What did they know of Loretta, and what were their plans for her? If Murdoch had been identified while they had him on the Falkenberg she must have been condemned already, and it seemed too much to hope that Murdoch had not been seen by the sleuth who had observed his blatant arrival at the Hotel de la Mer the day before. How much had Loretta suffered already?…He could only guess at the answers.
It was an uncanny feeling to be eating and drinking on terms of almost saccharine cordiality with two men who might even then be plotting his funeral—and whose own funerals he himself would plot without compunction in certain circumstances—with, every warning of antagonism, utterly suppressed on both sides. If he had not had last night’s experience of Vogel’s methods to acclimatise him, he would have suffered the same sensation of nightmare futility again, doubled in intensity because Loretta was now with them, but his nerves had been through as much of that cat-and-mouse ordeal as they were capable of tolerating, and the normal reaction was setting in. Somehow he knew that that game could not be played much longer, and when the showdown came he would have his compensation.
But meanwhile Loretta was there, beside him—and he could give her no more than the polite interest called for by their recent introduction…when every desire in his mind was taking both her hands and laughing breathlessly with her and talking the quick sparkling nonsense which was the measure of their predestined understanding. He saw the shifting gold in her hair and the softness of her lips when she spoke, and was tormented with a hunger that was harder to fight than all Vogel’s inhuman patience.
And then he was dancing with her.
They had discovered that there was a dance at the hotel, and after the coffee and liqueurs they had gone into the ballroom. Even so, he had waited while first Vogel and then Arnheim danced, before he had looked at her and stood up as if only to discharge his duty to a fellow-guest.
But he had her alone. He had her hand in his, and his arm round her, and they were moving quietly in their own world, like one person, to music that neither of them heard. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen you all, Mary Jane,” he said.
“Wasn’t it before I put my hair up?”
“I think it was the Sunday School treat when you ate too many cream buns and had to give them up again in the rhododendrons.”
“You would remember that. And now you’re such a big man, doing such big and wonderful things. I’m so proud of you, Elmer.”
“George,” Simon corrected her, “is the name. By the way, did I ever give you the inside dope on that dragon business? This dragon, which was closely related to a female poet, a dowager duchess, and a prominent social reformer and purity hound, was actually a most mild and charitable beast, except when it felt that the morals of the community were being endangered. On those occasions it would become quite transformed, turning red in the face and breathing smoke and fire and uttering ferocious gobbling sounds like those of a turkey which has been wished a merry Christmas. The misguided inhabitants of the country, however, mistaking these symptoms for those of sadistic dyspepsia, endeavoured to appease the animal—whose name, by the way, was Angelica—by selecting their fairest damsels and leaving them as sacrifices, stripped naked and tied to trees and shrubbery in its path, Angelica, on the other hand, mistook these friendly offerings for further evidence of the depravity which had overtaken her friends, and was only raised to higher transports of indignation and gobbling. The misunderstanding was rapidly denuding the country in every sense, and in fact the dearth of beautiful damsels was become so acute that certain citizens were advocating that their grandmothers should be used instead, in the hope that Angelica might be moved by intellectual endowments where mere physical charm had only aggravated the gobbling, when I came along and…Why haven’t I told you how beautiful you are, Loretta?”
“Because you haven’t noticed?”
“Because it’s too true, I think. And so many other ridiculous things have been happening all the time. And I’ve been so stupid…They’d have tied you to a tree for Angelica if they’d seen you, Loretta.”
“With nothing on?”
“And everyone would have been asking ‘Where’s George?’ He was a Saint, too.”
There was a breath of cool night air on their faces, and as if there had been no voluntary movement they were outside. There must have been a window or a door, some steps perhaps, some mundane path by which they had walked out of the ballroom into the infinite evening, but it was as if mortar and stone and wood had melted away like shadows to leave them under the stars. Their feet moved on a soft carpet of grass, and the music whispered behind them.
Presently she sat down, and he sat behind her. He still kept her hand. “Well,” he said.
She smiled slowly. “Well?”
“Apparently it wasn’t death,” he said, “So I suppose it must have been dishonour.”
“It might be both.”
He counted over her fingers and laid them against his cheek.
“You feel alive. You sound alive. Or are we both ghosts? We could go and haunt somebody.”
“You knew something, Simon. When we met on the waterfront…”
“Was it as obvious as that?”
“No. I just felt it.”
“So did I. My heart went pit-a-pat. Then it went pat-a-pit. Then it did a back somersault and broke its bloody neck. It still feels cracked.”
Her other hand covered his mouth.
“Please. Simon. Every minute we stay here is dangerous. They may have missed us already. They may be talking. Tell me what you knew. What happened last night?”
“They caught Steve—slugged him, and hauled him out of his canoe. I went back to the
Falkenberg and slugged Otto and brought home the blue-eyed boy. Otto never saw me, but I don’t know how many other people had inspected the boyfriend before I butted in. If the same guy who heard him asking for you at the Hotel de la Mer yesterday had seen him, I knew you were in the book.”
“What about you?”
“Vogel came over shortly afterwards and put on a great show of being shown over the Corsair, while I changed my nappies and did the honours. But he didn’t find Steve. I’m still technically anonymous; Steve got away.”
“Who from?”
“From me. In between Vogel going home and me congratulating Orace on the hiding-place, Steve saw the dawn and set a course for it. I saw him again in the morning, when I was trying to reach you before Vogel did and warn you what might be waiting—as a matter of fact, he held me up just long enough to let Vogel get in first. I missed seeing you by about thirty seconds. Where Steve is now I don’t know, but if you bet your shirt he’ll bob up here tomorrow you won’t run much risk of being left uncovered.” The Saint turned his face to her, and she saw the dim light shift on his eyes. “He saw you this morning, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Telling you I tried to kidnap him.”
“Yes.”
“And speaking as follows: ‘This guy Templar is just a tough crook from Toughville, Crook County, and if you think he’s turned Horatio Alger because you gave him a pretty smile you’re crazy.’ ”
“Were you listening?”
He shook his head.
“I’m a thought-reader. Besides, I did try to kidnap him, after a fashion. Anyway I tried to detain him. Obviously. He may be the hell of a good detective in some ways, but he doesn’t fit into the game we’re playing here. He’d done his best to break it up twice in one day, and I thought it’d be a good thing to keep him quiet for a bit. I still do.”
“And the rest?” she said. “What do you think?”
Her hand slipped down over his hair, came to rest on his shoulder. For once the dark mischievous eyes were quiet with a kind of surrendered sadness.
“I think Steve was right.”
“And yet you’re here.”
“Yes. I’m a fool, aren’t I? But I didn’t tell you I was weak-minded. All Ingerbeck’s people have to go through an intelligence
test, and they tell me I’ve got the mentality of a child of five. They say I’ll probably finish up in an asylum in another year or two.”
“May I come and see you in the padded cell?”
“If you want to. But you won’t. When you’ve had all you want from me—”
He silenced her with his lips. And with her mouth he tried to silence the disbelief in his own mind that sat back and asked cold questions. There was a hunger in him, overriding reason, that turned against the weary emptiness of disbelief.
He was a man, and human. He kissed her, touched her, held her face in his hands, and found forgetfulness in the soft sweetness of her body. He was aware of her with every sense, and of his own desire. There was no other answer he could give. He should have been thinking of so many other things, but he had stopped thinking. He was tired—not with the painful fatigue of ordinary exhaustion, but with the peace of a man who has come home from a long journey. Presently he lay back with his head in her lap, looking up at the stars.
“Tell me something,” she said.
“I’m happy.”
“So am I. I’ve no reason to be, but I am. It doesn’t seem to matter. You do love me, don’t you?”
He was in a dream from which he didn’t want to wake. Somewhere in his memory there was the cynical impress of a thought he had had so long ago, that if the need came she would use her fascination to tempt him as she had hoped to tempt Vogel. And there was his own thought that if that was her strategy he would meet her cheerfully with her own weapons.
But that was so faint and far away. Must he be always thinking, suspecting, fighting—when there was so much comfort in the present?
He said, “Yes.”
“Say it all.”
“I love you.”
“Dear liar…”
She leaned over him. Her hair fell on his face. She kissed him.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Tomorrow I shall be wise—and sorry. You’re going to hurt me, Saint. And I don’t seem to mind. I’m happy. I’ve had tonight.”
“Is there any tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“We must go in,” she said.
Again they walked under the glittering sky, hand in hand, towards reality. There was so much that should have been said, so little that they could say. This was illusion, yet it was more real than life.
“What’s your tomorrow?” he asked.
“The Professor’s making his trial descent. I don’t know what happens afterwards, but next week they’re going down to Madeira. Vogel asked me to stay with them.”
“And you said you would.”
“Of course.”
“Must you?”
“Yes.” The word was quick, almost brutal in its curtness. And then, as if she had hurt herself also, she said, “You don’t understand. This is my job. I took it on with my eyes open. I told you. I gave my word. Would you think the same of me if I broke it?”
Out of the sudden ache of madness in him he answered, “Yes. Just the same.”
“You wouldn’t. You think so now, because you want me, but you’d remember. You’d always remember that I ran away once—so why shouldn’t I run away again? I know I’m right.” He knew it, too. “You must let me finish the job. Help me to finish it.”
“It’s as good as finished,” he said, with a flash of the old reckless bravado.
“Kiss me.”
The lights of the ballroom struck them like a physical blow. The orchestra was still playing. How long had they been away? Ten minutes? Ten years? She slipped into his arms and he went on dancing with her, as if they had never stopped, mechanically. He let the lights and the noise drug his senses, deliberately sinking himself in a stupor into which emotion could not penetrate. He would not think.
They completed a circle of the floor, and rejoined the others. Vogel was just paying a waiter.
“We thought you would like another drink after your efforts, Mr Tombs. It’s quite a good floor, isn’t it?”
4
Simon forced himself back to reality, and it was like stepping under a cold shower. And exactly as if he had stepped under a cold shower he was left composed and alert again, a passionless fighting machine, perfectly tuned, taking up the threads of the adventure into which he had intruded. The madness of a few moments ago might never have lived in him: he was the man who had come out on to the deck of the Corsair at the sound of a cry in the night, the cynical cavalier of the crooked world, steady-handed and steady-eyed, playing the one game in which death was the unalterable stake.
“Not at all bad,” he murmured. “If I’d been in the Professor’s shoes I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“I suppose it must always be difficult for the layman to understand the single-mindedness of the scientist. And yet I can sympathise with him. If his experiments ended in failure, I’m sure I should be as disappointed as if a pet ambition of my own had been exploded.”
“I’m sure you would.”
Vogel’s colourless lips smiled back with cadaverous suavity.
“But that’s quite a remote possibility. Now, you’ll be with us tomorrow, won’t you? We are making a fairly early start, and the weather forecasts have promised us a fine day. Suppose you came on board about nine…”
They discussed the projected trip while they finished their drinks, and on the walk back to the harbour. Vogel’s affability was at its most effusive; his stony black eyes gleamed with a curious inward lustre. In some subtle disturbing way he seemed more confident, more serenely devoid of every trace of impatience or anxiety.
“Well—goodnight.”
“Till tomorrow.”
Simon shook hands—touched the moist warm paw of Otto Arnheim. He saluted Loretta with a vague flourish and the outline of a smile.
“Goodnight.”
No more. And he was left with an odd feeling of emptiness and surprise, like a man who has dozed for a moment and roused up with a start to wonder how long he has slept or if he has slept at all. Anything that had happened since they came in from that enchanted garden had gone by so quickly that that sudden awakening was his first real awareness of the lapse of time. He felt as if he had been whirled round in a giant sling and flung into an arctic sea, as if he had fought crazily to find his depth and then been hurled up by a chance wave high and dry on some lonely peak, all within a space of seconds. He remembered that he had been talking to Vogel, quietly, accurately, without the slightest danger of a slip, like a punch-drunk fighter who has remained master of his technique without conscious volition. That was illusion: only the garden was real.
He shook himself like a dog, half angrily, but in a way the sensation persisted. His thoughts went back slowly and deliberately, picking their footholds as if over slippery stepping-stones. Loretta Page. She had come out of the fog over Dinard and disturbed his sleep. He had been fascinated by the humour of her eyes and the vitality of her brown body. On an impulse he had kissed her. How long had he known her? A few hours. And she had been afraid. He also had been afraid, but he had found her. They had talked nothing except nonsense, and yet he had kissed her again, and found in that moment a completer peace than he had ever known. Then they had talked of love. Or hadn’t they? So little had been said; so much seemed to have been understood. His last glimpse of her had been as she turned away, with Vogel tucking her hand into his arm; she had been gay and acquiescent. He had let her go. There was nothing else he could do. They were in the same legion, pledged to the same grim code. So he had let her go, with a smile and a flourish, for whatever might come of the fortunes of war, death or dishonour. And he had thought: “Illusion…”
Ssssssh…
The Saint froze in the middle of a step, with his mind wiped clean like a slate and an eerie ballet of ice-cold pinpricks skittering up into the roots of his hair. Once again he had been dreaming, and once again he had been brought awake in a chilling flash. Only this time there was no feeling of unreality about the galvanic arresting of all his perceptions.
<
br /> He stopped exactly as he was when the sound caught him, on his toes, with one foot on the deck of the Corsair and the other reaching down into the cockpit, one hand on a stanchion and the other steadying himself against the roof of the miniature wheelhouse, as if he had been turned into stone. All around him was the quiet dimness of the harbour, and the lights of the port spread up the slope from the waterfront in scintillating terraces of winking brilliance in front of him; somewhere on one of the esplanades a couple of girls were giggling shrilly at the inaudible witticisms of their escorts. But for that long-drawn moment the Saint was marooned as far from those outposts of the untroubled commonplace as if he had been left on the last outlaw island of the Spanish Main. And in that space of incalculable separation he stayed like the inanimate imprint of a moving man on a photographic plate, listening for a confirmation of that weird tortured hiss that had transfixed him as he began to let himself down over the coaming.
He knew that it was no ordinary sound such as Orace might have made in moving about his duties; otherwise it would never have sent that unearthly titillation coursing over his spine. There was a strained intensity about it, a racking sibilance of frightful effort, that had crashed in upon his dormant vigilance as effectively as an explosion. His brain must have analysed it instinctively, in an instant, with the lightning intuition bred of all the dangerous years behind him: now, he had to make a laborious effort to recollect the features of the sound and work out exactly why it had stopped him, when subconscious reaction had achieved the same result in a microscopical fraction of the time.
A few inches in front of his left foot, the open door of the saloon stencilled an elongated panel of light across the cockpit. The ache eased out of his cramped leg muscles as he gently completed his interrupted movements and finished the transfer of his weight down on to his extended toes. And as both his feet arrived on the same deck he heard a low gasping moan.
Saint Overboard (The Saint Series) Page 14
