Leslie Charteris - Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

"And suppose anyone comes—could you spare a gun?"

"I could." And he did. "That belonged to the late lamented. So long as you don't get rattled and shoot me by mistake everything will be quite all right.. . .All set, lass?"

"All set, Saint."

"Good enough. And I'll be right back." He had hitched the sleeping quartermaster onto his shoulder, and he paused on the return journey to touch one of the cool, small hands that had taken over the helm. "Yo-ho-ho," said the Saint smiling, and was gone like a wraith.

HE DUMPED the quartermaster beside the third officer, and went quickly down the companion to the upper deck. There he found a plentiful supply of rope, and cut off as much as he required. On his way back he reentered the cabin in which he had found the girl, and borrowed a couple of towels from the bedchamber section beyond the curtains. That much was easy. He flitted silently back to the bridge, and rapidly bound and gagged the two un­conscious men with an efficient hand; the task called for hardly any attention, and while he worked his mind was busy with the details of the job that would have to be done next—which was not quite so easy. But when his victims lay at his feet giving two creditable imitations of Abednego before entering the hot room, the Saint went back to the upper deck without seeing the girl again.

On his first trip he had located one of the most important items in the catalogue—the boat in which Sonia Delmar had been taken to the ship. It still hung over the side, obviously left to be proper­ly stowed away the next morning; and, which was even more important, the gangway still trailed low down by the water, as a glance over the side had re­vealed.

"And a lazy lot of undisciplined sea-cooks that makes them out," murmured the Saint when he had digested all this good news. "But I'm making no complaints to-night!"

But for that providential slackness, the job he had to do would have been trebly difficult. Even so, it was none too easy; but it had come to him, during part of the buccaneering business on the bridge, that there was no real need to look forward to any superfluous unpleasantness on the return to Saltham, and that a resourceful and athletic man might very well be able to rule that ship's crew out of the list of probable runners for the Death-or-Glory Stakes. That was what the Saint was out to do, being well satisfied with the prospect of the main-line mirth and horseplay that lay ahead, without inviting the intrusion of any imported tal­ent en route; and he proceeded to put the first part of this project into execution forthwith, by lower­ing the boat gingerly, foot by foot, from alterna­tive davits, until it hung within a yard of the water. Then, with a rope from another boat coiled over his shoulder, he slid down the falls. One end of the rope he made fast in the bows of the boat; and then he spent some time adjusting the fenders. The other end of the rope he carried back with him on his return climb, stepping off on the main deck; and then, going down the gangway, he made that end fast to a convenient stanchion near the water level. Then he went back to the upper deck and paid out some more rope, even more gingerly at first, and then with a rush. The tackle creaked and groaned horrifically, and the boat finally hit the water with a smack that seemed loud enough to wake the dead; but the Saint had neither seen nor heard any sign of life on any of the expeditions connected with the job, and the odds were that the crew were all sleeping soundly in their bunks . . . unless an oiler or someone had taken it into his head to come up on deck for a breather about then. . . . But it was neck or nothing at that point, anyhow, and the Saint gave way on the falls reck­lessly until the ropes went slack. Then he leaned out over the side and looked down, and saw the boat floating free at the length of the rope by which he had moored it to the gangway; and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Praise the Lord!" breathed the Saint; and meant it.

He belayed again, and made a second trip down the falls to cast off the blocks. The cockle-shell bucked and plunged perilously in the ship's wash; but he noted with renewed satisfaction that it had sustained no damage in the launching, and was shipping no water in spite of its present maltreat­ment. Again he took a rest on the main deck on his way up and listened in silence for several seconds, but he heard no suspicious sound.

Back on the upper deck, it was the work of a. moment to haul the falls well up and clear; and then he made his last trip down the gangway and bent his back to the hardest physical labour of the whole performance—the task of talking in the towrope until the boat was near enough to be easily reached from the grating at the bottom of the gangway. He got it done after a struggle that left every muscle aching, and left the boat less than half a fathom away, with all the slack of the tow-rope secured in a seamanlike sheep-shank. And; then he went back to the bridge.

"Strange adventure that we're trolling:

Modest maid and gallant groom — "

The song came again to his lips as he turned into the wheelhouse and looked down the barrel of the girl's automatic.

"Put it away, honey," he laughed. "I have a tender regard for my thorax, and I've seen fingers less wobbly on the trigger!"

"But what have you been doing?"

"Preparing our getaway. Did I make a lot of noise?"

"I don't know—it seemed a frightful din to me—"

Simon grinned, and took out his cigarette case.

"It seemed the same to me, old dear," he re­marked. "But I don't think anyone else noticed it."

With a lighted cigarette between his lips, he re­lieved her of the wheel, and told her briefly what he had done.

"In its way, it should be a little gem of an es­cape," he said. "We bring the old tub in as near to the shore as we dare, and then we turn her round again and step off. When the next watch comes on duty they find out what's happened; but the old tub is blinding through the North Sea at its own sweet will, and they won't know whether they're coming or going. Gosh, wouldn't you give a couple of years of your life to be able to listen in on the excitement?"

She moved away, and brought up a chair to sit beside him. Now she definitely felt that she was dreaming. Looking back, it seemed incredible that so much could have happened in such a short time—that even the present position should have come to pass.

"When do you think we should get back?" she asked.

"We ought to sight land in about an hour, the way I figure it out," he answered. "And then— more fun!"

The smiling eyes rested on her face, reading there the helpless incredulity that she could not hide from her expression any more than she could dispel it from her mind; and the Saint laughed again, the soft lilting laughter of sheer boyish de­light that carried him through all the adventures that his gods were good enough to send.

"I meant to tell you it was a great life," said the Saint, with that lazy laughter dancing like sunshine through his voice. "Here you are, Sonia—have an­other of these cigarettes and tell me your story. We've got all the time in the world!"

BUT IT WAS the Saint who talked the most on that strange return voyage, standing up to the wheel, with the breeze through the open door fluttering his tie, and his shoulders sweeping wide and square against the light, and his tanned face seeming more handsome and devil-may-care and swaggeringly swift of line than ever.

She came to know him then as otherwise she might never have come to know him. It was not that he talked pointedly of himself—he had too catholic a range of interests to aim any long speech so monotonously—and yet it would be idle to deny that his own personality impregnated every subject on which he touched, were the touch never so fleeting. It was inevitable that it should be so, for he spoke of things that he had known and un­derstood, and nothing that he said came at second­hand. He told her of outlandish places he had seen, of bad men that he had met, of forlorn ventures in which he had played his part; and yet it was nothing like a detailed autobiography that he gave her—it was a kaleidoscope, an irresponsibly shredded panorama of a weird and wonderful life, strewn extravagantly under her eyes as only the Saint himself could have strewn it, seasoned with his own unique spice of racy illusion and flippant phrase; and it was out of this squandered prodigal­ity of inconsequent reminiscence, and the gallant manner of its telling, that she put together her picture of the man.