16 The Saint Overboard

like a mermaid, and the standard of living went up again like a rocket. And would you mind moving off that bit of the carpet, because the comparison is too hideous. She stood there with the water on her, and she said 'Will you let me out?' And I said 'No!' Just like that.'

'Didyer, sir?'

'And she pulled a gun on me.'

'Go on, did she?'

'She pulled a gun. Look, you pull a gun. Hold your hand like that. Right. Well, I said 'Ha, ha,'—like that, very sinister. I switched out the lights! I leapt upon her! I grabbed her wrist! We fell on the bunk——'

'Steady on, sir, yer 'urting!'

'You shut up. She was crrrushed against me. Her lips were an inch from mine. For heaven's sake stop whiffling your moustache like that. I felt her breath on my face. I was on fire with passion. I seized her in my arms . . . and . . .' Simon planted a smack­ing kiss on his crew's horrified brow. 'I said 'Don't you think Strindberg is too sweet?' Now go and drown yourself.'

He picked himself up and erupted out of the cabin, slinging the towel round his neck, while Orace gaped goggle-eyed after him. In a few minutes he was back, tightening the belt of a pair of swimming trunks, and stuffing cigarettes into a waterproof metal case.

'By the way,' he said, 'we aren't full up on juice for the auxil­iary. As soon as you've cleared up, you'd better take the dinghy and fetch a couple of dozen bidons. Get some oil, too, and see that there's plenty of food and drink. There's another bird mixed up in this who's less beautiful—a guy named Kurt Vogel—and we ought to be ready for traveling.'

He went up on deck and looked around. The sun was flooding down on stucco villas and the rise of green behind, and cutting innumerable diamonds from the surface of the water. It was going to be a hot brilliant day. People were well awake on the other yachts near by. A gramophone opened up cheerfully on one, and a loud splash and a shout heralded another of the morn­ing's bathers. The Falkenberg was too far away for him to be able to distinguish its signs of life: a couple of seamen were swabbing down the paint forward, but nothing that resembled the hooknosed man was visible. Simon noticed that besides the outboard dinghy there was now a small speed tender also tied up alongside which had not been there when he made his first survey—it had the air of being part of the Falkenberg's equipment, and probably it had been away on a trip to the shore and re­turned while he was below.

After a while he dived off the side and swam round the Pointe du Moulinet to the beach. He strolled the length of the plage while the sun dried him, and then chose a clear space to stretch himself out opposite the Casino.

He had not seen Loretta Page during his walk, but he knew she would come. He lay basking in the voluptuous warmth, and knew with an exquisite certainty that the kind gods of adventure would take care of that. The story she had told him went through his memory, not in an exuberant riot of comprehension as it had when he first heard it, but in a steady flow, fact by fact, a sequence of fragments of accepted knowledge which strung logically together to make a tale that was breath-taking in its colossal implications. If it was something on a more grandiose scale than anything he had ever dreamed of even in his wildest flights of buccaneering, he was still ready to give it a run. He blew smoke into the sparkling air and considered the profile of Kurt Vogel. Properly worked on by an octet of bunched knuc­kles. . . .

'Hullo, old timer.'

He dropped his gaze and saw her. She wore the same ele­mentary swim suit, with a bathrobe that fitted her better than his had done, swept back by her hands on her hips and leaving her long satiny legs to the sun. The grey eyes were dark with devilment.

He rolled up on one elbow.

'Hullo, pardner.'

'Did you sleep well?'

'I saw ghosts,' he said sepulchrally. 'Ghosts of the dead past that can never be undone. They rose up and wiggled their bony fingers at me, and said 'You are not worthy of her!' I woke up and burst into tears.'

She slipped out of the striped gown and sat down beside him.

'Wasn't there any hope?'

'Not unless you stretched out your