16 The Saint Overboard

heading towards the Bee de la Vallee. For a moment he watched it idly, calculating that its course would take it within a few yards of the Corsair: as it came nearer he recognised Kurt Vogel, and with him a stout grey-bearded man in a Norfolk jacket and a shapeless yellow Panama hat.

Simon began to get up from his chair. He began slowly and almost uncertainly, but he finished in a sudden rush of decision. Any action, however vague its object, was better than no action at all. He skated down the companion with something like his earlier exuberance, and shouted for Grace.

'Never mind about lunch,' he said, scattering silk shirts and white duck trousers out of a locker. 'I'm going on shore to take up ornithology.'

2

One of the vedettes from St Malo was coming in to the jetty when the Saint scrambled back on deck, and the Falkenberg's tender was still manoeuvering for a landing. Simon dropped into his dinghy and wound up the outboard. Fortunately the Corsair had swung round on the tide so that she screened his movements from any chance backward glances from the quay, and he started off up-river and came round in a wide circle to avoid identifying himself by his point of departure. Not that it mattered much; but he wanted to avoid giving any immediate impression that he was deliberately setting off in pursuit.

He cruised along, keeping his head down and judging time and distance as the Falkenberg's tender squeezed in to the steps and Vogel and his companion went ashore. Looking back, he judged that with any luck no curious watcher on the Falkenberg had observed his hurried departure, and by this time he was too far away to be recognised. Then, as Vogel and the grey-bearded man started up the causeway towards the Grande Rue, the Saint opened up his engine and scooted after them. He shot in to the quay under the very nose of another boat that was making for the same objective, spun his motor round into reverse under a cloudburst of Gallic expostulation and profanity, hitched the painter deftly through a ring-bolt, and was up on land and away before the running commentary he had provoked had really reached its choicest descriptive adjectives.

The passengers who were disembarking from the ferry effec­tively screened his arrival and shielded his advance as he hustled after his quarry. The other two were not walking quickly, and the grey-bearded man's shabby yellow Panama was as good as a beacon. Simon spaced himself as far behind them as he dared when they reached the Digue, and slackened the speed of his pursuit. He ambled along with his hands in his pockets, submerg­ing himself among the other promenaders with the same happy-go-lucky air of debating the best place to take an aperitif before lunch.

Presently the yellow Panama bobbed across the stream in the direction of the Casino terrace, and Simon Templar followed. At that hour the place was packed with a chattering sun-soaked throng of thirsty socialites, and the Saint was able to squeeze himself about among the tables in the most natural manner of a lone man looking for a place—preferably with company. His route led him quite casually past Vogel's table; and at the pre­cise moment when the hook-nosed man looked up and caught his eye, Simon returned the recognition with a perfect rendering of polite interest.

They were so close together that Vogel could scarcely have avoided a greeting, even if he had wished to—which the Saint quietly doubted. For a moment the man's black expressionless stare drilled right through him; and then the thin lips spread in a smile that had all the artless geniality of a snake's.

'I hope you didn't think I was too unceremonious about dis­turbing you last night,' he said.

'Not at all,' said the Saint cheerfully. 'I didn't leave the baccarat rooms till pretty late, so I was only just settling in.'

His glance passed unostentatiously over the grey-bearded man. Something about the mild pink youthful-looking face struck him as dimly familiar, but he couldn't place it.

'This is Professor Yule,' said the other, 'and my name is Vogel. Won't you join us, Mr—er——'

'Tombs,' said the Saint, without batting an eyelid, and sat down.

Vogel extended a cigarette-case.

'You are interested in gambling, Mr Tombs?' he suggested.

His tone was courteous and detached, the tone of a man who was merely accepting the obvious cue for the opening of a conventional exchange of small talk; but the Saint's hand hovered over the proffered case for an imperceptible second's pause be­fore he slid out a smoke and settled back.

'I don't mind an occasional flutter to