16 The Saint Overboard

would make one false step that would be sufficient for their purpose. And all the time they were smiling, talking flatteringly to her, respecting her with their words, so cunningly that an outside observer like Professor Yule could have seen nothing to give her the slightest offence.

She had clung to the Professor as the one infallible lodestar on the tricky course she had to steer, even while she had realised completely what Vogel's patronage of scientific exploration meant. Yule's spontaneous innocence was the one pattern which she had been able to hold to; and when he remained behind in the saloon she felt a cold emptiness that was not exactly fear.

Arnheim had engineered it, with a single sentence of irre­proachable and unarguable tact, when Vogel suggested showing her over the ship.

'We'll stay and look after the port,' he said, and there was not even the suspicion of a smirk in his eyes when he spoke.

She looked at staterooms, bathrooms, galleys, engines, and refrigerators, listening to his explanations and interjecting the right expressions of admiration and delight, steeling herself against the hypnotic monotone of his voice. She wondered whether he would kiss her in one of the rooms, and felt as if she had been let out of prison when they came out on deck under the open sky.

His hand slid through her arm. It was the first time he had touched her, and even then the touch had no more than an avun­cular familiarity.

'. . . This open piece of deck is rather pleasant for sitting out when it's hot. We rig an awning over that boom if the sun's too strong.'

'It must be marvellous to own a boat like this,' she said.

They stood at the rail, looking down the river. Somewhere among the lights in the broadening of the estuary was the Cor­sair, but there was nothing by which she could pick it out.

'To be able to have you here—this is pleasant,' he said. 'At other times it can be a very lonely ownership.'

'That must be your own choice.'

'It is. I am a rich man. If I told you how rich I was you might think I was exaggerating. I could fill this boat hundreds of times over with—delectable company. A generous millionaire is always attractive. But I've never done so. Do you know that you're the first woman who has set foot on this deck?'

'I'm sorry if you regret it,' she said carelessly.

'I do.'

His black eyes sought her face with a burning intensity. She realised with a thrill of fantastic horror that he was absolutely sincere. In that cold passionless iron-toned voice he was making love to her, as if the performance was dragged out of him against his will. He was still watching her; but within that inflexible vigilance there was a grotesque hunger for illusion that was an added terror.

'I regret it because when you give a woman even the smallest corner of your mind, you give her the power to take more. You are no longer in supreme command of your destiny. The building of a lifetime can be betrayed and broken for a moment's foolish­ness.'

She smiled.

'You're too cynical—you sound as if you'd been disappointed in love.'

'I have never been in love——'

The last word was bitten off, as if it had not been intended to be the last. It gave the sentence a curiously persistent quality, so that it seemed to reverberate in the air, repeating itself in ghostly echoes after the actual sound was gone.

She half turned towards him, in a natural quest for the conclu­sion of that unfinished utterance. Instead she found his hands pinning her to the rail on either side, his great predatory nose thrust down towards her face, his wide lipless mouth working under a torrent of low-pitched quivering words.

'You have tempted me to be foolish. For years I shut all women out of my life, so that none of them could hurt me. And yet what does wealth give without women? I knew that you wanted to come and see my boat. For you it might only have been a nice boat to look at, part of your holiday's amusement; for