Лесли Чартерис - The Saint in Trouble

Professor Maclett had, probably, chosen to make the rendezvous as a morning stroll along the sea front. Even now, it was not absolutely impossible for the Saint to keep his mythical appointment close to time. The early traffic on the Croisette was scanty, and in only a minimum of minutes Gaby was pulling into the parking lot beside the quay opposite the hotel.

The Saint was out of the car before it had stopped, his eyes frantically scanning the peaceful morning scene as he hurried along the wharf. Then, through a gap in the sardine-packed rows of boats, he saw an open launch creaming its way towards the open sea, and even from that distance he could identify the burly figure and flaming hair of Professor Maclett standing in the stern.

Gaby had climbed out of his cab and come up beside the Saint, following the line of his eyes. Simon turned to him.

“I need a boat. A fast boat.”

Gaby pointed towards a speedboat berthed a little farther along the jetty. It was typical of the craft that earned a living for their owners by towing water skiers around the bay. A man was kneeling in the bow adjusting a mooring rope.

Gaby called to him: “Bonjour, Albert!”

The man turned, recognised him, and came aft to climb up onto the jetty.

“I want to hire your boat,” said the Saint.

“At what time, m’sieu? I have a client at eleven.”

“Now!”

Simon thrust a roll of hundred-franc notes into the man’s hand, and had jumped down onto the boat and cast off while the startled owner was still counting them. He gunned the powerful engine into life and sent the boat purring out into the channel.

To avoid attracting the unwelcome attention of the maritime police, he had to make his way through the harbour at a speed that any Olympic swimmer could have surpassed without any exertion, and by the time he cleared the breakwater the launch he was following had taken a formidable lead.

As soon as he reached open water and was able to give the motor its head, the power of the propeller’s churning blades lifted the bow of the light fibre-glass hull clear of the water. He stood with his legs slightly bent to absorb the shock of the continual pounding as the keel jounced over innocent wavelets that seemed to turn into ridges of solid wood. His hands caressed the wheel as he automatically followed the creaming wake of the launch.

His borrowed speedboat was nimble and fast, but the launch he was trailing was no lumbering tugboat either. After a few minutes, he could estimate that he could be sure of overtaking it, but that it would be anything but a short, swift chase.

He was still trying to figure out the wherefores of the operation. Was Maclett actually being kidnapped at gunpoint? Or had he been told that he was only being ferried to a more secret meeting place?

The launch was headed east-south-east towards the two islands that lie in parallel off the point of the small peninsula where the Croisette ends, on a course that would take it through the channel between Ste. Marguerite and Ste. Honorat. It would certainly get there before he could catch it.

They were not the only vessels headed in that direction. Already a few much larger yachts were cruising towards the same channel, both from the old port and the Port Canto, under orders to take up the best anchorages while their owners and passengers breakfasted, for it was a favourite spot for the luxuriously seaborne community to spend the day, sunning and swimming well removed from the less favoured crowds on the beaches. For many of those millionaire cruisers, it was the longest voyage they ever took.

Simon judged speed and distance with the expert eye of a professional sailor. When he overhauled the launch it would be well into the channel, among several other statelier craft jockeying for position in addition to the boats already berthed there. Whatever were the intentions of the people on the launch, the Saint did not want to make his pursuit too obvious.

The Saint was uncomfortably aware that if his pursuit became unmistakable and he then had the temerity to try to head off the launch he would simply be run down, and drawing alongside was the easiest way he could imagine to collect a bullet.

The wind whipped the early warmth of the sun from his skin, pulling at his clothes and hair as the spray flung back by the bow stung his eyes. The Saint grinned at the sound of the hull smashing down on the water, at the protest of the wind in his ears, at the way the morning, so peaceful and tame just a few minutes before, had suddenly become wild and free, at the way the muscles of his arms reacted to hold the speedboat on course when it bucked like a skittish colt.

It was for such moments that the Saint lived. They were the reason for his existence, the antidote to the humdrum organised mundanity of modern life. It had often been suggested that the Saint was born out of his time, that he should have lived in the days when men carried swords at their sides, that he would have been better suited to captaining a privateer in search of galleons on the Spanish Main; that he had no place in the drab days of the twentieth century. But the Saint knew that it is not the time that matters but the people who live in it. He knew that those who spend their present plaintively recalling another’s past are not really yearning for those adventures so much as protecting themselves from the challenges of their own day. His own steed was a fast car, his frigate a speeding motor-boat, but his spirit was as free as that of any highwayman or privateer.

But with all that, his tactical instincts, as lively as those of any pirate, suggested a possibly profitable switch. The Saint made it without consciously examining his decision.

With a touch of the wheel, he sent the speedboat veering to port, out of its direct trail of the launch that carried Maclett.

The launch continued on its way into the channel between the islands, while the Saint’s speedboat swept into a parallel course opposite Ste. Marguerite. In a moment they were cut off from sight of each other. But the Saint figured that he had enough speed in hand to reach the eastern end of the island well ahead of the launch, swing around it, and meet the launch in the channel from an unexpected and apparently accidental head-on direction. Whatever the purpose of the party in the launch might be, his interception of it should take them completely by surprise.

He scanned the speedboat’s cockpit for anything that might prove useful once he made the encounter. His glance fell on a metal box bolted to the side under the dashboard, and he leaned over and flicked it open, to find it contained a Very pistol and distress flares. Guiding the boat with only an occasional touch, he carefully fitted a cartridge and placed the pistol on the ledge behind the windshield.

Up to a point, his plan worked out exactly as he had envisioned it. He kept the speedboat headed towards Cap d’Antibes until well past the end of Ste. Marguérite, to stay safely away from the irregular reef which projects eastwards under water from the island, before making his U-turn back into the channel where the big yachts were parking for the day. And almost at once he saw the launch that he had previously been following, rushing towards him and away from the assemblage of statelier pleasure barges in the most sheltered center of the notch.

Simon cut his engine to a mere tick-over, and as the speedboat slumped in the water he slewed it directly across the path of the launch. He stood up in the cockpit, waving his arms in an unmistakeable request for communication.

Without slackening speed by a knot, the launch veered to miss him, but so closely that its water almost capsized the speedboat, and only the Saint’s fantastic reflexes and co-ordinating muscles saved him from being thrown down into or bodily out of the bucking cockpit.