16 The Saint Overboard

undercurrent of relief in their pro­testations.

'I'm sorry all this should have happened to upset the evening,' said Vogel, as they left the saloon.

She laid her hand on his arm.

'Honestly, it hasn't upset me,' she said. 'It's been quite an adventure. I'm just rather tired. Do you understand?'

In that at least she was perfectly truthful. A reaction had set in that had made her feel mentally and physically bruised, as if her mind and body had been crushed together through machine rollers. Sitting beside him again in the cockpit of the speed ten­der, with a light sea breeze stirring refreshingly through her hair, it seemed as if a whole week of ceaseless effort had gone by since she set out to keep that dangerous appointment.

She felt his arm behind her shoulders and his hand on her knee, and steeled herself to be still.

'Will you come with us to-morrow?'

She shook her head, with a little despairing breath.

'I've been through too much to-night . . . You don't give a girl a chance to think, do you?'

'But there is so little time. We go to-morrow——'

'I know. But does that make it any easier for me? It's my life you want to buy. It mayn't seem very much to you, but it's the only one I've got.'

'But you will come.'

'I don't know. You take so much for granted——'

'You will come.'

His hand on her shoulder was weighting into her flesh. The deep toneless hypnotic command of his voice reverberated into her ears like an iron bell tolling in a resonant abyss; but it was not his command which scarred itself into her awareness and told her that she would have to go. There had been danger, ordeal, respite; but nothing accomplished. She would still have to go.

'Oh, yes . . . I'll come.' She turned her face in to his shoul­der; and then she broke away. 'No, don't touch me again now.'

He left her alone; and she sat in the far corner of the cockpit and stared out over the dark water while the tender came in alongside the quay. He walked up to her hotel with her in the same silence, and she wondered what kind of superhumanly im­mobilised exaltation was pent up in his obedience. She turned at the door, and held out her hand.

'Goodnight.'

'Will half-past ten be too early? I could send a steward down before that to do your packing.'

'No. I can be ready.'

He put her fingers to his lips, and went back to the jetty. On the return journey he took the wheel himself, and sent the speedboat creaming through the dark with her graceful bows lifting and the searchlight blazing a clear pathway over the wa­ter. The man who had been in charge of the hunt a little while before stood beside him.

'Where did you put him, Ivaloff ?' Vogel asked quietly.

'In No. 9 cabin,' answered the man in his sullen throaty voice. 'He is tied up and gagged; but I think he will sleep for a little while.'

'Do you know who he is?'

'I have not seen him before. Perhaps one of the men who has been watching on shore will know him.'

Vogel said nothing. Even if the captive was a stranger, it would be possible to find out who he was. If he carried no papers that would identify him, he would be made to talk. It never occurred to him that the prisoner might be innocent: Ivaloff made no mistakes, and Vogel himself had seen the canoe's significant swerve and first instinctive attempt to dodge the searchlight. He threw the engine into neutral and then into re­verse, bringing the tender neatly up to the companion, and went across the deck to the wheelhouse.