'How d'you like it?' asked the Saint, with a certain pardonable smugness.
He was breathing a little deeply from the effort of life-saving Steve Murdoch's unconscious body through the odd half-mile of intervening water, and the shifting muscles glistened over his torso as he filled his chest. Murdoch, lying in a heap with the water oozing out of his sodden clothes, was conspicuously less vital; and Orace inspected him with perceptible distaste.
'Wot is it?' he inquired disparagingly.
'A sort of detective,' said the Saint. 'I believe he's a good fellow at heart; but he doesn't like me and he's damned stubborn. He's tried to die once before to-night, and he didn't thank me when I stopped him.'
Orace sucked his moustache ghoulishly over the body.
'Is 'e dead now?'
'Not yet—at least I don't think so. But he's got a lump on the back of his head the size of an apple, and I don't expect he'll feel too happy when he wakes up. Let's try him and see.'
They undressed Murdoch out on the deck, and Simon wrung out his clothes as best he could and tied them in a rough bundle which he chucked into the galley oven when they took the still unconscious man below. He left Orace to apply the usual restoratives, and went back into the saloon to towel himself vigorously and brush his hair. He heard various groans and thumps and other sounds of painful resuscitation while he was doing this; and he had just settled into a clean shirt and a pair of comfortable old flannel trousers when the communicating door opened and the fruit of Orace's labours shot blearily in.
It was quite obvious that the Saint's prophecy was correct. Mr Murdoch was not feeling happy. The tender imprint of a skilfully wielded blackjack had established at the base of his skull a high-powered broadcasting station of ache from which messages of hate and ill-will were radiating in all directions with throbbing intensity, while the grinding machinery of transmission was setting up a roaring din that threatened to split his head. Taking these profound disadvantages into consideration, Mr Murdoch entered, comparatively speaking, singing and dancing; which he is to say that he only looked as if he would like to beat somebody on the head with a mallet until they sank into the ground.
'What the hell is this?' he demanded truculently.
'Just another boat,' answered the Saint kindly. 'On your left, the port side. On your right, the starboard. Up there is the forward or sharp end, which goes through the water first——'
Murdoch glowered at him speechlessly for a moment; and then the team of pneumatic drills started work again under the roof of his skull, and he sank on to a bunk.
'I thought it would be you,' he said morosely.
Orace came in like a baronial butler, put down a tray of whisky and glasses, sniffed loudly, and departed. Murdoch stared at the door which closed behind him with the penumbras of homicide darkening again on his square features.
'I could kill that guy twice, and then drown him.' Murdoch grabbed the whisky-bottle, poured three fingers into a glass, and swallowed it straight. He compressed his lips in a grimace, and looked up at the Saint again. 'Well, here I am—and who the hell asked you to bring me here?'
'You didn't,' Simon admitted.
'Didn't you tell me you'd keep out of the way next time?'
'That was the idea.'
'Well, what d'ya think I'm going to do—fall on your neck and kiss you?'
'Not in those trousers, I hope,' said the Saint.
The trousers belonged to Orace, who was taller but not so bulky. As a result, they were stretched dangerously across the seat, and hung in a graceful concertina over the ankles. Murdoch glared down at them venomously, and they responded with an ominous rending squeak as he moved to get hold of the whisky again.
'I didn't ask you to pull me out, and I'm not going to thank you. If you thought I'd fall for you, you're wrong. Was that the idea, too? Did you think you might be able to get under my skin that way—make the same sort of monkey outa me that you've made outa Loretta? Because you
