16 The Saint Overboard

the palm of the opposite hand, while Arnheim rubbed a handkerchief round the inside of his collar and puffed away to a chair in the background. The single question which Vogel had asked had hardly been a question at all, it had been more of a statement challenging contradiction; his acceptance of the reply had been simply an expression of satisfaction that the statement was not contested. There was no suggestion of praise in it. His orders had been given, and there was no reason why they should have mis­carried.

Loretta stared down into the half-translucent water and felt as if she was watching the inexorable march of reality turn into the cold deliberateness of nightmare. Down there in the sunless liq­uid silence under her eyes, under the long measured roll of that great reach of water, men were living and moving, incredibly, unnaturally, linked with the life-giving air by nothing but those fragile filaments of rubber hose which snaked over the stern; the Saint's strong lean hands, whitened with the cold and pressure, were moving deftly towards the accomplishment of their most fantastic crime. Working with skilled sure touches to lay open the most fabulous store of plunder that could ever have come in the path even of his amazing career—while his life stood helpless at the mercy of the two men who bent in monotonous alterna­tion at the handles of the air compressor, and waited on the whim of the impassive hooknosed man who was polishing his nails in the deck chair. Working with the almost certain knowl­edge that his claim to life would run out at the moment when his errand was completed.

She knew. . . . What had she told him, once? 'To do your job, to keep your mouth shut, and to take the conse­quences' . . . And in her imagination she could see him now, even while he was working towards death, his blue eyes alert and absorbed, the gay fighting mouth sardonic and un­afraid, as it had been while they talked so quietly and lightly in the cabin. . . . She could smile, in the same way that he had smiled goodbye to her—a faint half-derisive half-wistful tug at the lips that wrote its own saga of courage and mocked it at the same time. . . .

She knew he would open the strong-room; knew that he had made his choice and that he would go through with it. He would never hesitate or make excuses.

A kind of numbness had settled on her brain, an insensibility that was a taut suspension of the act of living rather than a dull anaesthesia. She had to look at her watch to pin down the leaden drag of time in bald terms of minutes and seconds. Until his voice came through the loud speaker again to announce the fulfilment of his bargain, the whole universe stood still. The Falkenberg lifted and settled in the stagnant swell, the two automatons at the air-pump bent rhymically at the wheels. Vogel rubbed his nails gently on his palms, the sun climbed fractionally down the western sky; but within her and all around her there seemed to be a crushing stillness, an unbearable quiet.

It was almost impossible to believe that only forty minutes went by before the Saint's voice came again through the loud speaker, ending the silence and the suspense with one cool steady sentence: 'The strong-room is open.'

3

Arnheim jumped as if he had been prodded, and got up to come waddling over. Vogel only stopped polishing his nails, and turned a switch in the telephone connection box beside him. His calm check-up went back over the line.

'Everything is all right, Ivaloff?'

'Yes. The door is open. The gold is here.'

'What do you want us to send down?'

'It will take a long time to move—there is a great deal to carry. Wait. ...'

The loud speaker was silent. One could imagine the man twenty fathoms down, leaning against the water, working around in laboured exploration. Then the guttural voice spoke again.

'The strong-room is close to the main stairway. Above the stairway there is a glass dome. We can go up on deck again and break through the glass, and you can send down the grab. That way, it will not be so long. But we cannot stay down here more than a few minutes. We have been here three quarters of an hour already, which is too long for this depth.'

Vogel considered this for a moment.

'Break down the glass first, and then we will bring you up,' he directed, and turned to the men who were standing around by the winch. 'Calvieri—Orbel—you will get ready to go down as soon as these two come up. Grondin, you will attend to the grab——'

For some minutes he was issuing detailed orders, allotting duties in his cold curt voice with impersonal efficiency. He shook off the lassitude in which he had been waiting without