III.������ HOW�� KURT� VOGEL� WAS�� NOT�� SO�� CALM,� AND

����������� OTTO ARNHEIM� ACQUIRED� A� �HEADACHE

A CEILING of cloud had formed over the sky, curtaining off the moon and leaving no natural light to relieve the blackness. Out in the river it was practically pitch dark, except where the riding lights of anchored craft sprang their small fragments of scattered luminance out of the gloom.

The Saint slid through the water without sound, without leav�ing so much as a ripple behind him. All of the rhythmic swing of his arms and legs was beneath the surface, and only his head broke the oily film of the still water; so that not even as much as the pit-pat of two drops of water could have betrayed his passing to anyone a yard away. He was as inconspicuous and unassertive as a clump of sea-weed drifting up swiftly and si�lently with the tide.

He was concentrating so much on silence that he nearly al�lowed himself to be run down by some nocturnal sportsman who came skimming by in a canoe when he was only a stone's throw from the Falkenberg. The boat leapt at him out of the darkness so unexpectedly that he almost shouted the warning that came instinctively to his lips; the prow brushed his hair, and he submerged himself a fraction of a second before the paddle speared down at him. When he came up again the canoe had vanished as silently as it had come. He caught a glimpse of it again as it arrowed across the reflected lights of the Casino de la Vicomt�, and sent a string of inaudible profanities sizzling across the wa�ter at the unknown pilot, apparently without causing him to drop dead by remote control.

Then the hull of the Falkenberg loomed up for undivided at�tention. At the very edge of the circle of visibility shed by its lights, he paused to draw a deep breath; and then even his head disappeared under the water, and his hands touched the side before he let himself float gently up again and open his lungs.

He rose under the stern, and trod water while he listened for any sound that would betray the presence of a watcher on the deck. Above the undertones of the harbour he heard the murmur of voices coming through open portholes in two different direc�tions, the dull creak of metal and the seep of the tide making under the hull; but there was no trace of the sharper sound that would have been made by a man out in the open, the rustle of cloth or the incautious easing of a cramped limb. For a full three minutes the Saint stayed there, waiting for the least faint disturbance of the ether that would indicate the wakefulness of a reception committee prepared to welcome any such unauthor�ised prowler as himself. And he didn't hear any such thing.

The Saint dipped a hand to his belt and brought it carefully out of the water with a mask which he had tucked in there be�fore he left the Corsair. It was made of black rubber, as thin and supple as the material of a toy balloon; and when he pulled it on over his head it covered every inch of his face from the end of his nose upwards, and held itself in place by its own gentle elasticity. If by any miscalculation he was to be seen by any member of the crew, there was no need for him to be recognised.

Then he set off again to work himself round the boat. There were three lighted portholes aft, and he stopped by the first of them to find a finger-hold. When he had got it he hauled himself up out of the water, inch by inch, till he could bend one modest eye over the rim.

He looked into a large cabin running the whole width of the vessel. A treble tier of bunks lined two of the three sides which he could see, and seemed to be repeated on the side from which he was looking in. On two of them half-dressed men were stretched out, reading and smoking. At a table in the centre four others, miscellaneously attired in shirtsleeves, jerseys, and sin�glets, were playing a game of cards, while a fifth was trying to poach enough space out of one side to write a letter. Simon ab�sorbed their faces in a travelling glance that dwelt on each one in turn, and mentally ranked them for as tough a harvest of hard-case sea stiffs as anyone could hope to glean from the scourings of the seven seas. They came up to his expectations in every single respect, and two thin fighting lines creased themselves into the corners of his mouth as he lowered himself back into the river as stealthily as he had pulled himself out of it.

The third porthole lighted a separate smaller cabin with only four bunks, and when he looked in he had to peer between the legs of a man who was reclining on the upper berth across the porthole. By the light brick-red hosiery at the ends of the legs he identified the sleuth who had trailed him that afternoon; and on the opposite side of the cabin the man who had been busily doing nothing in the foyer of the Hotel de la Mer, with one shoe off and the other unlaced, was intent on filling his pipe.

He couldn't look into any of the principal rooms without ac�tually climbing out on to the deck, but from the scraps of con�versation that floated out through the windows he gathered that was where the entertainment of Loretta Page was still pro�ceeding. Professor Yule appeared to be concluding some anec�dote about his submarine experiences.

". . . and when he squashed his nose against the glass, he just stayed there and stared. I never imagined a fish could get so much indignation into its face."

There was a general laugh, out of which rose Vogel's smooth toneless suavity: "Wouldn't even that tempt you to go down, Otto?"

"Not me," affirmed a fat fruity voice which the Saint had not heard before. "I'd rather stay on top of the water. Wouldn't you, Miss Page?"

"It must be awfully interesting," said Loretta�and Simon could picture her, sitting straight and slim, with the light lifting the glints of gold from her brown head. "But I couldn't do it. I should be frightened to death. . . ."

The Saint passed on, swimming slowly and leisurely up to the bows. He eeled himself round the stem and drifted down again, close up in the shadow of the other side. As he paddled under the saloon windows on the return journey, Vogel was offering more liqueurs. The man in the pink socks was snoring, and his companion had lighted his pipe. The card game in the crew's quarters finished a deal with a burst of raucous chaff, the letter-writer licked his envelope, and the men who had been reading still read.

Simon Templar edged one hand out of the water to scratch the back of his ear. During the whole of that round tour of inspec�tion he hadn't collected one glimpse or decibel of any sight or sound that didn't stand for complete relaxation and goodwill towards men. Except the faces of some of the crew, which may not have been their faults. But as for any watch on deck, he was ready to swear that it simply didn't exist.

Meaning . . . Perhaps that Loretta had been caught the night before by accident, through some sleepless mariner happening to amble up for a breath of fresh air. But even if that was the explanation, a watch would surely have been posted afterwards to frustrate any second attempt. Unless . . . and he could only see that one reason for the moment . . . unless Loretta had been promoted from a suspect to a certainty�in which case, since she was there on board, the watch could take an evening off.

The Saint gave it up. By every ordinary test, anyhow, he could find nothing in his way; and the only thing to do was to push on and search further.

He hooked his fingers over the counter and drew himself up until he could hitch one set of toes on to the deck. Only for an instant he might have been seen there, upright against the dark water; and then he had flitted noiselessly across the dangerous open space and merged himself into the deep shadow of the su�perstructure.

Again he waited. If any petrified watcher had escaped detec�tion on his first tour, and had seen his arrival on board, no alarm had been raised. Either the man would be deliberating whether to fetch help, or he would be waiting to catch him when he moved forward. And if the Saint stayed where he was, either the man would go for help or he would come on to investigate. In either of which events he would announce his presence unmis�takably to the Saint's tingling ears.

But nothing happened. Simon stood there like a statue while the seconds ticked into minutes on his drumming pulses, and the wetness drained down his legs and formed a pool around his feet, hardly breathing; but only the drone of conversation in the sa�loon, and a muffled guffaw from the crew's quarters under his feet, reached him out of the stillness.

At last he relaxed, and allowed himself to glance curiously at his surroundings. Over his head, the odd canvas-shrouded con�trivance which he had observed from a distance reached out aft like an oversized boom�but there was no mast at the near end to account for it. The Falkenberg carried no sail. He stretched up and wriggled his fingers through a gap in the lacing, and felt something like a square steel girder with wire cables stretched inside it; and suddenly the square protuberance, likewise covered with tarpaulin, on which the after end of the boom rested took on a concrete significance. At the end up against the deckhouse he found wheels, and the wire cables turned over the wheels, and ran down close beside the bulkhead to vanish through plated eyes in the deck at his feet ... He was exploring a nifty, well-oiled, and up-to-date ten-ton grab!

"Well, -well, well," murmured the Saint admiringly, to his guardian angel.

And that curiously low flattened stern ... It all fitted in. Divers could be dropped over that counter with the minimum of difficulty; and the grab could telescope out or swing round, and run its claw round to be steered on to whatever the divers offered it. While, forward of all those gadgets, there were a pair of high-speed engines and a super-stream-lined hull to facilitate a lightning getaway if an emergency emerged. . . . Which, how�ever priceless a conglomeration of assets, is not among the amen�ities usually advertised with luxurious pleasure cruisers.

A slow smile tugged at the Saint's lips; and he restrained him�self with a certain effort from performing an impromptu horn�pipe. The last lingering speck of doubt in his mind had been catastrophically obliterated in those few seconds. Loretta Page hadn't been pulling his leg, or raving, or leading him up the garden. He wasn't kidding himself to make the book read accord�ing to the blurb. That preposterous, princely, pluperfect racket did exist; and Kurt Vogel was in it. In it right up to the blue cornice of his neck.

If someone had been wearing a hat, he would have raised it in solemn salute to the benign deities of outlawry that had poured him into such a truly splendiferous tureen of soup.

And then a door opened further up the deck, and footsteps began to move down towards him. Where he was standing, there wasn't cover for a cat, except what was provided by the shadow of the deckhouse. In another second even that was taken from him, as a switch was clicked over somewhere and a pair of bulk�head lights behind frosted panels suddenly wiped out the dark�ness in. a glow of yellowish radiance.

The Saint's heart arrived in his mouth, as if it had soared up there in an express elevator; and for a moment his hand dropped to the gun in his belt.

And then he realised that the lights which had destroyed his hiding-place hadn't been switched on with that intention. They were simply a part of the general system of exterior illumination of the boat, and their kindling had doubtless been paralleled by the lighting up of other similar bulbs all around the deck. But the footsteps were drawing close to the corner where they would find him in� full� view,� and he� could hear Vogel� discoursing proprietorially on the details of beam and draught.

Simon looked up speculatively, and his hands reached for the deckhouse roof. In another second he was up there, spread out flat on his stomach, peeping warily down over the edge.

2

All the evening Kurt Vogel had been studiously affable. The dinner had been perfectly cooked and perfectly served; the wine, presented with a charming suggestion of apology, just dulcet enough to flatter a feminine palate, without being too sweet for any taste. Vogel had set himself out to play the polished cosmo�politan host, and he filled the part brilliantly. The other guest, whom he called Otto and who had been introduced to Loretta as Mr Arnheim, a fat broad-faced man with small brown eyes and a moist red pursed-up mouth, fitted into the play with equal correctness. And yet the na�ve joviality of Professor Yule, with his boyish laugh and his anecdotes and his ridiculously premature grey beard, was the only thing that had eased the strain on her nerves.

She knew that from the moment when she set foot on board she was being watched like a mouse cornered by two patient cats. She knew it, even without one single article of fact which she could have pointed out in support of her belief. There was nothing in the entertainment, not the slightest scintilla of a hint of an innuendo, to give her any material grounds for discomfort. The behaviour of Vogel and Arnheim was so punctilious that without their unfailing geniality it would have been almost em�barrassingly formal.

The menace was not in anything they said or did. It was in their silences. Their smiles never reached their eyes. Their laughter went no deeper than their throats. All the time they were watching, waiting, analysing. Every movement she made, every turn of a glance, every inflection of her voice, came under their mental microscope�was wafered down, dissected, scrutin�ised in all its component parts until it had given up its last parti�cle of meaning. And the fiendish cleverness of it was that a per�fectly innocent woman in the role she had adopted wouldn't have been bothered at all.

She had realised halfway through the meal that that was the game they were playing. They were merely letting her own imag�ination work against her, while they looked on. Steadily, skilfully, remorselessly, they were goading her own brain against her, keying her millimetre by millimetre to the tension of self-con�sciousness where she would make one false step that would be sufficient for their purpose. And all the time they were smiling, talking flatteringly to her, respecting her with their words, so cunningly that an outside observer like Professor Yule could have seen nothing to give her the slightest offence.

She had clung to the Professor as the one infallible lodestar on the tricky course she had to steer, even while she had realised completely what Vogel's patronage of scientific exploration meant. Yule's spontaneous innocence was the one pattern which she had been able to hold to; and when he remained behind in the saloon she felt a cold emptiness that was not exactly fear.

Arnheim had engineered it, with a single sentence of irre�proachable and unarguable tact, when Vogel suggested showing her over the ship.

"We'll stay and look after the port," he said, and there was not even the suspicion of a smirk in his eyes when he spoke.

She looked at staterooms, bathrooms, galleys, engines, and refrigerators, listening to his explanations and interjecting the right expressions of admiration and delight, steeling herself against the hypnotic monotone of his voice. She wondered whether he would kiss her in one of the rooms, and felt as if she had been let out of prison when they came out on deck under the open sky.

His hand slid through her arm. It was the first time he had touched her, and even then the touch had no more than an avun�cular familiarity.

". . . This open piece of deck is rather pleasant for sitting out when it's hot. We rig an awning over that boom if the sun's too strong."

"It must be marvellous to own a boat like this," she said.

They stood at the rail, looking down the river. Somewhere among the lights in the broadening of the estuary was the Cor�sair, but there was nothing by which she could pick it out.

"To be able to have you here�this is pleasant," he said. "At other times it can be a very lonely ownership."

"That must be your own choice."

"It is. I am a rich man. If I told you how rich I was you might think I was exaggerating. I could fill this boat hundreds of times over with�delectable company. A generous millionaire is always attractive. But I've never done so. Do you know that you're the first woman who has set foot on this deck?"

"I'm sorry if you regret it," she said carelessly.

"I do."

His black eyes sought her face with a burning intensity. She realised with a thrill of fantastic horror that he was absolutely sincere. In that cold passionless iron-toned voice he was making love to her, as if the performance was dragged out of him against his will. He was still watching her; but within that inflexible vigilance there was a grotesque hunger for illusion that was an added terror.

"I regret it because when you give a woman even the smallest corner of your mind, you give her the power to take more. You are no longer in supreme command of your destiny. The building of a lifetime can be betrayed and broken for a moment's foolish�ness."

She smiled.

"You're too cynical�you sound as if you'd been disappointed in love."

"I have never been in love��"

The last word was bitten off, as if it had not been intended to be the last. It gave the sentence a curiously persistent quality, so that it seemed to reverberate in the air, repeating itself in ghostly echoes after the actual sound was gone.

She half turned towards him, in a natural quest for the conclu�sion of that unfinished utterance. Instead she found his hands pinning her to the rail on either side, his great predatory nose thrust down towards her face, his wide lipless mouth working under a torrent of low-pitched quivering words.

"You have tempted me to be foolish. For years I shut all women out of my life, so that none of them could hurt me. And yet what does wealth give without women? I knew that you wanted to come and see my boat. For you it might only have been a nice boat to look at, part of your holiday's amusement; for me it was a beginning. I broke the rule of a lifetime to bring you here. Now I don't want you to go back."

"You'll change your mind again in the morning." Somehow she tore her gaze away, and broke through his arms. "Besides, you wouldn't forget a poor girl's honour��"

She was walking along the deck, swinging her wrap with an affectation of sophisticated composure, finding a moment's es�cape in movement. He walked beside her, speaking of emotion in that terrifying unemotional voice.

"Honour is the virtue of inferior people who can't afford to dispense with it. I have enough money to ignore whatever any�one may think or anyone may say. If you shared it with me, nothing need hurt you."

"Only myself."

"No, no. Don't be conventional. That isn't worthy of you. It's my business to understand people. You are the kind of woman who can stand aside and look at facts, without being deluded by any fogs of sentimentality. We speak the same language. That's why I talk to you like this."

His hand went across and gripped her shoulder, so that she had to stop and turn.

"You are the kind of woman with whom I could forget to be cold."

He drew her towards him, and she closed her eyes before he kissed her. His mouth was hard, with a kind of rubbery smooth�ness that chilled her so that she shivered. After a long time he released her. His eyes burned on her like hot coals.

"You'll stay, Loretta?" he said hoarsely.

"No." She swayed away from him. She felt queerly sick, and the air had become heavy and oppressive. "I don't know. You're too quick. . . . Ask me again to-morrow. Please."

"I'm leaving to-morrow."

"You are?"

"We're going to St Peter Port. I hoped you would come with us."

"Give me a cigarette."

He felt in his pockets. The commonplace distraction, thrust at him like that, blunted the edge of his attack.

"I'm afraid I left my case inside. Shall we go in?"

He opened the door, and her hand rested on his arm for a moment as she passed him into the wheelhouse. He passed her a lacquer box and offered her a light.

"You didn't show me this," she said, glancing round the room. was one curved panel of plate glass in the streamlined shape of the most attractive living-rooms on the ship. At the after end there were shelves of books, half a dozen deep long armchairs invited idleness, a rich carpet covered the floor. Long straight windows ran the length of the beam sides, and the forward end was one curved panel of plate glass in the streamlined shape of the structure. There were flowers in chromium wall brackets, and concealed lights built into the ceiling. The wheel and instrument panel up in one corner, the binnacle in front of it and the lit�tered chart table filling the forward bay, looked almost like prop�erty fittings, as if a millionaire's whim had played with the idea of decorating a den in an ordinary house to look like the interior of a yacht.

"We were coming here," said Vogel.

He did not smoke, and he had an actor's mastery over his unoccupied hands which in him seemed to be only the index of an inhuman restraint. She thought he was gathering himself to recover the mood of a moment ago; but before he spoke again there was a knock on the door.

"What is it?" he demanded sharply�it was the first time she had seen a crack in the glassy veneer of his self-possession.

"Excuse me, sir."

The steward who had served dinner stood at the door, his saturnine face mask-like and yet obsequiously expressive. He stood there and waited, and Vogel turned to Loretta with an apologetic shrug.

"I'm so sorry�will you wait for me a moment?"

The door closed on the two men, and she relaxed against the back of a chair. The cigarette between her fingers was held quite steadily�there wasn't a crease or an indentation in the white oval paper to level a mute accusation at the mauling of unstead�ied fingers. She regarded it with an odd detached interest. There was even a full half-inch of ash built out unbroken from the end of it�a visible reassurance that she hadn't once exposed the nervous strain that had keyed up inside her almost to breaking pitch.

She dragged herself off the chair-back and moved across the room. This was the first time she had been left alone since she came on board. It was the chance which had forced her through the ordeal of dinner, the one faint hope of finding a shred of evidence to mark progress on the job, without which anything she suffered would have been wasted�and would have to be gone through again.

She didn't know exactly what she was looking for. There was no definite thing to find. She could only search around with an almost frantic expectancy for any scrap of something that might be added to the slowly mounting compilation of what was known about Kurt, Vogel�for something that might perhaps miracu�lously prove to be the last pointer in the long paper-chase. Others had worked like that before, teasing out fragments of knowledge with infinite patience and at infinite risk. Fragments that had been built up over many months into the single clue that had brought her there.

She ran her eyes over the titles of the books in the cases. There were books on philosophy, books on engineering and nav�igation, books on national and international law in various languages. There were works on criminology, memoirs of espio�nage, a very few novels of the highly mathematical detective type. They didn't look like dummies. She pulled out a couple at random and flicked the pages. They were real; but it would have taken twenty minutes to try them all.

Her fingers curled up and tightened. Nothing in the books. The littered chart table, perhaps . . . She crossed the room quickly, startled by the loud swish of her dress as she moved, her heart throbbing at a speed which surprised her even more. Funny, she thought. Three weeks ago she would have sworn she didn't pos�sess a heart�or nerves. A week ago. A day ago. Or a century.

She was staring down at the table, at a general chart of the Channel Islands and the adjacent coast of France, spread out on the polished teak. But what was there in a chart? A course had been ruled out from Dinard to St Peter Port, with a dog's-leg bend in it to clear the western end of the Minquiers. There was a jotted note of bearings and distances by the angle of the thin pencilled lines. Nothing in that . . . Her glance wandered helplessly over the scattered smudges of red which stood for light�houses and buoys.

And then she was looking at a red mark that wasn't quite the same as the other red marks. It was a distinct circle drawn in red ink around a dot of black marked to the east of Sark. Beside it, also in red ink, neat tiny figures recorded the exact bearing.

The figures jumbled themselves before her eyes. She gripped on her bag, trying to stifle the absurd pulse of excitement that was beginning to work under her ribs. Just like that. So easy, so plain. Perhaps the last clue, the fabulous open sesame that had been tormenting her imagination. Whatever those red marks meant�and others would soon find that out.

There was a pencil lying on the table; and she had opened her bag before she remembered that she had nothing in it to write on. Lipstick on a handkerchief, then . . . but there were a dozen scraps of torn-up paper in an ashtray beside the pencil, and a square inch of paper would be enough.

Her hand moved out.

Suddenly she felt cold all over. There was a feeling of night�mare limpness in her knees, and when she breathed again it was in a queer little shuddering sigh. But she put her hand into her bag quite steadily and took out a powder box. Quite steadily she dabbed at her nose, and quite steadily she walked away to an�other table and stood there turning the pages of a magazine� with the thrum of a hundred demented dynamos pounding through her body and roaring sickeningly in her brain.

Those scraps of inviting paper. The pencil ready to be picked up at the first dawn of an idea. The chart left out, with the red bearing marked on it. The excuse for Vogel to leave the room. The ordeal on the deck, before that, which had sabotaged her self-control to the point where the finest edge of her vigilance was dulled ... to the point where her own aching nerves had tempted her on to the very brink of a trap from which only the shrieked protest of some indefinable sixth sense had held her back ...

She stood there shivering inside, although her hand was quite steady�scanning a meaningless succession of pictures which printed themselves on her retinas without ever reaching her brain. For several seconds she hadn't the strength to move again.

She fought back towards mastery of herself. After an eternity that could scarcely have lasted a quarter of a minute, she let the magazine fall shut on the table and strolled idly back to the chair from which she had started. She sat down. She could feel that her movements were smooth and unhurried, her face calm and untroubled in spite of the tumult within her. Before that, her face and hands might have betrayed her�it only depended on the angle from which she must have been watched. But when Vogel came back, the smile with which she looked up to greet him was serene and artless.

He nodded.

"Please excuse me."

The smile with which he answered her was perfunctory and preoccupied�he didn't even make the mistake of looking closely at her. He went straight across to a folding bureau built into the panelling on one side of the room, and pulled out a drawer.

"I don't want you to be alarmed," he said in his cold even voice, "but I should like you to stay here a few minutes longer."

She felt the creep of her skin up towards the nape of her neck, and searched for the voice that had once been her own.

"I'm quite comfortable," she said.

"I think you'd better stay," he said, and turned round as he slipped the jacket of a big blued automatic in his hand. "The stewards have seen someone prowling about the ship again, just like that mysterious person I told you about who was here last night. But this time he isn't going to get away so easily."

3

Something as intangible as air and as vicious as a machinegun began hammering at the pit of Loretta's stomach. The cohort of ghostly dynamos sang in her ears again, blotting out her precarious instant of hard-won peace in a din that was twice as bad as anything before it. She felt the blood draining down from her head until only a dab of powder and the sea-tan on her skin were left to save her from ultimate disaster.

"Not really?" she said.

Her voice seemed to come from four or five miles away, a mere hollow echo of itself. She knew that by some miracle of will-power she had kept the smile steady on her face; but even that wasn't enough. The disaster was not dispelled�it was barely checked.

A queer glimpse of desperate humour was the only thing she could cling to. She, who had met case-hardened men on their own ground, who had faced death as often as dishonour, and with the same poised contempt and unfaltering alertness�she, Loretta Page, who was ranked at Ingerbeck's as the coolest head on a roster of frost-bitten intellects which operated in the perpetual bleakness of temperatures below zero�was being slowly and inevitably broken up. The rasps of a third degree more subtle and deadly than anything she had ever dreamed of were achieving what mere violence and crude terrorism could never have achieved. They were working away as implacably and untiringly as fate, turning her own self into her bitterest enemy.

Vogel's jet-black eyes were fixed on her now. They had moved on to her face like the poles of a magnet from which she would have had to struggle transparently to get away; and yet his aquiline features were still without positive expression.

"You've nothing to worry about," he said, in a purr of caress�ing reassurance.

"But I'm thrilled." She met his gaze unflinchingly, with the same smile of friendly innocence. "What is it that makes you so popular?"

He shrugged.

"They're probably just some common harbour thieves who think the boat looks as if she might have some valuables on board. We shall find out."

"Let me come with you."

"My dear��"

"I'm not a bit frightened. Not while you've got that gun. And I'll be awfully quiet. But I couldn't bear to miss anything so exciting. Please�would you mind?"

He hesitated for a moment only, and then opened the door on the starboard side.

"All right. Will you keep behind me?"

He switched out the lights, and she followed him out on to the deck. Under the dim glow of the masthead light she caught sight of his broad back moving forward, and stepped after him. In the first shock of transition from the bright illumination of the wheelhouse there was no difference in quality between the black�ness of the air and the sea, so that the night seemed to lie all around them, above and below, as if the Falkenberg was sus�pended in a vast bowl of darkness sprinkled with tiny twinkling lights. Vogel was almost invisible in his black evening clothes as he tiptoed round in the half-solid shadow to the other side of the deck; and when he halted she could hardly have been a pace behind him�his shape swam up before her eyes so suddenly that she touched him as she stopped.

"He's still there."

His voice touched her eardrums as a mere bass vibration in the stillness. From where she stood she could look down the whole length of the deck, a grey pathway stencilled with the yellow windows of the saloon where Yule and Arnheim were still presumably discussing the port. The deckhouse profiled itself in black and slanted black banks of shadow across the open space. Away aft there was another shadow merging into the rest, a thing that distinguished itself only by its shorter and sharper curves from the long cubist lines of the others�something that her eyes found and froze on.

Vogel lifted his automatic.

Her left hand gripped the weather rail. She was trembling, although her mind was working with a clarity that seemed out side herself. That psychological third degree had accomplished its purpose.

Vogel had got her. Even if she had bluffed him all the evening, even if she had betrayed nothing in that paralysed moment of realisation at the chart table, even if she had kept the mask unmoved on her face when he came back�he had got her now. The story of a man prowling on the ship might be a lie. She might be imagining the shadow out of her own guilty fear; or it might only be a member of the crew put out to play the part and build up the deception�to be aimed at and perhaps shot at by Vogel with a blank cartridge. But she didn't know. There was no way for her to know. She had to choose between letting the Saint be shot down without warning, or��

A dozen crazy thoughts crashed through her head. She might throw a noisy fit of maidenly hysterics. She might sneeze, or cough, or faint on his shoulder. But she knew that that was just what he was waiting for her to do. The first hint of interference that she gave would brand her for all time. He would have no more doubts.

She stared at him in a kind of chilled hopeless agony. She could see his arm extended against the lighter grey of the deck, the dull gleam of the automatic held rigidly at the end of it, his black deepset eyes lined unwinkingly along the sights. Something in the nerveless immobility of his position shouted at her that he was a man to whom the thought of missing had never occurred. She saw the great hungry crook of his nose, the ends of his mouth drawn, back so that the thin lips rolled under and van�ished into two parallel lines that were as vicious and pitiless as the smile of a cobra would have been. Her own words thundered through her head in a strident mocking chorus: "When you join Ingerbeck's, you don't sign on for a cocktail party . . . You take an oath ... to do your job . . . keep your mouth shut . . . take the consequences . . ." She had to choose.

So had the Saint.

Moving along the deckhouse roof as silently as a ghost, he had followed everything that happened outside; lying spreadeagled over the wheelhouse, he had leaned out at a perilous angle until he could peer down through one of the windows and see what was happening inside. He had bunched his muscles in a spasm of impotent exasperation when he saw Loretta's hand going out to touch the pencil and spring the trap, and had breathed again when she drew back. Everything that she had endured he had felt sympathetically within himself; and when Vogel came back and took out his automatic, Simon had heard what was said and had understood that also.

Now, gathering his limbs stealthily under him, so close above Loretta's head that he could almost have reached down and touched her, he understood much more. The first mention of a man prowling about the deck had prickled a row of nerve centres all along his spine; then he had disbelieved; then he had seen the shadow that Loretta was staring at, and had remembered the dark speeding canoe which had nearly run him down on his way there. But Loretta hadn't seen that; and he knew what she must be thinking. He could read what was in her mind, could suffer everything she was suffering, as if by some clairvoyant affinity that transcended reason he was identified with her in the stress of that satanically conceived ordeal; and there was a queer exaltation in his heart as he stepped off the wheelhouse roof, out into space over her head.

She saw him as if he had fallen miraculously out of the sky, which was more or less what he did�with one foot knocking down the automatic and the other striking flat-soled at the side of Vogel's head. The gun went off with a crash that echoed back and forth across the estuary, and Vogel staggered against the rail and fell to his knees.

Simon fell across the rail, caught it with his hands, and hung on for a moment. Down at the after end of the deck, the shape that had been lurking there detached itself from the shadows and scurried across the narrow strip of light to clamber over the rail and drop hectically downwards.

Loretta Page stared across six feet of Breton twilight at the miracle�half incredulously, with the breathlessness of inde�scribable relief choking in her throat. She saw the flash of white teeth in a familiar smile, saw him put his fingers to his lips and kiss them out to her with a debonair flourish that defied compar�ison; and then, as Vogel began to drag himself up and around with the gun still clutched in his right hand, she saw the Saint launch himself up with a ripple of brown muscles to curve over with hardly a splash into the sea.

He went down in a long shallow dive, and swam out of the Falkenberg's circle of light before he rose. He had judged his timing and his angle so well that the canoe flashed past his eyes as he broke the surface. He put up one hand and caught the gunnel as it went by, nearly upsetting the craft until the man in it leaned out to the other side and balanced it.

"I thought I told you to say goodbye to France," said the Saint.

"I thought I told you I didn't take your orders," said the other grimly.

"They were Loretta's orders, Steve."

Murdoch dug in the paddle and dragged the canoe round the stern of another yacht moored in the river.

"She's crazy, too," he snarled. "Because you've got around her with your gigolo line doesn't mean I don't know what she'll say when she comes to her senses. I'm staying where I like."

"And getting shot where you like, I hope," murmured Simon. "I won't interfere in the next bonehead play you make. I only butted in this time to save Loretta. Next time, you can take your own curtain."

"I will," said Murdoch prophetically. "Let go this boat."

Simon let go rather slowly, resisting the temptation to release his hold with a deft jerk that would have capsized the canoe and damped the pugnaciousness of its ungrateful occupant. He won�dered whether Murdoch's aggressiveness was founded on sheer blind ignorance of what might have been the result of his clumsy intrusion, or whether it was put up to bluff away the knowledge of having made an egregious mistake; and most of all he won�dered what else would come of the insubordinations of that tough inflexible personality.

One of those questions was partly answered for him very quickly.

He sculled back with his hands, under the side of the yacht near which they had parted company, listening to the low sono�rous purr of a powerful engine that had awoken in the darkness. There were no lights visible through any of the portholes, and he concluded that the crew were all on shore. He was on the side away from the Falkenberg, temporarily screened even from the most lynx-eyed searcher. The purr of the engine grew louder; and with a quick decision he grasped a stanchion, drew himself up, and rolled over into the tiny after cockpit.

He reached it only a second before the beam of a young searchlight swept over the ship, wiping a bar of brilliant illu�mination across the deck in its passing. The throb of the engine droned right up to him; and he hitched a very cautious eye over the edge of the cockpit, and saw the Falkenberg's speed tender churning around his refuge, so close that he could have touched it with a boathook. A seaman crouched up on the foredeck, swinging the powerful spotlight that was mounted there; two other men stood up beside the wheel, following the path of the beam with their eyes. Its long finger danced on the water, touched luminously on the hulls of other craft at their anchor�ages, stretched faintly out to the more distant banks of the es�tuary . . . fastened suddenly on the shape of a canoe that sprang up out of the dark as if from nowhere, skimming towards the bathing pool at the end of the Plage du Prieur�. The canoe veered like a startled gull, shooting up parallel with the rocky foreshore; but the beam clung to it like a magnetised bar of light, linking it with the tender as if it were held by intangible cables. At the same time the murmur of the tender's engine deepened its note: the bows lifted a little, and a white streamer of foam lengthened away from the stern as the link-bar of light between the two craft shortened.

The canoe turned once more, and headed south again, the man in it paddling with unhurried strokes again, as if he was trying to undo the first impression he had given of taking flight. The Falk�enberg'stender turned and drifted up alongside him as the en�gine was shut off; and at that moment the spotlight was switched out.

Simon heard the voices clearly across the water.

"Have you seen anyone swimming around here?"

And Murdoch's sullen answer: "I did see someone�it was over that way."

"Thanks."

The voice of the tender's spokesman was the last one Simon heard. And then, after the very briefest pause, the engine was cut in again, and the tender began to slide smoothly back towards the Falkenberg, while the canoe went on its way to the shore. In that insignificant pause the only sound was a faint thud such as a man might have made in dumping a heavy weight on a hard floor. But Simon Templar knew, with absolute certainty, that the man who paddled the canoe on towards the shore was not the man who had been caught by the spotlight, and that the man who had been in the canoe was riding unconsciously in the speedboat as it turned back.

4

The tender slid in under the side of the Falkenberg, and the man on the foredeck who had been working the spotlight stood up and threw in the painter. Vogel himself caught the rope and made it fast. Under the natural pallor of his skin there was a curious rigidity, and the harsh black line of his brows over that great scythe of a nose was accentuated by the shadows that fell across his face as he leaned over the rail.

"Did you find anything?"

"No." The man at the wheel answered, standing up in the cockpit. He looked up at Vogel intently as he spoke, and his right hand fingered a rug that seemed to have been thrown down in a rather large bundle on the seat beside him. His phlegmatic voice, with a thick guttural accent, boomed on very slowly and deliberately: "We asked a man in a boat, but he had seen no�body."

"I see," answered Vogel quietly.

He straightened up with a slight shrug; and Professor Yule and Arnheim, on his right, turned away from the rail with him.

"That's a pity," said Yule enthusiastically. "But they can't have searched very far. Shall we go out and have another look?"

"I'm afraid we shouldn't be likely to have any more success, my dear Professor," replied Vogel. "There is plenty of room in the river for anyone to disappear quite quickly, and we were slow enough in starting after them." He turned to Loretta. "I'm very sorry�you must have had rather a shock, and you're more im�portant than catching a couple of harbour thieves."

In some way the quality of his voice had altered�she could feel the change without being able to define it. She felt like somebody who has been watching a fuse smouldering away into a stack of lethal explosive under her feet, and who has seen the fuse miraculously flicker and go out. The sensation of limpness in her muscles was no longer the paralysis of nightmare; it was the relaxation of pure relief. She knew that for that night at least the ordeal was over. Vogel had shot his bolt. In a few hours he would be as balanced and dangerous as ever, his brain would be working with the same ruthless insistence and ice-cold de�tachment; but for the moment he himself was suffering from a shock, intrinsically slight, and yet actual enough to have jarred the delicately calculated precision of his attack. Something told her that he realised what he had lost, and that he was too clever to waste any more effort on a spoiled opportunity.

"I'm perfectly all right," she said; and her nerves were so steady again that she had to call on acting for the vestiges of trepidation which she felt were demanded.

"All the same, I expect you would like a drink."

"That wouldn't do any of us any harm," agreed Arnheim.

In his own way he had altered, although his broad flat face was as bland as ever, and his wet little red mouth was pursed up to the same enigmatic sensual bud that it had been all the eve�ning. He took it on himself to officiate with the decanter, and swallowed half a tumbler of neat whisky in two methodical gulps. Vogel took a very modest allowance with a liberal splash of soda, and sipped it with impenetrable restraint.

But even the artificial film of lightness had gone murky. Vo�gel's unshaken suavity, with Arnheim's solid co-operation, elimi�nated any embarrassing silences; but a curious heavy tenseness like the threat of thunder had crept into the atmosphere, a tense�ness so subtle and well concealed that at any other time she might have been persuaded that it was purely subjective to her own fatigue. When at last she said that she had had too many late nights already that week, and asked if they would excuse her, she detected a tenuous undercurrent of relief in their pro�testations.

"I'm sorry all this should have happened to upset the evening," said Vogel, as they left the saloon.

She laid her hand on his arm.

"Honestly, it hasn't upset me," she said. "It's been quite an adventure. I'm just rather tired. Do you understand?"

In that at least she was perfectly truthful. A reaction had set in that had made her feel mentally and physically bruised, as if her mind and body had been crushed together through machine rollers. Sitting beside him again in the cockpit of the speed ten�der, with a light sea breeze stirring refreshingly through her hair, it seemed as if a whole week of ceaseless effort had gone by since she set out to keep that dangerous appointment.

She felt his arm behind her shoulders and his hand on her knee, and steeled herself to be still.

"Will you come with us to-morrow?"

She shook her head, with a little despairing breath.

"I've been through too much to-night . . . You don't give a girl a chance to think, do you?"

"But there is so little time. We go to-morrow��"

"I know. But does that make it any easier for me? It's my life you want to buy. It mayn't seem very much to you, but it's the only one I've got."

"But you will come."

"I don't know. You take so much for granted��"

"You will come."

His hand on her shoulder was weighting into her flesh. The deep toneless hypnotic command of his voice reverberated into her ears like an iron bell tolling in a resonant abyss; but it was not his command which scarred itself into her awareness and told her that she would have to go. There had been danger, ordeal, respite; but nothing accomplished. She would still have to go.

"Oh, yes . . . I'll come." She turned her face in to his shoul�der; and then she broke away. "No, don't touch me again now."

He left her alone; and she sat in the far corner of the cockpit and stared out over the dark water while the tender came in alongside the quay. He walked up to her hotel with her in the same silence, and she wondered what kind of superhumanly im�mobilised exaltation was pent up in his obedience. She turned at the door, and held out her hand.

"Goodnight."

"Will half-past ten be too early? I could send a steward down before that to do your packing."

"No. I can be ready."

He put her fingers to his lips, and went back to the jetty. On the return journey he took the wheel himself, and sent the speedboat creaming through the dark with her graceful bows lifting and the searchlight blazing a clear pathway over the wa�ter. The man who had been in charge of the hunt a little while before stood beside him.

"Where did you put him, Ivaloff ?" Vogel asked quietly.

"In No. 9 cabin," answered the man in his sullen throaty voice. "He is tied up and gagged; but I think he will sleep for a little while."

"Do you know who he is?"

"I have not seen him before. Perhaps one of the men who has been watching on shore will know him."

Vogel said nothing. Even if the captive was a stranger, it would be possible to find out who he was. If he carried no papers that would identify him, he would be made to talk. It never occurred to him that the prisoner might be innocent: Ivaloff made no mistakes, and Vogel himself had seen the canoe's significant swerve and first instinctive attempt to dodge the searchlight. He threw the engine into neutral and then into re�verse, bringing the tender neatly up to the companion, and went across the deck to the wheelhouse.

Professor Yule was there. He glanced up from a newspaper.

"I wish I knew what these gold mining shares were going to do," he remarked casually. "I could sell now and take a profit, but I'd like to see another rise first."

"You should ask Otto about it�he is an expert," said Vogel. "By the way, where is he?"

"I don't know. He went out to look for part of a broken cuff�link. Didn't you see him on deck?"

Vogel shook his head.

"Probably he was on the other side of the ship. Do you hold very many of these shares?"

He selected a cigar from a cedarwood cabinet and pierced it carefully while Yule talked. So Arnheim hadn't been able to wait more than a few minutes before he tried to find out something about the man they had captured. Otto had always been impa�tient�his brain lacked that last infinitesimal milligram of poise which gave a man the power to possess himself indefinitely and imperturbably. He should have waited until Yule went to bed.

Not that it was vitally important. The Professor was as unsus�pecting as a child; and No. 9 cabin was the dungeon of the ship �a room so scientifically soundproofed that a gun fired in it would have been inaudible where they were. Vogel drew steadily at his cigar and discussed the gold market with unruffled compo�sure for a quarter of an hour, until Yule picked himself up and decided to retire.

Vogel stood at the chart table and gave the Professor time to reach his stateroom. In front of him was the chart with that lone position marked in red ink, the scraps of torn paper in the ashtray, the pencil lying beside it ... untouched. Loretta Page had stood over those things for a full minute, but from where he was watching he could not see her face. "When she turned away she had seemed unconcerned. And yet . . . there were more things than that to be explained. Kurt Vogel was not worried�his pas�sionlessly efficient brain had no room for such a futile emotion� but there had been other moments in his career, like that, when he knew that he was fighting for his life.

He left the chart table without a shrug, and left the wheelhouse by the door at the after end. Between him and the saloon a com�panion ran down to the lower deck. He went aft along the alley�way at the bottom�the door of the Professor's cabin was close to the foot of the companion, and he paused outside it for a couple of seconds and heard the thud of a dropped shoe before he went on. His cigar glowed evenly, gripped with the barest necessary pressure between his teeth, and bis feet moved with a curious soundlessness on the thick carpet.

No. 9 cabin was the last door in the passenger section. Just beyond it another companion sloped steeply up to the after deck, and abaft the companion a watertight door shut off the continua�tion of the alleyway on to which the crew's quarters opened. Vogel stopped and turned the handle, and a faint frown creased in between his eyebrows when the door did not move.

He raised his hand to knock; and then for some reason He glanced downwards and saw that the key was in the lock on the outside. At the same time he became conscious of a cool damp�ness on his hand. He opened it under the light, and saw a glisten of moisture in the palm and on the inside of his fingers.

For an instant he did not move. And then his hand went down slowly and touched the door-handle again. He felt the wetness of it under the light slide of his finger-tips, and bent down to touch the carpet. That also was d& so were the treads of the com�panion.

Without hesitation he turned the key silently in the lock, slipped an automatic out of his pocket, and thrust open the door. The cabin was in darkness, but his fingers found the switch in�stantaneously and clicked it down. Otto Arnheim lay at his feet in the middle of the floor, with his face turned whitely up to the light and his round pink mouth hanging vacuously open. There were a couple of lengths of rope carelessly thrown down beside him�and that was all.

IV.���� HOW STEVE MURDOCH REMAINED OBSTINATE,

��������� AND� SIMON TEMPLAR RENDERED FIRST AID

IF THE quality of surprise had ever been a part of Orace's emo�tional make-up, the years in which he had worked for Simon Templar had long since exhausted any trace of its existence. Probably from sheer instinctive motives of self-preservation he had acquired the majestically immutable sang-froid of a jellied eel; and he helped Simon to haul his prize out on to the deck of the Corsair as unconcernedly as he would have lent a hand with embarking a barrel of beer.

"How d'you like it?" asked the Saint, with a certain pardona�ble smugness.

He was breathing a little deeply from the effort of life-saving Steve Murdoch's unconscious body through the odd half-mile of intervening water, and the shifting muscles glistened over his torso as he filled his chest. Murdoch, lying in a heap with the water oozing out of his sodden clothes, was conspicuously less vital; and Orace inspected him with perceptible distaste.

"Wot is it?" he inquired disparagingly.

"A sort of detective," said the Saint. "I believe he's a good fellow at heart; but he doesn't like me and he's damned stub�born. He's tried to die once before to-night, and he didn't thank me when I stopped him."

Orace sucked his moustache ghoulishly over the body.

"Is 'e dead now?"

"Not yet�at least I don't think so. But he's got a lump on the back of his head the size of an apple, and I don't expect he'll feel too happy when he wakes up. Let's try him and see."

They undressed Murdoch out on the deck, and Simon wrung out his clothes as best he could and tied them in a rough bundle which he chucked into the galley oven when they took the still unconscious man below. He left Orace to apply the usual re�storatives, and went back into the saloon to towel himself vigorously and brush his hair. He heard various groans and thumps and other sounds of painful resuscitation while he was doing this; and he had just settled into a clean shirt and a pair of comfortable old flannel trousers when the communicating door opened and the fruit of Orace's labours shot blearily in.

It was quite obvious that the Saint's prophecy was correct. Mr Murdoch was not feeling happy. The tender imprint of a skilfully wielded blackjack had established at the base of his skull a high-powered broadcasting station of ache from which messages of hate and ill-will were radiating in all directions with throbbing intensity, while the grinding machinery of transmission was set�ting up a roaring din that threatened to split his head. Taking these profound disadvantages into consideration, Mr Murdoch entered, comparatively speaking, singing and dancing; which he is to say that he only looked as if he would like to beat some�body on the head with a mallet until they sank into the ground.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded truculently.

"Just another boat," answered the Saint kindly. "On your left, the port side. On your right, the starboard. Up there is the forward or sharp end, which goes through the water first��"

Murdoch glowered at him speechlessly for a moment; and then the team of pneumatic drills started work again under the roof of his skull, and he sank on to a bunk.

"I thought it would be you," he said morosely.

Orace came in like a baronial butler, put down a tray of whisky and glasses, sniffed loudly, and departed. Murdoch stared at the door which closed behind him with the penumbras of homi�cide darkening again on his square features.

"I could kill that guy twice, and then drown him." Murdoch grabbed the whisky-bottle, poured three fingers into a glass, and swallowed it straight. He compressed his lips in a grimace, and looked up at the Saint again. "Well, here I am�and who the hell asked you to bring me here?"

"You didn't," Simon admitted.

"Didn't you tell me you'd keep out of the way next time?"

"That was the idea."

"Well, what d'ya think I'm going to do�fall on your neck and kiss you?"

"Not in those trousers, I hope," said the Saint.

The trousers belonged to Orace, who was taller but not so bulky. As a result, they were stretched dangerously across the seat, and hung in a graceful concertina over the ankles. Murdoch glared down at them venomously, and they responded with an ominous rending squeak as he moved to get hold of the whisky again.

"I didn't ask you to pull me out, and I'm not going to thank you. If you thought I'd fall for you, you're wrong. Was that the idea, too? Did you think you might be able to get under my skin that way�make the same sort of monkey outa me that you've made outa Loretta? Because you won't. I'm not so soft. You can slug me again and take me back to the Falkenberg, and we'll start again where we left off; and that's as far as you'll get."

Simon sauntered over to the table and helped himself to a measured drink.

"Well, of course that's certainly a suggestion," he remarked. He sat down opposite Murdoch and put up his feet along the settee. "I've always heard that Ingerbeck's was about the ace firm in the business."

"It is."

"Been with them long?" asked the Saint caressingly.

"About ten years."

"Mmm."

Murdoch's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"What the hell d'you mean?"

"I mean they can't be so hot if they've kept you on the over�head for ten years."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah�as we used to say in the movies. Stay where you are, Steve. If you try to start any rough stuff with me I shall hit your face so hard that you'll have to be fed from behind. Besides which, those pants will split."

"Go on."

Simon flicked open the cigarette-box and helped himself to a smoke. He slipped a match out of the ashstand and sprung it into flame with his thumb-nail.

"Now and for the last time," he said, with the caress in his voice smoothed out until it was as soothing as a sheet of ice, "will you try to understand that I don't give a good God-damn how soon you have your funeral. Your mother may miss you, and even Ingerbeck's may send a wreath; but personally I shall be as miserable as a dog with a new tree. The only reason I interfered on the Falkenberg was because Vogel wasn't half so interested in shooting you as in seeing how Loretta would like it. The only reason I pulled you out again��"

"Was what?"

"Because if you'd stayed there they'd have found out more about you. You're known. Thanks to your brilliant strategy in tearing into the Hotel de la Mer and shouting for Loretta at the top of your voice, the bloke who was sleuthing her this after�noon knows your face. And if he'd seen you to-night on an identification parade�that would have been that. For Loretta, anyway. And that's all I'm interested in. As it is, you may have been recognised already. I had to take a chance on that. I could only lug you out as quickly as possible, and hope for the best. Apart from that, you could have stayed there and been massaged with hot irons, and I shouldn't have lost any sleep. Is that plain enough or do you still think I've got a fatherly interest in your future?"

Murdoch held himself down on the berth as gingerly as if it had been red hot, and his chin jutted out as if Ms fists were itch�ing to follow it.

"I get it. But you feel like a father to Loretta�huh?"

"That's my business."

"I'll say it is. There are plenty of greasy-haired dagoes making big money at it."

"My dear Steve!"

"I know you, Saint," Murdoch said raspingly. His big hands rolled his glass between them as if they were playing with the idea of crushing it to fragments with a single savage contraction, and the hard implacable lights were smouldering under the sur�face of his eyes. "You're crook. I've heard all about you. Maybe there aren't any warrants out for you at the moment. Maybe you kid some people with that front of yours about being some kind of fairy-tale Robin Hood trying to put the world right in his own way. That stuff don't cut any ice with me. You're crook�and you're in the racket for what you can get out of it."

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"Aren't you?"

"Yeah. I get one hundred bucks a week out of it; and the man who says I don't earn 'em is a liar. But that's the last cent I take."

"Of course, that's very enterprising of you," murmured the Saint, in the same drawl of gentle mockery. "But we can't all be boy scouts. I gather that you think I wouldn't be content with one hundred bucks a week?"

"You?" Murdoch was viciously derisive. "If I thought that, I'd buy you out right now."

"Where's your money?"

"What for?"

"To buy me out. One hundred dollars a week�and that's more than I thought I was going to get out of it."

The other stared at him.

"Are you telling me you'll take a hundred a week to get out?"

"Oh, no. But I'll take a hundred a week to get in. You'll have the benefit of all my brains, which you obviously need pretty badly; and I shall get lots of quiet respectable fun and a beautiful glow of virtue to keep me warm for the winter. I'm trying to convince you that I'm a reformed character. Your loving sympathy has made me see the light," said the Saint brokenly, "and from now on my only object will be to live down my evil past��"

"And I'm trying to convince you that I'm not so dumb that a twister like you can sell me a gold brick!" Murdoch snarled vio�lently. "You came into this by accident, and you saw your chance. You greased around Loretta till she told you what it was about, and you've made her so crazy she's ready to eat outa your hand. If I hadn't come along you'd of played her for a sap as long as it helped you, and ditched her when you thought you had a chance to get away with something. Well, you bet you're going to get out. I'm going to find a way to put you out�but it ain't going to be with a hundred dollars!"

The Saint rounded his lips and blew out a smoke-ring. For a moment he did actually consider the possibilities of trying to convince Murdoch of his sincerity; but he gave up the idea. The American's suspicions were rooted in too stubborn an antagonism for any amount of argument to shake them; and Simon had to admit that Murdoch had some logical justification. He looked at Murdoch thoughtfully for a while, and read the blunt facts of the situation on every line of the other's grim hard-boiled face. Oh, well . . . perhaps it was all for the best. And that incorrigible imp of buffoonery in his make-up would have made it difficult to carry the argument to conviction, anyway . . .

The Saint sighed.

"I suppose you're entitled to your point of view, Steve," he conceded mildly. "But of course that makes quite a difference. Now we shall have to decide what we're going to do with you."

"Don't worry about me," retorted Murdoch. "You worry about yourself. Give me my clothes back, and I'll be on my way."

He dumped his glass on the table and stood up; but Simon Templar did not move.

"The question is�will you?" said the Saint.

His voice was pleasant and conversational, coloured only with the merest echo of that serene and gentle mockery which had got under Murdoch's toughened hide at their first encounter; and yet something behind it made the other stand momentarily very still.

Murdoch's chunky fists knotted up slowly at his sides, and he scowled down at the slim languid figure stretched out on the settee with his eyes slotting down to glittering crevices in the rough-hewn crag of his face.

"Meaning what?" he demanded grittily.

"I'm not so thrilled with your promise to put me out," said the Saint. "And I don't know that we can let you go on getting into trouble indefinitely. Twice is all right, but the third time might be unlucky. I may be a boy scout, but I'm not a nurse�maid. One way and another, Steve, it looks as if we may have to shut you up where you won't be able to get into mischief for a while."

2

Murdoch hunched over him as if he couldn't believe his ears. There was stark pugnacious incredulity oozing out of every pore of him; and his jaw was levered up till his under lip jutted out in a bellicose ridge under his nose. His complexion had gone as red as a turkey-cock's.

"Say that again?"

"I said we may have to keep you where you won't get in the way," answered the Saint calmly. "Don't look so unhappy� there's another bottle of whisky on board, and Orace will bring you your bread and milk and tuck you up at night."

"That's what you think, is it?" grated Murdoch. "Well, you try to keep me here!"

The Saint nodded. His right hand, with the half-smoked ciga�rette still clipped between the first two fingers, slid lazily into the shelf beside the settee, under the porthole. It came out with the automatic which he had put down there when he began to dress.

"I'm trying," he said, almost apologetically.

Murdoch shied at the gun like a startled horse. His screwed-up eyes opened out in two slow dilations of rabid unbelief.

"Do you mean you're trying to hold me up?" he barked.

"That was the rough idea, brother," said the Saint amiably. "I'm not very well up in these things, but I believe this is the approved procedure. I point a rod at you, like this; and then you either do what I tell you or try to jump on me and get shot in the dinner. Correct me if I'm wrong."

The bantering serenity of his voice lingered on in the air while Murdoch stared at him. The Saint was smiling faintly, and the sheen of sapphire in his eyes was alive with irrepressible humour; but the automatic in his hand was levelled with a per�fectly sober precision that denied the existence of any joke.

Murdoch blinked at it as if it had been the first specimen of its kind which he had ever seen. His gaze travelled lingeringly up from it to the Saint's face, and the incredulity faded out of his features before a spreading hardness of cold calculating wrath. He swallowed once, and his chin settled down on his chest.

"You think you can get away with that, do you?"

"I'm betting on it."

Simon met the other's reddened glare as if he hadn't a shadow on his horizon, and wondered what the odds ought to be if it were a betting proposition. And he became reluctantly aware that any prudent layer would consider them distinctly hazardous. There was something consolidating itself on Murdoch's thinned-out lips which stood for the kind of raging foolhardy fearlessness that produces heroes and tombstones in cynically unequal pro�portions.

And at the same time something quite different was thrusting itself towards the front of the Saint's consciousness. It had started like the hum of a cruising bee away out in the far reaches of the night, a mere stir of sound too trivial to attract attention. While they were talking it had grown steadily nearer, until the drone of it quivered through the saloon as a definite pulse of disturbance in the universe. And now, in the silence while he and Murdoch watched each other, it suddenly roared up and stopped, leaving a sharp void in the auditory scale through which came the clear swish and chatter of settling wa�ters.

Simon felt the settee dip gently under him, and Murdoch's glass tinkled on the table as the wash slapped against the side. And then an almost imperceptible jar of contact ran through the boat, and a voice spoke somewhere outside.

"Ahoy, Corsair!"

The Saint felt as if a starshell had burst inside his head. Un�derstanding dawned upon him in a blinding light that showed him the meaning of that sequence of sounds, the owner of the voice that had hailed them, and everything that had led up to what lay outside, as clearly as if they had been focused under a batten of sun arcs. If he had not been so taken up with the im�mediate problem that had been laid in front of him, he might have guessed it and waited for it all down to the last detail; but now it came to him as a shock that electrified all his faculties as if he had taken a shot of liquid dynamite.

It could hardly have taken a second to develop, that galvanic awakening of every nerve; but in the latter half of that scorch�ing instant the Saint reviewed the circumstances and realised everything that had to be done. Murdoch was still half arrested in the stillness which the interruption had brought upon him: his head was turned a little to the left, his mouth a little open, his gaze fractionally diverted. At that moment his train of thought was written across him in luminous letters a yard high. He also was considering the interruption, working over its bearing on his own predicament, while the simmer of fighting obstinacy in him was boiling up to outright defiance. The Saint knew it. That chance event was wiping out the last jot of hesitation in the American's mind. In another split second he would let out a yell or try to jump the gun�or both. But his powers of comprehen�sion were functioning a shade less rapidly than the Saint's, and that split second made as much difference as twenty years.

Simon let go the automatic and unfolded himself from the settee. He came up like the backlash of a cracked whip, and his fist hit Murdoch under the jaw with a clean crisp smack that actually forestalled the slight thud of the gun hitting the carpet. Murdoch's eyes glazed mutely over, and Simon caught him ex�pertly as he straightened up on his feet.

"Ahoy, Corsair!"

"Ahoy to you," answered the Saint.

The communicating door at the end of the saloon was opening, and Orace's globular eyes peered over his moustache through the gap. There was no need of words. Simon heaved Murdoch's inanimate body towards him like a stuffed dummy, with a dozen urgent commands sizzling voicelessly on his gaze, and followed it with the glass from which Murdoch had been drinking. And then, without waiting to assure himself that Orace had grasped the situation to the full, he snatched up his gun and leapt for the companion in one continuous movement, slipping the automatic into his hip pocket as he went.

He started with lightning speed, but he emerged into the after cockpit quite leisurely; and everything else had been packed into such a dizzy scintilla of time that there was no undue hiatus between the first hail and his appearance. He turned unhurriedly to the side; and Kurt Vogel, standing up in the speedboat, looked up at him with his sallow face white in the dim light.

"Hullo," said the Saint genially.

"May I come aboard for a moment?"

"Surely."

Simon reached out an arm and helped him up. Again he exper�ienced the peculiar revulsion of the other's strong clammy grip.

"I'm afraid this is a most unseemly hour to pay a visit," said Vogel, in his suave flat voice. "But I happened to be coming by, and I hoped you hadn't gone to bed."

"I'm never very early," said the Saint cheerfully. "Come on below and have a drink."

He led the way down to the saloon, and pushed the cigarette-box across the table.

"D'you smoke?" Vogel accepted; and Simon raised his voice. "Orace!"

"As a matter of fact, I only called in in case you'd made up your mind about to-morrow," said Vogel, taking a light. "Per�haps you didn't take my invitation seriously, but I assure you we'll be glad to see you if you care to come."

"It's very good of you." Simon looked up as Orace came in, "Bring another glass, will you, Orace?"

He put the match to his own cigarette and lounged back on the opposite berth while Orace brought the glass. He rested his finger-tips on the edge of the table and turned his hand over with a perfectly natural movement that brought his thumb downwards. With his back turned to Vogel, Orace set down the glass. His face was always inscrutable, and the fringe of his luxu�riant moustache concealed any expression that might ever have touched his mouth; but without moving another muscle of his features he drooped one eyelid deliberately before he retired, and the Saint felt comforted.

"I would rather like to come," said the Saint frankly, as he poured out the whisky.

"Then we'll expect you definitely. Loretta is coming, too."

"Who's coming?"

"You know�Miss Page��"

Simon eased a drop of liquid from the neck of the bottle on to the rim of the glass with a hand as steady as a rock, and looked up with a smile.

"I'm afraid I don't," he murmured. "Who is the lady?"

"She was with us�� I beg your pardon," Vogel said quickly.

"My memory is playing me tricks�I had an idea she was with us when we met this morning. Perhaps you will meet her in Guernsey."

"If she's as pretty as her name, I hope I do," said the Saint lightly.

He passed the glass over and sat down again, feeling as if his stomach had been suddenly emptied with a vacuum pump.

"We shall be sailing about eleven," proceeded Vogel urbanely. "But we shan't take long on the trip�we marine motorists have rather an advantage in speed," he added deprecatingly. "I don't wonder you thorough-going yachtmen despise us, but I'm afraid I'm too old to learn your art."

Simon nodded vaguely. But there was nothing vague in his mind. Every fibre of his being seemed to have been dissected into an individual sentience of its own: he was conscious of the vitality of every cell and corpuscle of his body, as though each separate atom of him was pressed into the service of that super�charged aliveness. His whole intellect was waiting, cat-like, for Vogel to show his hand.

Vogel gave him no sign. His smooth aggressively profiled face might have been moulded out of wax, with its appearance of hard and uniform opacity under the thin glaze of skin. The Saint's keenest scrutiny could find no flaw in it. He had watched Vogel working up through a conspiracy of intricate and marvel�lously juggled tensions towards a climax of cunning that had been exploded like a soap-bubble at the very instant of crisis; he knew that even after that Vogel must have taken a re-staggering shock when he discovered the vanishment of their prisoner and the slumber of Otto Arnheim; he could guess that even Vogel's impregnable placidity must have felt the effect of a cumulation of reverses that would have shaken any other man to the beginnings of fear; and yet there was not a microscopical fissure in the sleek veneer of that vulturine face. Simon admitted after�wards that the realisation of all that was implied by that im�movable self-command gave him a queer momentary supersti�tious feeling of utter helplessness, like nothing else that he had ever experienced in the presence of another human being.

He took hold of the feeling with a conscious effort and trod it ruthlessly down. Vogel was holding his drink up in one steady hand, imperturbably surveying the details of the saloon, with the eyelids drooping under the shadow of his black overhanging brows; and Simon watched him without a tremor in the careless good humour of his gaze.

"But this is a charming boat," Vogel remarked idly. "What is her tonnage?"

"About twenty-five."

"Delightful . . ." Vogel got up and began to wander around, studying the panelling, touching the fittings, investigating the ingenious economy of space with all the quiet pleasure of an enthusiast. "I envy you, really�to be able to have something like this all to yourself, without bothering about crews and for�malities. If I were twenty years younger . . . Did you have her fitted out yourself?"

"Yes."

"Of course. And are all the other rooms as attractive as this one?"

So that was how it was coming. The Saint felt a tiny pulse beginning to beat way back in the depths of his brain, like the frantic ticking of a distant clock racing with time.

"They're pretty comfortable," he said modestly; and Vogel caught him up without a second's hesitation.

"I wish I could see them. I'm tremendously interested�I had no idea a small boat could be so luxurious. You might even con�vert me!"

Simon, brought the tip of his cigarette to a red glow, and feathered a fading cloud of smoke through his lips.

He was for it. The fuse was lighted. There was no excuse, however plausible, no tactful way of changing the subject, how�ever fluent, from which Vogel would not draw his own conclu�sions. Vogel had got him, exactly as he had got Loretta a few hours before. He had paid that belated call, transparently, with the one object of discovering whether the Corsair would yield any connecting link with the night's disturbances, and he would not be prepared to go home satisfied after one brief confined session in the saloon. Simon could see the man's black unswerv�ing eyes fixed on him intently, outwardly with no more than the ingenuous eagerness which made the granting of his request a favour that it would be difficult in any circumstances to refuse� inwardly with a merciless insistence of which no one without the Saint's knowledge would have been conscious. The fuse was lighted; and how soon the mine would go up depended only on Orace's perception of the secondary uses of keyholes.

Now that the die was cast, Simon felt a curious contented relaxation.

"By all manner of means," he said amicably. "Let me show you the works."

3

He stood up, lighting a second cigarette from the stub of the first. The movement gave a few seconds' grace in which Orace, if he had been listening, might prepare for the emergency as best he could. But it could not be prolonged a moment beyond the requirements of the bare physical facts; and with an inaudible prayer to the hardworked gods of all good buccaneers, the Saint flattened his discarded butt in the ashtray and opened the com�municating door.

Simon Templar could rake over his memory at any time and comb out an impressive crop of moments which he had no desire to live over again. In spite of the ultimate balance of success that showed on the books of his meteoric career, his life had contained its full quota of occasions that definitely looked their best in distant retrospect. But of all that collection of unenjoya�ble contingencies there were very few to which he would so fer�vently have refused an encore as those hectic instants during which the vista beyond the saloon unrolled itself before the opening door. The spectacle of Orace sitting curled up in the diminutive galley, alone, with a paper-covered detective story on his knee, was such a dizzy anti-climax that it made the Saint feel somewhat lightheaded. He could have raised the protective cur�tain of Orace's moustache and kissed him.

Fortunately the presence of Kurt Vogel precluded any such regrettable demonstration. Simon cleared his throat and spoke almost hesitatingly through the ecstatic glow which enveloped him.

"This is the kitchen, where we heat the tins and open the bot�tles. On the right, the refrigerator, where we keep the beer warm ..."

He exhibited all the features of the galley with feverish pride; and Vogel, as flatteringly impressed as any proud owner could want a guest to be, admired them all in turn�the cunningly fitted glass and crockery racks, the planned compartments for all kinds of provisions, the paraffin geyser that provided hot water at the turn of a tap, the emergency stove slung in gimbals for use when the weather was too rough for a kettle to stand on the ordinary gas cooker, and all the other gadgets which had been installed to reduce discomfort to the vanishing point. All the time Simon was casting hopeful glances at Orace, searching for a hint of what his staff had done to meet the situation; but the staff had returned phlegmatically to its volume of blood, and its battle-scarred face offered as many clues as a boiled pudding.

Eventually they had to move on. Beyond the galley there was a short alleyway, and Simon led the way briskly down it.

"That's the bathroom and toilet," he explained casually, indicating the first door on the left as he went by; and he would have gone quickly on, but Vogel stopped.

"A bathroom�really? That's even more remarkable on a boat this size. May I look at it?"

Simon turned, with the glow of relief on him dying down again to a cold resignation. Of all the places where Orace might have been expected to dump his charge in a hurry, the bathroom seemed the most probable. Simon looked innocently at Vogel; and the edge of his gaze, overlapping his guest, sought frantically for inspiration over Vogel's shoulder. But Orace was deep in his sanguinary literature: only the back of his head could be seen, and he had not moved.

"There's nothing much to see," began the Saint diffidently; but Vogel had already turned the handle.

Simon leaned sidelong against the bulkhead and very deliber�ately estimated the chances of a shot going unheard by the sea�man whom Vogel had left outside in charge of his speedboat. He also gave some consideration to the exact spot on Vogel's anat�omy where a bullet could be made to do a regulated amount of damage without leaving any margin for an outcry to add itself to the noise. His left thumb was tucked loosely into his belt; his right hand was a little behind his hip, the fingers hovering on the opening of the pocket into which he had slipped his gun. The cigarette between his lips slanted out at a rakish angle that would have made certain people who knew him well stand very still while they decided what scrap of cover they were going to dive for when the storm broke loose. And yet there was the ghost of a smile lingering on his mouth, and a shifting twinkle in his blue eyes, which might have misled those who were not so well informed.

"But that's almost luxurious!" came Vogel's bland ingratiating accents. "And a shower, too ... I certainly am learning a les�son�I almost wish I could find something that you've forgotten."

Simon prised himself off the bulkhead and let his right hand fall to his side. He didn't take out a handkerchief and mop his brow, but he wished he could have indulged in that sedative gesture. His shirt felt damp in the small of his back.

"I hope you won't do that," he said earnestly. "Now, this is just a small single cabin��"

The tour went on. Vogel praised the small single cabin. He studied the berth, the lockers under it, and peeped inside the wardrobe.

The Saint began to wonder if he was simply undergoing one of Vogel's diabolically clever psychological third degrees. There was something as nightmarish as a slow-motion avalanche about Vo�gel's patient thoroughness, a suggestion of feline cruelty in his velvety smoothness, that burred the edges of Simon's nervous system into crystals of jagged steel. He felt an almost irresistible temptation to throw guile to the winds�to say: "Okay, brother. I have got Steve Murdoch here, and he is the bird who paid you a call earlier this evening; and so what?"�to do any foolish thing that would wipe that self-assured smirk off the other's face and bring the fencing match to a soul-satisfying showdown. Only the knowledge that that might very well be what Vogel was play�ing for eased the strain of holding himself in check.

On the starboard side there was one double cabin. Vogel ad�mired this also. There were two fitted wardrobes for him to peer into, and also a large recessed cupboard for storing blankets and other dry gear, besides the usual lockers under the berths. As Vogel methodically opened each door in turn, to the accompa�niment of a tireless flow of approbation, the Saint felt himself growing so much older that it wouldn't have surprised him to look down and see a long white beard spreading over his shirt.

"This is the most perfect thing I've ever seen." Vogel was positively purring by then: his waxen skin shone with a queer gloss, as if it had been polished. "You should have made this your profession�I should have been one of your first clients . . . And that door at the end?"

Simon glanced up the alleyway.

"The fo'c'sle? That's only Orace's quarters��"

And at the same time he knew that he might just as well save his breath. Vogel had already declared himself, at the bathroom door and since then, as a sightseer who intended to see every sight there was; and it would have been asking a miracle for him to have allowed himself to be headed off on the threshold of the last door of all.

The Saint shrugged.

At any rate, the gloves would be off. The nibbling and niggling would be finished, and the issue would be joined in open battle; and the Saint liked to fight best that way. Behind that door lay the showdown. He knew it, as surely as if he could have seen through the partition, and he faced it without illusion. Even at that transcendental moment the irrepressible devil in him came to his aid, and he was capable of feeling a deep and unholy glee of anticipation at the thought of the conflicting emotions that would shortly be chasing each other across Vogel's up-ended universe.

He opened the door and stood aside, with a sense of peace in the present and a sublime faith in the exciting future.

Vogel went in.

Perhaps after all, Simon reflected, his gun could stay where it was. A clean sharp blow with the edge of his hand across the back of the other's neck might achieve the same immediate effect with less commotion, and with less risk of letting him in for the expenses of a high-class funeral later. Of course, that would still leave the loyal mariner outside, but he would have had to be dealt with anyhow . . . And then what? The Saint's brain raced through a hectic sequence of results and possibilities . . .

And then he heard Vogel's voice again, through a kind of giddy haze that swept over him at the sound of it.

"Excellent . . . excellent . . . Why, I've seen a good many boats in which the owner's accommodation was not half so good. And this is all, is it?"

If a choir of angels had suddenly materialised in front of him and started to sing a syncopated version of Christmas Day in the Workhouse, Simon Templar could hardly have had a more devastating reason to mistrust his ears. If the Corsair had sud�denly started to spin round and round like a top, his insides couldn't have suffered a more cataclysmic bouncing on their moorings. With a resolute effort he swallowed his stomach, which was trying to cake-walk up into his mouth, and looked into the fo'c'sle.

Vogel was coming out; and his cordial smile was unchanged. If he had just suffered the crowning disappointment of his unfortu�nate evening, there was no sign of it on his face. And behind him, quite plainly visible to every corner, Orace's modest cabin was as naked of any other human occupancy as the icebound fastnesses of the North Pole.

The Saint steadied his reeling brain, and took the cigarette from between his lips.

"Yes, that's all," he answered mechanically. "You can't get much more into a fifty-footer."

"And that?" Vogel pointed upwards.

"Oh, just a hatchway on to the deck."

Forestalling any persuasion, he caught the ladder rungs screwed to the bulkhead, drew himself up, and opened it. After all he had been through already, his heart was too exhausted to turn any more somersaults; but the daze deepened round him as he hoisted himself out on to the deck and found no unconscious body laid neatly out in the lee of the coaming. They had been through the ship from stern to stem, and that hatchway was the last most desperate door through which Murdoch's not inconsid�erable bulk could have been pushed away. If Orace hadn't dumped the man out there, he must have melted him and poured him down the sink, or ordered a fiery chariot from Heaven to take him away: the Saint was reaching a stage of blissful delir�ium in which any miracle would have seemed less fantastic than the facts.

He stretched down a hand and helped Vogel to follow him out. They stood together under the dimly luminous canopy of the masthead light, and Vogel extended his cigarette-case. There were only the ordinary shadows on the deck, and the one seaman sat patiently smoking his pipe in the cockpit of the speed tender tied up astern.

"I'm afraid my enthusiasm ran away with me," said Vogel. "I should never have asked you to show me round at this hour. But I assure you it's been worth it to me�in every way."

He laid the faintest and most innocent emphasis on the last three words.

Simon leaned on the mast, with one arm curled round it, as if it had been a giant's lance. The stub of his old cigarette fizzed into the water.

"It's been no trouble at all," he murmured courteously. "What about one for the road?"

"Many thanks. But I've kept you up too late already."

"You haven't."

"Then I'll leave before I do." Vogel waved a hand to his mar�ine chauffeur. "Ivaloff!" He smiled, and held out his hand. "We'll look out for you, then, at St Peter Port?"

"I'll be there by tea-time, if we have any wind."

The Saint sauntered aft beside his guest. Beyond all doubt, the stars in their courses fought for him. If he could have given vent to his feelings, he would have serenaded them with crazy carols. He thought about the munificent rewards which might suitably be heaped on the inspired head of Orace, when that incompara�ble henchman could be made to reveal the secrets of his wizardry.

His right hand trailed idly along the boom. And suddenly his whole body prickled with an almost hysterical effervescence, as if the two halves of some supernal seidlitz powder had been incon�tinently fused under his belt.

"Goodnight," said Vogel. "And many thanks."

"Au revoir," responded the Saint dreamily.

He watched the other step down into the tender and touch the starter. The seaman cast off; and the speedboat drew away, swung round in a wide arc, and went creaming away up the dark estuary.

Simon stood there until the blaze of its spotlight had faded into a brilliant blur, and then he put his hands on the companion rail and slid down below. First of all he poured himself out a large drink, and proceeded to absorb it with profound delibera�tion. Then he grasped Orace firmly by the front of his shirt and drew him forward.

"You god-damned old son of a walrus," he said, with his voice torn between wrath and laughter. "Men have been shot for less."

"I couldn't think of nothink else, sir, sudding like," said Orace humbly.

"But it makes the ship look so untidy." Orace scratched his head.

"Yessir. But it was a bit untidy ter start wiv. Jremember the mains'l started to tear comin' dahn from St Helier? Well, when yer went orf to-night I thought I might swell do somefink abaht it. I sewed a patch on it while yer was awy, but I 'adn't 'ad time ter furl it agyne when yer came back. So when yer chucked that detective bloke at me��"

"You took him along to the hatch��"

"An" dreckly I sore yer go below, I 'auled 'im aht an' laid 'im on the boom an' folded the mains'l over 'im. I couldn't think of nothink else, sir," said Orace, clinging to his original defence.

Words failed the Saint for a while. And then, with a slow help-less grin dragging at his mouth, he brought up his fist and pushed Orace's chin back.

"Go up and fetch him in again, you old humbug," he said. "And don't play any more tricks like that on me, or I'll wring your blessed neck."

He threw himself down on the settee and began to think again. Murdoch still remained to be dealt with: and the Saint feared that he might not have been made any more amenable to reason by the sock on the jaw which had unfortunately been obliged to interrupt their conversation. Not that Murdoch could have been called an unduly sympathetic listener before that . . . Probably it made very little difference; but the original problem remained. There was also the question arising in his mind of whether Or�ace's manoeuvres with the mainsail had passed unnoticed by the seaman who had stayed in the speedboat�which would be even more difficult to determine. And the Saint's attention was busily divided between these two salient queries when he looked up and discovered that Orace had returned to the saloon and was gaping at him with a peculiarly fish-like expression in his eyes.

Simon Templar regarded the spectacle thoughtfully for one or two palpitating seconds. Orace's rounded eyes goggled back at him with the same trout-like intensity. The fringes of Orace's moustache waved in the draught of his breathing like the ciliated epithelium of a rabbit's oviduct. It became increasingly apparent to the Saint that Orace had something on his mind. "Are you laying an egg?" he inquired at length. "E's�e's gorn, sir!" said Orace weakly.

4

Simon got up slowly. Of all the spectacular things he had done that evening, he was inclined to estimate that restrained and dignified uprising as the supreme achievement. It was a crowning triumph of mind over matter for which he felt justly entitled to take off his hat to himself, afterwards, and when wearing a hat.

"He's gorn, has he?" he repeated.

"Yessir," said Orace hollowly.

Simon moved him aside and went up on to the deck. The dis�ordered mainsail, draped sloppily away from the boom, offered its own pregnant testimony to the truth of Orace's conjecture. Simon strolled round it and prodded it with his toe. There was no deception. The lump that had been Steve Murdoch, which he had felt under his hand as he walked by with Vogel, hadn't sim�ply slipped off its insecure perch and buried itself under the folds of canvas. Murdoch had taken it on the hoof.

" 'E must 've woke up while yer was talkin' to me an' 'opped overboard," said Orace gloomily.

The Saint nodded. He scanned the surrounding circle of black shining water, his hands in his pockets, listening with abstracted concentration. He could hear dance music still coming from one of the casinos, a waif of melody riding over the liquid under�tones of the harbour; that was all. There was no sight or sound to tell him where Murdoch had gone.

"You have the most penetrating inspirations, Orace," he mur�mured admiringly. "I suppose that's what must have happened. But we shan't get him back. It's nearly low tide, and he's had time to reach the shore by now. I hope he catches his death of cold."

He smoked his cigarette down with remarkable serenity, while Orace fidgeted uncomfortably round him. Certainly the problem of what to do with Steve Murdoch was effectively disposed of. The problem of what Steve Murdoch would now be doing with himself took its place, and the question marks round the problem were even more complicated and more disturbing. But the doubt of how much Kurt Vogel knew stayed where it was�intensified, perhaps, by the other complication.

"Do you think anyone saw you parking our friend up here?" he asked.

Orace sucked his teeth.

"I dunno, sir. I brought 'im aht soon's I sore yer go in an' lugged 'im along on me stummick. It didn't take arf a tick to lay 'im aht on the boom an' chuck the sile over 'im, an' the other bloke was lightin' 'is pipe an' lookin' the other way." Orace frowned puzzledly. "Yer don't think them thunderin' barstids came back an' took 'im orf, do yer?"

"No, I don't think that. I watched them most of the way home, and they wouldn't have had time to get back here and do it. If they saw you, they may come back later. Or something. The point is�were you seen?"

Simon's brow creased over the riddle. If the seaman had ob�served Orace's manoeuvres, he might have been clever enough to give no sign. He would have told Vogel on their way back. After which the sunshine would have come back into Vogel's ugly life, Simon reflected malevolently. And then ...

Vogel would know that the Saint didn't know he knew. And the Saint wouldn't know whether Vogel knew, or whether Vogel was banking on the Saint knowing that Vogel didn't know he knew he knew. And Vogel would still have to wonder whether the Saint knew he knew he knew he didn't know. Or not. It was all somewhat involved. But the outstanding conclusion seemed to be that the Saint could still go to St Peter Port with the assur�ance that Vogel wouldn't know definitely whether the Saint knew he knew, and Vogel could issue walk-into-my-parlour in�vitations with the certainty that the Saint couldn't refuse them without admitting that he knew Vogel knew he knew Vogel knew. Or vice versa. Simon felt his head beginning to ache, and decided to give it a rest.

"We'd better sleep on it," he said.

He left Orace slapping down the mainsail into a neat roll with a condensed viciousness which suggested that Orace's thoughts were concerned with the way he would have liked to manhandle Murdoch if that unfortunate warrior had been available for manhandling, and went below. As he got into his pyjamas he realised that there was at least one certainty about Murdoch's future movements, which was that he would try to reach Loretta Page either that night or early in the morning with his story. He would be able to do it, too. There might be many places on the continent of Europe where anyone clothed only in a pair of trousers couldn't hope to get far without being arrested, but Dinard in the summer was not one of them; and presumably the man had parked his luggage somewhere before he set out on his pig-headed expedition. The Saint only hoped that their encounter that afternoon had taught Murdoch the necessity of making his approach with a discreet eye for possible watchers, but he was inclined to doubt it.

He was awake at eight, a few moments before Grace brought in his orange juice; and by half-past nine he was dressed and breakfasted.

"Have everything ready to sail as soon as I get back," he called into the galley, where Orace was washing up.

He went out on deck, and as he stepped up into the brighten�ing sunlight, he glanced automatically up-river to where the Falkenberg lay at anchor. Something about the ship caught his eye; and after leisurely picking up a towel, as if that was all he had come out for, he went back to the saloon and searched for his field-glasses.

His eyesight had served Mm well. There was a man sitting in the shade aft of the deckhouse with a pair of binoculars on his knee, and even while the Saint studied him he raised the glasses and seemed to be peering straight through the porthole from which the Saint was looking out.

Simon drew back, with the chips of sapphire hardening in his blue eyes. His first thought was that he was now out of the doubtful class into the privileged circle of known menaces; but then he realised that this intense interest in his morning activi�ties need only be a part of Vogel's already proven thoroughness. But he also realised that if he set off hurriedly for the shore, the suspicion which already centred on him would rise to boiling point; and if somebody set off quickly to cover him at the Hotel de la Mer�that would be that.

The Saint lighted a cigarette and moved restlessly round the cabin. Something had to be done. Somehow he had to reach Lo�retta, tell her�what? That she was suspected? She knew that. That Murdoch was suspected ? She might guess it. That she must not take that voyage with Vogel? She would go anyway. Simon's fist struck impatiently into the palm of his hand. It didn't mat�ter. He had to reach her�even if the entire crew of the Falk�enbergwas lined up on the deck with binoculars trained on the Corsair, arid even if the Hotel de la Mer was surrounded by a cordon of their watchers.

With a sudden decision he opened the door of the galley again.

"Never mind the washing up, Orace," he said. "We're sailing now."

Orace came out without comment, wiping his hands on the legs of his trousers. While Simon started the auxiliary, he swung out the davits and brought the dinghy up under the falls. While the engine was warming up, the Saint helped him to haul up the dinghy, and then sent him forward at once to get up the anchor.

It was a quarter to ten when the nose of the Corsair turned down the estuary and began to push up the ripples towards the sea.

"Let it hang," said the Saint, when Orace was still working at the anchor. "We'll want it again in a minute."

Orace looked at him for a moment, and then straightened up and came aft, lowering himself into the cockpit.

"Get ready to drop the dinghy again, and swing her out as soon as we're round the point," said the Saint.

He turned and and gazed back at the Falkenberg. There was a midget figure standing up on her deck which might have been Kurt Vogel. Simon waved his arm, and the speck waved back. Then the Saint turned to the chart and concentrated on the tricky shoals on either side of the main channel. He brought the Corsair round the Pointe du Moulinet as close as he dared, and yelled to Orace to get up into the bows. Then he brought the control lever back into reverse.

"Let go!"

The anchor splashed down into the shallow water and Simon left the wheel and sprang to the dinghy. With Orace helping him, it was lowered in a moment; and Simon dropped between the thwarts and reached for the oars. It was quicker than fitting the outboard, for a short pull like that; but the boat seemed to weigh a ton, and his shirt was already hot with sweat when the last fierce heave on the oars sent the dinghy grinding up on to the sands of the Plage de l'Ecluse. He jumped out and dragged it well up on the beach, and made his way quickly between the early sunbathers to the Digue.

It was five-past ten when he climbed up on to the pavement, and there was an uneasy emptiness moving vaguely about under his lower ribs. That watcher on the Falkenberg had made a difference of half an hour�half an hour in which, otherwise, he could have done all that he wanted to do. He realised that he had been incredibly careless not to have allowed for any obsta�cles such as the one which had delayed him, and it dawned on him that he only had Vogel's word for it that the Falkenberg would not sail before eleven. Loretta might be already on board, and they might be already preparing to follow him out to sea.

And then, straight in front of him, as if it had materialised out of empty air, he saw the square dour visage of Steve Murdoch coming towards him. It brought him back to the urgent practical present with a jar that checked him in his stride; but Murdoch came on without a pause.

"Not recognising me to-day, Saint?" Murdoch's grim harsh voice grated into his ears with a smug challenge that flexed the muscles of the Saint's wrists.

Simon looked him up and down. He was wearing a suit of his own clothes again, and every inch of him up to his glittering eyes told the story of what he had done in the intervening hours.

"I've only got one thing to say to you," said the Saint coldly. "And I can't say it here."

"That cramps your style, I bet. You talk pretty well with your fists, Saint. But you can't have it your own way all the time. Where you goin' now?"

"That's my business."

The other nodded�a curt jerk of his head that left his jaw set in a more unbroken square than it had been before.

"I bet it is. But it's my business too. Thought you'd get up early and pick up cards with Loretta again, did you? Well, you weren't early enough."

"No?"

"No. Take your eyes off my chin, Saint�it's ready for you this morning. Look at that gendarme down the road instead. Gazing in a shop window an' not takin' any notice of us now, ain't he? You're all right. But this ain't your boat now. You try to get tough with me again and he'll look at us quick enough. And when he comes up here, I'll have something to tell him about what you tried to do last night." Murdoch's own fists were quietly clubbed at his sides; and he was on his toes. There was vengeful unfriendliness and the bitter memory of another occa�sion gleaming out of his small unblinking eyes. "You turn round and go back the way you came from, Saint, unless you want to sit in a French precinct house and wait while they fetch over your dossier from Scotland Yard. And don't go near St Peter Port unless you want the same thing again. I said I was goin' to put you out, and you're out!"

Simon took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and tapped a smoke thoughtfully on the edge of the packet. He put the ciga�rette in his mouth and slipped the package into the side pocket ofhis coat.

"It's too bad you feel that way about it, Steve," he said slowly, and his right hand jolted forward from his side like a piston.

For the second time in that young day Steve Murdoch felt the impact of the Saint's fist. And once again he never saw it com�ing. The blow only travelled about six inches, and it covered the distance so swiftly that even a man who had been watching them closely might not have seen it. It leapt straight from the edge of the Saint's side pocket to Murdoch's solar plexus, with the power of a pile-driver behind it; and Murdoch's face went grey as he doubled up.

Simon caught him and lowered him tenderly to the ground. By the time the first interested spectator had formed the nucleus of a crowd, the Saint was fanning Murdoch with his handkerchief and feeling for his heart with every symptom of alarm. By the time the shop-gazing gendarme had joined the gathering, it was generally agreed among the spectators that the Breton sun must have been at least a contributory cause to Murdoch's sudden collapse. Somebody spoke about an ambulance. Somebody else thought he could improve on the system of first aid which was being practised; and Simon handed the case over to him and faded quietly through the swelling congregation.

He moved on towards the Hotel de la Mer, as quickly as he dared, but with anxiety tearing ahead of his footsteps. That chance encounter�if it was a chance encounter�had wasted more of his precious and dwindling margin of time.

And then he stopped again, and plunged down in a shop door�way to tie up an imaginary shoelace. He had seen Kurt Vogel, smooth and immaculate in a white suit and a white-topped cap. turning into the entrance of the hotel. He was too late. And something inside him turned cold as he realised that there was nothing more that he could do about it�nothing that would not risk making Loretta's danger ten times greater by linking her with him. Murdoch had won after all, and Loretta would have to make the voyage unwarned.

V.������� HOW� SIMON� TEMPLAR WALKED IN A GARDEN,

����������� AND� ORACE ALSO� HAD� HIS� TURN

IT was half-past four when the Corsair came skimming up over the blue swell past St Martin's Point, with her sails trimmed to coax the last ounce of power from the mild south-westerly breeze which had held steadily on her quarter all the way from the Pierres des Portes. In those five and a half hours since they had cleared the rocks and shoals that fringe the C�tes du N�rd, Simon Templar had never taken his hands from the wheel: his eyes had been reduced to emotionless chips of blue stone, me�chanical units of co-operation with his hands, ceaselessly watch-ing the curves of the canvas overhead for the first hint of a flut�ter that would signify a single breath of the wind going by un�used. During those hours he almost surrendered his loyalty to the artistic grace of sail, and yearned for the drumming engines ofthe Falkenberg, which had overtaken them in the first hour and left a white trail of foam hissing away to the horizon.

He hardly knew himself what was in his mind. With all the gallant thrust of the Corsair through the green seas under him, he was as helpless as if he had been marooned on an iceberg at the South Pole. Everything that might be meant to happen on the Falkenberg could still happen while he was out of reach. Vogel could say "She decided not to come," or "There was an accident"; with all the crew of the Falkenberg partnering in the racket, it would be almost impossible to prove.

The Saint stared at the slowly rising coastline with a darken�ing of satirical self-mockery in his gaze. Did he want proof? There had been many days when he was his own judge and jury: it was quicker, and it left fewer loopholes. And yet ...

It wasn't quite so simple as that. Revenge was an unthinkable triviality, a remote shadow of tragedy that cut grim lines be�tween his lowered brows. More than any revenge he wanted to see Loretta again, to see the untiring mischief in her grey eyes and hear the smiling huskiness of her voice, to feel the touch of her hand again, or ... More than any boodle that might lie at the end of the adventure. . . . Why? He didn't know. Something had happened to him in the few hours that he had known her�something, he realised with a twist of devastating candour, that had happened more than once in his life before, and might well happen again.

The breeze slackened as they drew up the channel, and he started the auxiliary. As they chugged past the sombre ugliness of Castle Cornet and rounded the point of the Castle Breakwater, he had a glimpse of the white aero-foil lines of the Falk�enberg already lying snug within the harbour, and felt an odd indefinable pressure inside his chest.

He sat side-saddle on the edge of the cockpit and lighted a cigarette while Orace finished the work of tidying up. The Falk�enberghad probably been at her berth for three hours by then, and apart from a jerseyed seaman who was lethargically washing off the remains of salt spray from her varnish, and who had scarcely looked at the Corsair as she came past, there was noth�ing to be observed on board. Most likely Vogel and his party were on shore; but Loretta ... He shrugged, with the steel brightening in his eyes. Presently he would know�many an�swers.

"Wot nex', sir?"

Orace stood beside him, as stoical as a whiskered gargoyle; and the Saint moved his cigarette in the faintest gesture of direc�tion.

"You watch that boat. Don't let them know you're doing it �you'd better go below and fix yourself behind one of the port�holes most of the time. But watch it. If a girl comes off it, or a box or a bundle or anything that might contain a girl, you get on your way and stick to her like a fly-paper. Otherwise�you stay watching that ship till I come back or your moustache grows down to your knees. Got it?"

"Yessir."

Orace went below, unquestioningly, to his vigil; and the Saint stood up and settled his belt. There was action and contact, still, to take his mind away from things on which it did not wish to dwell: he felt a kind of tense elation at the knowledge that the fight was on, one way or the other.

He went ashore with a spring in his step, and a gun in his pocket that helped him to a smile of dry self-derision when he remembered it. It seemed a ridiculously melodramatic precaution in that peaceful port, with the blue afternoon sky arching over the unrippled harbour and the gay colour-splashes of idle holi�day-makers promenading on the breakwaters; but he couldn't laugh himself out of it. Before the end of the adventure he was to know how wise and necessary it was.

The cross-Channel steamer from Weymouth was standing out on the continuation of her voyage to Jersey, and Simon threaded his way to the New Jetty through the stream of disembarked passengers and spectators, and eventually secured a porter. In�quiries were made. Yes, the steamer had landed some cargo con�signed to him. Simon gazed with grim satisfaction at the two new and innocent-looking trunks labelled with his name, and spread a ten-shilling note into the porter's hand.

"Will you get� 'em to that boat over there?� The� Corsair.

There's a man on board to take delivery. And don't mistake him for a walrus and try to harpoon him, because he's touchy about that."

He went back down the pier to the esplanade, fitting a fresh cigarette into his mouth as he went. Those two trunks which he had collected and sent on equipped him for any submarine emer�gencies, and the promptness of their arrival attested the fact that Roger Conway's long retirement in the bonds of respectable if not holy matrimony had dulled none of his old gifts as the perfect lieutenant. There remained the matter of Peter Quentin's contribution; and the Saint moved on to the post office and found it already waiting for him, in the shape of a telegram:

Latitude fortynine fortyone fiftysix north longitude two twentythree fortyfive west Roger and I will be at the Royal before you are others will catch first airplane when you give the word also Hoppy wants to know why he was left out if you've already made a corner in the heroine we are going home I have decided to charge you with the cost of this wire so have much pleasure in signing myself comma at your expense comma yours till Hitler dedicates a synagogue dash

PETER

Simon tucked the sheet away in his pocket, and the first wholly spontaneous smile of that day relaxed the iron set of his mouth as he ranged out into the street again. If he had been asked to offer odds on the tone of that telegram before he opened it, he would have laid a thousand to one to any takers that he could have made an accurate forecast; and at that moment he was very glad to have been right. It was a tribute to the spell which still bound the crew of hell-bent buccaneers which he had once commanded, a token of the spirit of their old brother�hood which no passage of time or outside associations could alter, which sent him on his way to the Royal Hotel with a quickened stride and a sudden feeling of invincible faith.

He found them in the bar, entertaining a couple of damsels in beach pyjamas who could be seen at a glance to be endowed with that certain something which proved that Peter and Roger had kept their speed and initiative unimpaired in more directions than one. Beyond the first casual inspection with which any newcomer would have been greeted, they took no notice of him; but as he approached the counter, Roger Conway decided that an�other round of drinks was due, and came up beside him.

"Four sherries, please," he said; and as the barmaid set up the glasses, he added: "And by the way�before I forget�would you get a bottle of Scotch and a siphon sent up to my room some time this evening? Number fifteen."

Simon took a pull at the beer with which he had been served, and compared his watch with the clock.

"Is that clock right?" he inquired, and the barmaid looked up at it.

"Yes, I think so."

The Saint nodded, pretending to make an adjustment on his wrist.

"That's good�I've got an appointment at seven, and I thought I had half an hour to wait."

He opened a packet of cigarettes while Roger teetered back to his party with the four glasses of sherry adroitly distributed between his fingers, and soon afterwards asked for a lavatory. He went out, leaving a freshly ordered glass of beer untouched on the bar; and the man who had taken the place next to him, who had been specifically warned against the dangers of letting his attentions become too conspicuous stood and gazed at that reas�suring item of still life for a considerable time before being trou�bled with the first doubts of bis own wisdom. And long before those qualms became really pressing, the Saint was reclining gracefully on Roger Conway's bed, blowing smoke-rings at the ceiling and waiting for the others to keep the appointment.

They came punctually at seven; and, having closed and locked the door, eyed him solemnly.

"He looks debauched," Peter said at length.

"And sickly," agreed Roger.

"Too many hectic moments with the heroine," theorised Peter.

"Do you think," suggested Roger, "that if we both jumped on him together��"

They jumped, and there was a brief but hilarious tussle. At the end of which:

"Do your nurses know you're out?" Simon demanded sternly. "And who told you two clowns to start chasing innocent girls to their doom before you've hardly unpacked? Presently I shall want you in a hurry for some real work, and you'll be prancing over the hillsides, picking daisies and sticking primroses in your hair�� Did you speak, Peter?"

"How the hell could he speak," gasped Roger, "while you're grinding your knee into his neck? You big bully . . . Ouch! That's my arm you're breaking."

The Saint picked himself off their panting bodies, sorted the smouldering remains of his cigarette out of the bedclothes, and lighted another.

"You're out of training," he remarked. "I can see that I've only just thought of you in time to save you from being put in a vase."

"I don't know whether we want to be thought of," said Peter, massaging his torso tenderly. "You always get so physical when you're thinking."

"It only means he's got into another mess and wants us to get him out of it," said Roger. "Or have you found a million pounds and are you looking for some deserving orphans?"

Simon grinned at them affectionately, and threw himself into a chair.

"Well, as a matter of fact there may be several millions in it," he answered.

There was a quiet dominance in his voice which carried them back to other times in their lives when the fun and horseplay had been just as easily set aside for the other things that had bound them together; and they sorted themselves out just as soberly and sat down, Roger on the bed and Peter in the other chair.

"Tell us," said Roger.

Simon told them.

2

"So that's the story. Now . . ."

He sat up and looked at them through a haze of smoke, in one of those supreme pauses when he knew most clearly that he would not, could not, have changed his life for any other. It was like old times. It was like coming home. It was the freebooter coming back to the outlaw camp-fire where he belonged. He saw their faces across the room, Peter's rugged young-pugilist vital�ity, Roger's lean and rather grim intentness; and under the tur�bulent thoughts that were clouding the background of his mind he knew an enduring and inexplicable contentment.

"As I see it, if all the evidence that's been collected since Ingerbeck's took on the case was worked up, there might be enough of it to put Vogel away. But that's not good enough for the underwriters, and it isn't good enough for Ingerbeck's. The underwriters can't show any dividends on gloating over Vogel sitting in prison for a few years. They want to recover some of the money they've lost on claims since he went into business. And Ingerbeck's want their commission on the same. And we want��"

"Both," said Peter Quentin bluntly.

The Saint gazed at him thoughtfully for a moment and did not answer directly. Presently he said: "The argument's fairly simple, isn't it? Boodle of that kind isn't exactly ready money. You can't take a sack of uncut diamonds or half a ton of bar gold into the nearest pawnshop and ask 'em how much they'll give you on it. It takes time and organisation to get rid of it. And it isn't so easy to cart around with you while your organisation's functioning�particularly the gold. You have to park it some�where. And for similar reasons you can't use the ordinary safe deposit or keep it in a sock."

Roger nodded.

"Meaning if we could find this parking-place��"

The Saint spread out his hands.

"Find it, or find out where it is. Join Vogel's crew and get the key. Follow him when he goes there to fetch some of the boodle out, or put some more in. Or something . . ." He smiled, and reached for his glass. "Anyway, you get the general idea."

They had got the general idea; and for a minute or two they digested it in efficient silence. The magnitude of the situation which had been unfolded to them provoked none of the conventional explosions of incredulity or excitement: it was only on the same plane with what they had come to expect from the shame�less leader who sat there studying them with the old mocking light of irresistible daredevilry on his dark reckless face. And it is doubtful whether the morality of their attitude ever troubled them at all.

"That seems quite clear," Peter said at last. "Except for the beautiful heroine."

"She's only trying to get at Vogel from his soft side�if he has one. That's why she had to make that trip to-day. I ... wasn't in time to stop it. Don't know whether I could have stopped it anyway, but I might have tried. If she hasn't arrived here safely . . ." He left the thought in the air; but for an instant they saw a cold flame of steel in his eyes. And then there was only the glimmer of the scapegrace smile still on his lips. "But that's my own party," he said.

"It looks like it," Peter said gloomily. "I might have known we couldn't afford to give you a start like this. If you're staking a claim on the heroine, I think I shall go home."

"Is it a claim?" asked Roger seriously.

Simon drew the last smoke of his cigarette deep into his lungs, and shed the butt into an ashtray.

"I don't know," he said.

He stood up abruptly and prowled over to the window, almost unconsciously triangulating its exact position in the exterior geog�raphy of the hotel, in case he should ever wish to find it with�out using the ordinary entrances. Automatically his mind put aside Roger's question, and went working on along the sternly practical lines for which he had convened the meeting.

"Now�communications. We can't have a lot of these reun�ions. I had to ditch a shadow to make this one; and yesterday I did the same in Dinard. I think I was pretty smooth both times, but if I do it much more it'll stop looking so accidental. There's just a thin chance that Birdie is still wondering how smooth I am, and it's just possible I may be able to keep him guessing for another twenty-four hours; which might make a lot of difference. So we'll go back to splendid isolation for a while. Orace and I will get in touch with you here�one or the other of you must look in every hour, in case there's a message. If we can't send a message, we'll put a bucket on the deck of the Corsair, which means you look out for signals. Remember the old card code? We'll put the cards in one of the portholes. Those are general orders."

"Anything more particular?"

"Only for myself, at present. To-morrow they're going out to try Yule's new bathystol�and I've got an invitation."

Peter sat up with a jerk.

"You're not going?"

"Of course I am. Any normal and innocent bloke would jump at the chance, and until there's any evidence to the contrary I've got to work on the assumption that I'm still supposed to be a normal and innocent bloke. I've got to go. Besides, I might find out something."

"All about the After Life, for instance," said Peter.

The Saint shrugged.

"That's all in the kitty. But if it's coming to me, it'll come anyhow, whether I go or not. And if it happens to-morrow . . ." The Saintly smile was gay and unclouded as he buttoned his coat �"I looks to you gents to do your stuff."

Roger pulled himself off the bed.

"Okay, Horatius. Then for the time being we're off duty."

"Yes. Except for general communications. I just wanted to give you the lie of the land. And you've got it. So you can go back to your own heroines, if they haven't found something better by this time; and don't forget your powder-puffs."

He shifted nimbly through the door before the other two could prepare a suitable retaliation, and found his way back to the bar. His glass of beer was still on the counter; and the sleuth who had been watching it, who had been mopping his brow feverishly and running round in small agitated circles for some time past appeared to suffer a violent heart attack which called for a large dose of whisky to restore his shattered nerves.

Simon lowered his drink at leisure. It went down to join a deep and pervading glow that had come into being inside him, in curious contrast to an outward sensation of dry cold. That brief interview with Peter and Roger, the knowledge that they were there to find trouble with him as they had found it before, had given a solid foundation to a courage which had been sustained until then by sheer nervous energy. Andyet, as the feeling of cold separateness in his limbs was there to testify, their presence had not altered the problem of Loretta, or made her safe; and a part of him remained utterly detached and immune from the intoxicating scent of battle as he set out to find her.

To find her ... if she was to be found. But he forced that fear ruthlessly out of his head. She would be found�he was becoming as imaginative as an overwrought boy. If Vogel had taken the risk of letting her sail on the Falkenberg at all, he must be interested; and if he was interested, there would be no point in murder until the interest had been satisfied. Vogel must be interested�the Saint had not watched that scene on the Falk�enberg'sdeck last night with his eyes shut. And Vogel's mathe�matically dehumanised brain would work like that. To play with the attractive toy, guarding himself against its revealed dangers, until all its amusing resources had been explored, before he broke it ... Surely, the Saint told himself with relentless insistence, Loretta would be found. The thing that troubled him most deeply was that he should be so afraid . . .

And he found her. As he walked by the harbour, looking over the paling blue of the water at the inscrutable curves of the Falkenberg as if his eyes were trying to pierce through her hull and superstructure to see what was left for him on board, he became aware of three figures walking towards him; and some�thing made him turn. He saw the tall gaunt aquilinity of Kurt Vogel, the gross bulk of Arnheim, and another shape which was like neither of them, which suddenly melted the ice that had been creeping through his veins and turned the warmth in him to fire.

"Good evening," said Vogel.

3

Simon Templar nodded with matter-of-faet cheeriness. And he wanted to shout and dance.

"I was just going to look you up," he said.

"And we were wondering where you were. We inquired on the Corsair, but your man told us you'd gone ashore. You had a good crossing?"

"Perfect."

"We were thinking of dining on shore, for a change. By the way, I must introduce you." Vogel turned to the others. "This is my friend Mr Tombs�Miss Page ..."

Simon took her hand. For the first time in that encounter he dared to look her full in the face, and smile. But even that could only be for the brief conventional moment.

". . . and Mr Arnheim."

"How do you do?"

There was a dark swollen bruise under Arnheim's fleshy chin, and the Saint estimated its painfulness with invisible satisfaction as he shook hands.

"Of course�you helped us to try and catch our robber, didn't you, Mr Tombs?"

"I don't think I did very much to help you," said the Saint deprecatingly.

"But you were very patient with our disturbing attempts," said Vogel genially. "We couldn't have met more fortunately�in every way. And now, naturally, you'll join us for dinner?"

The great hook of his nose curved at the Saint like a poised scimitar, the heavy black brows arched over it with the merest hint of challenge.

"I'd like to," said the Saint easily. And as they started to stroll on: "What about the Professor?"

"He refuses to be tempted. He will be working on the bathy�stol for half the night�you couldn't drag him away from it on the eve of a descent."

They had dinner at the Old Government House. To Simon Templar the evening became fantastic, almost frighteningly un�real. Not once did he catch Vogel or Arnheim watching him, not once did he catch the subtle edge of an innuendo thrust in to prick a guilty ear; and yet he knew, by pure reason, that they were watching. The brand of his fist on Arnheim's chin caught his eyes every time they turned that way. Did Arnheim guess� did he even know?�whose knuckles had hung that pocket earth�quake on his jaw? Did Vogel know? There was no answer to be read in the smooth colourless face or the black unwinking eyes. 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 al�ready? ... 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 show�down 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 re�cent 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 rhodo�dendrons."

"You would remember that. And now you're such a big man, doing such big and wonderful things. I'm so proud of you, El�mer."

"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 dyspep�sia, 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 shrub�bery 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 trans�ports 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 stu�pid . . . 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 tinder 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 boy friend be�fore 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 congratulat�ing 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 wait�ing�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 to-morrow 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 sweet�ness 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. Some�where 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. "To-morrow 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 to-night."

"Is there any to-morrow ?"

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 to-morrow?" he asked.

"The Professor's making his trial descent. I don't know what happens afterwards, but next week they're going down to Ma�deira. 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 under�stand. 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 reck�less 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 sink�ing 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 sym�pathise 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 to-morrow, 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 impa�tience or anxiety.

"Well�goodnight."

"Till to-morrow."

Simon shook hands; touched the moist warm paw of Otto Arnheim. He saluted Loretta with a vague flourish and the out-line 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 deliber�ately, 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 under�stood. 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 . . ."

Sssssh . . .

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 skitter�ing 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 gal�vanic arresting of all his perceptions.

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 wheel-house, 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 pho�tographic 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 effec�tively 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 ar�rived on the same deck he heard a low gasping moan.

He touched the gun on his hip; but that might be too noisy. His left hand was still grasping the stanchion by which he had been letting himself down, and with a silent twist he slipped it out of its socket. Then he took a long breath and stepped out across the door of the saloon, squarely into the light.

He looked down the companion into a room through which a young cyclone seemed to have passed. The bunks had been opened and the bedding taken apart; lockers had been forced open and their contents scattered on the floor; books had been taken from their shelves and thrown down anywhere. The carpet had been ripped up and rolled back, and a section of panelling had been torn bodily away from the bulkhead. The Saint saw all this at once, as he would have taken in the broad features of any background; but his gaze was fixed on the crumpled shape of a man who lay on the floor�-who was trying, with set teeth and pain-wrinkled face, to drag himself up on to his hands and knees. The man whose hiss of convulsive breathing had shocked him out of his sleep-walking a minute ago. Orace.

Simon put a hand on the rail of the companion and dropped into the saloon. He left his stanchion on the floor and hoisted Orace up on to one of the disordered couches.

"What's the matter?"

Orace's fierce eyes stared at him brightly, while he clutched his chest with one rough hand; and Simon saw that the breast of his shirt was red with blood. The man's voice came with a hoarse effort.

"Ain't nothink. Look out . . ."

"Well, let's have a look at you, old son��"

The other pushed him away with a sudden access of strength. Orace's head was turned towards the half-closed door at the forward end of the saloon, and his jaw was clamped up under the pelmet of his moustache with the same savage doggedness that had been carved into it when Simon had seen him making that heroic fight to get himself up from the floor. And at the same moment, beyond the communicating door, Simon heard the faint click of a latch and the creak of a board under a stealthy foot ...

A slight dreamy smile edged itself on to the Saint's mouth as he stooped in swift silence to recover his stanchion. Clubbed in his left hand, an eighteen-inch length of slender iron, it formed a weapon that was capable of impressing the toughest skull with a sense of painful inferiority; and the thought that the sportsman who had turned his cabin upside down and done an unascer�tained amount of damage to Orace was still on board, and might come within reach of a shrewd smack on the side of the head, brought a comforting warmth of grim contentment into his veins.

"Steady, me lad. We must get this coat off to see what the trouble is ... I never thought you'd go and hit the bottle di�rectly I was out of sight, Orace. And I suppose the cap blew off the ginger ale when you weren't looking . . . There we are. Now if we just change the cut of this beautiful shirt of yours ..."

He burbled on, as if he were still attending to the patient, while he picked his way soundlessly over the littered floor. His eyes were fixed on the door into the galley, and they were not smiling.

And then he stopped.

He stopped because the half-open door had suddenly jerked wide open. Beyond it, the further end of the alleyway was in darkness; but in the shadowy space between the light of the saloon and the darkness beyond he could see the black configuration of a man, and the gun in the man's hand was held well forward so that the light of the saloon laid dull bluish gleams along the barrel.

"Don't come any closer," said the shadow.

The Saint relaxed slowly, rising from the slight crouch to which his cautious advance had unconsciously reduced him. The man facing him seemed to be of medium height, square and thickset; his voice had a throaty accent which was unfamiliar.

"Hullo, old cockroach." Simon greeted him in the gentlest of drawls, with the stanchion swinging loosely and rather speculatively in his hand. "Come in and make yourself at home. Oh, but you have. Never mind. There's still some of the bulkhead you haven't pulled to pieces��"

"I'll finish that in a minute. Turn round."

"You're sure you haven't any designs on me?"

"Turn round!"

The Saint turned with a shrug.

"I suppose you know what'll happen if your hand shakes with that gun of yours, brother," he remarked. "You might have an accident and hit me. There's something about your voice which makes me think you've been practising in a place where little things like that don't matter, but over here they're a bit fussy. Have you ever seen a man hanged, old dear? It does the most comic things to his face. Although probably your face is comic enough��"

"You can forget that stuff," said the man behind him, coldly. "Now just drop that thing you've got in your hand."

"What, my little umbrella?"

"Yeah�whatever it is."

The Saint bent down slowly and laid the stanchion on the floor, choosing the place for it carefully.

"Now take two steps forward."

Simon measured the two paces, and stood still. His body was braced for the bullet which might conclude the interlude within the next three seconds, and yet his one desperate hope was pinned to the temptation he had left two steps behind�the iron rod which he had put down so carefully, with one end on an upset ashtray from which it could not be moved without the slight grating sound for which his ears were straining. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Orace leaning rigidly forward on the couch, his scarecrow face set in a stare of indomitable wrath. . . .

It came�the faint gritting scrape of metal which told him that the stanchion was being picked up. And the Saint flung him�self back with an instantaneous release of his tensed muscles.

His right heel went kicking backwards like a mule's, straight as a gunshot for the place where the head of the man behind him should have been if he was bending to pick up the stanchion, with all the power of the Saint's vengeful thews packed into it, and a silent prayer to speed it on its way. And the head of the intruder was exactly where Simon had computed it should have been. He felt the ecstatic squelch of the leather sogging home into something hard and only superficially yielding, heard the plop! of a silencer and felt something tug at his sleeve, and spun round, half overbalancing with the violence of his own impetuous effort.

From the man behind had come one single shrill hiccough of agony: and the Saint twisted round in time to see him rocking back on his haunches with one hand clapped to his face and the blood spurting through his fingers. His other hand still clutched the silenced gun, weaving it round in a blind search for a target. It plopped again, chipping the corner from a mirror on the after bulkhead; and Simon laughed softly and fell on him with his knees. As he grabbed the man's gun wrist he saw Orace lurching forward to pick up the iron bar which had given him his chance, and the obvious justice of the team play appealed to him irrestibly. He rolled under his victim with a quick squirm and a heave, and the man's weight came dead on his hands as Orace struck.

The Saint wriggled out from underneath and sat up, feeling for a cigarette and leaning against the bunk.

"A shrewd swipe, Orace�very shrewd," he commented, eyeing the sleeping beauty with professional approval. "It must have made you feel a lot better. What's all the excitement been about?"

While he explored the extent of his crew's injuries, Orace told him.

" 'E came alongside abaht 'arf-parst nine, sir. Said 'e 'ad a messidge from yer. 'Ho, yus?' I ses, 'wot is this 'ere messidge?' 'Yer to go an' meet Mr Tombs at the Queen's right awy,' 'e ses. 'Ho, yus?' I ses, 'well, Mr Tombs's larst words to me was to sty 'ere till it snows,' I ses. So 'e ses: 'This is very urgent. Can I come aboard an' tell yer the rest of the messidge?'�and before I could say anythink 'e'd come aboard. 'Not aht 'ere,' 'e ses, 'where we can be seen. Let's go below.' So 'e goes below, wivout so much as a by-your-leave, an' I follers 'im to tell 'im where 'e gets orf. 'I gotter whisper it,' 'e ses; an' then, bang, I got a biff on the 'ead that lide me right aht."

"What about this bullet?"

"That was afterwards. When I woke up 'e was still tearin' the saloon to pieces, an' 'e didn't notice me. I lay doggo fra bit, an' then I got 'old of one of the drawers wot 'e'd pulled out an' shied it at 'im. Must 've knocked 'im arf silly, becos I nearly got me 'ands on 'im, but I 'adn't got me legs back so much as I thought I 'ad, an' 'e pulled out 'is gun an' shot me."

"And damned nearly killed you," said the Saint thoughtfully.

The bullet had struck one of Orace's left ribs, glanced off, and torn an ugly gash in the muscle of his arm. So far as the Saint could tell, there were no bones broken; and he busied himself with expertly dressing and bandaging the wound, while his mind probed for the origins of that riotous visit.

It wasn't homicide alone and primarily, at least�he was sure of that. From the story, the shot which had crippled Orace looked more like an accident of panic, the desperate impulse of any thug who had felt himself on the point of being cornered and captured. And if that had been the object, it would have been easy enough to finish the job�he himself could have been picked off without warning while he stood at the head of the companion. If not that, then what? The eruptive appearance of the saloon provided a ready answer. Vogel was still searching for information; and the legend of convenient harbour thieves had already been established in Dinard.

There was another suggestion which he remembered as he put the last touches to Orace's bandages.

"Did a porter bring a couple of trunks along for me?" he asked; and Orace nodded.

"Yessir. They came abaht arf-parst seven. I put 'em in the starboard cabin."

Simon went forward as soon as he had finished, and found more or less what he had expected. The cords had been cut away from the trunks, and the locks had been ripped away by the scientific application of a jemmy. One of them was already open, and the lid of the other lifted at a touch. Clearly the visitor had just been completing his investigations when the sound of the Saint's arrival had disturbed him.

"Which is all very festive and neighbourly," reflected the Saint, as he surveyed the wreckage.

He strolled back to the saloon in a meditative frame of mind. There remained the problem of the investigator himself, who seemed destined to wake up with a sore head as well as a flattened face. The sore head might return to normal in twenty-four hours; even the flattened face might endear itself by a few years of devotion, and become as acceptable to its owner as the sym�metrical dial which perhaps it had once been; but the informa�tion which had been acquired during the same visit might prove to be more recalcitrant. It must not be allowed to take itself back to Vogel; but on the other hand it was doubtless keeping company with some useful information from the Vogel camp which might form a basis of fair exchange.

Simon Templar found himself warming to that idea on his return journey. He closed the door of the galley behind him and folded a wet towel which he had collected on his way, grinning at Orace rather dreamily.

"We might see if your boy friend feels talkative," he said. "And if he doesn't, you may be able to think of some way to thaw him out."

He cleared a space on one of the settees and yanked the in�truder up on it. For a minute or so he applied the cold towel methodically. Then he felt the back of the man's head, looked closely into his face, and opened up his shirt. After which he moved away and finished his cigarette with contemplative de�liberation. For nothing was more certain than that the sleeping beauty had listened to the last lullaby of all.

VI.������ HOW PROFESSOR YULE TESTED THE BATHYSTOL,

����������� AND KURT VOGEL MADE A PROPOSITION

DEFINITELY an uninvited complication, thought the Saint; although he admitted that it was the sort of accident that was always liable to happen when a man had an iron bar in his hand and good reason to be annoyed. Orace had had no cause to feel tenderhearted, and perhaps the deceased's cranium had been more fragile than the average. The Saint's attitude was sympathetic and broadminded. He did not feel that Orace was to be blamed; but he did feel that that momentary lapse had altered the situation somewhat drastically. Considering the point again in the placid light of the morning after, he could find no encouragement to revise his opinion. What he had no way of foreseeing was how drastic that alteration was destined to turn out.

He folded his arms on the rail of the Falkenberg, and frowned ruminatively at a flight of gulls wheeling over the blue water. Somewhere back under that same blue water, out in the channel between Guernsey and Herm, the unfortunate visitor lay in his long sleep, moored down to the sea bed by a couple of pigs of ballast. The Corsair had been cleaned up and tidied, and every record of his intrusion effaced.

Simon Templar had done that alone, before he went to sleep; but his own plans had kept him awake for longer.

"The balloon's gone up, anyway," he had reasoned. "When the search party doesn't come home, Vogel will start thinking until his head gets hot. What'll he decide? That the fellow rat�ted? ... One chance in fifty . . . That he's had an accident. then? That's the forty-nine to one certainty."

He had thought round it from every angle that he could see, trying to put himself into Vogel's place, but there was no other conclusion he could come to. What then?

"Vogel won't talk to the police. For one thing, that would give him a hell of a tall story to think up, explaining how he knew anyone would be burgling my boat to-night. And to go on with, he doesn't want to draw the attention of the police any more than I do. And to put a lid on it, for all he may know up to this moment, I might be the police."

There was still that thin and brittle straw of anonymity to clutch.

"What would I do? ... I'd come right over and have a look. But Vogel won't. He's pulled that one already; and he'd have a job to find another excuse to get shown over the boat for the second time in twenty-four hours. Besides, he knows he wouldn't find anything. If I'm police or if I'm just one of the idle rich, the burglar's already lodged in jail, and there's nothing he can do about it except try to bail him out in the morning when he hears the story. And if there's a chance that I'm police, he'd have to be damn careful how he went about that. On the other hand, if I'm in the racket too, I'd be waiting for something like that, and he'd expect to be walking into a reception if he did come over."

That seemed the most unlikely chance of all. The Saint mod�estly reckoned himself to be something unique in his profession; and there was a sober possibility that Vogel would not think of his peculiar brand of interference at all�unless he had already been identified. Simon slept with his hand on his gun and this debatable chance in mind; but he woke for the first time in the early morning. Yet this uninterrupted sleep gave him nothing more definite to work on. It was still possible that Vogel had stayed away for fear of being expected.

Over breakfast he had had to make his own decision, and his crew glared at him incredulously.

"Yer must be barmy," was Orace's outspoken comment.

"Maybe I am," admitted the Saint. "But I've got to do it. If I don't keep that date this morning, I'm branded. An innocent man would keep it, even if he had caught a burglar during the night. Even a policeman would keep it�and that card may be worth holding for another few hours, though it won't last much longer."

"It's that perishin' girl," said Orace morosely.

Simon paused in the act of fastening a strap around his leg just below the knee�a strap which supported the sheath of the slim razor-sharp knife, Belle, which in his hands was almost as deadly as any firearm. He looked up at Orace sardonically, then ruefully; and he smiled.

"She's not perishing, Orace. Not while I'm still on my feet."

"Yer won't be on yer feet fer long, any'ow," said Orace, as if the thought gave him a certain gloomy satisfaction. "And wot the 'ell 'appens to my job when yer feedin' the shrimps like that bloke I 'it last night?" he added, practically.

"I expect you could always go back to your old job as an artist's model," said the Saint.

He straightened his sock and stood up, smiling that curiously aimless and lazy smile which only came to him when he was shaking the dice to throw double or quits with death. His hand dropped on Orace's shoulder.

"But it won't be so bad as that. I'll put the cards in the port�hole for Mr Conway or Mr Quentin to look you up during the day, and they'll see you don't starve. And I'll be having the time of my life. I'll bet Birdie is just hoping and praying that I'll plant myself by not showing up. Instead of which, it'll take all the wind out of their sails when I step on board, bright and beautiful as a spring morning, as if I hadn't one little egg of a wicked thought on my mind. It ought to be a great moment."

In its way, it had been quite a great moment; but it had suf�fered from the inherent brevity of its description.

Simon watched the play of light on the water, the swiftly-changing lace of the foam patterns swirling and spawning along the side, and recalled the moment for what it was worth. It was the first time he had found any of the signs of human strain on Vogel's face. Even so, his practised eyes had to search for them; but they were there. A fractionally more than ordinary glaze of the waxen skin, as if it had been drawn a shade tighter over the high prominent cheekbones. An extra trace of shadow under the black deep-set eyes. Nothing else. Vogel was as spotlessly turned out as usual, his handshake was just as cold and firm, his genial�ity no less smooth-flowing and urbane.

"A perfect morning, Mr Tombs."

"A lovely morning after a gorgeous night before," murmured the Saint.

"Ah, yes! You enjoyed our little evening?"

"And the bed-time story."

Vogel lifted his dark eyebrows in tolerant puzzlement�and the Saint could just imagine how well that gesture of polite per�plexity must have been rehearsed.

Simon smiled.

"There must be something catching about this harbour thief business," he explained, with the air of a man in the street who is simply bursting with his little adventure and is trying to ap�pear blase about it. "I had a caller myself last night."

"My dear Mr Tombs! Did you lose anything valuable?"

"Nothing at all," said the Saint smugly. "We caught him."

"Then you were luckier than we were," said Arnheim, with his round flabby face full of admiration and interest. "Did he put up a fight?"

"He didn't have a chance��"

Simon looked up as Loretta came towards them along the deck. He had felt the beat of his heart when he saw her, had seemed to discover an absurb lightening of the perfect morning as if a screen had been taken away from before the sun. Vogel took her arm.

"My dear, Mr Tombs has been telling us what happened after he left us last night. He had one of those harbour thieves on board his own boat�and caught him!"

"But how exciting." She was smiling coolly, but her eyes were steady with questions. "How did you do it?"

"He came along to my bloke, Orace, and said I wanted him�it must have been while we were at the hotel. Orace was a bit suspicious and wanted to know more about it, and then this fellow hit him over the head with something. Orace came to again before the burglar had gone, and he went on with the fight. They were still at it when I got back. The burglar had a gun and everything, but it had misfired, so��"

"What happened?"

Vogel had asked the question, with his face as calm as stone; and the Saint had known that his answer would mark the sharp pinnacle of the moment which he had deliberately courted. He had allowed himself time to light a cigarette before he replied.

"Well, we were wrestling all over the saloon trying to get his gun away from him, and Orace grabbed hold of a stanchion that he'd brought down to clean and hit him over the head. Then we tied him up and took him ashore and lugged him along to the police station. But when they tried to give him first aid, they found he was�sort of dead."

For a little while there was an absolute silence. Even in the most humdrum circumstances, a revelation like that would natu�rally have taken a few seconds to establish itself in the minds of the audience; but the Saint had been waiting for a more preg�nant silence than that. It was while he was actually on his way over to the Falkenberg that he had finally decided to bring his story as close to the truth as possible. If he had said that the burglar was lodged alive in jail, and Vogel's ingenuity had been equal to devising a way of putting through an inquiry, the fiction could have been exposed in an hour or two. But the truth would offer an obvious inducement to wait for confirmation in a news�paper story which could not appear for another twenty-four hours, and it might well dispose of direct inquiries by making their prospects manifestly unprofitable: and, as Simon had told it, it had a ring of authenticity which an invention might not have had.

Simon had been waiting for a pregnant silence, and he was not disappointed. Yet even he did not know until later how much that silence had contained.

"Dead?" Arnheim repeated at last, in a strained voice.

The Saint nodded.

"Orace must have underestimated his strength, or something� I suppose it's quite understandable, as we were fighting all over the place. He'd bashed the devil's skull right in."

"But�but won't you be arrested?" faltered Loretta.

"Oh, no. They call it accidental death. It was the fellow's own fault for being a burglar. Still, it's rather a gruesome sort of thing to have on your conscience."

Vogel put up a hand and stroked the side of his chin. His pas�sionless eyes, hard and unwinking as discs of jet, were fastened on the Saint with a terrible brightness of concentration. For the first time since they had been talking there seemed to be some�thing frozen and mechanical about his tight-lipped smile.

"Of course it must be," he agreed. "But as you say, the man brought it on himself. You mustn't let it worry you too much."

"What's worrying him?"

The Professor came ambling along, with his rosy cheeks beam�ing and his premature grey beard fluttering in the breeze, and the story had to be started over again. While it was being repeated, a seaman came up and handed Vogel a telegram. Vogel opened it with a slow measured stroke of his thumb-nail: while he read it, and during the conclusion of the second telling of the adventure, he seemed to regain complete command of himself with a mental struggle that showed only in the almost imperceptibly whitened pallor of his face.

He buttoned his jacket and glanced along the deck as Yule added his hearty voice to the general vote of exoneration.

"We're ready to sail," he said. "Will you excuse me if I go and attend to it?"

And in that way the big moment had touched its climax and gone on its incalculable trajectory, leaving Simon Templar to consider where it left him.