16 The Saint Overboard

'Where?'

'To Herqueville—below Cap de la Hague, at the northern end of the Anse de Vauville. It is not a fashionable place, but I have found it convenient for that reason. I have a chateau there where you can be as comfortable as you wish—after to-morrow. Or, if you prefer, we can go for a cruise somewhere. I shall be entirely at your service.'

'Is that where you'll put the Saint ashore?'

He pressed up his under lip.

'Perhaps. But that will take time. You understand—I shall have to protect myself.'

'If he gives you his word——'

'Of course, that word of a gentleman!' Vogel smiled sarcastically. 'But you must not let yourself forget the other knightly virtue: Chivalry . . . He might be unwilling to leave you.'

Loretta had put down her glass. Her head ached with the tumultuous racing of her brain; and yet another part of her mind was numb and unresponsive. She had reached a stage of nervous exhaustion where her thoughts seemed to be torn be­tween the turmoil of fever and the blank stupor of collapse. What did anything matter? She passed a hand over her forehead, pushing back her hair, and said hazily: 'But he mustn't know.'

'Naturally. I should not attempt to reconcile him to our bar­gain. But he will want to know why you are staying with us, and we shall have to find a way to satisfy him. Besides, I have too much to risk . . .'

She half turned her head towards a window, so that she need not look at his smooth gloating face. Her head was throbbing with disjointed thoughts that she could not discipline. Radio. Radio. Peter Quentin. Roger Conway. Orace. Steve Murdoch. The Corsair. At St Peter Port. The Royal Hotel, If only a mes­sage could get through to them . . . And Vogel was still talking, with leisured condescension.

'You understand that I cannot go about with such a cargo as we shall have on board. And there have been other similar car­goes. The banks are no use to me, and they take time to dispose of. Therefore I have my own bank. Down at the bottom of the sea off Herqueville, under thirty feet of water, where no one could find it who did not know the exact bearing, where no one could reach it who did not possess equipment which would be beyond the understanding of ordinary thieves, I have such a treasure in gold and jewels as you have never dreamed of. When I have added to-day's plunder to it there will be nearly twelve millions; and I shall think that it may be time to take it away somewhere where I can enjoy it. It is for you to share—there is nothing in the world that you cannot have. To-night we shall drop anchor above it, and the gold of the Chalfont Castle will be lowered to the same place. I think that perhaps that will be enough. You shall go with me wherever you like, and queens will envy you. But I must see mat Templar cannot jeopardise this treasure.'

He was looking at her sidelong; and she knew with a horrible despair that all his excuses were lies. Perhaps she had always known it. There was only one way in which the Saint could cease to be a danger, by Vogel's standards, and that was the way which Vogel would inevitably dictate in the end. But first he would play with them while it pleased him: he would let the Saint live —so long as in that way she might be made easier to enjoy.

'I suppose you must,' she said; and she was too weary to argue.

'You will not be sorry.'

He was coming closer to her. His hands touched her shoulders, slipped round behind her back; and she felt as if a snake had crawled over her flesh. He was drawing her up to him, and she half closed her eyes. It was a nightmare not to struggle, not to hit madly out at him and feel the clean shock of her young hands striking into his face; but it would have been like hitting a corpse. And what was the use? Even though she knew that he was mocking her with his promises and excuses, she must submit, she must be acquiescent, just as a man obeys the command of a gun even though he knows that it is only taking him to his death —because until the last dreadful instant there is always the delu­sion of life.

His lips were an inch from hers; his black stony eyes burned into her. She could see the waxen glaze of his skin, flawless and tight-drawn as if it had been stretched over a skull, filling her vision. Something seemed to break inside her head—it might have been the grip of the fever—and for a moment her mind ran clear as a mountain stream. And then her head fell back and she went limp in his arms.