Saint Overboard

AUTHOR’S
 
FOREWORD

WHEN this
book was first published, it appeared with the
fol
lowing preface:

For the
diving sequences in this story I am deeply indebted to
Messrs. Siebe Gorman & Co., of Westminster Bridge Road,
London, the well-known submarine engineers, who
most kindly
made it possible for me to
obtain the first-hand experience of
diving
without which the latter part of this book could not
possibly have been written.

For the idea of the story I am indebted solely to history. I
have
become so used to seeing the adjective “incredible” regu
larly used
even in the most flattering reviews of the Saint’s adventures, even when I
have taken my plots from actual incidents
which may be found in
the files of any modern newspaper, that I almost hesitate to deprive the
critics of their favourite word.
But I have decided, after some profound searchings of heart, that
in this case it is only fair to give them warning.
For their benefit,
therefore, and also
for that of any other reader who may be
interested, I should like to say that the facts mentioned on pages
18-19
may be verified by anyone who cares to take the trouble; and I submit that my
solution of one of the most baffling mys
teries
of the sea is as plausible as any.

Obviously, this was long before the invention of the Aqualung
brought
“skin diving” to replace many of the cumbersome procedures described
in some sequences in this story, to say nothing
of special kinds of
miniature submarines which can now cruise,
observe, and perform
certain sampling and pick-up operations at
depths which seemed
fantastic when Professor Yule invented
his “bathystol.”

That seems to be the trouble with writing
any story that hinges on some fabulous invention, in the days we live in. Once
upon a
time, as with the imaginative predictions of Jules Verne, progress
moved with enough dignity and deliberation to allow the book to
become a
quaint old classic, and the author to pass on to his
immortality, before making his incredible
creations merely com
monplace. Today, the
most preposterous contraption a fictioneer
can dream up is liable to be on sale in the neighborhood drug
store or supermarket while he is still trying to
flog his paperback
rights.

This is a trap I have fallen into a number of
times, and I think
I must now resolve to write no more stories of that type.
I
shall attempt no more adventurous predictions of what some
mad (or
even sane) scientist will come out with next.

But I am certainly not going to withdraw this
story, or any
other, simply because technology has outstripped many of
the
premises and limitations that it was based on. I think it still
stands up
as a rattling good adventure, and that should be
enough for anybody’s
money. Including my own.

I.
         
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR’S
SLEEP WAS DISTURBED,

AND
  
LORETTA
  
PAGE
  
MADE
  
AN
  
APPOINTMENT

SIMON TEMPLAR woke at the shout, when most men would
probably
have stirred uneasily in their sleep and gone on sleeping. It was distant
enough for that, muffled by the multiple veils of white summer fog that laid
their five prints of mist on the
portholes and filled the night with a cool
dampness. The habit of
years woke him, rather than the actual volume
of sound—years
in which that lightning assessment and responses to any
chance
sound, that almost animal awareness of events even in sleep, that
instantaneous
leap to full consciousness of every razor-edge fac
ulty, might draw the
thin precarious hair-line between life and
death.

He woke in a flash, without any sudden
movement or altera
tion in his rate of breathing. The only difference
between sleep
and wakefulness was that his eyes were open and his brain
searching back over his memory of that half-heard shout for a
more
precise definition of its meaning. Fear, anger, and surprise
were
there, without any articulate expression… . And then he heard the sharp
voice of a gun, its echoes drumming in a crisp
clatter through the
humid dark; another fainter yell, and a
splash… .

He slid from between the blankets and swung
his long legs
over the side of the bunk with the effortless natural
stealth of a
great cat. The moist chill of the fog went into his lungs
and
goosefleshed his skin momentarily through the thin silk of his
pyjamas as
he hauled himself up the narrow companion, but he
had the other animal
gift of adapting himself immediately to
temperature. That one
reflex shiver flicked over him as his bare feet touched the dew-damp
deck; and then he was nervelessly
relaxed, leaning a little forward with
his hands resting on the
weatherboard of the after cockpit, listening
for anything that
might explain that queer interruption of his rest.

Overhead, according to the calendar, there
was a full moon;—
but the banks of sea-mist which had rolled up towards
midnight,
in one of those freakish fits of temperament that
sometimes
strike the north coast of France in early summer, had
blanketed
its light down to a mere ghostly glimmer that did no more
than lend a tinge of grey luminance to the cloudy dark. Over on the
other side
of the estuary St. Malo was lost without trace: even
the riding lights of
the yacht nearest to his own struggled to
achieve more than a
phosphorescent blur in the baffling obscu
rity. His own lights
shed a thin diffused aurora over the sleek
sea-worthy lines of
the
Corsair,
and reached no further beyond
than he could have
spun a match. He could see nothing that
would give him his
explanation; but he could listen, and his ears shared in that uncanny keenness
of all his senses.

He stood motionless, nostrils slightly
dilated almost as if he
would have brought scent to his aid against
the fog and sniffed
information
out of the dank saltiness of the dark. He heard the
whisper of ripples against the hull and the faint chatter of the
anchor-chain dipping a link or two as the
Corsair
worked with
the tide. He heard
the sibilant creak of a rope as the dinghy
strained against the side of a craft moored two berths away, and
the clanking rumble of a train rolling over the
steel ways some
where behind the dull
strip of almost imperceptible luminousness
that was Dinard. The mournful hooting of a ship groping to
wards harbour, way out over the Channel towards
Cherbourg, hardly more than a quiver of vibration in the clammy stillness, told
him its own clear story. The murmur of indistinguishable
voices somewhere across the water where the shout
had come
from he heard also, and
could build up his own picture from the
plunk of shoe-heels against timber and the grate of an oar slipping
into its rowlock. All these things delineated themselves on his mind like
shadings of background detail on a photographic
plate, but none of them
had the exact pitch of what he was lis
tening
for.

He heard it, presently—an ethereal swish of
water, a tiny pitter
of stray drops from an incautiously lifted head tinkling back
into the oily tide, a rustle of swift movement in
the grey gloom
that was scarcely audible above the hiss and lap of the
sea under his own keel. But he heard it, and knew that it was the sound he
had been waiting for.

He listened, turning his head slightly, ears
pricked for a more
precise definition of the sound. Over in the fog where
the voices
had been muttering he heard the whirr of a lanyard whipped
from its coiling, and the sudden splutter and drone of an out
board
motor taking life jarred into the fine tuning of his atten
tion. Then
he cut it out again, as one tunes out an interfering
station on a
sensitive radio receiver, and touched on that silent
dragging cleave of
the water once more, that sluicing ripple of an
expert swimmer
striving to pass through the water quickly but
without noise.
Nearer, too. Coming directly towards him.

Still Simon Templar did not move, but his
immobility had an
electric tension about it, like that of a leopard about
to spring.
Whatever might be happening out in that steamy darkness
was
not strictly
any concern of his, except in the role of public-spir
ited citizen—which he was not. But it was for just that blithe
willingness to meddle in affairs which did not
concern him that
he had come by the
Corsair
herself and all his other outward
tokens
of unlimited wealth, and which made certain persons
think it so epically absurd that he should go
about with the nick
name of the
Saint. Only for that sublimely lawless curiosity, a variegated assortment of
people whose habitats ranged from the
gutters of Paris to the high spots
of Broadway, from the beaches
of the South
Pacific to the most sanctified offices of Scotland
Yard, could see no just reason why he should be
taking a million
aire’s holiday at
Dinard instead of sewing mail-bags in Lark
stone Prison or resting in a nice quiet cemetery with a stomachful
of lead to digest. But the roots of that outlaw vigilance were
too deep for cure, even if he had wished to cure
them; and out
there in the vaporous
twilight something odd was happening of
which he had to know more. Wherefore he listened, and heard
the outboard chuffing around in the murk, and the
swimmer com
ing closer.