Leslie Charteris - The Saint Overboard

While they were tightening down the wing-nuts around the straps he slipped a cigarette out of the packet which he had put down beside him, and lighted it while they hitched on the lead weights back and front of the corselet. All the time he was listening tensely for the first warning of Vogel's approach; but Calvieri had stepped back from the job before he heard footsteps and voices on the deck behind him.

"Alors… à demain."

"À demain, m'sieu."

Simon stood up. He heard the wooden clumping of Baudier climbing down into his dinghy, and then the double steps of Vogel and Arnheim coming along the deck. The hazards were not yet past.

A complete diving outfit weighs one hundred and eighty pounds, which is not the handiest load to walk and lounge about in on land; but Ivaloff was husky enough, and the Saint had to risk making him seem eccentric. He walked laboriously to the taffrail and leaned on it, smoking and watching the man in the dinghy pull slowly away out of range of the deck lights towards the shore. Behind him he heard the vague sounds of Vogel being encased in his suit, but there was no conversation. On his dip that afternoon, Simon had noticed that Vogel encouraged no unnecessary speech from his crew, and he had been hoping that the rule would still hold good. And once again the bet had come off. The Saint had been sent down before — why should the dressers comment on his being sent down again?

At last he heard the chuff-chuff of the air pump, and the slow thudding tramp of heavy boots behind him; and Calvieri appeared beside him with his helmet. He stooped for it to be put on, without turning his head, and waited for the front window to be screwed on before he looked round.

Then, safely hidden behind the small panel of reflecting plate glass, he turned round to the ladder which had been fitted into sockets on the counter, and saw Vogel following cumbrously after him. And at the same moment a three-hundred-watt submarine lamp suspended from the boom was switched on, deluging the after deck and the sea over the stern with light.

They sank down in the centre of its cone of brilliance. There was the sudden shock of air pressure thumping into the eardrums, the sudden lifting of the load of the heavy gear, and then the eerie silence and loneliness of the deep. The lamp, lowered into the water after them, came to rest at the same time as they reached the bottom, and hung six feet over their heads, isolating them in its little zone of light. The effect of that night descent was stranger even than the twenty-fathom plunge which the Saint had taken in daylight. The lamp gave more light within its circumscribed radius than he had had in the Chalfont Castle even when the sun was blazing over the surface of the sea; and the water was so clear that they might have been in a tank. The contours of the rocky bottom within the narrow area in which vision was possible were as plain as if they had been laid out under the sun. The Saint could see scattered fronds of weed standing erect and writhing in the stir of imperceptible currents, and a few small surprised pollack darted under the light and hung poised in fishy puzzlement at the unceremonious invasion of their sleep.

Vogel was already ploughing away towards a huge rounded boulder that was dimly visible on the blurred outskirts of their field of light, and Simon adjusted his escape valve and waded after him. Again he had to adapt himself to the tedious struggle which the water forced upon every movement: it was rather like a nightmare in which invisible tentacles dragged against all his limbs and reduced progress to a snail-like crawl which no effort could hasten. It seemed to take several minutes to cover the few yards which he had to go; and as he got nearer he noticed that Vogel seemed to be trying to wave him away. He turned clumsily aside and swayed up towards the other side of the rock.

It occurred to him with a sudden clutch of anxiety that the lamp by whose light they were moving might make everything that happened down on the sea floor as plainly visible to the men on the deck of the Falkenberg as it was to him. And then, with his lips twisting in a faint curve of grim and unrelaxed relief, he realised that he had no cause for alarm. The ripples and tiny wavelets scampering across the surface of the water above would break up all details into a confused eddy of indistinguishable shapes. They would hardly be able to see any more than a swirling nimbus of light down in the opaque surge of the deep. Why else would Vogel go down himself with one trusted man to keep the secret of his fantastic treasure-house?

He saw that Vogel was looking upwards, his helmet tilted back like the face of some weird dumb monster of the sea lifted to a blind pre-historic sky. Simon looked up also, and saw that the grab was coming down through the roof of the tent of light over them. Vogel began to work himself out to meet it, and the Saint did the same. Following what he could divine of Vogel's intention, he helped to drag the great claw over and settle it around the rock by which they had been standing. Then they moved back; and he heard Vogel's voice reverberating in his helmet.

"All ready. Lift!"

The wire cables straightened, became taut and rigid as steel bars. A little cloud of disturbed sediment filtered out like smoke from the base of the rock. It was going up, rolling over to follow the diagonal drag…

"Stop!"

The boulder lurched once, and settled; the hawsers became slack again. Looking down breathlessly through the wispy grey fog that curled sluggishly up around his legs, the Saint saw that where the stone had once rested was now an irregular black oval crater in the uneven floor. At first he could make out no more than the hazy outlines of it, but even then he knew that the shifting of that rock had laid open the last of Kurt Vogel's secrets, the most amazing Aladdin's cave that the hoards of piracy had ever known.

Vogel was floundering to the edge of the hole in the awkward slow-motion which was the best that either of them could achieve down there, his arms waving sprawlingly like the feelers of an octopus in an attempt to help himself along. He sank down on his knees and lowered his legs into the pit: there seemed to be a ladder fixed to the rock inside, for presently his feet found the rungs and he began to descend step by step.

Simon started to follow him, but again Vogel waved him back. He heard the muffled clatter of the telephone.

"Stay there and guide the cases down to me."

The Saint hesitated. Down there in that narrow cavern at his feet, beyond any doubt, was Vogel's outlandish strong-room; and down there must lie the stupendous booty for which so much had been risked and suffered — for which three men had already set out on a quest from which they never returned, for which Wesley Yule had gone down into the silence and died without knowing why, for which Loretta and himself had stood under the sentence of death and more than death. Having fought his way to it so far, at such a cost, it was almost as much as he could do to hold himself back from the last step.

And then he realised that the step could wait. The murky smokiness under his feet was settling down, and he could see Vogel's helmet gleaming below him. The boulder which had just been lifted away was protection enough for the treasure. There would be no more doors to open…

A vague bulk swaying into the margins of his vision made him turn with a start. The grab had released the boulder and gone up, and now it was descending again with a stack of bullion cases clutched in its giant grip.

"Steady!" snapped the Saint into his telephone, and heaved himself unwieldily towards it.

The descent stopped; and he got his hands to the load and pushed it towards the hole. It was hard work against the resistance of the water, and he needed all his strength. At last it was in position, and he ventured to give the order for it to go on.