16 The Saint Overboard

There was something as nightmarish as a slow-motion avalanche about Vo­gel's patient thoroughness, a suggestion of feline cruelty in his velvety smoothness, that burred the edges of Simon's nervous system into crystals of jagged steel. He felt an almost irresistible temptation to throw guile to the winds—to say: 'Okay, brother. I have got Steve Murdoch here, and he is the bird who paid you a call earlier this evening; and so what?'—to do any foolish thing that would wipe that self-assured smirk off the other's face and bring the fencing match to a soul-satisfying showdown. Only the knowledge that that might very well be what Vogel was play­ing for eased the strain of holding himself in check.

On the starboard side there was one double cabin. Vogel ad­mired this also. There were two fitted wardrobes for him to peer into, and also a large recessed cupboard for storing blankets and other dry gear, besides the usual lockers under the berths. As Vogel methodically opened each door in turn, to the accompa­niment of a tireless flow of approbation, the Saint felt himself growing so much older that it wouldn't have surprised him to look down and see a long white beard spreading over his shirt.

'This is the most perfect thing I've ever seen.' Vogel was positively purring by then: his waxen skin shone with a queer gloss, as if it had been polished. 'You should have made this your profession—I should have been one of your first clients . . . And that door at the end?'

Simon glanced up the alleyway.

'The fo'c'sle? That's only Orace's quarters——'

And at the same time he knew that he might just as well save his breath. Vogel had already declared himself, at the bathroom door and since then, as a sightseer who intended to see every sight there was; and it would have been asking a miracle for him to have allowed himself to be headed off on the threshold of the last door of all.

The Saint shrugged.

At any rate, the gloves would be off. The nibbling and niggling would be finished, and the issue would be joined in open battle; and the Saint liked to fight best that way. Behind that door lay the showdown. He knew it, as surely as if he could have seen through the partition, and he faced it without illusion. Even at that transcendental moment the irrepressible devil in him came to his aid, and he was capable of feeling a deep and unholy glee of anticipation at the thought of the conflicting emotions that would shortly be chasing each other across Vogel's up-ended universe.

He opened the door and stood aside, with a sense of peace in the present and a sublime faith in the exciting future.

Vogel went in.

Perhaps after all, Simon reflected, his gun could stay where it was. A clean sharp blow with the edge of his hand across the back of the other's neck might achieve the same immediate effect with less commotion, and with less risk of letting him in for the expenses of a high-class funeral later. Of course, that would still leave the loyal mariner outside, but he would have had to be dealt with anyhow . . . And then what? The Saint's brain raced through a hectic sequence of results and possibilities . . .

And then he heard Vogel's voice again, through a kind of giddy haze that swept over him at the sound of it.

'Excellent . . . excellent . . . Why, I've seen a good many boats in which the owner's accommodation was not half so good. And this is all, is it?'

If a choir of angels had suddenly materialised in front of him and started to sing a syncopated version of Christmas Day in the Workhouse, Simon Templar could hardly have had a more devastating reason to mistrust his ears. If the Corsair had sud­denly started to spin round and round like a top, his insides couldn't have suffered a more cataclysmic bouncing on their moorings. With a resolute effort he swallowed his stomach, which was trying to cake-walk up into his mouth, and looked into the fo'c'sle.

Vogel was coming out; and his cordial smile was unchanged. If he had just suffered the crowning disappointment of his unfortu­nate evening, there was no sign of it on his face. And behind him, quite plainly visible to every corner, Orace's modest cabin was as naked of any other human occupancy as the icebound fastnesses of the North Pole.

The Saint steadied his reeling brain, and took the cigarette from between his lips.

'Yes, that's all,' he answered mechanically. 'You can't get much more into a fifty-footer.'

'And that?' Vogel pointed upwards.

'Oh, just a hatchway on to the deck.'