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.
The roughness of the ropes was scorching the inside of his hands. The cords were too thin to be gripped comfortably, and his fingers were numbed and aching with the strain. In spite of his strength, he felt as if his arms were being torn from their sockets; and it seemed centuries since he had drawn a full free breath. . . .
The Saint set his teeth. It had got to be done this next time — he doubted whether he could hang on for a third attempt. Ordinary surf-riding was another matter, when you had a good board beneath you to skim the surface of the water; but when you were immersed yourself. . . . Again he sighted, turned the boat, and prayed. . . . And, as he did so, he heard, high and clear above the clamour of the engine, the sharp sound of a shot.
Well, that was inevitable — and that was what the Italian delegate was sitting in the boat for anyway.
'But what about us?' thought the Saint; and, at that moment, he felt the boat quiver against the ropes he held. 'Here goes,' thought the Saint, and relaxed his tortured hands. The cords whipped out of his grip like live things. Then the anchor-chain seemed to materialize out of space. It leaped murderously at his head; he grabbed desperately, caught, held it. ...
As he hauled himself wearily out of the water, drawing great gulps of air into his bursting lungs, he saw the Italian delegate flop sideways over the tiller. The boat heeled over dizzily; then the Italian tumbled forward into the bilge, and the boat straightened up somehow, gathered itself, and headed roaring out to sea. A second shot cracked out from the deck.
Simon felt as if he had been stretched on the rack; but he dared not rest for more than a few seconds. This was his chance, while the attention of everyone on deck was focussed on the flying motorboat. Somehow he clambered upwards. If it had been a rope that he had to climb he could never have done it, for there seemed to be no strength left in his arms; but he was able to get his toes into the links of the chain, and only in that way could he manage the ascent. As he went higher, the bows of the ship cut off the motorboat from his view; but he heard a third shot, and a fourth. ...
Then he was able to reach up and grip a stanchion. With a supreme effort, he drew himself up until he could get one knee over the side.
No one was looking his way; and, for all his weariness, he made no sound.
As he came over the rail, he saw the motorboat again, scudding towards the rising moon. A figure stood up in the boat, swaying perilously, waving frantic arms. .Then it gripped the tiller, and the boat reeled over on its beam-ends and headed once more towards the ship.
The man must have been shouting; but whatever he shouted was lost in the snarl of the motor. And then, for the fifth time, a gun barked somewhere on the deck; and the Italian delegate clutched at his chest and went limply into the dark sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
How Sonia Delmar heard a story, and Alexis Vassiloff was interrupted
SONIA DELMAR heard the shooting as she was hustled across the deck and up an outside companion. Before that, she had seen the speeding motorboat and the shape of the man crouched in the stern. The drone of its engine had rattled deafeningly across the waters as she was hurried up the gangway; she had heard the perplexed mutterings of her captors, without being able to understand what they said; and she herself, in a different way, had been as puzzled as they were. She had seen the Saint on the cliff path, and had understood from the signs he made that he was not yet proposing to interfere; after a fashion, she had been relieved, for so far she had gained no useful information. But she appreciated that, if he had meant to interfere, his chance had been then and there, on the cliff path, when he could have taken by surprise a mere handful of men who would have been additionally hampered by the difficulty of distinguishing friend from foe; and she wondered what could have made him elect instead to come so noisily against a whole boatload.
But these questions had no hope of a leisured survey at that moment; they rocketed hazily across the back of her conscience as she stumbled onto the upper deck. The two men in charge of her, at least, placed the mysterious motorboat second in their considerations, whatever their fellows might be doing. There was a quietly efficient discipline about everything that she had seen done that was unlike anything she had expected to find in such a criminal organization as Simon Templar had pictured for her. Nor had anything that she had read of the ways of crime prepared her for such an efficiency: the gangs on her native side of the Atlantic, by all reports, were not to be compared with this. Again came that vicious snap of the rifle on the lower deck; but the men who led her took no notice. She tripped over a cleat in the darkness, and one of the men caught her and pulled her roughly back to her balance; then a door was opened, and she barely had a glimpse of the lighted cabin within before she herself was inside it, and she heard the key turned in the lock behind her.
The howl of the motorboat grew steadily louder, and then died down again to a fading moan.
The clatter of two more shots came to her ears as she reached an open porthole; and then she could see the boat itself and the swaying figure in the stern. She saw the boat turn and make for the ship again; and then came the last shot....
Slowly she sank onto a couch and closed her eyes. She felt no deep emotion—neither grief, nor terror, nor despair. Those would come afterwards. But at the time the sense of unreality was too powerful for feeling. It seemed incredible that she should be there, on that ship, alone, alive, destined for an unknown fate, with her one hope of salvation lost in the smooth waters outside. Quite quietly she sat there. She heard the empty motorboat
