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.
VI: How Bernadotti was Discovered, and the Phoenix was set loose
1
Simon Templar swam head-first into the cabin below; and he would have been the first to admit that the hands with which he began to scrape at the sand had lost some of their accustomed steadiness.
Almost as soon as his fingers began to burrow, they came up against something more solid. He pushed some of the sand aside, and shone the light full on the area he had partially cleared.
And between the grains of sands he saw the fabulous glistening gleam of gold.
He scraped some more sand away; and almost in a dream he saw them. Brick upon brick, or bar upon bar — the terminology was the least important thing at that moment — they were piled up inside the sunken launch, under that mere sprinkling of sand.
And even though the Saint had been at least half expecting it, still the actual discovery of all that gold was a wonder and a marvel now that it lay there before him in tangible reality. Its permanent brightness had always been the prime attraction of that malleable yellow metal upon which the fates of nations had risen and fallen. Too soft to share many practical uses with humbler metals, it had become sought after not only for its rarity but also for that very chemical inertness which had preserved the hoard under his hands from the normally corrosive sea.
No naturally occurring substance will make so much as a chemical dent in gold: that is why, almost alone among metals, it is found in the free state as gleaming nuggets or dust of the pure element. Only aqua regia, a mixture of concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids in the “royal” proportions, can attack it. And that is why gold has been so prized by almost every civilisation and pre-civilised society that ever was.
In every country where it has been found, people had made religious artefacts from it. They had fashioned art and jewellery of it; craftsmen had given their lives to working with it; armies had been raised for it, wars started for it and stopped for it. Loves were traditionally sealed with it; it was the bedrock of currencies and economies; generations of men and women had schemed and lied and cheated and stolen and killed for it.
And Simon Templar was looking at maybe eight million dollars’ worth of it at current values.
It was not the first gold he had seen in bulk, and if the fates gave him half a chance it would not be the last. There had even been a time, years before, when he had gazed upon another underwater hoard of gold, and had played his part in bringing it to the surface, and finally in consigning its possessor to the deep in its place. But that was another adventure, one that had passed into memory with so much else; and this was a new sea, and there were new villains to do battle with, and a new heroine, and the gold of here and now.
He lifted one of the ingots to test its underwater weight, and then he let it fall back.
It was not easy to heave a deep sigh from within the respiratory encumbrances of a scuba-diving mask, mouthpiece and other paraphernalia. But the Saint, who could do many things that were not easy, managed to heave one, in spirit at least. The sigh that he heaved was profoundly heartfelt, the sigh of a man deliciously tantalised, a sigh of high aspiration and rich romantic yearning. To be confronted with such a splendiferous superabundance of boodle, which moreover must have been long given up for lost by its rightful owners, and to have no immediately available means of appropriating it for his own use, was almost more than a red-blooded freelance buccaneer could bear. Even such a seasoned practitioner of free-booting as himself, with all his experience of mouthwatering loot in every conceivable form and denomination, could hardly be blase about such a prodigious heap of solid swag as that.
His mind reviewed the situation objectively, once again, as he shifted a few of the ingots to check his estimate of their depth in the cargo hold, and their number.
Up above, Descartes would be waiting — waiting and wondering, with the automatic on his knee and Arabella beside him. Obviously the Saint had to go back to the dinghy, and just as obviously his prudent policy of saving their skins for as long as possible would dictate that he tell Descartes about the gold, even if not all about it...
He spent only a short while longer inside the boat; then, leaving the hatch open, he glided back and upwards through the lightening green, to break surface beside the dinghy. As he climbed aboard, blinking at the glare of the sun and pushing back his face-mask, Descartes leaned forward eagerly, with the automatic held loosely in his hand.
“Anything?”
Simon slipped out of the tanks, and took off his flippers expressionlessly.
“Well?” Arabella insisted.
Simon towelled calmly, as if he had just returned from a purely recreational swim.
“Well?” Descartes demanded. “Is it down there?”
In reply the Saint picked up an orange marker-buoy and dropped it overboard, throwing its anchor after it.
Descartes’ eyes widened with delighted realisation.
“Yes? Is it really there? The gold is there?”
“I’d say a good four, maybe five million dollars’ worth.” The Saint halved his own estimate with a straight face. “It’s certainly going to mean a fortune for somebody.”
“Magnifique!”
Simon looked steadily at him.
“We’re in luck, aren’t we, partner.”
Descartes hesitated; and then a broad and cunning smile, rich with gold of its own, spread across his face.
“Well done — partner,” he agreed.
The Saint was under no illusions about that, of course. He was quite sure that Descartes was going along with the implications of partnership for one reason only, which was a simple and practical one. The gold was still at the bottom of the sea, and the physical task of bringing it up remained. Whatever system they might manage to rig for getting it aboard, a diver would be needed. It might take a dozen dives or more; but somebody would have to go down there. And that somebody was certainly not going to be Jacques Descartes.