16 The Saint Overboard

'We shall be sailing about eleven,' proceeded Vogel urbanely. 'But we shan't take long on the trip—we marine motorists have rather an advantage in speed,' he added deprecatingly. 'I don't wonder you thorough-going yachtmen despise us, but I'm afraid I'm too old to learn your art.'

Simon nodded vaguely. But there was nothing vague in his mind. Every fibre of his being seemed to have been dissected into an individual sentience of its own: he was conscious of the vitality of every cell and corpuscle of his body, as though each separate atom of him was pressed into the service of that super­charged aliveness. His whole intellect was waiting, cat-like, for Vogel to show his hand.

Vogel gave him no sign. His smooth aggressively profiled face might have been moulded out of wax, with its appearance of hard and uniform opacity under the thin glaze of skin. The Saint's keenest scrutiny could find no flaw in it. He had watched Vogel working up through a conspiracy of intricate and marvel­lously juggled tensions towards a climax of cunning that had been exploded like a soap-bubble at the very instant of crisis; he knew that even after that Vogel must have taken a re-staggering shock when he discovered the vanishment of their prisoner and the slumber of Otto Arnheim; he could guess that even Vogel's impregnable placidity must have felt the effect of a cumulation of reverses that would have shaken any other man to the beginnings of fear; and yet there was not a microscopical fissure in the sleek veneer of that vulturine face. Simon admitted after­wards that the realisation of all that was implied by that im­movable self-command gave him a queer momentary supersti­tious feeling of utter helplessness, like nothing else that he had ever experienced in the presence of another human being.

He took hold of the feeling with a conscious effort and trod it ruthlessly down. Vogel was holding his drink up in one steady hand, imperturbably surveying the details of the saloon, with the eyelids drooping under the shadow of his black overhanging brows; and Simon watched him without a tremor in the careless good humour of his gaze.

'But this is a charming boat,' Vogel remarked idly. 'What is her tonnage?'

'About twenty-five.'

'Delightful . . .' Vogel got up and began to wander around, studying the panelling, touching the fittings, investigating the ingenious economy of space with all the quiet pleasure of an enthusiast. 'I envy you, really—to be able to have something like this all to yourself, without bothering about crews and for­malities. If I were twenty years younger . . . Did you have her fitted out yourself?'

'Yes.'

'Of course. And are all the other rooms as attractive as this one?'

So that was how it was coming. The Saint felt a tiny pulse beginning to beat way back in the depths of his brain, like the frantic ticking of a distant clock racing with time.

'They're pretty comfortable,' he said modestly; and Vogel caught him up without a second's hesitation.

'I wish I could see them. I'm tremendously interested—I had no idea a small boat could be so luxurious. You might even con­vert me!'

Simon, brought the tip of his cigarette to a red glow, and feathered a fading cloud of smoke through his lips.

He was for it. The fuse was lighted. There was no excuse, however plausible, no tactful way of changing the subject, how­ever fluent, from which Vogel would not draw his own conclu­sions. Vogel had got him, exactly as he had got Loretta a few hours before. He had paid that belated call, transparently, with the one object of discovering whether the Corsair would yield any connecting link with the night's disturbances, and he would not be prepared to go home satisfied after one brief confined session in the saloon. Simon could see the man's black unswerv­ing eyes fixed on him intently, outwardly with no more than the ingenuous eagerness which made the granting of his request a favour that it would be difficult in any circumstances to refuse— inwardly with a merciless insistence of which no one without the Saint's knowledge would have been conscious. The fuse was lighted; and how soon the mine would go up depended only on Orace's perception of the secondary uses of keyholes.

Now that the die was cast, Simon felt a curious contented relaxation.

'By all manner of means,' he said amicably. 'Let me show you the works.'

3

He stood up, lighting a second cigarette from the stub of the first. The movement gave a few seconds' grace in which Orace, if he had been listening, might prepare for the emergency as