Saint Overboard by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

means who come to grief.”
    Simon Templar let a trickle of smoke drift
down his nostrils, and that instantaneous instinctive tension within him
relaxed into a pervasive chortle of pure glee which spread around his inside like
a sip of old brandy. Kurt Vogel, he reflected, must have been taking a
diet of the kind of mystery story in which the villain always
introduces himself with some lines of sinister innuendo like that—and
thereby convinces the perhaps otherwise unsuspecting hero that something
villainous is going on. In the same type of
story, however, the hero can never resist the temptation to respond in
kind—thereby establishing the fact that he
is the hero. But the Saint had been treading the fickle tight ropes of piracy when those same romantic
juveniles were cooing in their cradles, and he had his own severely practical
ideas of heroism.
     
    “There’s not much chance of that,”
he said lightly, “with my overdraft in its present state.”
    They sat eye to eye like two duellists baffled for an opening; and the Saint’s smile was wholly innocent. If Kurt
Vogel had hoped to get him to betray himself by any theatrical
insinuations of that sort, there were going
to be some disappointed hearts in Dinard
that fine day. But Vogel’s outward cordiality never wav ered an iota. He gave away nothing, either—the
innuendo was only there if the Saint
chose to force it out.
    “Are you staying long?”
    “I haven’t made any plans,” said
the Saint nebulously. “I might dart off at any moment, or I might
hang around until they make me a local monument. It just depends on
how soon I get tired of the place.”
    “It “doesn’t agree with
everybody,” Vogel assented purringly. “In fact, I have
heard that some people find it definitely un healthy.” Simon
nodded.
    “A bit relaxing, perhaps,” he admitted. “But I
don’t mind that. Up to the present, though, I’ve found it rather dull.”
    Vogel sat back and stroked the edge of the
table with his finger-tips. If he was disconcerted, the fact never registered
on his face. His features were a flat mask of impassively regulated scenery
behind that sullen promontory of a nose.
    A waiter equilibrating under a dizzy tray of
glasses swayed by and snatched their order as he passed. At the same time an
ad joining table became vacant, and another party of thirst- quenchers
took possession. The glance of one of them, sweeping round as he wriggled his
legs in, passed over the Saint and then became faintly fixed.
For a brief second it stayed set; then he leaned sideways to
whisper. His companions turned their heads furtively. The name
of Yule reached the Saint clearly, but after that the surrounding
buzz of conversation and the glutinous strains of the Casino
band swallowed up the conversation for a moment. And then,
above all interfering undertones, the electric sotto voce of a
resplendently peroxided matron in the party stung his eardrums
like a saw shearing through tin: “I’m sure it must be! … You know,
my dear—the bathy-something man. …”
    Simon Templar’s ribs lifted under his shirt
with the deep breath that he drew into his lungs, and the twirtle of
bliss within him rose to a sweet celestial singing. He knew now why the
name of Professor Yule had seemed familiar, and why he had tried to place that
fresh apple-cheeked face over the trim grey beard. Only a few months ago
the newspapers had run their stories and the illustrated
weeklies had carried special pictures; the National Geographic
Magazine had brought out a Yule Expedition num ber. For
Wesley Yule had done something that no man on earth had ever done before.
He had been down five thousand feet into the Pacific Ocean,
beyond any depth ever seen before by human eyes—not in any sort of glorified
diving bell, but in a fantastic bulbous armour built to withstand the
terrific pressure that would have crushed an unprotected man like a
midge on a window-pane, in which he was able to move and walk about