Orace sucked his moustache ghoulishly over the body. “Is ’e dead now?”
“Not yet—at least I don’t think so. But he’s got a lump on the back of his head the size of an apple, and I don’t expect he’ll feel too happy when he wakes up. Let’s try him and see.”
They undressed Murdoch out on the deck, and Simon wrung out his clothes as best he could and tied them in a rough bundle which he chucked into the galley oven when they took the still unconscious man below. He left Orace to apply the usual restoratives, and went back into the saloon to towel himself vigorously and brush his hair. He heard various groans and thumps and other sounds of painful resuscitation while he was doing this, and he had just settled into a clean shirt and a pair of comfortable old flannel trousers when the communicating door opened and the fruit of Orace’s labours shot blearily in.
It was quite obvious that the Saint’s prophecy was correct. Mr Murdoch was not feeling happy. The tender imprint of a skilfully wielded blackjack had established at the base of his skull a high-powered broadcasting station of ache from which messages of hate and ill-will were radiating in all directions with throbbing intensity, while the grinding machinery of transmission was setting up a roaring din that threatened to split his head. Taking these profound disadvantages into consideration, Mr Murdoch entered, comparatively speaking, singing and dancing, which is to say that he only looked as if he would like to beat somebody on the head with a mallet until they sank into the ground.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded truculently.
“Just another boat,” answered the Saint kindly. “On your left, the port side. On your right, the starboard. Up there is the forward or sharp end, which goes through the water first—”
Murdoch glowered at him speechlessly for a moment, and then the team of pneumatic drills started work again under the roof of his skull, and he sank on to a bunk.
“I thought it would be you,” he said morosely.
Orace came in like a baronial butler, put down a tray of whisky and glasses, sniffed loudly, and departed. Murdoch stared at the door which closed behind him with the penumbras of homicide darkening again on his square features.
“I could kill that guy twice, and then drown him.” Murdoch grabbed the whisky-bottle, poured three fingers into a glass, and swallowed it straight. He compressed his lips in a grimace, and looked up at the Saint again. “Well, here I am—and who the hell asked you to bring me here?”
“You didn’t,” Simon admitted.
“Didn’t you tell me you’d keep out of the way next time?”
“That was the idea.”
“Well, what d’ya think I’m going to do—fall on your neck and kiss you?”
“Not in those trousers, I hope,” said the Saint.
The trousers belonged to Orace, who was taller but not so bulky. As a result, they were stretched dangerously across the seat, and hung in a graceful concertina over the ankles. Murdoch glared down at them venomously, and they responded with an ominous rending squeak as he moved to get hold of the whisky again.
“I didn’t ask you to pull me out, and I’m not going to thank you. If you thought I’d fall for you, you’re wrong. Was that the idea, too? Did you think you might be able to get under my skin that way—make the same sort of monkey outa me that you’ve made outa Loretta? Because you won’t. I’m not so soft. You can slug me again and take me back to the Falkenberg, and we’ll start again where we left off, and that’s as far as you’ll get.”
Simon sauntered over to the table and helped himself to a measured drink.
“Well, of course that’s certainly a suggestion,” he remarked. He sat down opposite Murdoch and put up his feet along the settee. “I’ve always heard that Ingerbeck’s was about the ace firm in the business.”
“It is.”
“Been with them long?” asked the Saint caressingly.
“About ten years.”
“Mmm.”
Murdoch’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What the hell d’you mean?”
“I mean they can’t be so hot if they’ve kept you on the overhead for ten years.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah—as we used to say in the movies. Stay where you are, Steve. If you try to start any rough stuff with me I shall hit your face so hard that you’ll have to be fed from behind. Besides which, those pants will split.”
“Go on.”
Simon flicked open the cigarette-box and helped himself to a smoke. He slipped a match out of the ash stand and sprung it into flame with his thumb-nail.
“Now and for the last time,” he said, with the caress in his voice smoothed out until it was as soothing as a sheet of ice, “will you try to understand that I don’t give a good God-damn how soon you have your funeral. Your mother may miss you, and even Ingerbeck’s may send a wreath, but personally I shall be as miserable as a dog with a new tree. The only reason I interfered on the Falkenberg was because Vogel wasn’t half so interested in shooting you as in seeing how Loretta would like it. The only reason I pulled you out again—”
“Was what?”
“Because if you’d stayed there they’d have found out more about you. You’re known. Thanks to your brilliant strategy in tearing into the Hotel de la Mer and shouting for Loretta at the top of your voice, the bloke who was sleuthing her this afternoon knows your face. And if he’d seen you tonight on an identification parade—that would have been that. For Loretta, anyway. And that’s all I’m interested in. As it is, you may have been recognised already. I had to take a chance on that. I could only lug you out as quickly as possible, and hope for the best. Apart from that, you could have stayed there and been massaged with hot irons, and I shouldn’t have lost any sleep. Is that plain enough or do you still think I’ve got a fatherly interest in your future?”
Murdoch held himself down on the berth as gingerly as if it had been red hot, and his chin jutted out as if his fists were itching to follow it.
“I get it. But you feel like a father to Loretta—huh?”
“That’s my business.”
“I’ll say it is. There are plenty of greasy-haired dagoes making big money at it.”
“My dear Steve!”
“I know you, Saint,” Murdoch said raspingly. His big hands rolled his glass between them as if they were playing with the idea of crushing it to fragments with a single savage contraction, and the hard implacable lights were smouldering under the surface of his eyes. “You’re crook. I’ve heard all about you. Maybe there aren’t any warrants out for you at the moment. Maybe you kid some people with that front of yours about being some kind of fairy-tale Robin Hood trying to put the world right in his own way. That stuff don’t cut any ice with me. You’re crook—and you’re in the racket for what you can get out of it.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I get one hundred bucks a week out of it, and the man who says I don’t earn ’em is a liar. But that’s the last cent I take.”
“Of course, that’s very enterprising of you,” murmured the Saint, in the same drawl of gentle mockery. “But we can’t all be boy scouts. I gather that you think I wouldn’t be content with one hundred bucks a week?”
“You?” Murdoch was viciously derisive. “If I thought that, I’d buy you out right now.” “Where’s your money?”
“What for?”
“To buy me out. One hundred dollars a week—and that’s more than I thought I was going to get out of it.”
The other stared at him.
“Are you telling me you’ll take a hundred a week to get out?”
“Oh, no. But I’ll take a hundred a week to get in. You’ll have the benefit of all my brains, which you obviously need pretty badly, and I shall get lots of quiet respectable fun and a beautiful glow of virtue to keep me warm for the winter. I’m trying to convince you that I’m a reformed character. Your loving sympathy has made me see the light,” said the Saint brokenly, “and from now on my only object will be to
live down my evil past—”
“And I’m trying to convince you that I’m not so dumb that a twister like you can sell me a gold brick!” Murdoch snarled violently. “You came into this by accident, and you saw your chance. You greased around Loretta till she told you what it was about, and you’ve made her so crazy she’s ready to eat outa your hand. If I hadn’t come along you’d of played her for a sap as long as it helped you, and ditched her when you thought you had a chance to get away with something. Well, you bet you’re going to get out. I’m going to find a way to put you out—but it ain’t going to be with a hundred dollars!”
The Saint rounded his lips and blew out a smoke-ring. For a moment he did actually consider the possibilities of trying to convince Murdoch of his sincerity, but he gave up the idea. The American’s suspicions were rooted in too stubborn an antagonism for any amount of argument to shake them, and Simon had to admit that Murdoch had some logical justification. He looked at Murdoch thoughtfully for a while, and read the blunt facts of the situation on every line of the other’s grim hard-boiled face. Oh, well…perhaps it was all for the best. And that incorrigible imp of buffoonery in his make-up would have made it difficult to carry the argument to conviction, anyway…
The Saint sighed.
“I suppose you’re entitled to your point of view, Steve,” he conceded mildly. “But of course that makes quite a difference. Now we shall have to decide what we’re going to do with you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” retorted Murdoch. “You worry about yourself. Give me my clothes back, and I’ll be on my way.”
He dumped his glass on the table and stood up, but Simon Templar did not move. “The question is—will you?” said the Saint.
His voice was pleasant and conversational, coloured only with the merest echo of that serene and gentle mockery which had got under Murdoch’s toughened hide at their first encounter, and yet something behind it made the other stand momentarily very still.
Murdoch’s chunky fists knotted up slowly at his sides, and he scowled down at the slim languid figure stretched out on the settee with his eyes slotting down to glittering crevices in the rough-hewn crag of his face.
“Meaning what?” he demanded grittily.
“I’m not so thrilled with your promise to put me out,” said the Saint. “And I don’t know that we can let you go on getting into trouble indefinitely. Twice is all right, but the third time might be unlucky. I may be a boy scout, but I’m not a nursemaid. One way and another, Steve, it looks as if we may have to shut you up where you won’t be able to get into mischief for a while.”
2
Murdoch hunched over him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. There was stark pugnacious incredulity oozing out of every pore of him, and his jaw was levered up till his under lip jutted out in a bellicose ridge under his nose. His complexion had gone as red as a turkeycock’s.
“Say that again?”
“I said we may have to keep you where you won’t get in the way,” answered the Saint calmly. “Don’t look so unhappy—there’s another bottle of whisky on board, and Orace will bring you your bread and milk and tuck you up at night.”
“That’s what you think, is it?” grated Murdoch. “Well, you try to keep me here!”
The Saint nodded. His right hand, with the half-smoked cigarette still clipped between the first two fingers, slid lazily into the shelf beside the settee, under the porthole. It came out with the automatic which he had put down there when he began to dress.
“I’m trying,” he said, almost apologetically.
Murdoch shied at the gun like a startled horse. His screwed-up eyes opened out in two slow dilations of rabid unbelief.
“Do you mean you’re trying to hold me up?” he barked.
“That was the rough idea, brother,” said the Saint amiably, “I’m not very well up in these things, but I believe this is the approved procedure. I point a rod at you, like this, and then you either do what I tell you or try to jump on me and get shot in the dinner. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
The bantering serenity of his voice lingered on in the air while Murdoch stared at him. The Saint was smiling faintly, and the sheen of sapphire in his eyes was alive with irrepressible humour, but the automatic in his hand was levelled with a perfectly sober precision that denied the existence of any joke.
Murdoch blinked at it as if it had been the first specimen of its kind which he had ever seen. His gaze travelled lingeringly up from it to the Saint’s face, and the incredulity faded out of his features before a spreading hardness of cold calculating wrath. He swallowed once, and his chin settled down on his chest.
“You think you can get away with that, do you?”
“I’m betting on it.”
Simon met the other’s reddened glare as if he hadn’t a shadow on his horizon, and wondered what the odds ought to be if it were a betting proposition. And he became reluctantly aware that any prudent layer would consider them distinctly hazardous. There was something consolidating itself on Murdoch’s thinned-out lips which stood for the kind of raging foolhardy fearlessness that produces heroes and tombstones in cynically unequal proportions.
And at the same time something quite different was thrusting itself towards the front of the Saint’s consciousness. It had started like the burn of a cruising bee away out in the far reaches of the night, a mere stir of sound too trivial to attract attention. While they were talking it had grown steadily nearer, until the drone of it quivered through the saloon as a definite pulse of disturbance in the universe. And now, in the silence while he and Murdoch watched each other, it suddenly roared up and stopped, leaving a sharp void in the auditory scale through which came the clear swish and chatter of settling waters.
Simon felt the settee dip gently under him, and Murdoch’s glass tinkled on the table as the wash slapped against the side. And then an almost imperceptible jar of contact ran through the boat and a voice spoke somewhere outside.
“Ahoy, Corsair!”
The Saint felt as if a starshell had burst inside his head. Understanding dawned upon him in a blinding light that showed him the meaning of that sequence of sounds, the owner of the voice that had hailed them, and everything that had led up to what lay outside, as clearly as if they had been focused under a batten of sun arcs. If he had not been so taken up with the immediate problem that had been laid in front of him, he might have guessed it and waited for it all down to the last detail, but now it came to him as a shock that electrified all his faculties as if he had taken a shot of liquid dynamite.
It could hardly have taken a second to develop, that galvanic awakening of every nerve, but in the latter half of that scorching instant the Saint reviewed the circumstances and realised everything that had to be done. Murdoch was still half arrested in the stillness which the interruption had brought upon him: his head was turned a little to the left, his mouth a little open, his gaze fractionally diverted. At that moment his train of thought was written across him in luminous letters a yard high. He also was considering the interruption, working over its bearing on his own predicament, while the simmer of fighting obstinacy in him was boiling up to outright defiance. The Saint knew it. That chance event was wiping out the last jot of hesitation in the American’s mind. In another split second he would let out a yell or try to jump the gun—or both. But his powers of comprehension were functioning a shade less rapidly than the Saint’s, and that split second made as much difference as twenty years.
Simon let go the automatic and unfolded himself from the settee. He came up like the backlash of a cracked whip, and his fist hit Murdoch under the jaw with a clean crisp smack that actually forestalled the slight thud of the gun hitting the carpet. Murdoch’s eyes glazed mutely over, and Simon caught him expertly as he straightened up on his feet.
“Ahoy, Corsair!”
“Ahoy to you,” answered the Saint.
The communicating door at the end of the saloon was opening, and Orace’s globular eyes peered over h
is moustache through the gap. There was no need of words. Simon heaved Murdoch’s inanimate body towards him like a stuffed dummy, with a dozen urgent commands sizzling voicelessly on his gaze, and followed it with the glass from which Murdoch had been drinking. And then, without waiting to assure himself that Orace had grasped the situation to the full, he snatched up his gun and leapt for the companion in one continuous movement, slipping the automatic into his hip pocket as he went.
He started with lightning speed, but he emerged into the after cockpit quite leisurely, and everything else had been packed into such a dizzy scintilla of time that there was no undue hiatus between the first hail and his appearance. He turned unhurriedly to the side, and Kurt Vogel, standing up in the speedboat, looked up at him with his sallow face white in the dim light.
“Hullo,” said the Saint genially.
“May I come aboard for a moment?”
“Surely.”
Simon reached out an arm and helped him up. Again he experienced the peculiar revulsion of the other’s strong clammy grip.
“I’m afraid this is a most unseemly hour to pay a visit,” said Vogel, in his suave flat voice. “But I happened to be coming by, and I hoped you hadn’t gone to bed.”
“I’m never very early,” said the Saint cheerfully. “Come on below and have a drink.”
He led the way down to the saloon, and pushed the cigarette-box across the table. “D’you smoke?” Vogel accepted, and Simon raised his voice. “Orace!”
“As a matter of fact, I only called in in case you’d made up your mind about tomorrow,” said Vogel, taking a light. “Perhaps you didn’t take my invitation seriously, but I assure you we’ll be glad to see you if you care to come.”
“It’s very good of you.” Simon looked up as Orace came in. “Bring another glass, will you, Orace?”
He put the match to his own cigarette and lounged back on the opposite berth while Orace brought the glass. He rested his fingertips on the edge of the table and turned his hand over with a perfectly natural movement that brought his thumb downwards. With his back turned to Vogel, Orace set down the glass. His face was always inscrutable, and the fringe of his luxuriant moustache concealed any expression that might ever have touched his mouth, but without moving another muscle of his features he drooped one eyelid deliberately before he retired, and the Saint felt comforted.
Saint Overboard (The Saint Series) Page 10