Saint Overboard Read Free Page B

shyly, “and I don’t mind
telling you that my modesty has been outraged. If you make another attempt to assault me—— ”
    The grey eyes cut him with ice-cold lights.
    “I didn’t think you were that sort of
man.”
    “Oh, but I am. Now why don’t you look at
the scenery, dar ling? We could have quite a chat before you go home. I
want to know what this gay game is that starts shooting in the night and sends you
swimming through the fog. I want to know what makes you and
Hooknose string along with the same crazy story, and what sort of a
bet it is that makes you go bathing with a gun on your
belt!”
    The last fragment of his speech was not quite
accurate. Even as he uttered it, her hand flashed to the waterproof
pouch; and he looked down the muzzle of a tiny automatic that was
still large enough to be an argument at point-blank range.
    “You’re quite right about the gun,”
she said, with a new glacial evenness in her voice. “And, as you say,
Frenchmen have such a wonderful grip on the facts of life—haven’t
they? Their juries are pretty easy on a woman who shoots her lover… .
Don’t you think you’d better change your mind?”
    Simon considered this. She saw the chiselling
of his handsome reckless face, the bantering lines of devil-may-care
mouth and eyebrow, settle for a moment into quiet calculation, and
then go back to the same irresponsible amusement.
    “Anyway,” he remarked, “she
does give the fellow his fun first. Stay the night and shoot me after
breakfast, and I won’t complain.”
    The magnificent unfaltering audacity of him
left her for a moment
without words. For the first time her eyes wavered, and he read in them something that might have been an unwilling regret.
    “For the last time—— ”
    “Will I let you go.”
    “Yes.”
    “No.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “So am I,” said the Saint gently.
“From the brief gander I had at Hooknose just a little while back,
he looked like a man’s job to me. I know you’ve got what it takes, but
these games can get pretty tough. Tough things are my job, and I hate being
jock eyed out of a good fight.”
    “I’m going now,” she said. “I
mean it. Don’t think I’m afraid to shoot, because I’m ready for accidents. I’ll
count five while you get out of the way.”
    The Saint looked at her for a second, and
shook his head.
    “Oh, well,” he said
philosophically. “If you feel that way about it …”
    He stood up unhurriedly. And as he stood up,
one hand slid up the bulkhead with him and touched the light switch.
    For the first instant the darkness in the
cabin was absolute. In the sudden contrasting blackness that
drenched down across her vision she lost even a silhouette of him in
the opening above the companion. And then his fingers closed and
tightened on her wrist like a steel tourniquet. She struggled and tripped
against the couch, falling on the soft cushions; but he went down with her, and
her hand went numb so that she had no power even to pull the trigger
while he took the automatic away. She heard his quiet chuckle.
    “I’m sorry, kid.”
    As they had fallen, his lips were an inch
from hers. He bent his head, so that his mouth touched them. She fought him
wildly, but the kiss clung against all her fighting; and then suddenly she was
passive and bewildering in his arms.
    Simon got up and switched on the lights.
    3
    “I’m Loretta Page,” she said.
    She sat wrapped in his great woolly bathrobe,
sipping hot coffee and smoking one of his cigarettes. The Saint sat
opposite her, with his feet up and his head tilted back on the bulkhead.
    “It’s a nice name,” he said.
    “And you?”
    “I have dozens. Simon Templar is the only
real one. Some people call me the Saint.”
    She looked at him with a new intentness.
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m so very, very
respectable.”
    “I’ve read about you,” she said.
“But I never heard anything like that before.”
    He smiled.
    “Perhaps it isn’t true.”
    “There