Leslie Charteris - Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

But presently, after an age of grim anxiety, he heard voices above him, and slipped discreetly off the path. Two men came down—one of them, ap­parently, the Boche whose dulcet tones had a little earlier been complaining about his enforced in­somnia, for they spoke in German. The Saint lis­tened interestedly for any reference to himself as they came nearer, but there was none. The Boche complained about the steepness of the path, about the darkness, about the food on which he was fed, and about his lack of sleep, and the ship's officer expressed perfunctory sympathy at intervals; they passed on. They, at all events, were unperturbed by anything they had heard up at the house.

Simon watched them saunter down the jetty and shake hands. The officer reentered the boat. A man in the bows pushed it off with a boat-hook. The crew bent to their oars.

In the light of the lanterns held by the men on the jetty Simon could see the girl looking back to­wards the cliff; but she could not have seen him even if he had stood out in the open. And then two of the men on the quay began to trudge back to­wards the cliff path.

Two of them. . . . Simon saw them pass beneath him, and frowned. Then he looked down to the shore again, seeking the third man, and could not find him. The footsteps and voices of the two who climbed grew fainter and fainter, and presently were lost altogether. They had passed over the top of the scarp; and still the third man had not followed.

Simon hesitated, shrugged, and descended again to the path. Whatever the third man was doing, he would have to take his chance. Time was getting short. The ship must have been ready to weigh an­chor as soon as its compulsory passenger was on board; and besides—well, how soon ...?

And then, as he paused there, a very Saintly smile bared Simon's teeth in the darkness. For, if the third man was still lurking about on the shore —so much the better. His companions were gone, and the boat was some distance away . . . and the Saint was an efficient worker. The sounds of a slight scuffle need not be fatal. And the third man, whoever he was, could be used—very profitably and entertainingly used—in conjunction with that providential motorboat....

Simon sped down the path like a flying shadow. As he rounded the last corner a stone dislodged by his foot went clinking over the side of the path and flurried into a bush. He heard a sharp movement at another point beneath him, and went on care­lessly. Then a stocky figure loomed out of the dark directly in front of him.

"Chi va la?" rapped the startled challenge, in the man's own language; and Simon felt that the occasion warranted a demonstration of his own linguistic prowess.

"L'uomo che ha la penna della tua zia," he an­swered solemnly.

His feet grounded on the sand, a yard from the challenger; and, as the man opened his mouth to make some remark which was destined never to be given to the world, the Saint slashed a terrific up­percut into a jaw that was positively asking for it.

"Exit Signor Boloni, the Italian delegate," murmured the Saint complacently; and, stooping swiftly, he hoisted the unconscious man onto his, shoulder and proceeded on his way thus laden.

IN A FEW MOMENTS he stood on the jetty beside the motorboat, and there he dumped his burden. Then, like lightning, he stripped himself to the skin.

The Saint possessed a very elegant and extensive wardrobe when he was at home; but, on this occa­sion, its extensiveness was not at his disposal, and the elegance of the excerpt that he was wearing therefore became an important consideration. He was certainly going to get wet; but he saw no good reason why his clothes should get wet with him. Besides, he felt that it would be an advantage to preserve immaculate the outward adornments of his natural beauty: there was no knowing how much more that Gent's Very Natty was going to have to amble through before the dawn, and to have been forced to exchange any breezy badinage with Rayt Marius or Prince Rudolf while looking like a deep-sea diver whose umbrella had come un-gummed at twenty fathoms would have cramped the Saintly style more grievously than any other conceivable circumstance.

Therefore he Saint stripped. His clothes were of the lightest, and he was able to make them all into one compact bundle, which he wrapped in his shirt.

Then he returned his attention to the motorboat. It was moored by two painters; and these he de­tached. A loose narrow floorboard taken from the bottom of the boat he lashed at right angles across the tiller, using strips of the Italian delegate's trousers, carved out with Belle, for the purpose; then, to the ends of this board, he fixed the ropes he had obtained, leaving them trailing in the water behind the boat. Finally, he deposited the Italian delegate himself in the sternsheets, propping him up as best he could with another couple of duck-boards.

The Saint had worked with incredible speed. The boat which carried Sonia Delmar had not reached the side of the ship when Simon took hold of the motorboat's starting handle. With that he was lucky. The engine spluttered into life after a couple of pulls. And so, stark naked, with his bun­dle of clothes on his head and the sleeves of his shirt knotted under his chin to hold the bundle in place, the Saint slid into the water, holding one of his tiller ropes in each hand; and the motorboat swerved out from the jetty and began to pick up speed as Sonia Delmar was lifted onto the gang­way of the waiting ship.

That crazy surf ride remained ever afterward as one of Simon Templar's brightest memories. The motorboat had a turn of speed that he had not an­ticipated; its creaming wake stung his eyes, half blinding him, and strangled his nostrils when he breathed; if he had not had fingers of steel his hold on the ropes by which it towed him would have been broken in the first two minutes. And with those very ropes he had to steer a course at the same time, an accurate course—with the hull of the boat in front of him blacking out most of his field of vision, and so much play on his crude steering apparatus that it was a work of art to do no more than prevent the tiller locking over on one side or the other and thereafter ceasing to function at all. Whereupon he would, presumably, have travelled round in a small circle till the petrol tank dried up....

He found that the only way he could keep con­trol of his direction was by travelling on a series of progressive diagonal tacks: otherwise it was im­possible to keep his objective in view. Even then, the final rush would have to be a straight one. . . . The blinding stammer of the motor was a hellish affair. Long ago the men out on the water must have been asking questions. Probably the din could have been heard up at the house on the cliffs as well; and he wondered what that section of the unrighteous would make of it. ... As he swung over on another tack—he had to do this very gent­ly, for any vertical banking business would have been liable to upset the Italian delegate, and Simon wanted the Italian delegate to stay put—he glimpsed the ship's boat hanging from the falls, clear of the water, and little knots of black figures clustered along the starboard rail. Surely they must be asking questions....

He realized, suddenly, that it was time to at­tempt the last straight dash.

He sighted for it as best he could, rolled all his weight onto one rope for a moment, and then flat­tened out again. Now, if he hit the side of the ship the fishes would do themselves proud on what was left of him. ... But he didn't hit. Far from it. Through a lashing lather of spray, he saw the an­chor-chain flash past him, half a dozen yards away.

Not good enough....

As he went by, he heard the faint shred of a shout from the deck above, and the Saintly smile twitched a trifle grimly at the corners of his mouth. Then the motorboat was speeding out to sea; and again he rolled his weight carefully onto one rope.