16 The Saint Overboard

up.

Simon caught him and lowered him tenderly to the ground. By the time the first interested spectator had formed the nucleus of a crowd, the Saint was fanning Murdoch with his handkerchief and feeling for his heart with every symptom of alarm. By the time the shop-gazing gendarme had joined the gathering, it was generally agreed among the spectators that the Breton sun must have been at least a contributory cause to Murdoch's sudden collapse. Somebody spoke about an ambulance. Somebody else thought he could improve on the system of first aid which was being practised; and Simon handed the case over to him and faded quietly through the swelling congregation.

He moved on towards the Hotel de la Mer, as quickly as he dared, but with anxiety tearing ahead of his footsteps. That chance encounter—if it was a chance encounter—had wasted more of his precious and dwindling margin of time.

And then he stopped again, and plunged down in a shop door­way to tie up an imaginary shoelace. He had seen Kurt Vogel, smooth and immaculate in a white suit and a white-topped cap. turning into the entrance of the hotel. He was too late. And something inside him turned cold as he realised that there was nothing more that he could do about it—nothing that would not risk making Loretta's danger ten times greater by linking her with him. Murdoch had won after all, and Loretta would have to make the voyage unwarned.

V.        HOW  SIMON  TEMPLAR WALKED IN A GARDEN,

            AND  ORACE ALSO  HAD  HIS  TURN

IT was half-past four when the Corsair came skimming up over the blue swell past St Martin's Point, with her sails trimmed to coax the last ounce of power from the mild south-westerly breeze which had held steadily on her quarter all the way from the Pierres des Portes. In those five and a half hours since they had cleared the rocks and shoals that fringe the Cotes du Nord, Simon Templar had never taken his hands from the wheel: his eyes had been reduced to emotionless chips of blue stone, me­chanical units of co-operation with his hands, ceaselessly watch-ing the curves of the canvas overhead for the first hint of a flut­ter that would signify a single breath of the wind going by un­used. During those hours he almost surrendered his loyalty to the artistic grace of sail, and yearned for the drumming engines of the Falkenberg, which had overtaken them in the first hour and left a white trail of foam hissing away to the horizon.

He hardly knew himself what was in his mind. With all the gallant thrust of the Corsair through the green seas under him, he was as helpless as if he had been marooned on an iceberg at the South Pole. Everything that might be meant to happen on the Falkenberg could still happen while he was out of reach. Vogel could say 'She decided not to come,' or 'There was an accident'; with all the crew of the Falkenberg partnering in the racket, it would be almost impossible to prove.

The Saint stared at the slowly rising coastline with a darken­ing of satirical self-mockery in his gaze. Did he want proof? There had been many days when he was his own judge and jury: it was quicker, and it left fewer loopholes. And yet ...

It wasn't quite so simple as that. Revenge was an unthinkable triviality, a remote shadow of tragedy that cut grim lines be­tween his lowered brows. More than any revenge he wanted to see Loretta again, to see the untiring mischief in her grey eyes and hear the smiling huskiness of her voice, to feel the touch of her hand again, or ... More than any boodle that might lie at the end of the adventure. . . . Why? He didn't know. Something had happened to him in the few hours that he had known her—something, he realised with a twist of devastating candour, that had happened more than once in his life before, and might well happen again.

The breeze slackened as they drew up the channel, and he started the auxiliary. As they chugged past the sombre ugliness of Castle Cornet and rounded the point of the Castle Breakwater, he had a glimpse of the white aero-foil lines of the Falk­enberg already lying snug within the harbour, and felt an odd indefinable pressure inside his chest.

He sat side-saddle on the edge of the cockpit and lighted a cigarette while Orace finished the work of tidying up. The Falk­enberg had probably been at her berth for three hours by then, and apart from a jerseyed seaman who was lethargically washing off the remains of salt spray from her varnish, and who had scarcely looked at the Corsair as she came past, there was noth­ing to be observed on board. Most likely Vogel and his party were on shore; but Loretta ... He shrugged, with the steel brightening in his eyes. Presently he would know—many an­swers.

'Wot nex', sir?'

Orace stood beside him, as stoical as a whiskered gargoyle; and the Saint moved his cigarette in the faintest gesture of direc­tion.