Had Vogel changed his mind? That was more than the Saint could make himself believe. Or had Vogel begun to wonder whether it would be safe to kill him, when he must be presumed to have associates somewhere who knew as much as he knew and knew also where he had gone, who would make inquiries and take action when he didn't come back? The Saint could see practical difficulties in the way of casually bumping himself off which might have made even Kurt Vogel stop to think; and yet he couldn't quite convince himself that Vogel's strategic talents had at last been baffled.
He was alive without knowing why—without knowing how long that delicious surprise could last, but believing that it could not possibly last for long. And yet the instinct of life is so strong that he was more occupied with wondering how he would turn the reprieve to the most profit. Even when he was working down there on the strong-room door, believing that he had no hope of seeing the light again, that same queer instinct of survival had made him prepare for the impossible chance. Now, when he moved his arm, he could feel a wet discomfort in his sleeve that was more than compensated by the small steel instrument which slithered against his wrist—an instrument which he had not possessed when he left the deck of the Falkenberg, which might yet be worth more to him than all the gold of the Chalfont Castle. . . .
The water above his head thinned and lightened, became a mere film which broke against his helmet. The weight on his shoulders became real again, and the massive boots dragged at his feet. Then expert hands unlocked the helmet and detached it from the breastplate, and he filled his lungs with the clean sea air and felt the breath of the sea on his face.
Vogel stood in front of him.
"Perhaps you were justified in calling my former assistant an amateur," he remarked urbanely. "Judged by your own exceptional standard, I fear he was not so efficient as I used to think."
"It's hardly fair to compare anyone with me," murmured the Saint modestly. "And so where do we go after the compliments, Birdie?"
"You will go to your cabin below while I consider what is to be done with you."
He left the Saint with a satirical bow, and went on to give further instructions to the two replacement divers who were waiting to have the straps tightened on their corselets. Simon sat on a stool and loosened the cords and straps of his boots, while his own breastplate was taken off. As he wriggled out of the cumbersome twill and rubber suit he managed to get the instrument in his sleeve into his hand, and during the process of peeling off the heavy woollen sweater and pants with which he had been provided to protect him against the cold of the water he managed to transfer it undetected into an inside pocket of his clothes. He was not dead yet—not by a million light-years. . . .
He fished out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and lighted one while he sought a sign from Loretta. The smoke caressed the hungry tissue of his lungs and sent its narcotic balm stealing gratefully along his nerves; and over by the rail he saw her, slim and quiet and desirable in her scanty white dress, so that it was all he could do not to go over and take her quietly into his arms. Even to see her and to desire her in helpless silence was a part of that supreme ecstasy of the return to life, a delight of sensual survival that had its place with the smell of the sea and the reddening retreat of the sun, a crystallisation of the voluptuous rapture of living; but she only looked at him for a moment, and then turned away again. And then he was seized by the arms and hurried down the companion.
Loretta heard him go, without looking round. She heard the feet of men on the deck, and the whine of the winch as the second pair of divers were lowered. Presently she heard Arnheim's fat voice:
"How much longer will this take?"
And Vogel's reply:
"I don't know. Probably we shall have to send Ivaloff down again, with someone else, when Orbel and Calvieri are tired. I expect it will be dusk before we can reach St Martin."
"Are they expecting us?"
"I shall have to tell them. Will you attend to the telephone?"
Loretta rested her elbows on the rail and her chin on her hands. Her face slid down between her hands till her fingers combed through her hair. She heard without hearing, gazed over the sea and saw nothing.
A touch on her shoulder roused her. She shivered and straightened up, shaking the hair out of her eyes. Her face was white with a sort of lifeless calm.
Vogel stood beside her, with his hands in his pockets.
"You are tired?" he said, in his cold grating voice.
She shook her head.
"Oh, no. It's just—rather dull, waiting, isn't it? I suppose you're interested in the work, but—I wish they'd be quick. We've been here for hours. . . ."
She was talking aimlessly, for the sake of talking, for the sake of any distraction that would reassure her of her own courage. His thin lips edged outwards in what might have been a smile.
"Would you like a drink?"
"Yes."
He touched her arm.
"Come."
He led her into the wheelhouse and pressed the bell for a steward. As the man entered silently, he said: "A highball?—I think that would be your national prescription."
She nodded, and he confirmed the order with a glance. He held out an inlaid cigarette-box and struck a match. She inhaled the smoke and stood up to him without recoiling, with her head lifted in that white lifeless pride. Her heart was beating in quick leaden strokes, but her hand was steady.
Was it to be so soon? She wished it could be over before she was weakened by her fear; and yet the instinct of escape prayed for a respite, as if time could give cold logic a more crushing mastery of her revulsion. What did it amount to after all, this physical sacrifice, this brief humiliation? Her mind, her self that made her a living personality, her soul or heart or whatever it might be called, could not be touched. It was beyond reach of all the assailments of the body for so long as she chose to keep it so. "You don't burn your house down because a little mud has been trodden into the floor." She, her essential self, could triumph even in the defeat of the flesh. What a lot of exaggerated nonsense was talked about that one crude gesture. . . . And yet her heart throbbed with that leaden pulse before the imminent reality.
"Excuse me a moment."
Either he had observed nothing, or he was insensible to her emotions. Without touching her, he turned away and moved over to the bookcases at the after end of the room.
She had her respite. The steward returned, and put down a tray on the table beside her; he poured out a drink and went out again without speaking. Loretta took up the glass and tasted it: after she had sipped, it occurred to her that it might be drugged, and she almost put it down. And then her lips moved in the ghost of a wry grimace. What did it matter?
She looked to see what Vogel was doing. He had taken a chair over to the bookcase and sat down in front of it. The upper shelves had opened like a door, carrying the books with them, and in the aperture behind was the compact instrument panel of a medium-powered radio transmitting station. Vogel had clipped a pair of earphones over his head, and his long white fingers were flitting delicately over the dials—pausing, adjusting, tuning his station with quick and practised touches. Somewhere in the stillness she could hear the faint whirr of a generator. . . . And then she heard a clearer, sharper, intermittent tapping. Vogel had found his correspondent, and he was sending a message.
The staccato rhythm of the transmitter key pattered into her brain and translated itself almost automatically into letters and words. Like everyone else in Ingerbeck's, she had studied the Morse code as part of her general training: it was second nature to interpret the rattle of dots and dashes, as effortless a performance as if she had been listening to Vogel talking. She did it so instinctively, while the active part of her mind was too turbulent with other thoughts to pay attention, that it was a few seconds before she coordinated what she was hearing.