter of time. They could be filled in later. The
irresistible surge
of inspiration had taken all those petty triviali
ties in its stride, outdistancing logic and coherent planning …
Without
knowing very clearly why, the Saint found himself
spreadeagled on the roof again in front of the unsuspectingly
ambulating
seaman; and as the man passed underneath him Si
mon’s arm shot out and grasped him by the throat …

Before the cry which the man might have uttered could gain
outlet it was choked back into his gullet by the
merciless clutch of those steel fingers, and before he could tear the fingers
away
the Saint’s weight had dropped
silently on his shoulders and borne
him
down to the deck. Staring up with shocked and dilated eyes as he fought, the
man saw the cold flash of a knife-blade in the
dim light; and then the
point of the knife pricked him under the
chin.

The Saint’s fierce whisper sizzled in his
ear.

“Wenn du einen Laut von dir gibst,
schneide ich dir den Kopf
ab.”

The man made no sound, having no wish to feel
the hot bite
of that vicious blade searing through his neck. He lay
still; and
the Saint slowly released the grip on his throat and used
his freed hand to take the automatic from the man’s hip pocket.
Then he
took his knee out of the man’s chest.

“Get up.”

The man worked himself slowly to his feet,
with the muzzle of the gun grinding into his breastbone and the knife still
under his
eyes.

“Do you want to live to a ripe old age,
Fritz?” asked the Saint
gently.

The man nodded dumbly, licking his lips. And
the Saint’s
white teeth flashed in a brief and cheerless smile.

“Then you’d better listen carefully to
what I’m saying. You’re not going to take all of that message to Ivaloff.
You’re going to
take me along, and tell him that Vogel says
I’m
to
go down.
That’s all. You won’t see this gun any more, because it’ll
be in
my pocket; but it’ll be quite close enough to hit you. And if you
make the
slightest attempt to give me away, or speak one word
out of your turn, I’ll
blow the front out of your stomach and let
your dinner out for
some air. Do you get my drift or shall I say
it again?”

2

As they moved on, Simon amplified his
instructions. He re
placed his knife in its sheath and put it inside his
shirt; the gun
he slipped into his trouser pocket, turning it up so that
he could
fire fairly easily across his body. He was still building
up his plan while he was giving his orders. Crazy? Of course he was. But any
man who
was going to win a fight like that had to be crazy any
how.

And now he could fill in the steps of
reasoning which the wild
leap of his inspiration had ignored. The sight
of those cases of
bullion stacked around the after deck had started it; the
grab
not yet dismantled and lashed down had helped. Vogel’s talk
about
unloading the gold had fitted in. And then, when he had
heard Vogel
speak about “going down” again, and gathered that
Vogel
himself was going to accompany Ivaloff, the complete and
incontestable
explanation had opened up in his mind like an
exploding bomb. Loretta had told him-—-how
many hundred years
ago?—that Vogel must have
some fabulous treasure-house some
where,
where much of the proceeds of his astounding career of
piracy might still be found, which Ingerbeck’s had
been seeking
for five years. And now the Saint knew where that treasury
was.
He knew it as certainly as if he could
have seen down through
the thirty
feet of stygian water over the side. Where else could it
have been? Where else, in the name of all the
sublime and extrav
agant gods of
piracy, could Kurt Vogel, taking his loot from the
trackless abysses of the sea, have found a more
appropriate and
inviolable depository
for it than down there in the same vast
lockers of Davy Jones from which it had been stolen?

And the Saint was going down there to find
it. Vogel was going
down with him to show him the last secret. And down there,
in
the heavy silence of that ultimate underworld, where no other
soul
could interfere, their duel would be fought out to its finish.