Leslie Charteris - The Saint Overboard

He stood up and flicked his cigarette-end through a porthole, helping himself to another. The lines of his face were lifted in high relief as he drew at a match.

"You didn't tell me all this to pass the time, did you?" he smiled.

"I told you because you're — you." She was looking at him directly, without a trace of affected hesitation. "I've no authority. But I've seen you, and I know who you are. Maybe I thought you might be interested."

She straightened the bathrobe quickly, looking round for an ashtray.

"Maybe I might," he said gently. "Where are you staying?"

"The Hotel de la Mer."

"I wish you could stay here. But tonight — I'm afraid there must be a thin chance that your boy friend wasn't quite satisfied with my lines when we exchanged words, and you can't risk it. Another time—"

Her eyes opened wider, and he stretched out his hand with a breath of laughter.

"I'm going to row you home now," he said. "Or do we have another argument?"

"I wouldn't argue," she began silkily; and then, with the corners of her mouth tugging against her will, she took his hand. "But thanks for the drink — and everything."

"There are only two things you haven't told me," he said. "One is the name of this boat you wanted to look at."

She searched his face for a moment before she answered:

"The Falkenberg"

"And the other is the name of the boy friend — the bloke who passed in the night."

"Kurt Vogel."

"How very appropriate," said the Saint thoughtfully. "I think' I shall call him Birdie when we get acquainted. But that can wait… I want to finish my beauty sleep, and I suppose you haven't even started yours. But I've got a hunch that if you're on the beach before lunch we may talk some more. I'm glad you dropped in."

The fog was thinning to a pearl-grey vagueness lightening with the dawn when he rowed her back; and when he woke up there were ovals of yellow sunlight stencilled along the bulkhead from the opposite portholes. He stretched himself like a cat, freshening his lungs with the heady nectar of the morning, and lighted a cigarette. For a while he lay sprawled in delicious laziness, taking in the familiar cabin with a sense of new discovery. There she had sat, there was the cup and glass she had used, there was the crushed stub of her cigarette in the ashtray. There on the carpet was still a darkened patch of damp, where she had stood with the salt water dewing her slim legs and pooling on the floor. He saw the ripple of gold in her hair, the shaft of challenge in her eyes, the exquisite shape of her as he first saw her like a shy nymph spiced with the devil's temper; and knew a supreme content which was not artistically rewarded by the abrupt apparition of a belligerent face sheltering behind a loose walrus moustache in the door leading to the galley.

"Lovely morn'n, sir," said the face, and limped struttingly in to plunk down a glass of orange juice beside him. "Brekfuss narf a minnit."

The Saint grinned ruefully and hauled himself up.

"Make it two minutes, Orace," he said. "I had company last night."

"Yessir," said Orace phlegmatically, gathering up cups; and he had retired to the galley again before Simon saw that he had left a second glass of orange juice ostentatiously parked in the middle of the table.

The mist had receded under the sun until it was only a haze on the horizon, and a sky of pale translucent azure lofted over a sea like glass. Simon went up on deck with a towel round his middle and slipped adroitly into the water, leaving the towel behind. He cut away across the estuary in a straight line of hissing crawl, turned and rolled over on his back to wallow in the invigorating delight of cold water sheathing his naked limbs, and made his way back more leisurely to eat bacon and eggs in a deck chair in the spacious cockpit while the strengthening sun warmed his shoulders.

All these things, then, were real — the physical gusto of life, quickened by unasked romance and laced with the wine of danger. Even the privileged cynicism of Orace only served as a touchstone to prove reality, rather than to destroy illusion. It was like the old days — which as a matter of fact were by no means so old. He lighted a cigarette and scanned the other boats which he could see from his anchorage. A cable's length away, towards the Pointe de la Vicomté, he picked a white rakish motor cruiser of about a hundred tons, and knew that this must be the one even before he went down to the saloon for a pair of binoculars and read the name from a lifebelt. Falkenberg. Simon's lips twitched in a half-smile that was entirely Saintly. The name of the legendary Flying Dutchman was a perfect baptism for the pirate ship of that hawk-faced black-browed man who called himself Kurt Vogel, and the Saint mentally saluted the antarctic quality of bravado that must have chosen it. Still using his binoculars from the prudent obscurity of the saloon, he took in the high outswept bows and the streamlined angles of the wheelhouse forward, the clean lines of superstructure dipping to the unusually low flat counter, and credited her with twin racing engines and a comfortable thirty knots. Abaft the saloon there was a curious projection neatly shrouded in canvas — for the moment he could not guess what it was.

He stropped his razor and ran water into a basin; and he was finishing his shave when his man came through with the breakfast plates. Simon rounded his chin carefully and said: "Orace, have you still got that blunderbuss of yours — the young howitzer you bought once in mistake for a gun?"

"Yessir," said Orace unemotionally.

"Good." The Saint wiped his razor and splashed water over his face. "You'd better get out my automatic as well and look it over."

"Yessir."

"Put a spot of oil in the works and load up a couple of spare magazines. And grease the cartridges — in case I take a swim with it."

"Yessir."

"We may be busy."

Orace's moustache stirred, like a field of corn under a passing zephyr. His limp was a souvenir of Zeebrugge Mole and days of authorised commotion as a sergeant of His Majesty's Marines, but it is doubtful whether even in those years of international discord he had heard as many different calls to arms as had come his way since he first took service with the Saint.

" 'Ave you bin gettin' in trouble again?" he demanded fiercely.

The Saint laughed behind his towel.

"Not trouble, Orace — just fun. I won't try to tell you how beautiful she is, because you have no soul. But she came out of the sea like a mermaid, and the standard of living went up again like a rocket. And would you mind moving off that bit of the carpet, because the comparison is too hideous. She stood there with the water on her, and she said 'Will you let me out?' And I said 'No!' Just like that."

"Didyer, sir?"

"And she pulled a gun on me."

"Go on, did she?"

"She pulled a gun. Look, you pull a gun. Hold your hand like that. Right. Well, I said 'Ha, ha,' — like that, very sinister. I switched out the lights! I leapt upon her! I grabbed her wrist! We fell on the bunk—"

"Steady on, sir, yer 'urting!"

"You shut up. She was crrrushed against me. Her lips were an inch from mine. For heaven's sake stop whiffling your moustache like that. I felt her breath on my face. I was on fire with passion. I seized her in my arms… and…" Simon planted a smacking kiss on his crew's horrified brow. "I said 'Don't you think Strindberg is too sweet?' Now go and drown yourself."

He picked himself up and erupted out of the cabin, slinging the towel round his neck, while Orace gaped goggle-eyed after him. In a few minutes he was back, tightening the belt of a pair of swimming trunks, and stuffing cigarettes into a waterproof metal case.