Leslie Charteris - Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

Sonia Delmar waited without speaking. She remembered, then, how often she had seen such situations enacted on the stage and on the screen, how often she had read of them! ...

She found herself trembling; but the physical reaction had no counterpart in her mind. She could not help recalling all the stereotyped jargon that had been splurged upon the subject by a hun­dred energetic parrots. "A fate too horrible to contemplate"—"a thing worse than death." . . . All the heroines she had encountered faced the horror as if they had never heard of it before. She felt that she ought to have experienced the same emotions as they did; but she could not. She could only think of the game that had been thrown away—the splendid gamble that had failed.

At the desk, the captain uncrossed his legs and inhaled again from his cigar.

It seemed to Sonia Delmar that that little cabin was the centre of the world—and the world did not know it. It was hard to believe that in other rooms, all over the world, men and women were gathered together in careless comradeship, talking perhaps, reading perhaps, confident of a thousand to­morrows as tranquil as their yesterdays. She had felt the same when she had read that a criminal was to be executed the next day—that same shat­tering realization that the world was going on unmoved, while one lonely individual waited for dawn and the grim end of the world.. ..

And yet she sat upright and still, staring ahead with unfaltering eyes, buoyed with a bleak and bitter courage that was above reason. In that hour she found within herself a strength that she had not dreamed of, something in her breed that for­bade any sign of fear—that would face death, or worse than death, with scornful lips.

And the door opened and Vassiloff came in.

Anything that he had done to "prepare" himself was not readily visible. He still wore his hat, and his fur collar was muffled even closer about his chin; only his step seemed to have become more alert.

He gave the girl one cold-blooded glance; and then he turned to the captain.

"Let us waste no more time," he said harshly.

The captain stood up.

"I have the witnesses waiting, Mr. Vassiloff. Permit me...."

He went to the door and called two names curtly. There was a murmured answer; and the owners of the names came in—two men in coarse trousers and blue seamen's jerseys, who stood gazing uncomfortably about the cabin while the captain wrote rapidly in the book in front of him. Then he addressed them in a language that the girl could not understand; and, hesitantly, one of the men came forward and took the pen. The other followed suit. Then the captain turned to Vassiloff.

"If you will sign —"

As the Russian scrawled his name the captain spoke a brusque word of dismissal, and the wit­nesses filed out.

"Your wife should also sign," added the captain, turning back to the desk. "Perhaps you will arrange that?''

"I will." Vassiloff put down the pen. "I want to be left alone now—for a little while—with my wife. But I shall require to see you again. Where shall I find you?"

"I shall finish my cigar on the bridge."

"Good. I will call you."

Vassiloff waved his hand in a conclusive gesture; and, with a slightly sardonic bow, the captain accepted his discharge.

The door closed, but Vassiloff did not turn round. He still stood by the desk, with his back to the girl. She heard the snap of a cigarette case, the sizzle of a match; and a cloud of blue smoke wreathed up towards the ceiling. He was playing with her—cat and mouse....

"So," he said softly, "we are married—Sonia."

The girl drew a deep breath. She was shivering, in spite of the warmth of the evening; and she did not want to shiver. She did not want to add that relish to his gloating triumph—to see the sneer of sadistic satisfaction that would flame across his face. She wanted to be what he had called her— ice. ... To save her soul aloof and undefiled, in­finitely aloof and terribly cold....

She said swiftly, breathlessly: "Yes—we're married—if that means anything to you.... But it means nothing to me. Whatever you do to me, you'll never be able to call me yours—never."

He had unbuttoned his coat and flung it back; it billowed away from his wide shoulders, making him loom gigantically under the light.

"Perhaps," he said, "you think you love some­one else."

"I'm sure of it," she said in a low voice.

"Ah! Is it, after all, that you were not being sold to Sir Isaac Lessing for the help he could give your father?"

"Lessing means nothing to me."

"So there is another?"

"Does that matter?"

Another cloud of smoke went up towards the ceiling, "His name?"

She did not answer.

"Is it Roger Conway?" he asked; and anew fear chilled her heart.

"What do you know about him?" she whis­pered.

"Nearly everything, old dear," drawled the Saint; and he turned around, without beard, without glasses, smiling at her across the cabin, a mirthful miracle with the inevitable cigarette slanted rakishly between laughing lips.

"SAINT!"

Sonia Delmar spoke the name incredulously, storming the silence and the dream with that swift husky breath. And the silence was broken; but the dream did not break. ...

"Well—how's life, honey?" murmured the dream; but no dream could have miraged that gay, inspiring voice, or the fantastic flourish that went with it.

"Oh, Saint!"

He laughed softly, a sudden lilt of a laugh; and in three strides he was across the cabin, his hands on her shoulders.

"Weren't you expecting me, Sonia?"

"But I saw them shoot you—"

"Me? I'm bullet-proof, lass, and you ought to have known it. Besides, I wasn't the man in the comic canoe. That was an Italian exhibit—a senti­mental skeezicks with tender memories of the girl he left behind him in Sorrento. And I'm afraid his donna is completely mobile now."

She, too, was half laughing, trembling un­ashamedly now that the tense cord of suspense was snapped.

"Set me loose, Saint!"

"Half a sec. Has Vassiloff sung his song yet? "

"Yes—everything."

"And all done by kindness. . . . Sonia, you wonderful kid!"

"Oh, but I'm glad to see you, boy!"

"Are you?" The Saint's smile must have been the gayest thing in Europe. "But my show was easy! I came aboard off the motorboat several minutes before Antonio stopped the bit of lead that was meant for me. I'd got all my clothes with me, as good as new; but when I say that my own personal corpse was damp I don't mean peradven­ture, and I just naturally wandered into the nearest cabin in search of towels. I'd just got dried and dressed, and I was busy putting this beautiful shoe-shine on my chevelure with a pair of gold-mounted hair-brushes that were lying around, when who should beetle in but old Popoffski himself. There followed some small argument about the tenancy of the cabin, but I got half a pillow into our friend's mouth before he could raise real hell. Then I trussed him up with the sash of his own dressing gown; and after that there was nothing for it but to take his place."

Simon's deft fingers were working on the ropes that bound the girl's hands, and she felt the cir­culation prickling back through her numbed wrists.

"I breezed in pretty much on the off-chance. I'd still got the beard I used this morning, and that was good enough for the moment, with Vassiloff's own coat buttoned round my chin and his glasses on my nose; but I couldn't trust to it indefinitely.

The performance had to be speeded up—particu­larly, I had to find you. If Vassiloff hadn't laid his egg I should have had to go back to the cabin and perform a Caesarean operation with a hot iron, or something—otherwise the accident that I'd chosen his cabin for my dressing room might have mucked things badly. When I came in here and saw you and the skipper, I just said the first thing that came into my head, and after that I had to take my cue from him." Simon twitched the last turn of Manila from her wrists and grinned. "And there's the bitter blow, old dear; behold us landed in the matrimonial casserole. What sort of a hus­band d'you think I'll make?"