Лесли Чартерис - Salvage for the Saint

And it was something like that for Simon Templar now, as his mind busied itself with thoughts of the gold bars awaiting collection, and of the means to be employed for that collection and of the number of dives he might have to make... while the Phoenix turned slightly so as to continue bearing down directly on the small rubber dinghy.

He had her in his field of vision the whole time, but his full attention was aroused only when Descartes and Arabella let out strangled yells at the same moment; and then the bows of the Phoenix were almost upon them.

Before he realised what he had done, Simon had grabbed Arabella’s hand and yanked her over the side with him in a double dive that took them some five feet under.

They surfaced, with Arabella spluttering and coughing from the water she had inhaled, and looked around. The Phoenix had tossed the little dinghy aside like a cork, and they could see it still bobbing about, now upside down on the sea, but holed and sinking fast, as the yacht continued on her course. But of Descartes there was no sign.

Simon duck-dived as the stern of the Phoenix passed them, perhaps twenty feet away. And under the waves he saw the great gross form of Jacques Descartes being drawn inexorably into the churning propellers.

There was absolutely nothing that anyone could have done at this point. Simon surfaced again and waited for Descartes’ body to appear, which it did after a few seconds, with a blood-red stain spreading around it, as the Phoenix ploughed on away from them.

Whatever else this new and totally unforseen development might mean, for the Saint and Arabella it certainly meant that their business with Jacques Descartes had been concluded in the most dramatic and final way possible. But it was by no means clear to either of them that their new situation represented an improvement over the uneasy bond of necessity which they — or at any rate Simon on behalf of them both — had had with the not totally dislikeable Frenchman whose gross and mangled body now floated belly-down on the surface of the sea.

Whoever was at the helm of the Phoenix had inexorably staked his own claim to the gold, and had demonstrated at the same time, with the chilling clarity of ice, his attitude to any competing claims. He had simply and efficiently mown the three of them down; and that he had not bothered to stop to see whether they were alive or dead was evidence of a singlemindedness which made even Simon Templar catch his breath.

It had not escaped him, however, that he was lucky to have breath to catch, after having allowed himself to be caught so thoroughly off his guard by the Phoenix on her deliberate collision course. And it had not escaped either him or Arabella that on an immediate practical level the options now open to them were starkly limited. Either they could stay where they were, treading water until they eventually drowned, or they could start swimming for the shore.

They started swimming.

But they had swum no more than a hundred yards when they heard the drumming of another boat’s engines behind them. They turned, and waved and splashed and shouted, but clearly they had already been seen.

The boat was a motor launch bearing the markings of the French coastguard; and as it came towards them they recognised the slightly pudgy form of Inspector Gerard Lebec.

“Thanks,” Simon said as they were helped aboard. “Small world, isn’t it?”

Lebec’s pale green eyes looked expressionlessly at the Saint. He nodded, then barked an order in French to the man at the helm. The man gunned the motor briefly and took the launch around in a tight turn to where the body of Descartes floated on the waves.

After Simon had helped him to fish the body out of the sea and lift it aboard, Lebec said: “So — you receive police hospitality once more, Monsieur Templar.”

“I’ll admit, I never thought I’d be glad to see you, Inspector,” the Saint said easily. “Very lucky, the way you just happened along like that.”

“I have been following behind you since Marseille,” Lebec said shortly, and turned to Arabella. “It was very wise of you, Madame, to telephone me before your departure.”

That was no real surprise to Simon. He had suspected something of the sort as a possibility after he had first observed that they had company; and he had regarded Arabella’s brief foray into private-enterprise distress signalling as more or less clinching evidence.

He cocked a quizzical and challenging eye at her. For a while she tried rather awkwardly and shamefacedly to avoid his direct gaze, but he was remorseless in searching out her eyes; and finally she turned and looked at him defiantly.

“Well — it is lucky he was here to pick us up out of the sea,” she said. “And all I did was follow police instructions by reporting that we were leaving Marseilles.”

The Saint nodded, his thoughts working to accommodate all the new factors that had suddenly entered the picture. Descartes had gone, abruptly; and just as abruptly, Lebec had appeared. And there was now the mystery of the Phoenix, and of who had been at the helm a few minutes ago. But whatever the changes in principal actors, there was one central focus of interest in that picture, and that was what Simon hung on to. Just across the water was a fabulous hoard of gold, lying only forty feet down; and he wanted a good proportion of it to finish up in his own personal coffers.

“Inspector Lebec,” he said pleasantly. “Would you like me to tell you where there’s four million dollars’ worth of gold bars?”

Lebec gestured towards the now stationary Phoenix.

“I think I can guess that, Monsieur Templar.”

The Phoenix lay at anchor, her engines stopped. She was still, silent, and devoid of any sign of life. They had taken a wide circular line in the launch, and approached from her bows, not knowing quite what they might find. The wheelhouse, and the decks, were apparently deserted. At a signal from Lebec the helmsman brought the launch close in alongside.

“There may be some trouble, Madame,” Lebec said. “You will please remain here.” He turned to the Saint. “And you — you will accompany me, Monsieur Templar.”

Simon followed Lebec, making something between a long pace and a short jump from the roof of the launch’s cabin to the deck of the Phoenix.

The Saint could have recalled many occasions in his life when tension-filled minutes had seemed to drag into interminable hours.

Those were the times when he had been most vulnerable, for one reason or another, and the enemy had been at his most inscrutably and dangerously unpredictable. But of all that array of nerve-stretchingly unen-joyable situations, there were few in which he had felt so helplessly, fleshcrawlingly exposed, so wide open to the whim or mercy of someone unknown, as he did now, prowling watchfully around the Phoenix’s decks and accommodation. Lebec was at least armed. The Saint wasn’t; and the comfort that he was able to draw from the presence of an automatic in the detective’s hand was realistically limited compared with the comfort it would have given him to have one in his own... Over and above which, he had reasons enough, from his point of view, for feeling uncomfortable about any degree of personal dependence on Lebec.

Lebec led the way cautiously into the saloon. There was no one there. The wheel-house, likewise, was deserted. So were the staterooms the Saint and Arabella had used. And so was the Captain’s cabin. There was no sign of anybody on board.

“It seems that we have on our hands a ghost ship,” Lebec said.

And then, right on cue as it seemed, they heard a sound which caused the hairs on the back of Simon Templar’s neck to stand up as if in response to the caress of an icy feather.