Андрей Л.Рюмин - 03 Enter the Saint

She shook her head. "I don't like killing, Hilloran. You know that. And it isn't necessary." She pointed to his pocket. "You have the stuff. Suppose there was only one coffee without it after dinner to-night?"

Hilloran's face lighted up with a brutal eagerness. He had a struggle to conceal his delight. It was too simple-too utterly, utterly simple. Verily, his enemies were delivered into his hands. . . . But he tried to make his acknowledgment of the idea re­straining and calculating. "It'd be safer," he conceded. "I must say I'm relieved to find you're com­ing round to my way of thinking, Audrey."

She shrugged, with a crooked smile. "The more I know you," she said, "the more I realize that you're usually right."

Hilloran stood up. His face was like the thin crust of a volcano, under which fires and horrible forces boil and batter for release. "Audrey-"

"Not now, Hilloran-"

"I've got a first name," he said slowly. "It's John. Why don't you ever use it?"

"All right-John. But please ... I want to rest this afternoon. When all the work's done. I'll-I'll talk to you."

He came closer. "You wouldn't try to double-cross John Hilloran, would you?"

"You know I wouldn't!"

"I want you!" he burst out incoherently. "I've wanted you for years. You've always put me off. When I found you were getting on too well with that twister Tremayne, I went mad. But he's not taking you in any more, is he?"

"No-"

"And there's no one else?"

"How could there be?"

"You little beauty!"

"Afterwards, Hilloran. I'm so tired. I want to rest. Go away now-"

He sprang at her and caught her in his arms, and his mouth found her lips. For a moment she stood passively in his embrace. Then she pushed him back, and dragged herself away. "I'll go now," he said unsteadily.

She stood like a statue, with her eyes riveted on the closing door, till the click of the latch snapping home seemed to snap also the taut cord that held her rigid and erect. Then she sank limply back into her chair. For a second she sat still. Then she fell for­ward across the table, and buried her face in her arms.

Chapter VIII "VE VERE suppose'," said the Countess Anusia Marova, "to come to Monaco at nine o'clock. But ve are delay', and ze captayne tell me ve do nod zere arrive teel ten o'clock. So ve do nod af to urry past dinair to see ourselves come in ze port."

Dicky Tremayne heard the soft accents across the saloon, above the bull-voice drawl of Mr. George Y. Ulrig, who was holding him down with a discourse on the future of the Japanese colony in California. Dicky was rather less interested in this than he would have been in a discourse on the future of the Walloon colony in Cincinnati. A scrap of paper crumpled in the pocket of his dinner-jacket seemed to be burning his side.

The paper had come under his cabin door while he dressed. He had been at the mirror, fidgeting with his tie, and he had seen the scrap sliding on to the carpet. He had watched it, half-hypnotized, and it had been some time before he moved to pick it up. When he had read it, and jerked open the door, the alleyway outside was deserted. Only, at the end, he had seen Hilloran, in his uniform, pass across by the alley athwarthships without looking to right or left. The paper had carried one line of writing, in block letters: DON'T DRINK YOUR COFFEE.

Nothing else. No signature, or even an initial. Not a word of explanation. Just that. But he knew that there was only one person on board who could have written it. He had hurried over the rest of his toilet in the hope of finding Audrey Perowne in the saloon before the other guests arrived, but she had been the last to appear. He had not been able to summon up the courage to knock on the door of her cabin. His desire to see her and speak to her again alone, on any pretext, was tempered by an equal desire to avoid giving her any chance to refer to his last words of the previous night.

"The Jap is a good citizen," George Y. Ulrig droned on, holding up his cocktail-glass like a sceptre. "He has few vices, he's clean, and he doesn't make trouble. On the other hand, he's too clever to trust. He... Say, boy, what's eatin' you?"

"Nothing," denied Dicky hastily. "What makes you think the Jap's too clever to trust?"

"Now, the Chinaman's the honestest man in the world, whatever they say about him," resumed the drone. "I'll tell you a story to illustrate that. ..."

He told his story at leisure, and Dicky forced himself to look interested. It wasn't easy. He was glad when they sat down to dinner. His partner was the less eagle-eyed Mrs. George Y. Ulrig, who was incapable of noticing the absent-minded way in which he listened to her detailed description of her last illness. But halfway through the meal he was recalled to attention by a challenge, and for some reason he was glad of it.

"Deeky," said the girl at the end of the table. Dicky looked up. "Ve are in ze middle of an argu­ment," she said.

"Id iss this," interrupted Sir Esdras Levy. "Der Gountess asks, if for insdance you vos a friendt off mine, ant bromised to tell nobody nothing, ant I see you vill be ruined if you don't know off der teal, and I know der teal vill ruined be if you know off it-vot shoot I to?"

This lucid exposition was greeted with a sup­pressed titter which made Sir Esdras whiffle impa­tiently through his beard. He waved his hands ex­citedly. "I say," he proclaimed magisterially, "dot a man's vort iss his pond. I am sorry for you, bud I must my vort keep."

'Owever," chipped in Mr. Matthew Sankin, and, catching his wife's basilisk eye upon him, choked redly. "However," said Mr. Matthew San-kin, "I 'old by the British principle that a man ough­ter stick by his mates-friends-an' he ain't- 'asn't-hasn't got no right to let "em down. None of 'em. That's wot."

"Matthew, deah," said Mrs. Sankin silkily, "the Countess was asking Mr. Tremayne the question, ay believe. Kaindly give us a chance to heah his opin­ion."

'What about a show of hands?" suggested Dicky. How many of you say that a man should stand by his word-whatever it costs him?" Six hands went up. Sankin and Ulrig were alone among the male dis­senters. "Lost by one," said Dicky.

No," said the Countess. "I do not vote. I make you ze chairman, Deeky, and you 'ave ze last vord. 'Ow do you say?"

"In this problem, there's no chance of a com­promise? The man couldn't find a way to tell his friend so that it wouldn't spoil the deal for his other friends?"

"Ve hof no gompromises," said Sir Esdras sternly.

Dicky looked down the table and met the girl's eyes steadily. "Then," he remarked, "I should first see my partners and warn them that I was going to break my word, and then I should go and do it. But the first condition is essential."

"A gompromise," protested Sir Esdras. "Subbose you hof nod der dime or der obbortunity?"

"How great is this friend?"

"Der greatest friendt you hof," insisted the hon­ourable man vehemently. "Id mags no tifference."

"Come orf it," urged Mr. Sankin. "A Britisher doesn't let 'is best pal dahn."

"Well," drawled George Y. Ulrig, "does an American?"

"You say I am nod Briddish?" fumed Sir Esdras Levy, whiffling. "You hof der imberdinence-"

"Deeky," said the girl sweetly, "you should make up your mind more queekly. Ozairvise ve shall 'ave a quarrel. Now, 'ow do you vote?" Dicky looked round the table. He wondered who had started that fatuous argument. He could have believed that the girl had done it deliberately, judging by the way she was thrusting the casting vote upon him so insis­tently. But, if that were so, it could only mean . . .

But it didn't matter. With zero hour only a few minutes away, a strange mood of recklessness was upon him. It had started as simple impatience- impatience with the theories of George Y. Ulrig, impatience with the ailments of Mrs. Ulrig. And now it had grown suddenly to a hell-for-leather des­peration.