16 The Saint Overboard

'I don't think I could have been seen. I didn't see the man who caught me—he came up behind. And it was pretty dark where I was. He caught me round the neck with his arm; then I fired the shot, he let go, and I dived.'

'He'd know it was a woman.'

'Not necessarily. Don't you remember that Vogel said he was looking for a man?'

'An obvious lie.'

'A very stupid one—if it was. But what could it gain him? If you'd already seen a woman, it'd make you think there was something queer going on. If you hadn't, what did it matter?'

'He might have been trying to tempt me to keep up the lie— which would have given me away.'

She shrugged her intoxicating shoulders.

'Aren't you rather looking for trouble?' she said.

'That's my job,' answered the Saint evenly. 'And inciden­tally, it happens to be one of the reasons why I didn't come to a sticky end many years ago. I'll give you something else. Suppose Vogel wasn't quite happy about me last night?'

'Well?'

'It was rather an unusual hour for anyone to be up and about —messing around with fenders. Not impossible, but unusual. And if Vogel's the kind of man we think he is, he keeps alive by sorting out unusual things—like I do. He couldn't make any fuss, because that'd be letting himself in if he was wrong. But he could puff away in that outboard, stop the engine, and paddle back quietly on the oars. He couldn't have seen you—probably he couldn't even have heard what you said—but he could hear that there was a girl on board.'

'Which isn't impossible either,' she said demurely.

Simon frowned.

'You forget my Saintly reputation. But still, maybe to Vogel, with his low criminal mind, it isn't impossible either. But it's still unusual enough to be worth looking at. And then there's you.'

'Without a reputation.'

'And not deserving one. You've been making a clear set at him for several days—weeks—whatever it is. That again may not be impossible. It might be his money, or his beauty, or because he sings so nicely in his bath. But if it isn't even unusual, if I were in his place I'd think it was—interesting. Interesting enough, maybe, to try and find out some more about you.'

She pressed his hand—she had been letting it rest in his all that time, as if she hadn't noticed.

'Dear man,' she said, 'don't you think I know all this?'

'And if he only wants to see exactly where you stand in the game?'

'I can pack a gun.'

'Like any other ordinary innocent woman.'

'Then I'll go without it.'

'You wouldn't be much worse off.'

'All the same, I'll go.'

'Three,' he quoted her, 'didn't come back.'

She nodded. The impish humour still played on her lips and the surface of her eyes, but the depths behind it were clear and still.

'When you join Ingerbeck's, you don't sign on for a cocktail party. You join an army. You take an oath—to do your job, to keep your mouth shut, and to take the consequences. Wouldn't you go?'

'Yes. But there are special risks.'

'For a poor defenceless girl?'

'They call it Worse than Death.'

'I've never believed it.'