Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

"Off a rock," said the Saint.

She coughed, and choked again with a grimace.

"Excuse me if I spit," she said.

The Saint excused her. She did it to windward, which was not too successful. Simon regarded her sadly.

"You're new to this, aren't you?" he said mildly.

"You've got to begin sometime," she said defiantly.

"I've had a few lessons from one of the men, and I thought I'd like to try it by myself. Nobody was using the dinghy, so I just took it."

"There's only one policeman in the Scilly Isles," murmured Simon, "so if you lie low you may get away with it."

"Oh, I didn't steal it. It belongs to the yacht."

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"Have you got a yacht?"

"My stepfather has. The Claudette . We're lying over at Tresco."

The line of black-etched eyebrows seemed to harden fractionally.

"Near Abdul Osman's?"

"Why — how did you know?"

"Sort of bush telegraph," said the Saint. "It's amazing how the news travels in these wild parts."

It was during some of this conversation that he was able to review the artistic proportions of her body; for she was dressed in nothing more than a bathing costume in the modern style, consisting largely of entrances for the priceless ultra-violet ray.

"Are you determined to stay where you are?" she inquired presently; and the Saint smiled.

"Not permanently," he said. "But my bathing costume is even more modern than yours. You interrupted a lovely sunbath à l'atlemande . However, if you like to stay here for a minute I'll swim back and fetch some clothes."

He slid down into the water without waiting for his suggestion to be accepted, and made for the shore again, cutting a clean line through the water and leaving a wake behind. He returned on his back, one hand holding a bundle of shirt, trousers, and shoes high and dry in the air.

"I was born without shame," he said, heaving the bundle over the stern. "But if you feel bashful you can go forward and talk to the fish while I use your towel."

"I suppose you saved my life," said the girl, staring with intense concentration at a completely empty horizon, while the boat rocked under her as he pulled himself on board.

"There is no charge," said the Saint.

He towelled himself rapidly, and pulled on his trousers; then he set himself to bring the dinghy round and trim her on a straight course back towards Tresco. The girl turned round and watched his easy manoeuvres enviously. It was done with an effortless confidence that seemed no trouble at all; and he settled himself at the tiller and smiled at her again out of that rather reckless brown face. She saw challenging blue eyes gleaming with a ready mockery, wiry muscles that rippled under a skin like brown satin; sensed a personality that had no respect for polite conventions. She knew that the hint of antagonism that had infected her was due to nothing but her own feeling of foolishness, and knew that he knew she knew.

"I shan't tell," he said, and his words fitted in with her thoughts so uncannily that for a moment longer she had to continue looking at him.

"My stepfather might want to know where I picked you up," she said.

"That's true," Simon admitted, and said no more until he had run the dinghy neatly alongside the rather excessively magnificent-looking yacht that was riding in the New Grimsby channel.

He made the boat fast to the gangway and helped the girl out. One of the hands had noticed their arrival, and there was a middle-aged gentleman in white flannels waiting for them on the deck. He wore a yachting cap and a blue reefer jacket with a vague air of uneasiness, as if at every moment he were expecting some rude urchin to utter shrill comments on his pretensions to the uniform.

"Where have you been, Laura?" he demanded unnecessarily.

"Out in the dinghy," said the girl, no less unnecessarily, but with a certain impish satisfaction.

The man looked round at the Saint with a kind of restrained impatience, as though his presence had been imposed as a deliberate obstacle to the development of some plain speaking that was definitely called for.

"This hero has just saved my life," said Laura, also looking at the Saint. "Hero, this is my stepfather, Mr. Stride."

"Ha!" said Mr. Stride intelligently. "Hum!"

His eyes absorbed the Saint's appearance dubiously — they were small eyes, rather surprisingly sharp when they looked at you. Simon was still only wearing his shirt in a haphazard way — he had flung it carelessly over his shoulders and knotted the sleeves loosely under his chin — and he looked quite disreputable and quite happy about it. Mr. Stride groped hesitantly for his notecase.

"I got knocked overboard," said the girl. "I did something silly with the sails, and the boom hit me on the head—"

"It might have happened to anyone," said the Saint airily — he had never blushed over a lie in his life. "A sudden squall can make a lot of trouble for any boat, and you get plenty of them around here."

"Ha!" said Mr. Stride. His sharp eyes ran once up the Saint's lean, poiseful length thoughtfully; but at the sound of the Saint's voice he had let go his wallet as if it had grown red-hot in his fingers. "Ha!" said Mr. Stride. He tugged at his grey moustache. "Very lucky that you saw the accident, Mr.—"

Simon elegantly ignored the invitation to supply his name.

"We were just going to have lunch, Mr. — " said Stride, dangling the bait again. "Won't you stay?"

"That's awfully kind of you," murmured the Saint, and thought that Mr. Stride would have been more cordial if he had refused.

He proceeded to put on his shirt, with a calm indifference to his host's emotions that would have been boorish if it had been a shade less transparently innocent; and as he did so he was glancing over the other ships that were anchored within a hundred yards of the Claudette . There were a couple of French fishing smacks, broad-beamed sea boats, with high bows and low sterns, held idly into the wind by their great rust-red sails. Beyond them was a superb 200-ton Diesel yacht with a sweet line of clipper bow: Simon could read the name painted there — Luxor . Beside the wheel-house Simon could see a man focussing a pair of binoculars, and he knew that it was the Claudette that was the object of his attention.

"A lovely boat," said Stride purringly.

"Lovely," agreed the Saint. "You have to be a very successful man to own a ship like that — or even a ship like yours, Mr. Stride."

The other shot one of his surprisingly sharp glances at the unruffled young man beside him.

"Hum," he assented mechanically; but he was spared the necessity of finding some suitable amplification of his answer by the arrival of a white-coated steward with a tray of glasses, followed by what appeared to be the remainder of his guests.

These consisted of a pleasant-faced youngster of about twenty-five, with a diligently suppressed crinkle in his fair hair, and a sleek and saturnine man of indeterminate age whose coat fitted very tightly to his waist and whose hair waved unashamed in faultless undulations that nature unaided could scarcely have made so symmetrical. The fair-haired youngster's name was Toby Halidom, and his solicitude for Laura Berwick's complete recovery from the effects of her adventure seemed to account satisfactorily for the engagement ring which appeared on her finger when she had powdered her nose and changed for lunch. The sleek and saturnine one was introduced as Mr. Almido, private secretary to Mr. Stride; he spoke little, and when he did so it was with a lisping accent that was certainly no more English than his clothes.

Mr. Stride swallowed his cocktail in silence and led the way below almost abruptly. His lack of festive geniality, remarkable in a man whose stepdaughter had so recently been saved from a watery grave, continued for fully half the meal; but the Saint was unabashed. And then, just as surprisingly for anyone who had begun to accept his taciturnity, he began to thaw. He thawed so much that by the time the dessert was placed on the table he was inquiring into the Saint's plans with something approaching affability.