Leslie Charteris - The Saint and the People Importers

They churned on out to sea, Simon’s boat two hundred yards behind Fowler’s. Finally the Saint found the distance between himself and the bigger craft narrowing. The cruiser had stopped. He cut his own power, holding back. Over the splashing waves he heard a new, sharp sound: the smashing of an axe into wood. Fowler was hacking a hole in his boat’s hull just below the waterline.

Simon was already less than a hundred yards away. As he came closer he heard another sound: the yells and screams of the captive passengers below deck who now must see the axe blade and water breaking into the cabin where they were imprisoned.

The Saint pushed his throttle forward and bore down on the bigger boat at full speed, keeping his face hidden behind the black hat he was wearing. He turned on his own searchlight — a movable light that could be manipulated by the pilot at the wheel. In the beam he saw Fowler, a shotgun at the ready, facing the door from the cockpit and shouting over his shoulder:

“Hurry up! They’re breaking out! Get me off here!”

The Saint obliged, and as he continued to race the last yards towards Fowler’s listing boat he saw the doors burst open, wood splintering as the panic-stricken immigrants hurled themselves against it with a terror-inflamed vigour that Fowler had completely underestimated. Simon’s timing was such that he managed to ram the cruiser at just the instant that Fowler pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The blast went harmlessly into the air instead of into the Indians and Pakistanis who now swarmed frantically and furiously over Fowler like ants from a disturbed nest.

“I’m a friend!” the Saint shouted to them. “Some of you can get in my boat. And throw over the rubber dinghy on the cabin trunk — you know, the roof. Keep calm! There’s plenty of time for you all to get off.”

Simon was trying to hold his own confiscated craft alongside the cruiser. The foreign passengers paused, confused and uncertain. Fowler was prostrate. Somebody appeared to be standing on his arm.

“I didn’t exactly mean you’ve got all night,” Simon called. “Come on — get that dinghy launched!”

There was a babble of English and other languages. Two of the men climbed over into the speedboat while others untied and pulled down the already inflated Zodiac. They shoved it headlong off the deck, making it ship a few gallons of water, but fortunately it was by nature unsinkable unless punctured in several places.

Then Fowler made a bad mistake: he rolled over and tried to recover his shotgun, which had fallen nearby. Simon had just time to prove the validity of his good intentions to the Indians and Pakistanis by levelling his pistol at Fowler, but he did not have to use it. Dark forms pounced in the dancing glare of the spotlight, and three knives entered Fowler’s body almost simultaneously.

Fowler’s boat was listing heavily stern down, but before the water began to spill into the cockpit the Zodiac was ready loaded. If badly overcrowded, it at least floated. Nine men were in it, and three in the outboard with Simon.

“What happened?” one of the frightened passengers asked him. “Where are we?”

“The man who was supposed to take you ashore got frightened and decided to kill you instead.”

He got his party organised, tying the raft behind so that he could tow it. Then he set out at a low speed towards the coast.

A shout went up, and he turned to look back. The lights of Fowler’s cruiser had just disappeared beneath the waves, and the sea all around was dark except for the bead strings of lights along the distant shore.

Most of the way back to the vicinity of the fort was taken up by Simon’s explanations to the smuggled aliens of just what had gone wrong to destroy their hopes — and almost to destroy them.

“Are you the police?” one of them asked.

“No.”

“Where are we going? What can we do? Must we go to jail?”

“I’m afraid you must go back home,” Simon told them. “As long as you don’t go inside the territorial limits of Great Britain you haven’t broken any laws. I’m going to leave you off at the fort you just came from. I’ll arrange transportation so you can get back to the continent. You’re on your own from there.”

“I have no money!” one of them cried.

There was a scramble in the front of the boat.

“What is this?”

“I found it!”

The Saint’s voice carried invincible authority.

“Give it to me,” he ordered.

The packet which had caused the commotion was passed to him.

“It came from the man in the big boat,” one said.

Simon looked inside. He did not need to count. The great thickness of the package was enough.

“What is it?” someone asked.

“How much did you pay for this outing?” the Saint asked.

“Five hundred pounds,” one of them said.

“Four hundred,” said another.

“Seven hundred!”

Simon interrupted.

“Before the bidding gets any higher, I am authorised by this packet to announce that your fares will be returned — at five hundred pounds a head, just to be equitable about it — on condition that you use part of the money to get back home and don’t try any reverse colonisations in this direction in the future.”

He kept the packet to himself until they arrived back at the fort. Then he sent all but the one most articulate of the men up the ladder from the boats.

“I’m going to give your comrades five hundred pounds for each of you,” he said as they left. “Share it out equally, no matter what you paid to get here.”

As he counted out the money from Fowler’s package he told the Indian who had remained with him to assure the others that someone would come to take them away before noon the next day.

“Thank you, sahib.” He looked wistfully towards the lights of the shore. “So that is all I shall ever see of England.”

“Maybe you’ll come back honestly some day. Or treat yourself to a two-week tour.”

“Thank you, sahib.”

He took the money, shook Simon’s hand, and climbed up the ladder.

The Saint set the Zodiac adrift so that no overenterprising immigrants could still use it to reach the coast, and scarcely had time to get the speedboat cast off and under way again when he heard a voice across the water.

“Ahoy there!”

The sail of the Sunny Hours was a white smear against the dark sky, cutting down swiftly towards him.

“Ahoy!” Simon said. “How do you know I’m not Fowler, about to put a bullet through your head?”

“I have faith in my Simon,” Tammy called back. She steered to within a dozen yards of him, turning to luff into the wind. “When I heard the outboard coming back I knew it must be you. What happened?”

The Saint used a foot to fender their sides as the two boats drifted together.

“Kalki and Fowler are down among the dead men. Their clients just managed not to go with them. I’ll tell you all about it on the way back.”

“I’ll race you,” she said.

He looked at the luminous dial of his watch.

“I’ll give you a tow,” he said. “It’ll save a lot of time, and old Nautical William back at South Benfleet is probably having kittens already about his precious scow. Besides, I’m starting to feel hungry for a real dinner... Curry, anybody?”

“The Saint and the People Importers” is a novelization of the episode “The People Importers” from the 1962-69 TV series, The Saint, originally written by Donald James.