Therefore he Saint stripped. His clothes were of the lightest, and he was able to make them all into one compact bundle, which he wrapped in his shirt.
Then he returned his attention to the motorboat. It was moored by two painters; and these he detached. A loose narrow floorboard taken from the bottom of the boat he lashed at right angles across the tiller, using strips of the Italian delegate's trousers, carved out with Belle, for the purpose; then, to the ends of this board, he fixed the ropes he had obtained, leaving them trailing in the water behind the boat. Finally, he deposited the Italian delegate himself in the sternsheets, propping him up as best he could with another couple of duck-boards.
The Saint had worked with incredible speed. The boat which carried Sonia Delmar had not reached the side of the ship when Simon took hold of the motorboat's starting handle. With that he was lucky. The engine spluttered into life after a couple of pulls. And so, stark naked, with his bundle of clothes on his head and the sleeves of his shirt knotted under his chin to hold the bundle in place, the Saint slid into the water, holding one of his tiller ropes in each hand; and the motorboat swerved out from the jetty and began to pick up speed as Sonia Delmar was lifted onto the gangway of the waiting ship.
That crazy surf ride remained ever afterward as one of Simon Templar's brightest memories. The motorboat had a turn of speed that he had not anticipated; its creaming wake stung his eyes, half blinding him, and strangled his nostrils when he breathed; if he had not had fingers of steel his hold on the ropes by which it towed him would have been broken in the first two minutes. And with those very ropes he had to steer a course at the same time, an accurate course—with the hull of the boat in front of him blacking out most of his field of vision, and so much play on his crude steering apparatus that it was a work of art to do no more than prevent the tiller locking over on one side or the other and thereafter ceasing to function at all. Whereupon he would, presumably, have travelled round in a small circle till the petrol tank dried up....
He found that the only way he could keep control of his direction was by travelling on a series of progressive diagonal tacks: otherwise it was impossible to keep his objective in view. Even then, the final rush would have to be a straight one. . . . The blinding stammer of the motor was a hellish affair. Long ago the men out on the water must have been asking questions. Probably the din could have been heard up at the house on the cliffs as well; and he wondered what that section of the unrighteous would make of it. ... As he swung over on another tack—he had to do this very gently, for any vertical banking business would have been liable to upset the Italian delegate, and Simon wanted the Italian delegate to stay put—he glimpsed the ship's boat hanging from the falls, clear of the water, and little knots of black figures clustered along the starboard rail. Surely they must be asking questions....
He realized, suddenly, that it was time to attempt the last straight dash.
He sighted for it as best he could, rolled all his weight onto one rope for a moment, and then flattened out again. Now, if he hit the side of the ship the fishes would do themselves proud on what was left of him. ... But he didn't hit. Far from it. Through a lashing lather of spray, he saw the anchor-chain flash past him, half a dozen yards away.
Not good enough....
As he went by, he heard the faint shred of a shout from the deck above, and the Saintly smile twitched a trifle grimly at the corners of his mouth. Then the motorboat was speeding out to sea; and again he rolled his weight carefully onto one rope.
The roughness of the ropes was scorching the inside of his hands. The cords were too thin to be gripped comfortably, and his fingers were numbed and aching with the strain. In spite of his strength, he felt as if his arms were being torn from their sockets; and it seemed centuries since he had drawn a full free breath. . . .
The Saint set his teeth. It had got to be done this next time — he doubted whether he could hang on for a third attempt. Ordinary surf-riding was another matter, when you had a good board beneath you to skim the surface of the water; but when you were immersed yourself. . . . Again he sighted, turned the boat, and prayed. . . . And, as he did so, he heard, high and clear above the clamour of the engine, the sharp sound of a shot.
Well, that was inevitable — and that was what the Italian delegate was sitting in the boat for anyway.
"But what about us?" thought the Saint; and, at that moment, he felt the boat quiver against the ropes he held. "Here goes," thought the Saint, and relaxed his tortured hands. The cords whipped out of his grip like live things. Then the anchor-chain seemed to materialize out of space. It leaped murderously at his head; he grabbed desperately, caught, held it. ...
As he hauled himself wearily out of the water, drawing great gulps of air into his bursting lungs, he saw the Italian delegate flop sideways over the tiller. The boat heeled over dizzily; then the Italian tumbled forward into the bilge, and the boat straightened up somehow, gathered itself, and headed roaring out to sea. A second shot cracked out from the deck.
Simon felt as if he had been stretched on the rack; but he dared not rest for more than a few seconds. This was his chance, while the attention of everyone on deck was focussed on the flying motorboat. Somehow he clambered upwards. If it had been a rope that he had to climb he could never have done it, for there seemed to be no strength left in his arms; but he was able to get his toes into the links of the chain, and only in that way could he manage the ascent. As he went higher, the bows of the ship cut off the motorboat from his view; but he heard a third shot, and a fourth. ...
Then he was able to reach up and grip a stanchion. With a supreme effort, he drew himself up until he could get one knee over the side.
No one was looking his way; and, for all his weariness, he made no sound.
As he came over the rail, he saw the motorboat again, scudding towards the rising moon. A figure stood up in the boat, swaying perilously, waving frantic arms. .Then it gripped the tiller, and the boat reeled over on its beam-ends and headed once more towards the ship.
The man must have been shouting; but whatever he shouted was lost in the snarl of the motor. And then, for the fifth time, a gun barked somewhere on the deck; and the Italian delegate clutched at his chest and went limply into the dark sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
How Sonia Delmar heard a story, and Alexis Vassiloff was interrupted
1
SONIA DELMAR heard the shooting as she was hustled across the deck and up an outside companion. Before that, she had seen the speeding motorboat and the shape of the man crouched in the stern. The drone of its engine had rattled deafeningly across the waters as she was hurried up the gangway; she had heard the perplexed mutterings of her captors, without being able to understand what they said; and she herself, in a different way, had been as puzzled as they were. She had seen the Saint on the cliff path, and had understood from the signs he made that he was not yet proposing to interfere; after a fashion, she had been relieved, for so far she had gained no useful information. But she appreciated that, if he had meant to interfere, his chance had been then and there, on the cliff path, when he could have taken by surprise a mere handful of men who would have been additionally hampered by the difficulty of distinguishing friend from foe; and she wondered what could have made him elect instead to come so noisily against a whole boatload.
But these questions had no hope of a leisured survey at that moment; they rocketed hazily across the back of her conscience as she stumbled onto the upper deck. The two men in charge of her, at least, placed the mysterious motorboat second in their considerations, whatever their fellows might be doing. There was a quietly efficient discipline about everything that she had seen done that was unlike anything she had expected to find in such a criminal organization as Simon Templar had pictured for her. Nor had anything that she had read of the ways of crime prepared her for such an efficiency: the gangs on her native side of the Atlantic, by all reports, were no
t to be compared with this. Again came that vicious snap of the rifle on the lower deck; but the men who led her took no notice. She tripped over a cleat in the darkness, and one of the men caught her and pulled her roughly back to her balance; then a door was opened, and she barely had a glimpse of the lighted cabin within before she herself was inside it, and she heard the key turned in the lock behind her.
The howl of the motorboat grew steadily louder, and then died down again to a fading moan.
Crack!... Crack!...
The clatter of two more shots came to her ears as she reached an open porthole; and then she could see the boat itself and the swaying figure in the stern. She saw the boat turn and make for the ship again; and then came the last shot....
Slowly she sank onto a couch and closed her eyes. She felt no deep emotion—neither grief, nor terror, nor despair. Those would come afterwards. But at the time the sense of unreality was too powerful for feeling. It seemed incredible that she should be there, on that ship, alone, alive, destined for an unknown fate, with her one hope of salvation lost in the smooth waters outside. Quite quietly she sat there. She heard the empty motorboat whine past, close by, for the last time, and hum away towards the shore. Her mind was cold and numb. When she heard a new sound in the night— a noise not unlike that of the motorboat, but more deep-throated and reverberating—she did not move. And when upon that sound was superimposed the thrum and clutter of steam winch forward, she opened her eyes slowly and felt dully surprised that she could see....
Mechanically she took in her prosaic surroundings.
The cabin in which she sat was large and comfortably furnished. There were chairs, a table, a desk littered with papers, and one bulkhead completely covered with well-filled bookcases. One end of the cabin was curtained off; and she guessed that there would be a tiny bedroom beyond the curtain, but she did not move to investigate.
Presently she knelt up on the couch and looked up again. The ship was turning, and the dark coast swung lazily into view. Somewhere on the black line of land a tiny light winked intermittently for a while, and vanished. After a pause, the light flickered again, more briefly. She knew that it must have been a signal from the house on the cliffs, but she could not read the code. It would not have profited her to know that a question had been asked and answered and felicitations returned; for the answer said that the Saint was dead....
She lay down again, and stared at the ceiling with blind eyes. She did not think. Her brain had ceased to function. She would have liked to weep, to fling herself about in a panic of fear; but though there was the impulse to do both, she knew that neither outlet would have been genuine. That kind of thing was not in her. She could only lie still, in a paralyzing daze of apathy. She lost track of time. It might have been five minutes or fifty before the cabin door opened, and she turned her head to see who had come.
"Good-evening, Miss Delmar."
It was a tall man, weather-beaten of face and trimly bearded, in a smart blue uniform picked out with gold braid. His greeting was perfectly courteous.
"Are you the captain?" she asked; and he nodded.
"But I am not responsible for your present position," he said. "That is the responsibility of my employer."
"And who's he?"
"I am not at liberty to tell you."
He spoke excellent English; she could only guess at his nationality.
"I suppose," she said, "you know that you're also responsible to the American Government?"
"For you, Miss Delmar? I do not think I shall be charged."
"Also to the British Government—for murder."
He shrugged.
"There is no great risk, even of that accusation."
She was silent for a moment. Then she asked, casually: "And what's your racket—ransom?"
"You have not been informed?"
"I have not."
"Good. That was a question I came to ask." He sat down at the desk and I selected a thin cigar from a box which he produced from a drawer. "You have been brought here, frankly, in order that you may be married to a gentleman who is on board—a Mr. Vassiloff. The ceremony will be performed whether you consent or not; and if there should ever be a need to bring forward witnesses, we have those who will swear that you consented. I am told that is is necessary for you to marry Mr. Vassiloff—I do not know why."
2
THE NEWS did not startle her. It came as a perfect vindication of the Saint's deductions; but now it had a grim significance that had been lacking before. Yet the sense of unreality that lay at the root of her inertia became by that much greater instead of less. She could not imagine that she was dreaming—not in that bright light, that commonplace atmosphere—but still she could not adjust herself to the facts. She had found herself speaking mechanically, as calmly as if she had been sitting in the drawing room of the American Embassy in London, carrying on the game exactly as she had set out to play it, as if nothing had gone amiss. Her conscious mind was stunned and insentient; but some blind, indomitable instinct had emerged from the recesses of her subconscious to take command, so that she amazed whatever logic was left sensible enough within her to be amazed.
"Who is this man Vassiloff?"
"I am not informed. I have hardly spoken to him. He has kept to his cabin ever since he came on board, and he only came out when we were— shooting. He is on the bridge now, waiting to be presented."
"Don't you even know what he looks like?"
"I have scarcely seen him. I can tell you that he is tall, that he wears glasses, that he has a moustache. He may be young or old—perhaps he has a beard—I do not know. When I have seen him he has always had the collar of his coat buttoned over his chin. I assume that he does not wish to be known."
"Do you even know where we're going?"
"We go to Leningrad."
"And then?"
"As far as you are concerned, that is a matter for Mr. Vassiloff. My own employment will be finished."
His manner was impeccably restrained and impeccably distant. It made her realize the futility of her next question before she asked it.
"Aren't you at all interested in the meaning of what you're doing?"
"I am well paid not to be interested."
"People have been punished for what you're doing. You're very sure that you're going to escape."
"My employer is powerful as well as rich. I am well protected."
She nodded.
"But do you know who I am?"
"I have not been told."
"My father is one of the richest men in America. It's possible that he might be able to do even more for you than your present employer."
"I am not fond of your country, Miss Delmar." He rose, deferential and yet definite, dismissing her suggestion without further speech, as if he found the discussion entirely pointless. "May I tell Mr. Vassiloff that he may present himself?'"
She did not answer; and, with a faintly cynical bow, he passed to the door and went out.
She sat without moving, as he had left her. In those last few moments of conversation her consciousness had begun to creep back to life, but not at all in the way she would have expected. She was still unaware of any real emotion; only she became aware of the frantic pounding of her heart as the sole sign of a nervous reaction which she felt in no other way. But a queer fascination had gripped her, born, perhaps, of the utter hopelessness of her plight, a fantastic spell that subordinated every rational reflection to its own grotesque seduction. She was a helpless prisoner on that ship, weaponless, without a single human soul to stand by her, and every pulse of the rhythmic vibrations that she could feel beneath her was speeding her farther and farther from all hope of rescue; she was to be married with or without her consent to a man she had never seen, and whose very name she had only just heard for the first time; and yet she could feel nothing but an eerie, nightmare curiosity. The hideous bizarreness of the experience had taken her in a paralyzing hold; the stark certai
nty that everything that the captain had announced would inexorably follow in fact seemed to sharpen and vivify all her senses, while it stupefied all initiative; so that a part of her seemed to be detached and infinitely aloof, watching with impotent eyes the drama that was being enacted over herself. There was nothing else that she could do; and so, with that strange fatalism wrapping her in an inhuman impassivity she had only that one superbly insane idea—to see the forlorn game through to the bitter end, for what it was worth . . . facing the inevitable finale with frozen eyes. . . .
And, if she thought of anything else, she thought with a whimsical homesickness of a sunny room on a quiet Sunday morning, and the aromatic hiss and crackle of grilling bacon; and she thought she would like a cigarette....
And then the door opened again.
It was not the captain. This man came alone—a man such as the captain had described, with the wide brim of a black velour overshadowing his eyes, and the fur collar of a voluminous coat turned up about his face.
"Good-evening—Sonia.''
She answered quietly, with a soft contempt: "You're Vassiloff, I suppose?"
"Alexis."
"Once," she said, "I had a dog called Alexis. It's a nice name—for a dog."
He laughed, sharply.
"And in a few moments," he said, "you will have a husband of the same name. So are you answered."
Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint s-4 Page 9
