16 The Saint Overboard

Professor Yule was there. He glanced up from a newspaper.

'I wish I knew what these gold mining shares were going to do,' he remarked casually. 'I could sell now and take a profit, but I'd like to see another rise first.'

'You should ask Otto about it—he is an expert,' said Vogel. 'By the way, where is he?'

'I don't know. He went out to look for part of a broken cuff­link. Didn't you see him on deck?'

Vogel shook his head.

'Probably he was on the other side of the ship. Do you hold very many of these shares?'

He selected a cigar from a cedarwood cabinet and pierced it carefully while Yule talked. So Arnheim hadn't been able to wait more than a few minutes before he tried to find out something about the man they had captured. Otto had always been impa­tient—his brain lacked that last infinitesimal milligram of poise which gave a man the power to possess himself indefinitely and imperturbably. He should have waited until Yule went to bed.

Not that it was vitally important. The Professor was as unsus­pecting as a child; and No. 9 cabin was the dungeon of the ship —a room so scientifically soundproofed that a gun fired in it would have been inaudible where they were. Vogel drew steadily at his cigar and discussed the gold market with unruffled compo­sure for a quarter of an hour, until Yule picked himself up and decided to retire.

Vogel stood at the chart table and gave the Professor time to reach his stateroom. In front of him was the chart with that lone position marked in red ink, the scraps of torn paper in the ashtray, the pencil lying beside it ... untouched. Loretta Page had stood over those things for a full minute, but from where he was watching he could not see her face. 'When she turned away she had seemed unconcerned. And yet . . . there were more things than that to be explained. Kurt Vogel was not worried—his pas­sionlessly efficient brain had no room for such a futile emotion— but there had been other moments in his career, like that, when he knew that he was fighting for his life.

He left the chart table without a shrug, and left the wheelhouse by the door at the after end. Between him and the saloon a com­panion ran down to the lower deck. He went aft along the alley­way at the bottom—the door of the Professor's cabin was close to the foot of the companion, and he paused outside it for a couple of seconds and heard the thud of a dropped shoe before he went on. His cigar glowed evenly, gripped with the barest necessary pressure between his teeth, and bis feet moved with a curious soundlessness on the thick carpet.

No. 9 cabin was the last door in the passenger section. Just beyond it another companion sloped steeply up to the after deck, and abaft the companion a watertight door shut off the continua­tion of the alleyway on to which the crew's quarters opened. Vogel stopped and turned the handle, and a faint frown creased in between his eyebrows when the door did not move.

He raised his hand to knock; and then for some reason He glanced downwards and saw that the key was in the lock on the outside. At the same time he became conscious of a cool damp­ness on his hand. He opened it under the light, and saw a glisten of moisture in the palm and on the inside of his fingers.

For an instant he did not move. And then his hand went down slowly and touched the door-handle again. He felt the wetness of it under the light slide of his finger-tips, and bent down to touch the carpet. That also was damp; so were the treads of the com­panion.

Without hesitation he turned the key silently in the lock, slipped an automatic out of his pocket, and thrust open the door. The cabin was in darkness, but his fingers found the switch in­stantaneously and clicked it down. Otto Arnheim lay at his feet in the middle of the floor, with his face turned whitely up to the light and his round pink mouth hanging vacuously open. There were a couple of lengths of rope carelessly thrown down beside him—and that was all.

IV.     HOW STEVE MURDOCH REMAINED OBSTINATE,

          AND  SIMON TEMPLAR RENDERED FIRST AID

IF THE quality of surprise had ever been a part of Orace's emo­tional make-up, the years in which he had worked for Simon Templar had long since exhausted any trace of its existence. Probably from sheer instinctive motives of self-preservation he had acquired the majestically immutable sang-froid of a jellied eel; and he helped Simon to haul his prize out on to the deck of the Corsair as unconcernedly as he would have lent a hand with embarking a barrel of beer.