Hilloran was scrambling to his feet. "Yes, I'll get up!" he rasped, and his hand was making for his pocket. "But I've my own way of dealing with rats-" And there was an automatic in his hand. His finger was trembling over the trigger. Dicky saw it distinctly.
Then, in a flash, the girl was between them. "If you want the police here," she said, "you'll shoot. But I shan't be here to be arrested with you."
Hilloran raved. "Out of the way, you-"
"Leave him to me," said Dicky. He put her aside, and the muzzle of the automatic touched his chest. He smiled into the flaming eyes. "May I smoke a cigarette?" he asked politely.
His right hand reached to his breast pocket in the most natural way in the world. Hilloran's scream of agony shattered the silence. Like lightning, Dicky's right hand had dropped and gripped Hilloran's right hand, at the same instant as Dicky's left hand fastened paralyzingly on Hilloran's right arm just above the elbow. The wrench that almost broke Hilloran's wrist was made almost in the same movement.
The gun thudded into the carpet at their feet, but Tremayne took no notice. Retaining and strengthening his grip, he turned Hilloran round and forced him irresistibly to his knees. Tremayne held him there with one hand. "We can talk more comfortably now," he remarked. He looked at the girl, and saw that she had picked up the fallen automatic. "Before we go any further, Audrey," he said, "I should like to know what you think of the suggestion-that I might be a friend of the Saint's. I needn't remind you that this object is jealous as well as drunk. I won't deny the charge, because that wouldn't cut any ice. I'd just like your opinion."
"Let him go, first."
"Certainly."
With a twist of his hand, Dicky released the man and sent him toppling over onto his face. "Hilloran, get up!"
"If you-"
"Get up!"
Hilloran stumbled to his feet. There was murder in his eyes, but he obeyed. No man of his calibre could have challenged that command. Dicky thought. "A crook-and she can wear power like a queen. ..."
"I want to know, Hilloran," observed the girl frostily, "why you said what you said just now."
The man glared. "He can't account for himself, and he doesn't look or behave like one of us. We know there's a squeaker somewhere-someone who squealed on Handers-and he's the only one-"
"I see." The contempt in the girl's voice had the quality of concentrated acid. "What I see most is that because I prefer his company to yours, you're ready to trump up any wild charge against him that comes into your head-in the hope of putting him out of favour."
"And I see," sneered Hilloran, "that I'm the one who's out of favour-because he's taken my place. He's-"
"Either," said the girl, "you can walk out on your own flat feet, or you can be thrown out. Take your choice. And whichever way you go, don't come back here till you're sober and ready to apologize."
Hilloran's fists clenched. "You're supposed to be bossing this gang-"
"I am," said Audrey Perowne. "And if you don't like it, you can cut out as soon as you like."
Hillorn swallowed. "All right-"
"Yes?" prompted Audrey silkily.
"One day," said Hilloran, staring from under black brows, "you're going to be sorry for this. We know where we are. You don't want to fire me before the big job, because I'm useful. And I'll take everything lying down for the present time, because there's a heap of money in it for me. Yes, I'm drunk, but I'm not too drunk to be able to see that."
"That," said the girl sweetly, "is good news. Have you finished?"
Hilloran's mouth opened, and closed again deliberately. The knuckles showed whitely in his hands. He looked at the girl for a long time. Then, for a long time in exactly the same way, he looked at Tremayne, without speaking. At last. "Good-night, "he said, and left the room without another word.
From the window, Tremayne watched him walk slowly up the street, his handkerchief to his mouth. Then Dicky turned and found Audrey Perowne beside him. There was something in her eyes which he could not interpret. He said: "You've proved that you trust me-"
"He's crazy," she said.
"He's mad," said Dicky. "Like a mad dog. We haven't heard the last of this evening. From the moment you step on board the yacht, you'll have to watch him night and day. You understand that, don't you?"
"And what about you?"
"A knowledge of ju-jitsu is invaluable."
"Even against a knife in the back?"
Dicky laughed. "Why worry?" he asked. "It doesn't help us."
The grey eyes were still holding his. "Before you go," she said, "I'd like your own answer-from your own mouth."
To what question?"
"To what Hilloran said."
He was picking up his coat. He put it down and came towards her. A madness was upon him. He knew it, felt everything in him rebelling against it; yet he was swept before it out of reason, like a leaf before the wind. He held out his hand. "Audrey," he said, "I give you my word of honour that I'd be burnt alive sooner than let you down."
The words were spoken quite simply and calmly. The madness in him could only prompt them. He could still keep his face impassive and school the intensest meaning out of his voice. Her cool fingers touched his, and he put them to his lips with a smile that might have meant anything-or nothing. A few minutes later he was driving home with the first streaks of dawn in the sky, and his mouth felt as if it had been seared with a hot iron. He did not see the Saint again before they left for Marseilles.
Chapter IV THREE days later, Dicky Tremayne, in white trousers, blue reefer and peaked cap, stood at the starboard rail of the Corsican Maid and stared moodily over the water. The sun shone high overhead, turning the water to a sea of quicksilver, and making of the Chвteau d'If a fairy castle. The Corsican Maid lay in the open roadstead, two miles from Marseilles Harbour; for the Countess Anusia Marova, ever thoughtful for her guests, had decided that the docks, with their grime and noise and bustle, were no place for holiday-making millionaires and their wives to loiter, even for a few hours. But over the water, from the direction of the harbour, approached a fussy little tender. Dicky recognized it as the tender that had been engaged to bring the millionaires, with their wives and other baggage, to the countess's yacht, and watched it morosely.
That is to say that his eyes followed it intently; but his mind was in a dozen different places. The situation was rapidly becoming intolerable-far too rapidly. That, in fact, was the only reflection which was seriously concerned with the approach of the tender. For every yard of that approach seemed, in a way, to entangle him ten times more firmly in the web that he had woven for himself.
The last time he had seen the Saint, Dicky hadn't told him the half of it. One very cogent reason was that Dicky himself, at the time, hadn't even known the half well enough to call it Dear Sir or Madam. Now, he knew it much too well. He called it by its first name now-and others-and it sat back and grinned all over its ugly face at him. Curse it. ...
When he said that he might fall in love with Audrey Perowne, he was underestimating the case by a mile. He had fallen in love with her, and there it was. He'd done his level best not to; and when it was done, he'd fought for all he was worth against admitting it even to himself. By this time, he was beginning to see that the struggle was hopeless.
And if you want to ask why the pink parrakeets he should put up a fight at all, the answer is that that's the sort of thing men of Dicky Tremayne's stamp do. If everything had been different-if the Saint had never been heard of-or, at least, if Tremayne had only known him through his morning newspaper- the problem would never have arisen. Say that the problem, having arisen, remains a simple one-and you're wrong. Wrong by the first principles of psychological arithmetic.
The Saint might have been a joke. The press, at first, had suggested that he must be a joke-that he couldn't, reasonably, be anything else. Later, with grim demonstrations thrust under their bleary eyes, the press admitted that it was no joke. In spite of which, the jest might have stood, had the men carrying it out been less under the Saint's spell.
There exists a loyalty among men of a certain type which defies instinct, and which on occasion can rise above the limitations of mere logic. Dicky Tremayne was of that breed. And he didn't find the problem simple at all. He figured it out in his own way.
"She's a crook. On the other hand, as far as that goes, so am I-though not the way she thinks of it. She's robbing people who can afford to stand the racket. Their records, if you came to examine them closely, probably wouldn't show up any too clean. In fact, she's on much the same ground as we are ourselves. Except that she doesn't pass on ninety per cent of the profits to charity. But that's only a private sentimentality of our own. It doesn't affect the main issue. Hilloran isn't the same proposition. He's a real bad hombre. I'd be glad to see him go down.
"The snag with the girl is the late John L. Morganheim. She probably murdered him. But then, there's not one of our crowd that hasn't got blood on his hands. What matters is why the blood was shed. We don't know anything about Morganheim, and action's going to be forced on me before I've time to find out. In a story, the girl's always innocent. Or, if she's guilty, she's always got a cast-iron reason to be. But I'm not going to be led away. I've seen enough to know that that kind of story is mostly based on vintage boloney, according to the recipe. I'm going to look at it coldly and sanely, till I find an answer or my brain busts. Because- "Because, in fact, things being as they are, I've as good as sworn to the Saint that I'd bring home the bacon. Not in so many words, but that's what he assumes. And he's got every right to assume it. He gave me the chance to cry off if I wanted to-and I turned it down. I refused to quit. I dug this perishing pitfall, and it's up to me to fight my own way out-and no whining. ..."
Thus Dicky Tremayne had balanced the ledger, over and over again, without satisfying himself. The days since the discomfiture of Hilloran had not made the account any simpler.
Hilloran had come round the next morning and apologized. Tremayne had been there-of course. Hilloran had shaken his hand heartily, boisterously disclaimed the least animosity, declared that it had been his own silly fault for getting canned, and taken Dicky and Audrey out to lunch. Dicky would have had every excuse for being deceived-but he wasn't. That he pretended to be was nobody's business.
But he watched Hilloran when he was not being watched himself; and from time to time he surprised in Hilloran's eyes a curiously abstracted intentness that confirmed his misgivings. It lasted only for a rare second here and there; and it was swallowed up again in a fresh flood of open-handed good humour so quickly that a less prejudiced observer might have put it down to imagination. But Dicky understood, and knew that there was going to be trouble with Hilloran.
Over the lunch, the intrusion of the Saint had been discussed, and a decision had been reached- by Audrey Perowne. "Whoever he is, and whatever he's done," she said, "I'm not going to be scared off by any comic-opera threats. We've spent six thousand pounds on ground bait, and we'd be a cheap lot of pikers to leave the pitch without a fight. Besides, sooner or later, this Saint's going to bite off more than he can chew, and this may very well be the time. We're going to be on the broad Mediterranean, with a picked crew, and not more than twenty per cent of them can be double-crossing us. That gives us an advantage of four to one. Short of pulling out a ship of their own and making a pitched battle of it, I don't see what the Saint can do. I say we go on-with our eyes twice skinned." The argument was incontestable.