Salvage for the Saint

1

“Ah! On se revolt, Madame. Welcome! And the knight errant, eh? Bonjour aussi, Monsieur Templar. Come in, come in. Make yourselves comfortable, please!”

Descartes beamed at them over his mountainous midriff, gold dental work gleaming, and beckoned them in as if they were long-lost friends.

“Surprise, surprise,” said the Saint. “And I suppose the third member of the boarding party is right behind us?”

Descartes beamed still more broadly, but Bernadotti’s attempted smile came out as more of a sneer.

“You got it, Mister,” he said silkily, making a fractional movement of the barrel of the automatic he was holding loosely in his lap. “And Pancho is, you know, a hotheaded kind of guy. The slightest thing scares him, he tends to let fly with that knife of his.”

“And if you was-a me, you’d be pretty damned careful, huh?” said the Saint, parodying Bernadotti’s Italo-American accent as he glanced behind to confirm the presence of Pancho. And to him, he said: “Now you won’t be a silly boy with that thing, will you?”

At a nod from Descartes, Pancho slid forward and frisked Simon expertly. Having found nothing, he was preparing to turn his attention to a still-incredulous Arabella, but Descartes signalled him to stop.

“If Monsieur Templar has no gun, I think we can assume the lady is also unarmed.” He inclined his head in a half-bow to Arabella. “Madame, we regret the intrusion upon your boat. But you must remember, our claim is older than yours. Your Charles, he owed us a great deal, which he had not paid at the time of his death. This boat, indeed, would not have been bought, I think, except for the gold which your Charles — our Karl — kept entirely for himself.”

“The lady told you before,” Simon said with steel in his voice. “She doesn’t know about any gold.”

Descartes nodded.

“It is another regret that we did not accept her statement. Perhaps, after all, he did not share with her the secret... the secret which lies, does it not Monsieur Templar, in the voyages of the Phoenix?”

“And what did you threaten Captain Finnegan with?” Simon enquired evenly.

The reply, an evil grin and a throat-cutting mime, came from Bernadotti.

“He would have gone the same way you’re gonna go, Templar. To feed the sharks.”

“Nice to know you’re feeling really hospitable,” Simon observed. “What a pity your chum Tranchier can’t be here to complete the party. He’d have made it a quartet of physical repulsiveness. But I must say you three do get around — for a bunch of farmers.”

“Who’s looking after the pigs?” Arabella put in, having now partly adjusted her mind to the new development and the uncomfortable fact that the visitors were with them for the time being whether she liked it or not.

Descartes’ eyes blazed with anger and his voice cut across the room like the crack of a whip.

“We are not farmers! And we have no pigs! We are very seriously seeking that gold — and we will have it!” He fixed them both for a few moments. Then, ticking off the items on his fingers as he spoke, he added: “To save for you the trouble, we have smashed the radio — broken the signal lamps — thrown overboard the rifle — even the axe for fires. So — be at home with us.”

The Saint considered the invitation dispassionately and nodded to its reasonableness. He took Arabella’s arm and led her to some vacant chairs.

“Scotch and water, please,” he said expectantly.

“Gin and tonic — with ice,” Arabella added.

“Get it yourself!” growled Bernadotti.

Two hours and perhaps three or four spaced-out drinks later, Simon was just beginning yet another game of backgammon with Descartes, who had been animated by the play to a new exuberance of mood in which all other preoccupations were for the time forgotten.

“Finally, I have met a worthy opponent. Not for nothing am I titled, among the French players, Jacques du trictrac.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Simon lied, having seen at a very early stage of the proceedings that his reasonable knowledge of the game could be a valuable asset in dealing with Descartes.

“Monsieur Templar, you play very skillfully the difficult retarded game,” Descartes declared. “Have you read the Schneider book, by chance?”

The Saint hadn’t, but he had heard of the Austrian who was generally regarded as the best player in Europe.

“I’ve played a game or two with old Rudy,” he said casually.

“Played? You have actually played with Schneider?”

Simon smiled as he “captured” one of Descartes’ pieces and transferred it to the bar.

“Only backgammon.”

At Simon’s elbow, Arabella sat looking thoughtful, and occasionally swirling the drink around abstractedly in her glass. Bernadotti, black-garbed as usual, sat in a far corner plucking at his guitar. And as a background to the other sounds in the yacht’s saloon, there was a regular thwack every seven or eight seconds as Pancho threw his knife repeatedly into the once polished surface of a coffee table a few feet from where he sat. For reasons best known to himself, he had changed out of his nondescript clothes and was now sporting a light-coloured suit with a dark shirt and white tie — an outfit in which, perhaps intentionally, he looked like the stereotype of a thirties Chicago gangster.

Bernadotti abruptly stopped his strumming, put the guitar aside, and spoke.

“Sun’s almost gone down.”

“Afraid of the dark, are we?” the Saint enquired.

Descartes rolled the dice, regarded them for an instant, and pounced triumphantly back on the board with the piece that had been removed.

“I regret, Monsieur le Saint, that we are in something of a quandary regarding your status on the — expedition. The vote of my comrades is that upon darkness you shall go overboard.”

Bernadotti exposed his savage teeth in another wolfish grin, and repeated his earlier throat-cutting gesture.

To Descartes, Simon said: “That would be stupidly premature, for one simple reason.”

“And what is that?” asked Descartes, who seemed willing to be convinced.

“Our Captain Finnegan is one man, usually drunk. Can any of you handle a vessel this size, in possibly heavy weather?” He looked from Descartes to Bernadotti to Pancho. “None of you, I presume. Well, I can. So, it appears I’m going to be needed — as crew. At least for the time being.”

Simon could see that the sense of his words had got through to Descartes, and he could also see the distrust in the eyes of the other two. Pancho made an unmistakable gesture towards the sea with his thumb. Bernadotti shook his head and spoke one word.

“Overboard.”

Descartes regarded the Saint for a moment longer, and then made up his mind.

“Our Mister Saint, he is right. We have need of him — for the present. The fish can feast upon him when he is to us no longer useful.”

Bernadotti hissed impatiently: “Let the fish have him now.”

Descartes flushed with anger and he stabbed a pudgy forefinger in Bernadotti’s direction.

“This is not a voting democracy! Silence, Enrico!”

“Good thought,” said the Saint approvingly: at which Bernadotti came close, gripped his shoulder, and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Just watch your tongue, Templar. You might still have an accident and fall over the rail.”

Simon addressed himself to Descartes.

“I suggest you tell this goon to remove his greasy fingers from my shoulders before I break his arm,” he said simply; and Descartes inclined his head in a gesture that instructed the goon to comply.

Bernadotti went back to his guitar with a final murderous glare at the Saint, and Simon and Descartes played on. After a while Descartes sat back in his chair, linked his fingers comfortably across that huge paunch, and regarded his opponent through narrowed eyes.

“Monsieur Templar,” he said slowly. “Please gratify my curiosity, since we are to have your company for an uncertain period. How did it happen that you arrived at the haras in such a providential manner, to rescue Madame Tatenor?” He inclined his head towards Arabella in a token bow as he mentioned her.

“That’s easy,” the Saint told him. “Her perfume is very distinctive, and I have an acutely well-developed sense of smell. I once owned a bloodhound, and from him I picked up some of the basic skills of—”

“Monsieur Templar!” Descartes cut in reprovingly. “I ask from a genuine interest. And I ask also how did you know of Tranchier? You spoke his name, and yet... and yet, that was not the name given at the time of the boat explosion. From where, I ask you, did you have the information of his name?”

“Well, let’s see,” Simon began. “There are at least two possible explanations for that. One is that I made enquiries, through contacts of my own, and got the background on the so-called ‘Fournier’, including his real name, as well as on the bullion robbery that he — and you three, and Karl Schwarzkopf — committed.”

“And the other explanation?”

The Saint glanced at Arabella, who was listening with close attention.

“You do all know that there was a sixth man involved, working from the Moroccan side?”

Descartes gestured towards the oil portrait of Tatenor.

“Only Karl knew him.”

Simon raised his glass, held it up before him towards the portrait as if offering a toast, and drank.

Descartes went very still.

“You? Were you the sixth man?”

“I only said there was another possible explanation. What do you think?”

Descartes reflected, twirling his drooping moustache.

“No,” he said finally. “I do not think it is likely that you are the sixth man.”

“But I do,” Arabella put in. “That’s how you knew all about the gold, the robbery, the names, Charles, everything. And why you found me. Why you had to find me.” She looked straight at him, with a kind of desperate sadness in her eyes. “What are you going to do with me, Simon? Overboard, like these swine have in mind for you?”

Simon returned her level gaze; and there was a sadness in his too, at the realisation that somewhere he had mishandled Arabella badly enough to have lost her trust, at least for the moment.

“Just remember,” he told her gently, “that it was you who looked me up on the island, not the other way round.” He looked at his watch. “Now I think it’s time I took a turn at the helm.”

There was a moment of tension as Bernadotti began to get up to stop him, but Descartes wagged a finger at the Italian.

“No — let Mr Templar work for his passage. And Captain Finnegan shall join our little party here.”

“Let me make a suggestion,” said the Saint. “When you pump him cleverly for information he hasn’t got” — he gestured towards the bar — “use the rye whiskey on him, will you? There’s only a bit of the good Scotch left.” He found Finnegan already part-way lubricated and keeping somewhat unhappy company with an empty hip-flask. After commiserating with him over his, and their, enforced temporary compliance with the Descartes party’s takeover, Simon sent him down for a rest and a refill, and took over the helm.

For perhaps half an hour he surrendered his thoughts to the soothing balm of the sea, as he had often done before in the course of innumerable adventures that had taken him upon it and under it. The weather was still fine and clear; the rays of the sinking sun, slanting forward from the starboard side, gilded the bows of the Phoenix as she rose and fell rhythmically on the slight swell, and the wavelets sparkled with a golden sheen that stretched ahead to the horizon. Finnegan had set a south-easterly course once they had cleared the Marseille harbour, which meant they were headed for Corsica... And so Simon’s thoughts were brought back before long to the events of the immediate past and to how they might develop, or be induced to develop, in the immediate future.

Even at the risk of further confusing or alienating Arabella for a time, he had played up the sixth-man mystery for the sake of the advantage it might be presumed to buy him with Descartes and his cronies. The Saint sensed that the more he could keep them guessing about his precise role and interest in the affair, the more time he was likely to gain. So long as he had time in hand, he had a sublime confidence that his resourcefulness, added to that generous providence which had always come up with some twist of events in his favour when he had needed it most, would win through in the end. Therefore his strategy was to play for as much time as he could: to watch and wait.

For the moment, he couldn’t be sure how much any of the other principals in the developing drama of the Phoenix and the gold of Charles Tatenor actually knew or surmised. Descartes had clearly done enough thinking in the last day or two to have come to the same conclusion as Simon himself — Corsica held the key. At any rate, Descartes had told Finnegan to set the same course he would have set for Simon and Arabella had their uninvited guests not turned up. The Saint didn’t know exactly how much Finnegan himself knew about the real purpose of those regular fishing trips to Corsica.

“Always the same little bay,” he said, without giving any sign of attaching to that consistency of destination the significance which Simon, and evidently Descartes as well, suspected it had.

The Saint had familiarised himself with the instruments and studied the chart that had been unrolled and spread out, which included Marseilles at the north-west corner. It covered one sector in a large-scale Mediterranean series, and bore the number 12. He pulled out the drawers of a massive ship’s plan-chest nearby and found them full of rolled-up charts of the same series, numbered up to 22. Number 12, of course, was missing; but so was number 18.

Which was an interesting piece of corroborative evidence, if any was needed, that they were headed in the direction most likely to yield something of interest. For the missing chart 18, according to the small-scale over-all map on the bulkhead over the chart drawers, covered an area which included the extreme south-western extremity of Corsica.

For the best part of an hour and a half more the Saint stood at the helm of the Phoenix, almost automatically making the necessary small corrections of course, as the pink and yellow of the sunset faded and the sky and sea darkened towards night.

His cogitations were interrupted when the door was opened, hesitantly, and Arabella came somewhat sheepishly into the wheel-house.

“Simon,” she began, in a small and conciliatory voice, “I’m sorry if I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusions... sorry if I’m wrong... I mean, sorry if I was wrong. But all this — being threatened, abducted, nearly gored to death by a bull... people looking for gold, people waving guns at me... It’s right outside my experience.”

Simon nodded, smiled, and put his hands on her shoulders to look directly into the eyes that matched the blue of his own.

“I know that,” he said simply. “The fact is, you’ve stood up to it all magnificently. Perhaps I should have got around to saying this before now. Very few women, or men for that matter, would have come out of that bull-ring ordeal as creditably as you did.” The Saint put a finger under her chin, and kissed her lightly — with understanding rather than passion. “The fact is,” he added, “I’ve worked alone too long now to be in the habit of sharing all my thoughts or hypotheses.”

She searched his features reflectively.

“Well, try sharing some of them,” she suggested.

Simon grinned, having seen that coming.

“I’ll try to be less mysterious,” he agreed.

“Starting now?” Arabella persisted.

“Starting right now. Fire away.”

“Right. What do you think really happened on Charles’s boat. You said you thought there was another man on board.”

“Somebody,” he said slowly, “got ashore from that boat just before she hit the rocks and blew up. I found a scuba outfit buried near the beach, and someone out of the normal run of rail passengers, someone with a French accent and without luggage, caught a train to London from the local station. It may not be much to go on, but it looks as if Fournier, as we knew him, set up the explosion to make it appear that the two of them had died in the crash.”

“What about the two bodies they found in the wreckage?”

“That can be explained,” Simon said. “Remember one thing. There was no positive identification of the bodies. Fournier could have hidden another body aboard before the race. Most likely an already dead body.”

Arabella nodded keenly and thoughtfully.

“I see. And then, Tranchier would have knocked Charles out, jammed the helm at the right moment, and quietly vanished underwater, coming up on the beach while all eyes were on the blazing boat.”

“You have to admit,” said the Saint, “it sounds possible — in fact it sounds likely. Maybe Tranchier had got what he needed from Charles, namely the low-down on the gold and how to get it. And maybe he then got greedy. He had a bright idea. He would do a Charles, and keep all the remaining gold for himself. But to do that, and be able to enjoy it without constantly looking over his shoulder for Descartes and the others, he needed to convince them, as well as the rest of the world, that both he and Charles were no more.”

Simon paused to turn on a chart-light in the wheel-house.

“What doesn’t seem to have occurred to him,” he continued, “was that Descartes would be harder to shake off than that — that he’d turn his attentions to you, as the only other person who might have access to the gold — assuming, of course, that there’s some left and that it is still in the form of gold.”

Arabella toyed thoughtfully with one of the charts in the open drawer.

“And what do you think about that? Is there gold? Is it in Corsica?”

“In Corsica?” He shook his head. “No. I think there’s gold all right, but I think it’s off Corsica. Somewhere in the sea. And I think your Charles used to go back to that spot in this yacht twice a year for the express purpose of bringing up a bar or two to boost his bank balance — until the next time.”

Arabella pursed her lips in a long whistle of amazed appreciation.

“Why, that’s — that’s perfect. What a smart man he was! A secure private bank. Just bring the gold up a bit at a time, sell it discreetly someplace...”

Simon nodded agreement.

“The odd bar or two wouldn’t attract too much attention.”

“The only weakness,” she observed thoughtfully, “—the one point of vulnerability in his banking system — would appear to be Finnegan. Surely he must know about the gold?”

“Maybe,” the Saint said. “The good Captain’s still a bit of a question mark in my mind for the moment. But he certainly wasn’t near enough to have toppled that crate; nor was he driving the van; nor did he stab Lebec’s man in the Bidou Club. But somebody did.”

“Then who?” No sooner had she spoken the words than she answered her own question. “You mean Fournier!” Then she added: “And where does the Saint’s clairvoyance tell him Fournier is now?”

By way of a reply, Simon stepped outside on to the deck and pointed aft.

“See that speck on the horizon? It’s a smallish boat, some kind of power cruiser. It’s been following about ten miles behind us for at least the last couple of hours. I’d be willing to bet it’s been on our tail ever since we left Marseille. And if it isn’t Fournier,” said the Saint, looking hard at Arabella as he paused, “I’d lay ten to one it’s your friend Inspector Lebec.”

2

Jacques Descartes surveyed the limp piece of bacon on his fork as if mesmerised by it.

“It is a great institution, your English bacon and eggs, is it not?” he observed, entirely without conviction. “A breakfast which is yet adaptable for any mealtime.”

“That’s the best I could do,” Arabella said, sulkily defensive, “with what I found on board. And anyway, I don’t recall being hired as a cook — on my own yacht. You’re lucky to get anything at all.”

“Of course, Madame, of course,” Descartes said hurriedly. “I did not mean... it is an excellent repast — an excellent impromptu repast.”

He looked expectantly around the table, and after a slight delay some grudging grunts of assent were forthcoming from Bernadotti and Pancho.

Simon Templar, who had helped rinse the strips of bacon and spread them out to dry on a towel in the galley, after they had fallen into some washing-up water, thought it politic to change the subject.

“You were saying something to Mrs Tatenor,” he reminded Descartes. “About the bullion robbery.”

“Ah yes — yes.”

Descartes impaled another piece of bacon on his fork, dipped it into the congealing eggs on his plate, and conveyed it to his mouth with a valiantly repressed shudder. After minimal mastication he swallowed it with evident relief and made a visible effort to recover the mood of story-telling flamboyance which Arabella’s culinary offerings had interrupted.

“Picture if you will, Madame — a crystal clear night. The moon is a brilliant yellow cavaillon melon... Suddenly — there is the ship. Outwardly a small passenger vessel, but in secret also a bullion ship. So low she floats in the water — so heavy with gold! Then — a burst of shots in the air, we stop her, we climb aboard. Everyone — hands up! We open the cargo hold — and there — there it is, gleaming in the moonlight. Gold, Madame — so much gold! Gleaming bricks of gold. So many, one could build a house from them!”

Descartes glanced at the faces of his audience of four — two of whom were remembering the night with him as he spoke. He continued with rising animation.

“So much gold! And all is perfect. No violence, as it was with the pirates of old. We had done it better — the shots only for effect. And then...”

“Then — the champagne!” reminisced Bernadotti, his fork in his left hand and his automatic in his right where it had remained all through the evening.

“Yes!” Descartes beamed as he relived the excitement. “Some passengers are drinking champagne. We take it. We drink our own toast — to success!”

The Saint pushed his empty plate aside.

“And where’s friend Karl during all this revelry?” he asked.

“Karl? He is in our boat. At the wheel, waiting.” As he continued the story Descartes’ smile slowly faded. “You will understand — Karl was employed with the Paris bank, and so he was important to the planning of the robbery. But also, even then, he was a driver of fast boats.”

Arabella shifted impatiently on her chair.

“Well — what happened next?”

“The champagne, alas, was our undoing. We finished first the loading — we transfer the gold. Now our launch — she is low in the water, but still a very fast boat. We drink a final toast. Then suddenly, comes the French coastguard — an armed boat! And we are caught.”

He paused and leaned forward, his smile completely gone now, and his face reddening.

“Do you listen, Madame? We are caught — except for Karl, and the gold. Brrrmmm! He goes. Very fast. The gunboat shoots, he drives dodging. They chase — many miles. So it is told at the trial, our trial. But Karl — he escapes. And afterwards, there is prison for us.”

“We get eight lousy years apiece in jail.” Bernadotti spat the words out sourly. “And your goddamn Charles gets clean away. Pfft! Vanishes into thin air.”

“Until last month,” Descartes continued, “when we see a magazine regarding the boating, and the race which is to take place from the island. And there on the page — a photograph. He is older, yes. White hair, yes. A different name. But the same man. Our Karl Schwarzkopf!” He turned again to Arabella. “Madame, would you not, in our place, desire that gold?”

“Yes,” said Arabella. “And in my place, too... Anyone for more bacon?”

During the answering rush of unenthusiasm Simon thought over the account they had just heard. It had certainly put some colourful flesh on what until then had been the bare bones of a story; but it had added nothing much of new substance, except perhaps the fact that Schwarzkopf, as he then was, had given the coastguard the slip after “many miles” in a good boat that must have been heavily weighed down with gold. Whether it could have reached the Coriscan coast from the vicinity of Marseille in one hop, or at all, was certainly open to question.

The Phoenix, however, had indubitably made that trip on a number of occasions, if Finnegan was to be believed; and she was now, as the night wore on, a good halfway there once again. A little while before, Simon had given the helm back, somewhat dubiously, to a Finnegan who was at least two sheets to the wind.

“Don’t you worry. I could navigate her in me sleep, so I could,” he had maintained.

Simon hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but as a precaution he had insisted that Bernadotti receive some elementary instruction and be prepared to stand by as a reserve helmsman. This arranged, Simon and Arabella had at last settled their suitcases in the Phoenix’s two comfortable guest staterooms. Descartes and his henchmen having cautiously elected to remain for the night in the saloon, that left Finnegan in continued occupation of his regular port-side cabin, which adjoined the galley.

Arabella, pleading tiredness, had gone to her cabin soon after the bacon-and-egg meal; and the Saint now decided to amble back up to the wheelhouse to reassess the current juggedness of Finnegan.

The two sheets to the wind had become two and a half, as the Saint had guessed from the movement of the boat. The bibulous Captain was groggy and bleary-eyed, but still standing.

“In Dublin’s fair ci-ty,” he sang, and wound the wheel right “...where the girls are so pret-ty... I forrst set me eye-ees...” He wound the wheel left, as he sang unsteadily on: “... on sweet Mol-ly Ma-lone...”

Simon shook his head sadly in a kind of tolerant wonderment, and went aft to look out over the stern.

On the calm sea the Phoenix’s wake was clearly visible in the moonlight for perhaps half a mile back. It described a pronounced zig-zag; a small redeeming feature being that the directional trend of the wake, if the zig-zags were averaged out, was fairly consistent, which meant that Finnegan was at least managing to maintain the Phoenix’s over-all course.

The Saint was making his way forward again — having decided to leave Finnegan where he was for a while longer but to remove all and any further alcoholic temptation that might be at hand — when he became aware of a pulsating quality in the light reflecting off the sea on the ship’s starboard side. At the same instant a bellow from Bernadotti, who happened to be on deck at the time, indicated that he too had noticed the pulsations of light and had likewise worked out what must be happening.

In her locked cabin, Arabella had removed the shade from a portable reading-lamp and stuck the bulb out of the porthole; and she was busily flashing an approximation of the Morse SOS signal into the night.

Bernadotti, still gripping his automatic, reached the cabin door within fifteen seconds, with the Saint just behind him. Bernadotti hammered on the door.

“C’mon, lady, turn that goddamn light out and open this door!”

It was clear that she had no intention of opening the door and every intention of continuing her signalling. It was as clear to Descartes, who appeared at the Saint’s elbow with Pancho only moments later, as to Simon himself; and he turned at once to the deaf-mute and barked out an order, with exaggerated lip-movements to be sure of being understood at once.

“The fuses — quick! The engine room!” If the Saint’s opinion had been asked he would have had to agree that emergency action was called for. From Simon Templar’s point of view, which was concerned with leaving himself plenty of room to manoeuvre without the complication of further intervention from outside, Arabella’s distress-signal had to be stopped, and quickly. Already, as Pancho shot off down the com-panionway to the engine room, it might be too late. It would depend on the alertness of whoever was at the helm of the boat that had been keeping pace behind them. And it would depend, too, on who that was...

The lights went out suddenly; then, after a few seconds of total darkness, the corridor lights came back on. Pancho must have found the fuse or main switch for the cabin lights, for they could see that there was now only darkness where a strip of flashing light had previously been visible under the door of Arabella’s cabin.

Descartes banged on the door.

“Open now!” he boomed. “Open, I say — or Enrico will shoot the lock. I will count to three only. One... Two...”

Bemadotti raised his automatic and Descartes stood aside.

“Three!”

The gun made a deafening crash that echoed and reverberated back and forth through the ship. The shot made a mess of the door and the jamb, but the lock itself still held — thus giving the lie to the countless western films in which lock-shooting is invariably and instantly successful.

Bernadotti charged the door with his shoulder, and the weakened jamb gave way. He dived into the cabin, grabbed Arabella roughly, and wrenched the lamp away from her. He gripped her painfully by the wrists and tried to drag her out; but she dug in her heels and fought back furiously with a hard kick to his shins followed by a strategically directed knee which caused him to double over in agony. When he finally straightened up it was with an extended string of Italian profanities; and then he advanced on Arabella with one fist upraised.

The Saint had followed him into the small and now unlighted cabin, and his first action was a preventive or, it might be termed, defensive one. The automatic was a nuisance and, so long as it remained in Bernadotti’s grip, a dangerous nuisance. It took the Saint about four seconds to dispose of that hazard in a controlled manner. First the fingers of his left hand closed in a steely grip around the Italian’s right lower wrist, effectively immobilising the joint to prevent the automatic from being turned and fired; and then one bony projecting knuckle of the Saint’s other hand was jabbed up hard into the same wrist, where it found a pressure-point near the pulse. The effect was that Bernadotti’s fingers sprang open as if by magic. The rest of Bernadotti yelped; and the gun, which was the object of the exercise, dropped to the cabin door. The Saint kicked it under the lower bunk, and proceeded from the defensive to the offensive phase of the operation.

He kept, and tightened, his grip on Bernadotti’s right wrist; and then he moved in close and bent the arm hard up behind the Italian’s back, bringing it to within an inch of the position that would break it or dislocate the shoulder.

And then, maintaining that grip, the Saint marched Bernadotti round to the door of the cabin, and with his other hand repeatedly banged the Italian’s head against the doorframe.

“I know you prefer to fight women, Enrico,” he said calmly during these exertions, “but don’t ever do it again while I’m in the audience. Next time I will break your arm.”

He released the arm and shoved Bernadotti away hard, so that he crashed into the bulkhead opposite the cabin door. But Simon had underestimated his resilience, and was caught partly off his guard by the sudden ferocity with which Bernadotti sprang back at him in a cursing rage for revenge. He succeeded in catching Simon with a hard but glancing blow to the side of the head, and for a few seconds a kaleidoscope of coloured lights danced before the Saint’s eyes. Bernadotti had meanwhile sprang back to gather himself for a new rush. Simon waited, poised easily on the balls of his feet like the superbly fit fighting animal he was.

Arabella watched from inside the cabin; Descartes had quietly drawn an automatic of his own from a pocket, but he was making no attempt to influence the fight. And so Bernadotti hurled himself forward again, with wolf-teeth bared in a blood-lust of fury; and Simon Templar stepped aside adroitly and delivered a single hard forehand chop to the man’s ribs.

There was a whmmph sound, and he fell back winded and gasping. Simon half-crouched, waiting for another rush...

But then something quite unexpected happened. Suddenly the corridor lights dimmed, almost to darkness; then, after a second or two, they brightened again, then dimmed... then brightened. And in time with those weird fluctuations of light there came from the direction of the engine room an even weirder sound, an unearthly laboured whining that climbed up and down the scale of musical pitch in synchronisation with the alternations of brighter and dimmer lighting.

“Pancho!”

Descartes’ exclamation reminded them of what had been forgotten in the heat of the struggle: that the deaf-mute had not returned from his electrical mission in the engine room.

Descartes motioned urgently to Bernadotti, who limped off down the companionway to investigate after a final murderous glance at the Saint. Descartes flicked the barrel of his automatic to draw attention to it.

“Monsieur Templar,” he said as the weird variations of light and sound continued. “You will please retrieve Enrico’s weapon now, rather than later. Carefully! Holding the barrel! Thank you. Now give it to me.” As Simon complied he added, “It was most careless of Enrico, was it not, to permit you to disarm him?”

It was then that the said Enrico reappeared grim-faced and shaken, and with naked fear in his eyes.

“Pancho is dead,” he told them. “Strangled with his own tie — in the generator.”

3

It was a scene of perfectly stark and graphically gruesome clarity.

There, heroically trying to keep on working, was the generator; and there lying across it was the prone and unquestionably dead body of Pancho Gomez, his tie caught in the flywheel spindle, which had dragged him in tight against itself. Sparks showered about his head with the periodic binding of the flywheel. The generator whined in varying pitch as it laboured against the unwonted resistance; and as its output fluctuated, so did the lighting.

All this could be, and was, taken in at a single glance. But to Simon Templar, and no doubt to the others, there was a central point of focus in that scene, a point that drew the attention inexorably and mesmerically, and made all the other details pale into mere backdrop. That compelling point of central and inescapable interest was the condition of the dead Pancho’s face. It was blue; and from between the blubbery lips, now grotesquely parted, there protruded a hideously swollen purplish tongue. Pancho’s ugliness in life had been remarkable, but it was nothing to his ugliness in death.

It was a sight which few can imagine who have not actually seen, as Simon Templar had seen a couple of times before, the victim of a strangulation. And even he found he needed to make a definite and deliberate effort to tear his eyes from the hypnotising sight of that lividly engorged tongue.

When he did tear himself from the sight, he found he was the first to do so. The others were still standing frozen in horror-struck immobility when he reached forward to the mains box, took down the big battery lantern, and switched it on. He stopped the generator, and as the lights died he handed the lantern to Descartes to free both hands for the task of disengaging Pancho from the works. He managed it in a little while, with the sullen assistance of Bernadotti, and they lifted the body clear.

“Glory be!” said a familiar voice from behind, as they removed the last mangled pieces of the mauve tie.

And Finnegan appeared, clutching his hip-flask in the tight grip of a man who knows how to look after his possessions.

Simon blinked in astonishment.

“The helm, Captain!” he said. “What on earth are you doing down here?”

Finnegan made a smoothing-out gesture with his hands.

“Well, now, didn’t I lash it tight? Sure it’ll come to no harm for a minute or two.” He moved forward to start up the generator again, shaking his head sadly. “And a nasty accident it was, to be sure.”

“If it was an accident,” Simon said slowly, looking hard at Finnegan.

“How what in the devil’s name would he be doin’ bendin’ over the generator?” Finnegan puzzled aloud, either ignoring or not hearing Simon’s comment.

As the lights came on, Descartes moved up close to him ominously, and Bernadotti did the same. Finnegan backed nervously away from them.

“Aw, you don’t t’ink...” He eyed them disbelievingly as they fixed him with accusing glares. “How could I...? How could it ‘a had anyt’ing to do wit’ me? Sure and didn’t I just this minute pop down to see what the thrubble was? Wasn’t I just in the wheelhouse — steering dhis ship for yous?”

“The ship is proceeding at this moment without your attentions at the helm,” Descartes pointed out. “Why should we believe that you did not ‘pop’ here one minute earlier, and force the strangulation of our associate?”

Finnegan glared balefully from Descartes to Bernadotti and back to Descartes. Suddenly they grabbed one arm each and began to frog-march him away.

“I was in the wheelhouse, I tell yous!” Finnegan protested loudly as they got him up the companionway and out on deck.

Which was a considerable achievement in view of the hindrance which Descartes’ great quivering paunch represented to any serious physical endeavour relying on his contributory efforts. But somehow they managed it, with Simon and Arabella following closely behind. More than that, within seconds they had changed their grip on the hapless Finnegan — Bernadotti taking his feet and Descartes his hands — and had hoisted him bellowing on to the rail.

“Over he goes!” said Bernadotti.

“Stop!” the Saint called out with all the quiet authority he could muster; and it was just about enough. He spoke with the crisp urgency that the situation required. “Finnegan’s the only one who can navigate us to that gold!”

Descartes and Bernadotti stood in frozen indecision for long moments. They could not be sure that Simon Templar was telling the truth; he might have already wormed the necessary details out of Finnegan himself. But it was not a point they could seriously afford to put to the test. Descartes spoke.

“As usual, Monsieur Templar, you are right. We must not be hasty...” They lowered Finnegan to the deck none too gently, and Descartes added, “... with the good Captain.”

Finnegan, who in the last few minutes had sobered up probably faster than ever before in his life, tipped his cap to Simon and scuttled back towards the wheelhouse.

Descartes stood in silent thought for a minute or so, and then went determinedly after him. Simon followed, and so did Arabella; and Bernadotti tagged along too.

“Now!” they heard Descartes say, as the fat man completed the enterprise of squeezing his vast wobbling bulk up into the wheelhouse ahead of them. “It is time we had a truthful, a fully truthful conversation, my fine Captain Finnegan of the bottle!” He stood next to the helm with folded arms so that his presence would be impossible to ignore. “So — please begin the talking. Or we may yet change our minds and put you over the side!”

“I tell you, I had nothin’ to do with it,” Finnegan began.

“The gold! About the gold!”

Finnegan looked blank.

“Sure and didn’t I tell yous before? Two or t’ree times. I know nothin’ about any gold. What gold is it that you’d be t’inkin’ of, now?”

“I am thinking of the gold that you and Mr Charles Tatenor would collect during your cruising to Corsica. So — to where on the island did you go?”

Finnegan eyed him warily, as he might have eyed a mad dog.

“We only went fishin’, and that’s the truth, so it is.”

“And where exactly,” Descartes demanded, looking searingly into Finnegan’s face, “did you fish?”

Finnegan sighed with long-suffering patience.

“Like I said before — we’d anchor in a small bay. Always the same one.”

“Why always the same bay?”

Finnegan shrugged.

“Mr Charles — he liked it there. And... he liked the next bay round. He’d go off around the headland in the dinghy — spearfishin’.”

There was a long silence while the last revelation sank in. Descartes’ eyes lighted up.

“So,” he said softly. “We make progress at last.”

“And you are taking us to that usual bay, aren’t you?” Simon put in.

“Certain it is that I am,” Finnegan said, clearly relieved to have got off the hook so lightly after all. “And we’ll be there in the mornin’.”

Before they left him, Finnegan assured Simon that he was now revivified and daisy-fresh, and would happily stay at the helm through the night until they reached their destination.

“Not another drop,” he told Simon earnestly, “shall pass these trut’ful ould lips this night.”

Simon felt confident in the circumstances that the Captain would be as good as his word; and he was incidentally glad of the opportunity to get his own head down for a few hours of sleep in preparation for whatever tomorrow might bring.

“Time for some shuteye,” he told Descartes as they left the wheelhouse.

“An excellent suggestion,” Descartes agreed. He pointed with his automatic. “Down below — both of you. As you will have observed, Monsieur, we are now outnumbered, my one associate and I.” He indicated Bernadotti. “And since the door to Madame’s cabin cannot now be locked, you will both please to spend the night in the other cabin.”

“You mean — together?” Arabella enquired frostily.

“I object strenuously,” Simon protested, with evident delight.

“Now look here—” Arabella began; but Descartes’ face and voice hardened.

“No, Madame! You look here,” he told here. “And you do, please, as the weapon commands!”

And so it happened that Simon Templar came to be locked in a cabin with Arabella Tatenor; and it happened also that he awoke with the first light of dawn, as he had intended, and slid silently off his bed while she slumbered on in the one opposite.

Their luggage had been carefully searched, of course; but the Saint had one useful possession which nobody had thought worth confiscating; and that was a slim pencil flashlight. He put it in his pocket now in preparation for the early-morning walk which he intended to take as soon as he had disposed of the minor obstacle of the locked cabin door.

He examined the little heap of feminine impedimenta that Arabella had deposited on the dresser, and selected a promising-looking hairclip. The Saint’s experience with locks and the techniques of opening them had been long and varied, and the cabin door would have delayed him only briefly in any case; but here he had an almost unfair advantage which made the enterprise childishly simple. He had been able to get a close-up view, not long before, of a similar lock on the damaged door of the next cabin, so that he knew exactly which type of mechanism he was dealing with.

Less than one minute later, after two minor adjustments to the bend he had made at the end of the clip, the lock gave a satisfying click as his makeshift instrument did the trick. Unfortunately that click also had a side-effect which he would have preferred it not to have.

It woke Arabella.

She rubbed her eyes and looked at him uncomprehendingly for a few moments where he knelt by the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked muzzily.

The Saint held up the bent clip and pointed to the door. Then he put his finger warningly to his lips. Arabella sat up and spoke in a firm whisper.

“OK. I’ll keep quiet, but I’m coming along.”

Simon shrugged his agreement to the ultimatum. He opened the door gradually, making scarcely a sound.

“Where to?” Arabella whispered.

“Finnegan’s cabin. I want to see if he knows more than he’s letting on.”

They made their way noiselessly along the corridor and past the galley to Finnegan’s cabin. But it yielded no surprises to the probing of the Saint’s torch; it merely looked lived in, as indeed it had been. There was a bunk, with the bedding not very tidily straightened since it had last been used; there were a few books on a shelf, some magazines strewn about, and three or four empty bottles. The carpet had a grubby look, and some of Finnegan’s clothes were hung untidily over a chair. It was, in short, just what might have been expected.

“Nothing untoward there,” Simon had to concede as he closed the door again softly from the outside.

Arabella had glanced only briefly around the cabin with him, and now he found her by the open door of a small storage room that faced Finnegan’s cabin.

“Look,” she whispered. “Fishing gear.”

The Saint looked. The store-room, lit by the pale dawn light slanting through a single porthole, was in a bit of a jumble, but he could see that besides the fishing gear various odds and ends were stacked there. There were some assorted cans of paint, a drum of paraffin, some hanks of cord and rope in various thicknesses, some lanterns and a couple of waterproof torches; there was a stack of folded rubber wet-suits — the Saint counted three — and the scuba outfits; a nylon mesh net; rods, reels, tackle boxes — and one large deep angler’s basket complete with lid.

Simon picked up the basket curiously. It was sturdily constructed, and quite heavy. He took off the lid and peered inside. It was empty, but somehow the inside depth seemed less than the outside. He prodded the base from the inside, and it seemed to give slightly.

“Aha! Look here,” he whispered. “Look at the base.”

He tugged experimentally at the raffia weaving of the base. It moved — and then he found he could lift it up and out through the basket’s top.

“A false bottom!” Arabella exclaimed. She reached inside, and pulled out a portable mariner’s compass about six inches in diameter, and then a folded sheet of paper that had been hidden beneath the compass.

It was the missing nautical chart number eighteen.

“Well, well,” Simon said quietly. “Here it is — the bay where the fishing, I’ll warrant, may be the best in all Corsica.”

Arabella squinted down at the chart.

“What are those pencil lines and whatnot?”

“Seventy-three degrees — white villa,” the Saint read. “Three hundred and forty-eight degrees — lighthouse... They’re bearings on shore landmarks, taken from the sea.”

“So the point where they intersect...”

“... must be where the gold is,” Simon finished.

“Bravo!” boomed out the voice of Jacques Descartes from behind them. “Excellent work. I congratulate you both!”

4

By the middle of the morning the Phoenix lay anchor in a very small and very blue bay in the deeply indented south-west coast of Corsica, and Captain William Finnegan had gone to his bed clutching a newly replenished flask of his favourite spirituous comfort.

During breakfast, the Saint had contrived to come to what he regarded as satisfactory terms with Descartes over the next stage of their working relationship. In spite of the two automatics which now covered his movements more consistently than before, and which might have had an inhibiting effect on a less robust personality than Simon Templar’s, he had been at his most relaxed and amiable. He had taken what pleasure he could in the breakfast itself; and when Arabella’s attention was momentarily elsewhere he had occasionally winced in sympathy as he watched Descartes bravely swallowing his gastronomic scruples along with some tepid and lumpy porridge. The Saint had even made a point of finding the time and patience to play two more games of backgammon — and to make sure of narrowly losing. But most important, he had been able to argue convincingly enough that he was the only member of the party with any knowledge or experience of diving.

In truth, he had not had to argue very hard, even in the face of Bernadotti’s simmering hatred. That somebody would have to go down under the water, to see what, if anything, was to be found in the place marked on Tatenor’s hidden chart, was self-evident; and the Saint was the obvious if not the only possible choice.

And that, for the moment, was enough for Simon Templar. So long as he could extend his practical usefulness to Descartes, so long would he succeed in extending his own life. For he had not the slightest doubt that once the time of that usefulness was manifestly at an end, Descartes would kill him with no more compunction than he would have spared for a fly that had trespassed upon his petit pain, or a beetle as he ground it underfoot... And as things stood now, that time would come only after, not before, the burning question of the gold had finally been answered one way or another. As before, the Saint reasoned that so long as he had time he had a world of prospects for somehow, given a moderately friendly disposal of destinies, retrieving his and Arabella’s — and Finnegan’s — fortunes from under the shadow of Descartes’ uncomfortable influence.

Nevertheless, nobody with the smallest knowledge of the Saint’s character and history would doubt that he had been sorely tempted to improve his position by some spectacular and decisive action. If he had had no one but himself to consider, he would certainly have contrived an ambush, or some other plan, to secure one of the automatics for his own use and thereby level the odds. But he didn’t have only himself to think of; and an ambush would have carried a degree of risk in which he preferred not to involve the others until there was no other choice.

Therefore it was the waiting game still; and it was against that background that Simon and Arabella prepared to set off in the Phoenix’s rubber dinghy.

When they had lowered the boat into the placid waters of the bay, Descartes got in clumsily, his ponderous bulk all but capsizing the boat. Simon and Arabella followed, watched by a surly and suspicious-looking Bernadotti at the rail.

“How can I know you’re even gonna come back — if you do find the gold?” he demanded.

Descartes’ deep chuckle floated across the water as they pushed the dinghy off.

“Dear Enrico! Be relaxed. This boat can scarcely contain even its present loading.” He patted his stomach significantly. “It is far too small for much gold. We will have to come back for the yacht. Somebody has to remain here to keep observation on Finnegan.”

The Saint had already put on his wet-suit and weight-belt. Now he yanked the T-cord to whip the outboard into puttering life, and pointed the stubby nose of the dinghy obliquely out to sea. For two hundred yards or so he took the dinghy out in almost exactly the direction from which the Phoenix had only recently arrived; and his keen eyesight did not fail to note that the tiny dark smudge was still on the horizon, and at the distance it had maintained since he had first spotted it early that morning while the Phoenix was still under way.

And if Jacques Descartes had been watching the Saint’s features very closely, and had known how to read the signs on that lean tanned face, he might have seen, faintly and evanescently, the merest shadow of a ghostly smile playing at the corners of Simon’s mouth as he took the dinghy up to speed and turned round the narrow verdant headland that formed the little bay’s northern margin.

A few minutes later, with the headland behind them, he slacked the throttle right off and let the engine idle for a minute while he (quite literally) got his bearings.

They were in the next bay. Small and blue like the one they had just left, this was the bay where the pencil marks had been made on the chart — the bay, presumably, where Charles Tatenor had “spearfished” while the headland conveniently blocked Finnegan’s view from the Phoenix. Simon checked with the compact but finely graduated compass they had found in the false-bottomed fishing basket, sighting on a white villa near the beach. Then he opened the throttle briefly to take the boat a few yards farther across the bay.

“Seventy-three degrees to the white villa,” he announced. “Spot on.” He turned his attention to the lighthouse on the next headland. “Three hundred and forty-eight we want, three hundred and fifty-six we’ve got. So we’re a fraction too far out. If we head straight for the villa...”

A few minutes later he raised a thumb in the air to indicate success, and slung the anchor overboard.

“Bon!” said Descartes.

In his impatience and obvious excitement he peered at the sea on both sides of the dinghy as if he expected to see clearly through the wavelets and the forty feet of water to the sea bed beneath.

“Thanks — partner,” said the Saint sardonically, as he put on his flippers.

Arabella helped strap the scuba tanks on his back, with their breathing-tubes and mouthpiece. He donned the face mask, sat on the side of the boat, put in the mouthpiece, and back-flipped into the sea.

It was some time since he had done any diving, but to him it was one of those physical activities that had a unique feel which the body never forgot; like swimming itself.

Here, according to the chart, the water was some six to seven fathoms deep — comfortably within the range of scuba equipment. Yet all diving, no matter how straightforward, brought with it something of the same eerie sense of otherworldly adventure. The wonder began with the first moment, when the water closed over his mask, and years fell away as if they had never been, as though he had made his last dive only the day before. In an instant he crossed from the ordinary and familiar world of light into that other and very different world, the ultimate dim green world of the undersea. All the eye-aching brightness above was replaced at once by a cool trans-lucence of fluid jade. And with that came the ecstasy of weightlessness, the dream-like ability to move in three dimensions almost without effort.

With a few lazy kicks of his flippers, he sent himself gliding down towards the sea bed. At a depth of about fifteen feet, he stopped to look back at the sea’s surface. It was like a vast ceiling of liquid glass, wrinkling and rolling in long undulations, with the underside of the dinghy projecting down through it and partaking in its rhythmical movement.

The Saint went down into the deepening green. A school of hundreds upon hundreds of tiny silver-and-yellow fish flicked noiselessly past him, and some of their bigger cousins peered pop-eyed through the glass of his mask as they followed him curiously down. Then a spur of jagged rock rose to meet him out of the olive twilight; some fronds of slimy weed brushed at his legs for a moment; and then he was within arm’s length of the bottom.

He gazed arcund at the glaucous world of weeds and fishes. The sea bed was mostly sandy there, but it was far from flat, and there were little forests of marine growths at intervals for as far as his eyes could see in the soft gloom. He turned and surveyed the sea bed in the opposite direction. The same irregular landscape, if it can be called a landscape, met his probing eyes.

And then he saw it. It was perhaps twenty yards away, and it could only have been the remains of a boat.

At first glance he had taken it for another patch of the almost fluorescently tinted seaweed; but on longer inspection the shape of a largish cabin cruiser was unmistakable. Simon swam towards it, and as he came closer he could easily understand how he had almost been deceived on that first glance; for the sunken boat was almost overgrown by variegated algae. The Saint had, as a matter of fact, had a lucky line of sight, from which it was the sharp point of her bows that had caught his eyes. If he had been looking from any other angle, he might never have seen anything but the splodge of weed... And perhaps, he thought as he swam the last few yards towards the sunken hull, that was a good omen.

The first thing he noticed was the big jagged hole in her transom. He examined the hole closely for a moment; he had seen enough shellfire damage before to be sure that he was looking at an example of it now. This must be the boat in which Schwarzkopf-Tatenor had made his run for it; and therefore Simon Templar knew that he was surely approaching the moment when his theory — for it had little right to be called anything more — would be put to the final test. He was well aware of the many “ifs” and “buts” he had glossed over, perhaps too slickly, in the speculations which he had shared with Arabella the previous night in a corner of that bright blue world forty feet above him. He looked up again at the high liquid ceiling. It was dimmed from this depth, but he could still make out the underside of the dinghy, now well to the edge of his field of view.

Yes, he knew his hypothesis was just that, on any objective view. That Charles Tatenor had kept his gold eleven years ago, rather than finding some immediate way of turning it into cash; that he had continued to keep it during those years since; that he had paced his “spending” of his hoard so that a good proportion of the original amount might still remain; and finally that he had kept that hoard, not in a series of safe deposit boxes around the world, not buried in a cave on dry land, nor in any of a hundred other good and possible hiding places, but just exactly where it had sunk — in forty feet of water, in the locker of Davy Jones.

That was the postulate: and the Saint knew that at any step in the reasoning, Charles Tatenor might not have acted in the way which that reasoning assumed. But the Saint’s thinking was characterised by those occasional intuitive leaps of great boldness, which had usually proved justified when they had been trusted in the past. And that was why — supported now by the evidence of the chart and its annotations, which certainly suggested something of interest down there — he expected to find gold in the sunken cabin cruiser he had discovered in the silent depths of the sea.

Slowly he finned his way along the length of the boat and back along the other side, the silence broken only by the regular suck of his own breath drawn in from the compressed-air tanks on his back, and the gurgle of the escaping bubbles that trailed upwards as he exhaled. He saw weird and garish fish flitting at their leisure between the rusting railings that had long been incorporated into their submarine world. He saw the slow sure accretions of eleven years, the barnacles and sea urchins which had colonised the superstructure. He saw the wheelhouse that was now an eerie undersea cave where a school of small translucent squid were pumping themselves sporadically along beneath the sodden and rotting remains of the helm. And he saw the big hatchway set in the after-deck, its fastenings still gleaming with a faint metallic sheen and still relatively free from the encroaching weeds... as if it had seen some use over the years.

He examined the hatchway cover. It looked massive, and the fastenings seemed to be of tarnished brass. They included a big solid pair of hinges, two spring latches, and a large heavy brass ring.

The Saint released the latches without difficulty. He grasped the ring and twisted it first one way and then the other. He felt the fastening mechanism yield reluctantly. He braced himself against the railings with his feet, and heaved up on the ring with both hands.

Slowly, against the treacle-like resistance of the water, the hatchway cover opened. The Saint let it come to rest on the deck in the open position, and then he undipped the compact but powerful underwater torch from his weight-belt.

He switched it on and directed the beam into the open space below.

It was deep — perhaps six feet or so. And the bottom seemed to be completely filled with what looked like lumpy sand.