"Then we'll have lost a bet," he said grimly. "We could hustle back to Lucerne, get a car, come back here by road — I could find the place now, all right — and mount guard until they try to drive away with him. Then we could try an interception and rescue — supposing he isn't already gone, or they don't take him away even before we get back. On the other hand, they might keep him here for a week, and how could we watch all that time? Instead of waiting, we could be breaking in tonight. It's the kind of choice that generals are paid and pilloried for making."
She held her head in her hands.
"What can I say?"
Simon Templar prodded the starter button, and turned the wheel to point the little speedboat back towards Lucerne.
"You'll have to make up your own mind, Irma," he said relentlessly. "It's your father. You tell me, and we'll play it in your key."
There was little conversation on the return drive. The decision could only be left to her. He did not want to influence it, and he was glad it was not up to him, for either alternative seemed to have the same potentiality of being as catastrophically wrong as the other.
When he had brought the boat alongside the dock and helped her out, he said simply: "Well?"
"Tonight," she replied resolutely. "That is the way it must be."
"How did you decide?"
"As you would have, I think. If the nearest man on the dock when we landed wore a dark shirt, I would say 'Tonight'. It was a way of tossing up, without a coin. How else could I choose?"
Simon turned to the man in the blue jersey who was nearest, who was securing the boat to its mooring rings.
"Could we reserve it again tonight?" he inquired in German. "The Fräulein would like to take a run in the moonlight."
"At what time?" asked the attendant, unmoved by romantic visions. "Usually I close up at eight."
"At about nine," said the Saint, ostentatiously unfolding a hundred-franc note from his wad. "I will give you two more of these when I take the boat, and you need not wait for us. I will tie it up safely when we come back."
"Jawohl, mein Herr!" agreed the man, with alacrity. "Whenever you come, at nine or later, I shall be here."
Simon and Irma walked back over the planking to the paved promenade where natives and visitors were now crisscrossing, at indicatively different speeds, on their homeward routes. The sun had already dropped below the high horizons to the west, and the long summer twilight would soon begin.
"Suppose we succeed in this crazy project," he said. "Have you thought about what we do next?"
"My father will be free. I will book passage on a plane and take him back to Sweden with me."
"Your father will be free, but will you? And will I? Or for how long? Has it occurred to you, sweetheart, that the Swiss government takes a notoriously dim view of piratical operations on their nice neutral soil, even with the best of motives? And the Russkis won't hesitate to howl their heads off at this violation of their extra-territorial rights."
Her step faltered, and she caught his arm.
"I am so stupid," she said humbly. "I should have thought of that. Instead, I was asking you to become a criminal, to the Swiss Government, instead of a hero. Forgive me." Then she looked up at him in near terror. "Will you give it up because of that?"
He shook his head, with a shrug and a wry smile.
"I've been in trouble before. I'm always trying to keep out of it, but Fate seems to be agin me."
"Through the travel agency, perhaps I can arrange something to help us to get away. Let me go back to my hotel and make some telephoning."
"Where are you staying?"
"A small hotel, down that way." She pointed vaguely in the general direction of the Schwanenplatz and the older town which lies along the river under the ancient walls which protected it five centuries ago. "It is all I can afford," she said defensively. "I suppose you are staying here? Or at the Palace?" They were at the corner of the Grand National Hotel and the Halderistrasse.
"Here. It's the sort of place where travel bureaux like yours send people like me," he murmured. "So you go home and see what you can organize, and I'll see what I can work out myself. Meet me back here at seven. I'm in room 129." He flagged a taxi which came cruising by. "Dress up prettily for dinner, but nothing fussy — and bring a sweater, because it'll be chilly later on that thar lake."
This time he didn't have to take advantage of a situation. She put up her lips with a readiness which left no doubt as to how far she would have been willing to develop the contact in a less public place.
"See you soon," he said, and closed the taxi door after her,thoughtfully.
He had a lot to think about.
Without unchivalrously depreciating the value of any ideas she might have or phone calls she could make, he would not have been the Saint if he could have relied on them without some independent backing of his own. He had softened in many ways, over the years, but not to the extent of leaving himself entirely in the hands of any female, no matter how entrancing.
By seven o'clock, when she arrived, he had some of the answers; but his plan only went to a certain point and he could not project beyond that.
"I think I've figured a way to get into that house," he told her. "And if the garrison isn't too large and lively we may get out again with your father. But what happens after that depends on how hot the hue and cry may be."
She put down her sweater and purse on one of the beds — she had found her way to his room unannounced, and knocked on the door, and when he opened it she had been there.
"I have been telephoning about that, as I promised," she said. "I have arranged for a hired car and a driver to be waiting for us at Brunnen — that is at the other end of the lake, closer to the house than this, and just about as close to Zürich. He will drive us to the airport. Then, I have ordered through the travel agency to have a small private plane waiting to fly us all out."
"A private charter plane — how nice and simple," he murmured. "But can you afford it?"
"Of course not. I told them it was for a very rich invalid, with his private nurse and doctor. That will be you and I. When we are in Sweden and they give us the bill I shall have to explain everything, and I shall lose my job, but my father will be safe and they cannot bring us back."
He laughed with honest admiration.
"You're quite amazing."
"Did I do wrong?" She was crestfallen like a child that has been suddenly turned on, in fear of a slap.
"No, I mean it. You worked all that out while you were changing your clothes and fixing your hair, and you make it sound so easy and obvious. Which it is — now you've told me. But I recognize genius when I see it. And what a lot of footling obstacles disappear when it isn't hampered by scruples!"
"How can I have them when I must save my father's "life? But what you have to do is still harder. What is your plan?"
"I'll tell you at dinner."
In an instant she was all femininity again.
"Do I look all right?"
She invited inspection with a ballerina's pirouette. She had put on a simple wool dress that matched her eyes and moulded her figure exactly where it should, without vulgar ostentation but clearly enough to be difficult to stop looking at. The Saint did not risk rupturing himself from such an effort.
"You're only sensational," he assured her. "If you weren't, I wouldn't be hooked on this caper."
"Please?"
"I wouldn't be chancing a bullet or a jail sentence to help you."
"I know. How can I thank you?" She reached out and took his right hand in both of hers. "Only to tell you my heart will never forget."
With an impulsively dramatic gesture, she drew his hand to her and placed it directly over her heart. The fact that a somewhat less symbolic organ intervened did not seem to occur to her, but it imposed on him some of the same restraint that a seismograph would require to remain unmoved at the epicenter of an earthquake.