16 The Saint Overboard

stepped on to it and grasped the ropes, and in another moment they were swinging clear of the deck and com­ing down over the water.

Taking his last look round as they went down, Simon caught sight of the outboard coming back, a speck creeping over the sea from the north-west; and he watched it with an arctic stillness in his eyes. So, doubtless, the lighthouse had been dealt with, and two more innocent men had gone down perplexedly into the shadows, not knowing why they died. Before long, probably, he would be able to tell them. . . .

Then the water closed over his window, and, as it closed, seemed to change startlingly from pale limpid blue to green. In an instant all the light and warmth of the world were blotted out, leaving nothing but that dim emerald phosphorescence. Looking up, he could see the surface of the water like a ceiling of liquid glass rolling and wrinkling in long slow undulations, but none of the crisp warm sparkle which played over it under the sun came through into the weird viridescent gloaming through which they were sinking down. Up over his head he could see the keel of the Falkenberg glued in bizarre truncation to that fluid awning, the outlines growing vaguer and darker as it receded.

They were sinking through deeper and deeper shades of green into an olive-green semi-darkness. There was a thin slight singing in his ears, an impression of deafness: he swallowed, closing his nasal passages, exactly as he would have done in coming down in an aeroplane from a height, and his ear-drums plopped back to normal. A long spar rose out of the green gloom to meet them, and he realised suddenly that it was a mast: he looked down and saw the dim shapes of the funnels rising after it, slipping by ... the white paintwork of the upper decks.

The grating on which they stood jarred against the rail of the promenade deck, and their descent ceased. Ivaloff was clam­bering down over the rail, and Simon followed him. In spite of all the weight of his gear, he felt curiously light and buoyant— almost uncomfortably so. Each time he moved he felt as if his whole body might rise up and float airily away.

'Unscrew your valve.'

Ivaloff's gruff voice cracked in his helmet, and he realised that the telephone wiring connected them together as well as keeping them in communication with the Falkenberg. Simon obeyed the instruction, and felt the pressure of water creeping up his chest as the suit deflated, until Ivaloff tapped on his hel­met and told him to stop.

The feeling of excessive buoyancy disappeared with the reduction of the air. As they moved on, he found that the weights with which he was loaded just balanced the buoyancy of his body, so that he was not conscious of walking under a load; and the air inside his helmet was just sufficient to relieve his shoul­ders of the burden of the heavy corselet. Overcoming the resistance of the water itself was the only labour of movement, and that was rather like wading through treacle.

In that ghostly and fatiguing slow-motion they went down through the ship to the strong-room. It was indescribably eerie, an unforgettable experience, to trudge down the carpeted main stairway in that dark green twilight, and see tiny fish flitting between the balusters and sea-urchins creeping over a chan­delier; to pick his way over scattered relics of tragedy on the floor, and see queer creatures of the sea scuttle and crawl and rocket away as his feet disturbed them; to stand in front of the strong-room door, presently, and see a limpet firmly planted beside the lock. To feel the traces of green scum on the door under his finger-tips, and remember that a hundred and twenty feet of water was piled up between him and the frontiers of hu­man life. To see the uncouth shape of Ivaloff looming beside him, and realise that he was its twin brother—a weird, lumber­ing, glassy-eyed, cowled monster moving at the dictation of Si­mon Templar's brain. . . .

The Saint knelt down and opened his kit of tools, and spoke into the telephone transmitter:

'I'm starting work.'

Vogel was reclining in a deck chair beside the loud speaker, studying his finger-nails. He gave no answer. The slanting rays of the sun left his eyes in deep shadow and laid chalky high-lights on his cheekbones: his face was utterly sphinx-like and inscruta­ble. Perhaps he showed neither anxiety nor impatience because he felt none.

Arnheim had returned, clambering up from the dinghy like an ungainly bloated frog; and the three hard-faced seamen with him had hauled it up on the davits and brought it inboard before moving aft to join the knot of men at the taffrail.

Vogel had looked up briefly at his lieutenant.

'You had no trouble?'

'None.'

'Good.'

And he had gone back to the idle study of his finger-nails, breathing gently on them and rubbing them slowly on