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.