Leslie Charteris - The Saint Overboard

And Vogel recognised it. His black burning eyes widened into fathomless pools of horror, and the thin bloodless lips drew back from his teeth in a kind of snarl. For the first time the smooth waxen mask was smashed away from his face, and only the snarl of the wolf remained. Then he began to speak. His mouth twisted in the shape of soundless words that no human ears would ever hear. Until he found that there was no answer and no obedience; and one of his hands groped round and found the loose trailing end of his severed line…

God knows what thoughts, what roaring maelstroms of incredulous understanding, must have gone thundering through his brain in those infinite seconds. He must have known even then that the death which he had meted out to others had found him in his turn, but he would never know how it had come about. He had been on the peaks of triumph. He had won every point; and this last descent should have been no more than a stereotyped epilogue to a finished history. He had left Simon Templar a prisoner, outwitted and disarmed and beaten, locked up to await the moment when he chose to remove him forever from the power of interference. And yet the Saint was there, smiling at him with set lips and bleak steel-blue eyes, where Ivaloff should have been. The Saint had come back, not beaten, but free and inescapable. The crew had dressed him and sent him down without a word. That was the last bitter dreg of realisation which he had to accept. The Saint had reversed their weapons. But how it had been done, how the crew had been bribed or intimidated, by what inconceivable alchemy the Saint had turned the tables, remained a riddle that he would never solve.

He fought. As if the shock had wiped away the last fragments of that more than human self-control, his hand shot out and clawed at the Saint's shoulder. His fingers slipped on the coarse twill, and the Saint grasped his wrist and twisted it away.

From the distance of a foot, which might have been the breadth of the Atlantic, Simon Templar looked at him through the wall of water which cut them off, and his blue eyes smiled with a soundless and terrible laughter into the wild distorted face. And he brought down the stone he was holding in a fearful blow on the fingers of Vogel's right hand where they clung to the rock.

A spasm of agony crawled across Vogel's features. And as the crushed hand released its hold, Simon slashed his knife clean through Vogel's air pipe and pushed him away.

Vogel fell, absurdly slowly, toppling backwards from the ladder very gradually and deliberately, with his arms waving and his hands clutching spasmodically at the yielding water. He went down, and the darkness of his own treasure-cave closed on his gleaming helmet. A slender trickle of bubbles curled up out of the gloom…

The Saint climbed lumberingly to his feet.

"Otto," he said curtly, still imitating Vogel's voice; and in a moment Arnheim answered.

"Yes?"

"Bring me up alone."

Vogel's life-line, knotted around his waist, tightened against his body. And at once he slashed through the telephone wires which were his last link with his own line.

His feet dragged off the ground, and he rose up through the light, past the lamp, up through the deep green shadowiness beyond. The circle of illuminated sea floor dwindled below him. Down in the darkness of the crypt into which Vogel had fallen he seemed to catch a glimpse of a moving sheen of metal, as if Vogel was trying to fight his way up again. But all that was very far away. He went up alone, up through the darkening shadows and the silence.

Coming up from that depth, there was no need for a gradual decompression. In three minutes he was getting his feet on to the rungs of the ladder. There was the sudden release of pressure from his body, and the pull of the weights on his shoulders. He climbed up into the light.

Hands helped him up on to the deck, tapped on his helmet and pointed, guiding him to the stool that was placed behind him. He sat down, facing the sea, and they unscrewed the porthole in the front of his helmet. He felt the sweet freshness of the natural air again.

The round opening where the porthole had been slid sideways across his vision as the helmet was released. He bent his head for it to be lifted off, and at the same time he slipped his knife out of its sheath into his left hand. As the helmet came off, he kept his head bowed and felt for the automatic inside his collar. He found it; and the knife flashed momentarily as he cut through the tie on which he had slung the gun. Then he turned round and faced the deck.

"I think this is the end, boys," he said quietly.

At the sound of his voice, those who had not been looking at him turned round. Calvieri, who was putting down the helmet, dropped it the last six inches. It fell with a deep hollow thud. And then there was utter stillness.

Arnheim had got up out of his chair and had been advancing towards him. He stopped, as if a brick wall had suddenly materialised in front of his toes; and his pink fleshy face seemed to turn yellow. His gross paunch quivered. A glassy film spread over his small pig eyes, turning them into frozen buttons of ink; and his soft moist mouth drooped open in a red O of fluttering unbelief. The Saint spoke principally to him.

"Kurt Vogel is dead. Or he soon will be. I believe there's enough air in a diving suit to last a man about five minutes after his air-line is cut. That is my justice…" The Saint paused for a moment, and his calm gaze swept over the rest of them there with the timeless impassivity of a judge. "As for the rest of you," he said, "some of you may get away with a nice long rest in prison — if you live long enough to stand your trial. But to do that you will have to put your hands high up above your heads and take great care not to annoy me, because if any of you give me a scare—"

The automatic in his hand cracked once, a sudden sharp splash of sound in the persuasive flow of his words; and Otto Arnheim, with his hand halfway to his pocket, lurched like a drunken man. A stupid blankness spread across his face, and his knees folded. He went down limply on to the deck, rolled over, and lay still, with his staring eyes turned to the winking stars.

"— this gun is liable to go off," said the Saint.

None of the men moved. They looked down at the motionless body of Otto Arnheim, and kept their hands stretched well above their heads. And the Saint smiled with his lips.

"I think we shall have to put you away for a while," he said. "Calvieri, you take some of that life-line and tie your playmates together. Lash 'em by the waists about a yard apart, and then add yourself to the string. Then we'll all go below, with you leading the way and me holding the other end of the line, and see about rounding up the rest of the herd."

"That's already been done, old boy," murmured Roger Con-way, stepping out on to the deck from the after companion, with a gun in each hand and Steve Murdoch following him.

"It was quite easy really," said Roger Conway patronisingly. "When we got Loretta's radiogram we set off at once, straight for here. We nearly piled your boat up on several rocks on the way, but Orace managed to see us through. Took us about three hours. The Falkenberg passed us about halfway, somewhere in the distance, and we just managed to keep her in sight. Luckily it was getting dark, so we turned out our lights after a bit and crept up as close as we dared. We dropped our hook about a quarter of a mile away, and as soon as we'd given the Falkenberg time to get well settled in we manned the dinghy and paddled over to reconnoitre. Everybody on deck seemed to be pretty busy with the diving business, so we came aboard on the other side and went below. We collected seven specimens altogether on the round-up, including a bloke who seems to have got a broken jaw. Anyway he's still asleep. The rest of 'em we gagged and tied up and left for inspection. We made a pretty thorough job of it, if I may say so."