Saint Overboard (36 page)

As they came to the companion, Simon was
ripping off his tie and threading it through the trigger-guard of his
automatic. He steadied the helmsman as they reached the lower deck.

“Hold my arm.”

The man looked at him and obeyed. The
Saint’s blue eyes held
him with a wintry dominance that would not even allow the idea
of disobedience to come to life.

“And don’t forget,” added that smouldering undertone,
which
left no room for doubt in its audience
that every threat it made
would be
unhesitatingly fulfilled. “If they even begin to suspect
anything, you’ll never live to see them make up
their minds.
Move on.”

They moved on. The helmsman stopped at a door
a little further
up the alleyway and on the opposite side from the cabin in which Simon had been
locked up, and opened it. Ivaloff and the
two
men who had dressed the Saint before were there, and they looked up in dour
interrogation.

Simon held his breath. His forefinger took
up the first pressure
on the trigger, and every muscle in bis body
was keyed up in
terrible
suspense. The second which he waited for the helmsman
to speak was the longest he could remember. It dragged on
through an eternity of pent-up stillness while he
watched his
inspiration trembling on
a balance which he could do no more to
control.

“The Chief says Templar is to go down
again …”

Simon heard the words through a haze of
relief in which the
cabin swam round him. The breath seeped slowly back out
of his
thawing lungs. His spokesman’s voice was practically normal—at
least there was not enough
shakiness in it to alarm listeners who
had no
reason to be suspicious. The Saint had been sent down
once already; why not again?

Without a question, the two dressers got to
their feet and
stumped
out into the alleyway, as the helmsman completed the
order.

“He says you, Calvieri, see that there is a dress ready for
him.
He goes down himself also. He will be
along in a few minutes— you are to be quick.”

“Okay.”

The two dressers went on, and Ivaloff was coming out to fol
low them when the helmsman stopped him.

“You are to stay here. You change into your shore clothes at
once, and then you stay below here to see that none
of the
others come out on deck. No
one except the engineer and his
assistant
must come out for any reason, he says, until this work
is finished. Then you will go ashore with
him.”

“Boje moy,”
grumbled
the other. “What is this?”

The helmsman shrugged.

“How should I know? They are his
orders.”

Ivaloff grunted and turned back, unbuckling
his belt; and the helmsman closed the door on him.

It had worked.
        

The stage was set, and all the cues given. With that last order,
the remainder of the crew were immobilised as
effectively as they
could have been
by violence, and far more simply; while the one
man whose unexpected appearance on deck would have blown everything
apart was detailed to look after them. A good deal of
jollification and
whoopee might take place on deck while the
authority
of Vogel’s command kept them below as securely as if
they had been locked up—he had no doubt that a
man like Vogel
would have thoroughly impressed his underlings with the
unpleasant consequences of disobedience. And the exquisite strat
egy of the idea traced the first glint of a purely
Saintly smile in the depths of Simon Templar’s eyes. He only hoped that Kurt
Vogel, that refrigerated maestro of generalship,
would appreciate it himself when the time came
…

As he drew the helmsman, now white and
trembling with the
knowledge of what he had done, further along the
alleyway, Si
mon
flashed a lightning glance over the details of his organisa
tion, and found no flaw. There remained only the
helmsman himself, who could undo all the good work with the speech which he
would undoubtedly make as soon as he had the chance. It was,
therefore, essential that the chance should not
come for a long
time … Simon
halted the man opposite the cabin where he
had been imprisoned, and
grinned at him amiably. And then his
fist
smoked up in a terrific uppercut.

It was a blow that carried with it every atom
of speed and
strength
and science which the Saint had at his disposal. It im
pacted with surgical accuracy on the most sensitive spot of the
helmsman’s jaw with a clean crisp smack like the
sound of a
breaking spar, and the
man’s head snapped back as if it had
collided
with an express train. Beyond that single sharp crack of
collision it caused no sound at all—certainly the
recipient was
incapable of making
any, and the Saint felt reasonably sure that
he would not become audible again for a full hour. He caught
the man as he fell, lowered him to the ground
inside the cabin
which he should have been occupying himself, and
silently shut
the door.

As he hurried up the companion, Simon was
rapidly knotting
his tie behind his neck and stuffing it under his shirt.
The automatic, already threaded on it by the triggerguard, hung at his
collar-bone, where he could
reach it in full diving kit so long as
the
helmet was off.

Calvieri and his assistant had been out of
sight when the Saint
struck that one vital blow, and they showed
no surprise when he appeared on deck alone. In point of time only a few seconds
had
elapsed since they stumped up the companion before the Saint
followed
them; and the helmsman had had a separate message to
give to Ivaloff.
Probably they thought nothing about it; and the
Saint’s demeanour was
so tractable that it would have seemed
quite safe for him to
be moving about without a close guard.

He sat down on the stool and unlaced his
shoes. His experience
that afternoon had made him familiar with the
processes of
dressing for the dip, and every second might be precious.
As quickly as he could without seeming to be in frantic haste, he
tucked the
legs of his trousers inside his socks, pulled on the
heavy woollen pants,
and wriggled into the woollen sweater.
They helped him on
with the long coarse woollen overstockings
which came up to his thighs, and steered
his feet into the legs of
the diving suit.
Calvieri rubbed softsoap on his wrists, and he
gripped the sleeve of the dress between his knees and forced his
hands through the vulcanised rubber cuffs with the
adroitness of
a seasoned
professional. They slipped on the strong rubber bands
to tighten the fit of the wrists; and then, while
Calvieri laced
and strapped on the
heavy-boots, the other man was putting the
cushion collar over his head and wrestling the rim of the suit on
to
the bolts of the breastplate.

While they were tightening down the wing-nuts
around the
straps
he slipped a cigarette out of the packet which he had put
down beside him, and lighted it while they
hitched on the lead
weights back and front of the corselet. All the time
he was lis
tening tensely for the first
warning of Vogel’s approach; but
Calvieri
had stepped back from the job before he heard foot
steps and voices on the deck behind him.

“Alors
…
à
demain.”

“
À
demain, m’sieu.”

Simon stood up. He heard the wooden clumping
of Baudier climbing down into his dinghy, and then the double steps of
Vogel and
Arnheim coming along the deck. The hazards were not
yet past.

A complete diving outfit weighs one hundred
and eighty
pounds,
which is not the handiest load to walk and lounge about
in on land; but Ivaloff was husky enough, and the Saint had to
risk
making him seem eccentric. He walked laboriously to the taffrail and leaned on
it, smoking and watching the man in the dinghy pull slowly away out of range of
the deck lights towards
the shore. Behind
him he heard the vague sounds of Vogel being
encased in his suit, but there was no conversation. On his dip
that afternoon, Simon had noticed that Vogel
encouraged no
unnecessary speech from
his crew, and he had been hoping that
the rule would still hold good.
And once again the bet had come
off. The
Saint had been sent down before—why should the dress
ers comment on his being sent down again?

At last he heard the
chuff-chuff
of the
air pump, and the slow
thudding tramp of heavy boots behind him; and
Calvieri ap
peared beside him with his helmet. He stooped for it to
be put
on, without turning his head, and waited for the front window to
be
screwed on before he looked round.

Then, safely hidden behind the small panel
of reflecting plate
glass,
he turned round to the ladder which had been fitted into
sockets on the counter, and saw Vogel following
cumbrously
after him. And at the same moment a three-hundred-watt sub
marine lamp suspended from the boom was switched
on, deluging
the after deck and the sea over the stern with light.

They sank down in the centre of its cone of
brilliance. There
was the sudden shock of air pressure thumping into the
ear
drums, the
sudden lifting of the load of the heavy gear, and then
the eerie silence and loneliness of the deep. The lamp, lowered
into
the water after them, came to rest at the same time as they
reached the bottom, and hung six feet over their
heads, isolating
them in its little
zone of light. The effect of that night descent
was stranger even than the twenty-fathom plunge which the
Saint had taken in daylight. The lamp gave more
light within its
circumscribed radius
than he had had in the
Chalfont Castle
even when the sun was blazing over the surface of the sea; and
the water was so clear that they might have been
in a tank. The
contours of the rocky
bottom within the narrow area in which
vision
was possible were as plain as if they had been laid out under the sun. The
Saint could see scattered fronds of weed
standing erect and writhing in
the stir of imperceptible currents,
and a few
small surprised pollack darted under the light and
hung poised in fishy puzzlement at the
unceremonious invasion
of their
sleep.

Vogel was already ploughing away towards a
huge rounded
boulder that was dimly visible on the blurred outskirts of
their field of light, and Simon adjusted his escape valve and waded
after
him. Again he had to adapt himself to the tedious struggle
which the
water forced upon every movement: it was rather like
a nightmare in which invisible tentacles
dragged against all his
limbs and reduced
progress to a snail-like crawl which no effort could hasten. It seemed to take
several minutes to cover the few
yards
which he had to go; and as he got nearer he noticed that
Vogel seemed to be trying to wave him away. He
turned clumsily
aside and swayed up
towards the other side of the rock.

It occurred to him with a sudden clutch of
anxiety that the
lamp by whose light they were moving might make
everything
that happened down on the sea floor as plainly visible
to the men
on the deck of the
Falkenberg
as it was to him. And
then, with
his lips twisting in a faint curve of grim and unrelaxed
relief, he
realised that he had no cause for alarm. The ripples and
tiny
wavelets scampering across the surface of the water above would
break up
all details into a confused eddy of indistinguishable
shapes. They would
hardly be able to see any more than a swirl
ing nimbus of light down in the opaque
surge of the deep. Why
else would Vogel go
down himself with one trusted man to keep the secret of his fantastic
treasure-house?

He saw that Vogel was looking upwards, his
helmet tilted back
like
the face of some weird dumb monster of the sea lifted to a
blind pre-historic sky. Simon looked up also, and
saw that the
grab was coming down
through the roof of the tent of light over
them. Vogel began to work
himself out to meet it, and the Saint did the same. Following what he could
divine of Vogel’s inten
tion, he helped to
drag the great claw over and settle it around
the rock by which they had been standing. Then they moved
back; and he heard Vogel’s voice reverberating in
his helmet.