16 The Saint Overboard

have been eating, or recuperating from the day's work in their own quarters: the alleyway was an empty shaft of white paint gleaming in the dim lights which studded it at intervals. And in another second the Saint had closed the door of his prison si­lently behind him and flitted up the after companion on to the deck.

The cool air struck refreshingly on his face after the stuffiness of the cabin. Overhead, the sky was growing dark, and the first pale stars were coming out; down towards the western horizon, where the greyness of the sky merged indistinguishably into the greyness of the sea, they were becoming brighter, and among them he saw the mast-head lights of some small ship running up from the south-west, many miles astern. The creamy wake stretched away into the darkness like a straight white road.

He stood there for a little while in the shadow of the deck­house and absorbed the scene. The only sounds he could hear there were the churning rush of the water and the dull drone of the engines driving them to the east. Above him, the longboom of the grab jutted out at a slight angle, with the claw gear dan­gling loosely lashed to the taffrail; and all around him the wet wooden cases of the bullion from the Chalfont Castle were stacked up against the bulkheads. He screwed an eye round the corner and inspected the port deck. It was deserted; but the air-pump and telephone apparatus were still out there, and he saw four diving suits on their stretchers laid out in a row like steam­rollered dummies with the helmets gathered like a group of decapitated heads close by. Further forward he could see the lights of the wheelhouse windows cutting the deck into strips of light and darkness: he could have walked calmly along to them, but the risk of being prematurely discovered by some member of the crew coming out for a breather was more than he cared to take. Remembering the former occasion on which he had prowled over the ship, he climbed up over the conveniently arranged stairway of about half a million pounds on to the deckhouse roof, and went forward on all fours.

A minute or so later he was lying flat on his tummy on the roof of the streamlined wheelhouse, with the full wind of their twenty knots blowing through his hair, wondering if he could risk a cigarette.

Straight ahead, the scattered lights of the French coast were creeping up out of the dark, below the strip of tarnishing silver which was all that was left of the daylight. He could just see an outline of the black battlements of a rocky coast; there was nothing by which he could identify it, but from what he knew of their course he judged it to be somewhere south of Cap de la Hague. Down on the starboard beam he picked up a pair of winking lights, one of them flashing red and the other red and white, which might have belonged to Port de Dielette . . .

'Some more coffee, Loretta?'

Vogel's bland toneless voice suddenly came to him through one of the open windows; and the Saint drew a deep breath and lowered his head over the edge of the roof to peep in. He only looked for a couple of seconds, but in that time the scene was photographed on his brain to the last detail.

They were all there—Vogel, Arnheim, Loretta. She had put on a backless white satin dress, perfectly plain, and yet cut with that exquisite art which can make ornament seem garish and vulgar. It set off the golden curve of her arms and shoulders with an intoxicating suggestion of the other curves which it concealed, and clung to the slender sculpture of her waist in sheer perfection: beside her, the squat paunchy bulk of Otto Arnheim with his broad bulging shirtfront looked as if it belonged to some obscene and bloated toad. But for the set cold pallor of her face she might have been a princess graciously receiving two favoured ministers: the smooth hawk-like arrogance of Kurt Vogel, in a blue velvet smoking-jacket, pouring out coffee on a pewter tray at a side table, fitted in completely with the illusion. The man standing at the wheel, gazing straight ahead, motionless except for the occasional slight movements of his hands, intruded his presence no more than a waiting footman would have done. They were all there—and what was going to be done about it?

Simon rolled over on his back, listening with half an ear to the spasmodic mutter of absurdly banal conversation, and considered the problem. Almost certainly they were heading for Vogel's local, if not his chief, headquarters: the stacks of bullion left openly on the after deck, and the derrick not yet lashed down and covered with its tarpaulin, ruled out the idea that they were putting into any ordinary port. Presumably Vogel had a house or something close to the sea; he might unload the latest addition to his loot and go ashore himself that night, or he might wait until morning. The Saint realised that he could plan nothing until he knew. To attempt to burst into the wheelhouse and cap­ture the brains of the organisation there without an alarm of any sort being raised was a forlorn hope; to think of corralling the crew, one by one or in batches as he found them, armed only with his knife, without anyone in the wheelhouse hearing an outcry, was out of the question even to a man with Simon Tem­plar's supreme faith in his own prowess. Therefore he must wait for an opportunity or an inspiration; and all the time there was a thread of risk that some member of the crew might have been detailed to keep an eye on him and might discover