“And the Professor?” he asked. Vogel lifted his shoulders.
“Unfortunately the fault was traced too late, Mr Templar.”
“So you knew,” said the Saint softly. The other’s thin lips widened.
“Of course. When you were photographed in Dinard—you remember? I received the answer to my inquiry this morning. You were with us when I opened the telegram. That was when I knew that there would have to be an accident.”
Naturally. When once the Saint was known, a man like Vogel would not have run the risk of letting the Professor be warned, or snatched out of his power. He had been ready in every detail for the emergency—was there anything he had not been ready for?…Simon had a moment’s harrowing vision of that naïve and kindly man gasping out his life down there in the cold gloom of the sea, and the steel frosted in his blue eyes…
He thought of something else. Loretta’s piercing cry, the last voice he had heard before he was knocked down, still rang through his aching head. If he had been known since the morning, the stratagem had had no object in making him give himself away. But it had provided a subsidiary snare for Loretta while it was achieving the object of disarming him. And she also had been caught. Simon acknowledged every refinement of the conspiracy with inflexible resolution. Kurt Vogel had scooped the pool in one deal, with the most perfectly stacked deck of cards that the Saint had ever reviewed in a lifetime of going up against stacked decks.
He realised that Vogel was watching him, performing the simple task of following his thoughts, and smiled with unaltered coolness.
“So where,” he murmured, “do you think we go from here?”
“That depends on you,” said Vogel.
He put a match to his cigar and sat on the arm of a chair, leaning forward until the Saint was sitting under the shadow of his great eagle’s beak. Looking at him with the same lazy smile still on his lips, Simon was aware of the vibration of the powerful engines, and saw out of the corner of his eye that a seaman was standing at the wheel, with his back to them, his eyes intent upon the compass card. Wherever they were going, at any rate they were already on their way…
“You have given me a good deal of trouble, Templar. Not by your childish interference—that would be hardly worth talking about—but by an accident for which it was responsible.”
“You mean the Professor?” Simon suggested grittily. Vogel snapped his fingers.
“No. That’s nothing. Your presence merely caused me to get rid of him a little earlier than I should otherwise have done. He would have come to the same end, anyway, within the next few weeks. The accident I am referring to is the one which happened last night.”
“Your amateur burglar?”
“My burglar. I should hardly call him an amateur—as a matter of fact he was one of the best safe-breakers in Europe. An invaluable man…And therefore I want him back.”
The Saint sipped his brandy.
“Birdie,” he said gently, “you’re calling the wrong number. What you want is a spiritualist.”
“You were telling the truth, then?”
“I always do. My Auntie Ethel used to say—”
“You killed him?”
“That’s a crude way of putting it. If the Professor had an unfortunate accident this afternoon, so did your boyfriend last night.”
“And then you took him ashore?”
“No. That was the only part of my story where I wandered a little way from the truth. A bloke with my reputation can’t afford to deliver dead bodies at police stations, even if they died of old age—not without wasting a lot of time and answering a lot of pointed questions. So we gave him a sailor’s funeral. We rowed him out some way from the harbour and fed him to the fish.”
The other’s eyes bored into him like splinters of black marble, as if they were trying to split open his brain and impale the first fragment of a lie, but Simon met them with the untroubled steadiness of a clear conscience. And at last Vogel drew back a little.
“I believe you. I suspected that there was some truth in your story when you first told it. That is why you are alive now.”
“You’re too generous, Birdie.”
“But how long you will remain alive is another matter.”
“I knew there was a catch in it somewhere,” said the Saint, and inhaled thoughtfully from his cigarette.
Vogel got up and walked over to one of the broad windows, and Simon transferred his contemplative regard to Otto Arnheim, estimating how long it might take him to bridge the distance between them. While Vogel and the man at the wheel both had their backs turned to the room, could a very agile man…?
And Simon knew that he couldn’t. Reclining as he was in the depths of one of those luxuriously streamlined armchairs, he couldn’t even hope to get up on his feet before he was filled full of lead. He tried hauling himself up experimentally, as if in search of an ashtray, and Arnheim had a gun thrusting out at him before he was even sitting upright. The Saint dropped his ash on the carpet and lay back again, scratching his leg ruminatively. At least the knife strapped to his calf was still there—if it came to a pinch and the opportunity offered, he might do something with that. But even while he knew that his life would be a speculative buy at ten cents in the open market, he was being seized with an overpowering curiosity to know why Vogel had left it even that nominal value.
After about a minute Vogel turned round and came back.
“You are responsible for the loss of one of my best men,” he said with peremptory directness. “It will be difficult to replace him, and it may take considerable time. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to wait. But fortunately, I have you here instead.”
“So we can still play cut-throat,” drawled the Saint.
Vogel stood looking down at him impassively, the cigar glowing evenly between his teeth.
“Just now you wanted to know where we were going, Templar. The answer is that we are going to a point a little way south-west of the Casquet Lighthouse. When we stop again there, we shall be directly over the wreck of the Chalfont Castle—you will remember the ship that sank there in March. There are five million pounds’ worth of bullion in her strong-room which I intend to remove before the official salvage operations are begun. The only difficulty is that your clumsiness has deprived me of the only member of my crew who could have been relied upon to open the strong-room. I’m hoping that that is where your interference will prove to have its compensations. I said that the man you killed was one of the best safe-breakers in Europe. But I have heard that the Saint is one of the greatest experts in the world.”
So that was it…Simon dropped his cigarette-end into his empty glass, and took out his case to replace it. A miniature power plant was starting up under his belt and sending a new and different tingle along his arteries.
It was his turn to follow Vogel’s thoughts, and the back trail was blazed and signposted liberally enough.
“You want me to go down and give a demonstration?” he said lightly, and Vogel nodded.
“That is what I intend you to do.”
“In the bathystol?”
“That won’t be necessary. The Chalfont Castle is lying in twenty fathoms, and an ordinary diving suit will be quite sufficient.”
“Are you offering me a partnership?”
“I’m offering you a chance to help your partner.”
Something inside the Saint turned cold. Perhaps it was not until he heard that last quiet flat sentence that he had realised how completely Vogel had mastered the situation. Every twist and turn of strategy fitted together with the geometrical exactitude of a jigsaw puzzle. Vogel hadn’t missed one finesse. He had dominated every move of the opposition with the arrogant ease of a Capablanca playing chess with a kindergarten school.
Simon Templar had never known the meaning of surrender, but at that moment, in the full appreciation of the supreme generalship against which he had pitted himself, the final understanding of how efficiently the dice had been cogged, he was as near to
admitting the hopelessness of his challenge as he would ever be. All he had left was the indomitable spirit that would keep him smiling and fighting until death proved to his satisfaction that he couldn’t win all the time. It hadn’t been proved yet…He looked fearlessly into the alabaster face of the man in front of him, and told himself that it had still got to be proved.
“And what happens if I refuse?” he asked quietly.
Vogel shrugged.
“I don’t need to make any melodramatic threats. You are intelligent enough to be able to make them for yourself. I prefer to assume that you will agree. If you do what I tell you, Loretta will be put ashore as soon as it is convenient—alive.”
“Is that all?”
“I don’t need to offer any more.”
The answer was calm, uncompromising, blood-chilling in its ruthless economy of detail. It left volumes unsaid, and expressed every necessary word of them.
Simon looked at him for a long time.
“You’ve got all these situations down to their lowest common denominator, haven’t you?” he said, very slowly. “And what inducement have I got to take your word for anything?”
“None whatever,” replied Vogel carelessly. “But you will take it, because if you refuse you will certainly be dead within the next half-hour, and while you are alive you can always hope and scheme and believe in miracles. It will be interesting to watch a few more of your childish manoeuvres.” He studied his watch, and glanced out of the forward windows. “You have about fifteen minutes to make your choice.”
CHAPTER SEVEN:
HOW SIMON AND LORETTA TALKED TOGETHER AND LORETTA CHOSE LIFE
1
“Once upon a time,” said the Saint, “there was a lugubrious yak named Elphinphlopham, who grazed on the plateaus of Tibet and meditated over the various philosophies and religions of the world. After many years of study and investigation he eventually decided that the only salvation for his soul lay in the Buddhist faith, and he was duly received into the Eightfold Path by the Grand Lama, who was fortunately residing in the district. It was then revealed to Elphinphlopham that the approved method of attaining Nirvana was to spend many hours a day sitting in a most uncomfortable position, especially for yaks, whilst engaging in an ecstatic contemplation of the navel. Dutifully searching for this mystic umbilicus, the unhappy Elphinphlopham discovered for the first time that his abdomen was completely over grown with the characteristic shaggy mane of his species, so that it was physically impossible for him to fix his eyes upon the prescribed organ, or indeed for him to discover whether nature had ever endowed him with this indispensable adjunct to the Higher Thought. This awful doubt worried Elphinphlopham so badly—”
“Nothing worries you very much, does it?” said Loretta gently.
The Saint smiled.
“My dear, I gave that up after the seventh time I was told I had about ten minutes to live. And I’m still alive.”
He lay stretched out comfortably on the bunk, with his hands behind his head and the smoke spiralling up from his cigarette. It was the same cabin in which he had knocked out Otto Arnheim not so long ago—the same cabin from which he had so successfully rescued Steve Murdoch. With the essential difference that this time he was the one in need of rescuing, and there was no one outside who would be likely to do the job. He recognised it as Kurt Vogel’s inevitable crowning master-stroke to have sent him down there, with Loretta, while he made the choice that had been offered him. He looked at the steady humour in her grey eyes, the slim vital beauty of her, and knew by the breathless drag of his heart how accurately that master-stroke had been placed, but he could never let her know.
She sat on the end of the bunk, leaning against the bulkhead and looking down at him, with her hands clasped across her knees. He could see the passing of time on her wrist watch.
“How long do you think we shall live now?” she said.
“Oh, indefinitely—according to Birdie. Until I’m a toothless old gaffer dribbling down my beard, and you’re a silver-haired duenna of the Women’s League of Purity. If I do this job for him, he’s ready to send us an affectionate greeting card on our jubilee.”
“If you believe him.”
“And you don’t?”
“Do you?”
Simon twitched his shoulders. He thought of the bargain which he had really been offered, and kept his gaze steadfastly on the ceiling.
“Yes. In a way I think he’ll keep his word.”
“He murdered Yule.”
“For the bathystol. So that nobody else should have it. But no clever crook murders without good reason, because that’s only adding to his own dangers. What would he gain by getting rid of us?”
“Silence.” she said quietly. He nodded.
“But does he really need that anymore? You told me that some people had known for a long time that this racket existed. The fact that we’re here tells him that we’ve linked him up with it. And that means that we’ve got friends outside who know as much as we know.”
“He knows who I am, then?”
“No. Only that you’ve been very inquisitive, and that you tried to warn me. Doubtless he thinks you’re part of my gang—people always credit me with a gang.”
“So he’d let you go, knowing who you are?”
“Knowing who I am, he’d know I wouldn’t talk about him to the police.”
“So he’d let you go to come back with some more of your gang and shoot him up again?”
Simon turned his head to cock an eye at her. She must not know. He must not be drawn further into argument. Already, with that cool courageous wit of hers, she had him blundering.
“Are you cross-examining me, woman?” he demanded quizzically.
“I want an answer.”
“Well, maybe he thinks that I’ll have had enough.”
“And maybe he believes in fairies.”
“I do. I saw a beautiful one in Dinard. He had green lacquered toe-nails.”
“You’re not very convincing.”
The Saint raised himself a little from the pillow, and shook the ash from his cigarette.
He met her eyes without wavering.
“I’m convinced, anyway,” he said steadily. “I’m going to do the job.” She looked at him no less steadily.
“Why are you going to do the job?”
“Because it’s certain death if I don’t, and by no means certain if I do. Also because I’ll go a long way for a new sensation, and this will be the first strong-room I’ve ever cracked in a diving suit.”
Her hands unclasped from her knees, and she opened her bag to take out a cigarette. He propped himself up on one elbow to light it for her. Then he took her hand and held it. She tilted her golden-chestnut head back against the bulkhead, and a shaft of sunlight through the porthole lay across her face so that she looked like a fallen angel catching the last light from heaven. He had no regrets.
“We have had one or two exciting days,” she said.
“Probably we’ve had exciting lives.”
“You have.”
“And you. If I can imagine all you haven’t told me…You’re not a bit like a detective, Loretta.”
“What should I be?”
He shrugged.
“Tougher?” he said.
“Don’t you think I’m tough?”
“Yes. I know you are. But not all through.”
“Ought I to be an ogre?”
“You couldn’t. Not with a mouth like yours. And yet…”
“I oughtn’t to have a heart.”
“Perhaps.”
“I know. I must get rid of it. Do you think there’d be any second-hand market for it?”
“I could introduce you to a second-rate buccaneer who’d make a bid.”
She laughed.
“And yet you’re not everything that a second-rate buccaneer ought to be—not as I’ve known them.”
“Tell me.”
She considered him for a while, with a shadow of wistfu
lness in her mocking gaze that made him aware of his own hunger, through her parted lips still smiled.
“You’re kind,” she said simply, “and you want so much that you can never have. You have an honour that honest people couldn’t understand. You’re not fighting against laws: you’re fighting against life. You’d tear the world to pieces to find something that’s only in your own mind, and when you’d got it you’d find it was just a dream…Besides, you don’t talk out of the side of your mouth enough.”
He was silent for a moment.
“I expect I could cultivate that,” he said at length, and sat up so that he could put her hand to his lips. “Otherwise, we aren’t so different. We both wanted something that wasn’t there, and we set out to find it—in our own ways.”
“And now we’ve found plenty.” She glanced out of the porthole, and turned back to him thoughtfully. “We’ll probably both be down somewhere in the sea before the sun comes up again. Saint…It’s a funny sort of thought, isn’t it? I’ve always thought it must be so exasperating to die. You must always leave so much unfinished.”
“You’re not afraid.”
“Neither are you.”
“I’ve so much less to be afraid of.”
She closed her eyes for a second.
“Oh, dishonour! I think I should hate that, with death after it.”
“But suppose it had been a choice,” he said conversationally. “You know the old story-book formula. The heroine always votes for death. Do you think she really would?”
“I think I should like to live,” she said slowly. “There are other things to live for, aren’t there? You can keep your own honour. You can rebuild your pride. Life can go on for a long while. You don’t burn your house down because a little mud has been trodden into the floor.”
Saint Overboard (The Saint Series) Page 18
