16 The Saint Overboard

She nodded, and he confirmed the order with a glance. He held out an inlaid cigarette-box and struck a match. She inhaled the smoke and stood up to him without recoiling, with her head lifted in that white lifeless pride. Her heart was beating in quick leaden strokes, but her hand was steady.

Was it to be so soon? She wished it could be over before she was weakened by her fear; and yet the instinct of escape prayed for a respite, as if time could give cold logic a more crushing mastery of her revulsion. What did it amount to after all, this physical sacrifice, this brief humiliation? Her mind, her self that made her a living personality, her soul or heart or whatever it might be called, could not be touched. It was beyond reach of all the assailments of the body for so long as she chose to keep it so. 'You don't burn your house down because a little mud has been trodden into the floor.' She, her essential self, could triumph even in the defeat of the flesh. What a lot of exaggerated non­sense was talked about that one crude gesture. . . . And yet her heart throbbed with that leaden pulse before the imminent real­ity.

'Excuse me a moment.'

Either he had observed nothing, or he was insensible to her emotions. Without touching her, he turned away and moved over to the bookcases at the after end of the room.

She had her respite. The steward returned, and put down a tray on the table beside her; he poured out a drink and went out again without speaking. Loretta took up the glass and tasted it: after she had sipped, it occurred to her that it might be drugged, and she almost put it down. And then her lips moved in the ghost of a wry grimace. What did it matter?

She looked to see what Vogel was doing. He had taken a chair over to the bookcase and sat down in front of it. The upper shelves had opened like a door, carrying the books with them, and in the aperture behind was the compact instrument panel of a medium-powered radio transmitting station. Vogel had clipped a pair of earphones over his head, and his long white fingers were flitting delicately over the dials—pausing, adjusting, tuning his station with quick and practised touches. Somewhere in the still­ness she could hear the faint whirr of a generator. . . . And then she heard a clearer, sharper, intermittent tapping. Vogel had found his correspondent, and he was sending a message.

The staccato rhythm of the transmitter key pattered into her brain and translated itself almost automatically into letters and words. Like everyone else in Ingerbeck's, she had studied the Morse code as part of her general training: it was second nature to interpret the rattle of dots and dashes, as effortless a perform­ance as if she had been listening to Vogel talking. She did it so instinctively, while the active part of her mind was too turbulent with other thoughts to pay attention, that it was a few seconds before she coordinated what she was hearing.

Dot-dot-dash-dot . . . dot-dot-dash . . . dash-dot-dash-dot . . . She searched through her memory: wasn't that the call signal of the radio station at Cherbourg? Then he was giving his own call signal. Then, with the swift efficiency of a professional operator, he was tapping out his message. A telegram. 'Bau­dier, Herqueville. . . . Arrive ce soir vers 9 heures demi. Faites preparer phares ...'

The names meant nothing to her; the message was unimpor­tant—obviously Vogel must have a headquarters somewhere, which he would head for at such a time as this. But the fact that was thundering through her head was the radio itself. It wasn't merely in touch with a similar station at his headquarters—it could communicate openly with Cherbourg, and therefore pre­sumably with any other wireless telegraph receiving station that it could reach. The Niton station in the Isle of Wight, for in­stance, might easily be within range; from which a telegram might be relayed by cable to St Peter Port . . . There seemed to be no question about the acceptance of the message. Ob­viously the Falkenberg was on the list of registered transmitters, like any Atlantic liner. She almost panicked for a moment in trying to recall the signal by which Vogel had identified himself, but she had no need to be afraid. The letters were branded on her memory as if by fire. Then, if she could only gain five minutes alone in the chair where Vogel was sitting . . .

He had finished. He took off the headphones, swung over the main switch in the middle of the panel, turned out the light which illuminated the cupboard, and closed the bookshelf door. It latched with a faint click; and he came towards her again.

'I didn't know you were so well equipped,' she said, and hoped he would not notice her breathlessness. .

He did not seem to notice anything—perhaps he was so confident that he did not care. He shrugged.

'It is useful sometimes,' he said. 'I have just sent a message to announce that we shall soon be on our way.'