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.