The unexpected encounter had taken John as much by surprise as it had the ginger-haired officer. For a moment they stared at one another. John’s first impulse was to turn and run, but he knew that would be fatal. This was obviously a case for bluff—if he could only think of one. He wondered what line C.B. would have taken in these circumstances, but could not, for the life of him, imagine. The big man spoke again, more sharply: ‘What are you doing down here? Answer me!’
‘I am looking for Count Jules,’ John blurted, that being the first plausible lie that had come into his head.
‘How did you get aboard?’
‘By the gangway, of course.’
‘And the watchman did not give you directions where to find Monsieur le Comte?’
‘No, he was busy talking to someone else at the time.’
‘Why did you not wait and ask?’
‘I was in a hurry, and I thought that in a small yacht like this I would have no difficulty in finding him.’
John’s voice gained in confidence as he developed his bluff, but his heavily-built questioner continued to stare at him suspiciously, and muttered with a scowl, ‘You are a foreigner; are you not?’
There being no point in denying it, and his accent making it futile to do so, John nodded. Then, in an attempt to escape from this dangerous interrogation, he said, ‘I’m sorry to have invaded the private quarters of the ship, but I must have come down a deck too far by mistake. I’ll go up again and—’
Before he could finish his sentence and turn away, the man interrupted aggressively, ‘What do you want with Monsieur le Comte?’
‘I am an old friend of his.’
‘Is he expecting you?’
For a second John hesitated, and in that second he was lost. His ‘Yes’ came too late to carry conviction. The blue eyes staring into his showed frank disbelief. In two strides the officer was upon him. Seizing John by the arm, he rapped out: ‘Very well! I will take you to him.’
John’s brain worked quickly enough now. He realised that if he allowed himself to be taken up to Jules his goose would be cooked. He might have tackled Jules alone, had he followed his impulse of a few minutes back to take him by surprise in the saloon, but he could not hope to overcome both Jules and this strapping man. It seemed certain now that he had let himself in for just the sort of thing C.B. had feared might happen to him if he took the law into his own hands by coming aboard the yacht. They would first beat him up, then hand him over to the police. Such a prospect was bad enough, but the thought which infuriated him beyond all else was that his attempt to protect Christina should be foiled almost before it had started. It was barely ten minutes since he had come on board, and he was now to be lugged before her as a captive. It was revolt at such a swift and ignominious end to his venture that spurred him to action.
The officer had him firmly by the left arm, but his right was free. Thrusting his hand under his coat, he whipped out the cosh, raised it, and struck sharply at his captor. He did not need to deliver a second blow. The leather-covered egg-shaped piece of lead came down on the man’s uniform cap with hardly a sound; but his blue eyes suddenly bulged, his grip on John’s arm relaxed, and he slumped in a heap on the deck.
For a second John held his breath; then he felt himself beginning to tremble. He had belatedly remembered what C.B. had said about using the cosh with caution. If he had killed the officer it would be a clear case of murder. Thrusting the weapon back into his trouser top, he stooped, and with frantic hands pulled the limp body towards him, so that he could thrust off the cap and examine the man’s head.
The passage was lit only dimly by the small blue ceiling lights that are usually kept on permanently in ships’ corridors. Anxiously John peered down at his victim’s mat of short, ginger curls for signs of blood. He could see none, and his searching fingers found only a little wetness. With intense relief he realised that the man’s cap and the thickness of his hair must have saved him from serious injury. Even if his skull was slightly cracked the absence of any mushy depression or copious bleeding seemed clear indications that there was no risk of his dying.
Relief at being freed from the awful thought that he might have killed a man was swiftly succeeded by a lesser, but still pressing, anxiety. If he had not got a corpse on his hands, he had something like it. The limp body at his feet showed no signs of returning animation; so he was not faced with the unhappy choice of either humanely rendering it assistance at his own peril or giving it another biff on the head to prevent its calling on anyone else to do so; but if he left it lying where it was some other member of the crew might come upon it at any moment. Should that happen, and a general alarm be raised, unless he had first found himself a safe hiding-place, he would again be caught before the yacht left harbour.
The obvious course was to carry the unconscious officer back into the cabin from which he had emerged. John knew that good old ‘Crack’ and others of his mother’s fiction characters performed such feats without the least difficulty; but, being of slight build himself and having already felt the dead-weight of the powerfully built body, he had serious misgivings about his ability to get it there. Nonetheless, feeling that to be the only step by which he could prevent the discovery within a very short time that an act of violence had been committed aboard, he set about the job with feverish energy.
Getting his hands under his victim’s armpits, he endeavoured to half-lift, half-drag him towards the cabin; but the best he could manage was to pull him a few inches at a time along the floor. At every tug his head jerked and rolled ludicrously on his shoulders, his arms flapped like mechanical fins, and the heels of his boots scraped noisily on the boards. While John heaved, strained, and panted from his exertions, he expected every moment that someone would appear at one or other end of the corridor and catch him red-handed; but after three minutes’ gruelling struggle he had the body over the door sill. For him to have got it up on to the bunk unaided would have required further precious moments of exhausting effort; so, instead, he pushed a pillow under the injured man’s head before stepping out of the cabin and closing its door behind him.
Breathless, and still trembling a little, he again considered whether his best prospects of coming upon a good hiding-place lay forward or, through the bulkhead, astern. As he hesitated a sudden thought struck him with fresh dismay. Getting the unconscious officer back into his cabin had only put off the evil hour of discovery. In a crew of only a dozen or so he would soon be missed. Someone was certain to come down to his cabin to look for him. Had John been able to lock it, there would have been a chance of them assuming that the officer had been detained ashore and missed his ship. But there was no key in the door, so whoever came to look for him would walk straight in on his body.
That would mean an immediate enquiry. Perhaps by then he would have come round sufficiently to describe how he had been attacked. In any case he would do so before many hours had passed. The yacht would then be searched from stem to stern as a precaution against the foreigner who had attacked him still being on board. An 800-ton yacht was very different from a liner, or even a tramp; it had no great air-ducts, baggage holds or mountains of cargo, which would help a stowaway to elude a search.
As these disconcerting thoughts ran through John’s mind he was quick to see that wherever he concealed himself the chances were now at least ten to one on his being dragged from his hiding-place within the next hour or two. By knocking out the ginger-haired man he had burnt his boats, and could now only save himself by getting ashore again before the yacht sailed. If he failed to do so he was not only liable to be rough-handled by the crew, but would later find himself faced with a charge of having assaulted a ship’s officer in the execution of his duty.
Visions of a French prison spurred him to fresh action. A few swift steps took him back through the bulkhead. Pausing only to close the door in it behind him, he hurried along the semi-dark corridor to the foot of the after-companionway. In going up it he proceeded with more caution, and, before exposing himself to view in the better-lighted corridor above, peered along it at deck level, to assure himself that it was still empty.
It was, and as his glance swept it the sight of a key, protruding from the lock of a door which he knew must be that of the galley, stirred in him a sudden impulse to rail against fate. He felt that it was ill-luck alone that had brought his venture to nought, and compelled him to abandon it so quickly; for he might have been safely hidden by now, had he not had the misfortune to run into the officer; and, even then, had that key been in the door of the man’s cabin, instead of in that of the galley, the simple act of turning it would at least have spared him the mortification of having to make a bolt for it from fear that a hue and cry might start after him at any moment.
On tip-toe he ascended the upper ladder of the companionway, and from behind its curved hatch peeped out along the deck. It was still in semi-darkness, and the members of the crew whom he had seen come aboard were still below decks. He glanced towards the rail, but decided against again leaping the gulf between the ship and the quay, as the rail would make it so awkward to get a good take-off from this direction. Not much more than sixty feet of clear deck lay between him and the gangway. He had only to cross it at a run and before anyone had a chance to stop him he would be ashore. The watchman might shout after him, but that was very different from being challenged when coming aboard. Even if he were pursued he should have no great difficulty in getting away down one of the dark alleys that intersected the buildings facing the quay.
Swiftly now his thoughts flowed on. Why should he risk pursuit at all? There was still no sign of any intention shortly to take the yacht to sea. If he walked calmly along the deck and down the gangway the watchman would probably think that he was one of the crew going ashore for ten minutes on some small errand, and would not even challenge him.
Standing up, he moved out from behind the hatchway, his eyes fixed on the bridge. It was dully lit, but he could see no one up there; so it looked as if the watchman was either in the wheel-house, which faced forward, or behind the canvas screen at its starboard side, where, leaning on the rail, he could look down on the wharf. With firm, light steps John walked forward along the starboard side of the deck.
As he reached the first skylight he gave a swift glance through it. Below in the galley the steward and the chef were still at table: the latter was busily mixing a large bowl of salad. A few paces further on John came level with the skylight through which he had seen Jules and Christina. It lay on the port side, and ten feet away, but he could not resist the temptation to cross over for a quick peep. On his way he glanced up at the bridge to assure himself that nothing had altered there; then he peered down between the brass protecting rods of the skylight into the saloon. Jules and Christina were still sitting on either side of a small table and, apparently, had hardly altered their positions since he had last seen them.
In the interval he had been subject to so many emotions that it was difficult for him to realise that not much over ten minutes could have passed; and that during them events had entirely re-orientated the impulses that governed his actions. Then they had been inspired by a determination to protect Christina; now, they were the outcome of a craven fear to get out of danger as quickly as he could.
It was looking down on them again that made him aware of the change in mentality he had undergone, and no sooner was he conscious of it than he began to feel terribly ashamed. It had been bad luck to run into that officer, but he had handled the situation promptly and, as yet, had no reason at all to suppose that anyone else suspected his presence on board. As a result of the encounter he might find himself in very hot water unless he got off the yacht before she sailed; but that was no reason why he should not attempt to take Christina with him.
His prospects of succeeding in such an attempt were considerably better than they had been when he had contemplated making it ten minutes earlier. The major part of the crew could not turn up unexpectedly just as he was hoping to get Christina away, as they had arrived and gone below already. Having now had experience in using his cosh effectively, he felt far more confident of his chances of rendering Jules hors de combat before he could give the alarm. The way was clear from the after-hatch to the gangway. Above all, he knew now that he had but to turn the key in the galley door to ensure that the only two people within Jules’s call would be unable to come to his assistance if they heard him give a shout.
With a fresh wave of shame, it was borne in on John that he had been granted as near perfect conditions for a rescue as anyone could hope for, yet had very nearly thrown the opportunity away during a brief period of unjustifiable panic. He quailed at the thought of what C.B.’s opinion of him would have been afterwards had he done so, and that imperturbable secret agent had ever learned the facts. It needed only this last goad to his amour-propre to confirm John in his new resolution. Turning away from the skylight, he walked swiftly back to the after-hatch.
Losing not a second now, he ran lightly down the ladder, turned the key in the galley door, crossed the passage, opened that of the saloon, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.
Lack of experience in resorting to violence robbed him of an advantage he might otherwise have taken. Jules was sitting with his back to the door. A gangster or professional agent would have had the cosh ready in his grasp as he entered the saloon; so could have run forward and laid Jules out with it before he had time to get up and swing round. John took a couple of strides, then had to pause while he pulled the cosh out from his trouser top. Short as the delay was, it was long enough for Jules to spring to his feet, half turn, and kick the chair in which he had been sitting against John’s legs.
John had the cosh only shoulder high as the chair caught him. He stumbled and fell half across it, his arms shooting forward. Instantly Jules leapt at him. With his right he struck John a glancing blow on the side of the face, with his left he seized the wrist that held the cosh and gave it a violent twist. The attack was so sudden that, still off his balance as he was, John had no chance to defend himself. A second blow from Jules landed on his left eye. Again his wrist was wrenched down and backward. With a cry of pain, he dropped the cosh.
For a moment more they struggled with the chair between them, then Jules let go John’s wrist, gave him a swift push, and stepped back. John was panting and uneasily aware that so far he had had the worst of the encounter. He too stepped back, and his glance swiftly swept the floor, seeking the cosh, in the hope that he might recover it; but it had rolled away under a settee. Jules had seen where it had gone and, now that he had disarmed his attacker, appeared fully confident of his ability to deal with the situation. He was not even breathing quickly, and an amused smile twitched his full lips as he said: ‘I thought you might put in an appearance in spite of the warning I gave you. I told my father so, but he said it would not matter if you did; and, of course, he was quite right, as you cannot possibly bring any charge against us.’
‘Don’t you be too certain of that,’ John snapped, and his eyes switched to Christina.
As he burst in she had removed her long silk-stockinged legs from the banquette and, with a newly-lit cigarette between her fingers, half risen; but had then sat down again. Now, she had both elbows planted on the table and was smoking calmly, while watching the two men with a detached air, as if one looking on at a scene in a play.
Jules laughed. ‘If you are expecting my charming guest to go ashore with you and tell the police that I brought her here by force, you are much mistaken. We have been having a very pleasant time together. You, on the other hand, have come aboard clandestinely, and assaulted me. We are waiting only for my father to join us before putting to sea. I will leave it for him, when he arrives, to decide if we shall have you thrown into the harbour, or hand you over to the police.’
John had recovered his breath and, now that he had landed himself in real trouble, found his brain working with unexpected clarity. It seemed obvious that he could expect no help from Christina; but if he could get round the chair there was a chance that by hurling himself on Jules he might yet put him out of action.
Without taking his eyes from John, Jules spoke again. ‘Christina! Just behind you there is a bell-push. Please ring for the steward. He is quite a gorilla; so we’ll let him take charge of our uninvited guest. Then we can resume our conversation.’
‘No,’ replied Christina composedly. ‘I am enjoying this. You can fight it out between you.’
Shaken out of his complacency, Jules shot her a surprised glance. It gave John just the opportunity for which he had been hoping. The second that Jules’s eyes left his, he thrust the chair aside and sailed in.
John was much the slighter of the two, and at both school and university he had tended to despise athletics; but during his military service he had been made to take up boxing and had not done at all badly for his weight. Now, these bouts under the exacting eyes of tough Army instructors stood him in good stead. Jules put up his fists, and awkwardly fended off the first few blows, but was driven against the after-partition of the saloon. John slammed a left to his chin and his head banged back against the wooden panelling. As it jerked forward he opened his mouth to yell for help, but John drove a right into his stomach. With a gasp he half doubled up, thrusting his head out and clutching at his belly. He was now so obviously helpless that for a second John was reluctant to strike again; but he knew that to forgo this chance of finishing him off would be crazy. Stepping back a pace, he landed a blow that had all his force behind it under Jules’s left ear. The Frenchman pitched over sideways, struck his head hard on the leg of a chair as he went down, and rolled over, out cold, face upward on the carpet.
‘Well done! Oh, well done!’ The words came from Christina more as breathless gasps than exclamations.
Sucking the broken skin of his knuckles, John turned towards her. She had stubbed out her cigarette and was standing up now, her huge brown eyes round with excitement. Pushing her way out from behind the table, she ran to him, flung her arms about his neck and, opening her mouth wide, glued it on his.
It was the sort of kiss calculated to rock any man’s senses, and John was no exception. She had nothing on over her thin day frock and through it he could again feel the warmth of her body; yet it seemed an entirely different body from that which he had held in his arms during the afternoon. That had been soft and hesitantly yielding with occasional tremors due to girlish diffidence. This strained against him with a fierce virility, and every few seconds was shaken by a spasmodic trembling caused by uncontrollable passion.
Momentarily overcome as he was, his brain instantly protested that this was no time or place for love-making. Then instinct rowed in and told him that love played no part in this monstrous embrace, or even natural passion. It was night and Christina was not her true self. She was the victim of a primitive emotion which had been aroused in her by witnessing a scene of violence. She was the female who had just seen two males fighting over which of them should possess her. With shock, and almost a feeling of nausea, it suddenly came to him that had he been the senseless body on the floor and Jules the victor, it was Jules whom she would now be seeking to devour with her luscious, breathless kisses.
Lifting his arms from about her, he grasped her wrists, broke her grip round his neck, thrust her away from him, and cried: ‘Christina! Pull yourself together! We’ve got to get out of here; and at once.’
She seemed to sober, and murmured, ‘All right,’ but gave him a slightly sullen look as she turned to pick up from the back of a chair a heavy Shetland tweed coat, and added, ‘Now you have settled matters with Jules, what’s the hurry?’
‘I’ll give you all the reasons later,’ he said, endeavouring to humour rather than bully her, as he helped her into the coat.
‘Anyhow, there is time for you to get this off me.’ As she spoke she turned. He had noticed with vague surprise that she was wearing gloves, and drawing off the left one she thrust her hand out towards him.
‘D’you mean my ring?’ he asked in a puzzled voice. ‘But why?’
‘Of course, stupid!’ she exclaimed, turning away her head. ‘It has been hurting me all the evening. It’s like a hot band round my finger, and I can’t look at it. Every time I do it dazzles me.’
He stared at the signet ring and wondered if he could possibly be imagining things. To him it was not dazzling, but its gold seemed to be shining with a brighter, purer light than it had ever done during the years he had worn it himself. His father, to whom it had originally belonged, had not been a pious man, but upright and fearless, and the thought flashed into John’s mind that perhaps the precious metal had mysteriously absorbed some of his father’s qualities; so was now having on Christina, in a minor degree, a similar effect to that of the crucifix his mother had thrown to her the previous night. Seeing that the knuckle above the ring was red, angry and swollen, he said: ‘You have been trying to get it off yourself, and failed; so I don’t suppose I can.’
‘That was Jules,’ she replied with an impatient shrug. ‘I asked him to try, and offered to kiss him if he could; but he couldn’t; so I wouldn’t. But you put it on; so you must get it off.’
Suddenly it occurred to him that the ring might, perhaps, be acting to some extent as a charm against evil and, as long as she wore it, would reduce the strength of her nocturnal inclinations to play into the hands of her own enemies; so he shook his head.
‘No. I’ll take it off tomorrow morning for you if you like; but there is no time now. We’ve lost a couple of minutes as it is. And Jules isn’t the only person I’ve had to lay out in order to get hold of you. Ten minutes ago I slogged an officer. Any moment—’
‘Did you?’ she broke in, her eyes glowing again. ‘Oh, John, I think you’re wonderful! Let’s get away then. I’ll go anywhere you wish.’
‘Right; come on!’ He grabbed her by the arm and hurried her to the door. ‘It’s not Jules I’m worried about, but the other chap. The Captain may send someone to look for him. The moment they find him the hunt will be up. Alarm bells, lights all over the ship, and God knows what else. If that starts before we can get ashore our number will be up.’
The passage was empty. No one was battering on the door of the galley; evidently the steward and the chef had not heard the struggle in the saloon, or yet discovered that they were locked in. Still holding Christina by the arm, John drew her up the companionway after him. As his head emerged above deck level he glimpsed through the stern rail a man standing on the quay, some thirty feet away, by a bollard round which was looped the yacht’s stern hawser. It looked as if he was awaiting orders to cast off, but the deck of the yacht was still in darkness.
Feeling certain that if they ran the length of the deck they would be bound to attract the watchman’s attention and that, with his suspicions aroused, he would dash down the ladder from the bridge in an attempt to stop them before they reached the gangway, John whispered: ‘Steady, now. We must walk off just as if we had dined aboard and I was now going to see you home. With luck the watchman may take me for Jules, as he and I are about the same height. If we could be laughing over something, that would be all to the good. My mind is a blank about funny stories at the moment, but perhaps you can think of one.’
‘Yes,’ replied Christina promptly, as they set off along the deck. ‘Do you know the one about the five brides describing to one another what had happened on the first night of their honeymoon? The first said, “My husband was just like Roosevelt, he…”’
The rest of her sentence was drowned by the siren of a car. Next moment its headlights rolled back the darkness from the quay. As it ran past them it was slowing down and its driver brought it smoothly to a halt opposite the gangway.
‘Hell!’ exclaimed John, pulling Christina up. ‘That will be the Marquis! Quick! We must hide!’
But it was too late. He had scarcely got the words out when there was movement on the bridge, a whistle shrilled, and all the lights were switched on. Momentarily dazzled by the glare, they were caught in it, standing between two of the skylights right in the middle of the deck.
The passengers were getting out of the car; two tall men and one short one. A bearded officer, who looked as if he might be the Captain, was leaning over the after-bridge rail looking down at them. Another man stood beside him. Two more sailors ran out from the bridge-house and took up positions on either side of the gangway.
Suddenly it dawned on John that of all these people not one was looking in the direction of Christina and himself. If they could get below again and find some place in which to conceal themselves Jules would believe that they had succeeded in getting ashore before his father’s arrival. With luck they might remain as stowaways, undiscovered, until the yacht reached its port of destination, then slip ashore there. Swiftly he turned Christina about and pushed her towards the after-hatch at a quick walk.
They still had ten feet to go when they caught a muffled shouting from the galley; then, as they reached the hatch, a loud banging on its door. The steward and the chef had just discovered that they were locked in, and were endeavouring to draw attention to their plight.
Before John was halfway down the companionway, the banging abruptly ceased. As he neared its bottom he saw the reason, and consternation seized him. Jules had come round from being knocked out and striking his head on the chair leg much more quickly than might have been expected, and had staggered out into the passage and unlocked the door. He now stood swaying, a little drunkenly, as the steward and the chef tumbled out through it.
Once more John’s lack of experience in affairs of violence had let him down; but it was vain now for him to curse himself for not having had the forethought to tie Jules up and gag him while he had the chance.
A trickle of blood was running down from a cut on Jules’s forehead into his left eye. With a shaky hand he brushed it away and focused his unsteady glance on John’s legs as they appeared down the companionway. The second he saw his face, he flung out a pointing arm and shouted to his men: ‘There he is! Get him! Get him!’
The chef was a small plump man with a mild expression, and did not look at all a type who would willingly get himself mixed up in a rough house; but the steward was a brawny specimen with a low forehead, flattened nose and bull-dog jaw. Jules’s description of him earlier as ‘quite a gorilla’ had been an apt one.
John gave the group one glance, swung about, yelled to Christina to get back up the ladder, and scampered after her. Quick as he was, they would have been on him before he was halfway up had it not been that the chef, who was nearest, hesitated a second and the steward had to push past him.
Christina stubbed her toe and tripped over the top step. Hopping out on to the deck she let go a spate of foul language that sounded peculiarly shocking coming from her young, innocent-looking mouth. In tripping she had held him up for a moment. The gorilla-like steward was right on his heels and grabbing at them. He cleared the top step only just in time, but, swinging round, managed to kick his pursuer in the face.
With a howl of rage and pain, the man swayed backward. His eyes goggling and his hands clutching frantically at the empty air, he hovered for a second, then overbalanced. More yells came from below as his heavy body went crashing down on the little chef and Jules, who had been mounting the ladder behind him. Seizing the advantage this débâcle had given him, John stepped back, swung to the double doors of the hooded hatch cover, and flicked over into its staple the stout iron hook that secured them.
But his victorious retreat from below gained him no more than a breathing space. The shouting and sounds of strife had been heard up on deck. The group from the car were now halfway along it. In the lead was the tall, hatchet-faced Marquis, and beside him a man of about forty, with a large, fair, fluffed-out moustache of the style favoured by R.A.F. pilots. Close behind them were the little man, who looked like a valet, and the two sailors who had stood by the gangway. Others were running up from amidships, and the officers on the bridge were now staring aft to see what the commotion was about.
John gave a hurried glance over his shoulder. The stern rail was only a few feet behind him. In three paces he could reach the spot where it curved in towards the wharf. To balance on it for a jump would be almost impossible; but he could scramble over, cling to the rail with one hand, then leap. The ease with which he had cleared the gap when coming aboard proved that it was nothing like as formidable as it looked.
Now, though, his situation was very different. Someone on the yacht had only to call ‘Stop Thief’ to the wharf-hand, who was waiting to cast the hawser off from the bollard, for the man to run forward and grab him as he landed on the quay. Then there was Christina: her legs were long enough to make the jump, but might easily become entangled in her heavy coat. To urge her to attempt it would be asking her to take an appalling risk.
These thoughts flashed through his mind within a moment of his fastening the doors to the companionway; but even in that brief span of time the dispositions of the other protagonists in the scene had changed. The approaching group and Christina had both taken a few quick steps towards one another. Barely fifteen feet now separated them. With a swift contraction of the heart John accepted it as certain that in another minute he would be attacked, and that against such odds he had no possible chance. Then all his preconceived ideas of what was about to happen were suddenly altered by the totally unexpected attitude of the Marquis.
Sweeping off his hat he made a smiling bow to Christina. ‘My apologies, Mademoiselle, that a tiresome appointment should have prevented me from joining you earlier. And Mr Fountain, is it not? This is an unexpected pleasure. When we met the other night in Cannes, I did not know that you were an old friend of Jules. I trust that he has been giving you both a pleasant time?’
John was so nonplussed that he could think of no immediate reply. Then it occurred to him to take the Marquis’s words at their face value, in the wild hope that he meant them. Hastily he blurted out, ‘Thank you, sir. Yes, it’s been grand. I’m sorry you should arrive to find us on the point of leaving.’
By then the Marquis had taken Christina’s hand and was going through the gallant motion of kissing it. By then, too, Jules, the chef and the steward had had time to sort themselves out at the foot of the companionway, and one of them had run up it. There came a loud hammering on the doors of the covered hatch, accompanied by muffled shouts and curses.
The Marquis glanced in that direction, shrugged, and said suavely, ‘I fear some of my new crew are ill-disciplined fellows. No doubt the reason why Jules is not with you is that he remained below, endeavouring to quell a brawl among them. I am desolated that your visit should have been terminated so unpleasantly. Permit me to escort you to the gangway.’
He was still holding Christina’s hand. Drawing it through his arm in a paternal manner, he turned and led her forward. John could hardly believe his ears and eyes, but followed automatically and found himself in the middle of the little group that had come aft.
As they walked forward the Marquis conveyed kind messages to Christina from his wife. It seemed that the Marquise had also intended to dine aboard, but had been prevented from doing so by a slight indisposition. Had she not been aware that young English ladies were quite accustomed to dispensing with the presence of a chaperon she would naturally have made a special effort, but as things were she felt sure Christina would forgive her.
No one said a word to John. The sailors and the little man had deferentially stepped aside, so were now behind him; the tall R.A.F. type with the fluffy moustache was walking at his side, but in silence.
The sixty feet of after-deck was soon covered. They passed round the big squat funnel. Just beyond it, to starboard, lay the gangway. Six feet further on the bridge-structure rose up across the whole breadth of the yacht. Between it and the funnel lay a band of deep shadow. It was broken only in the middle by the glow of light coming up from the main companionway, which lay under the centre of the bridge.
The Marquis turned towards the gangway, and said to Christina, ‘I see there is no car here to fetch you. But no matter; you must allow me to send you home in mine.’
Suddenly into John’s brain there flashed an explanation for the Marquis’s strange behaviour. The reason why he had pretended not to grasp the fact that he had come upon them endeavouring to escape, and continued to ignore the shouts and banging that still came faintly from the stern, must be because it had never been intended to take Christina to sea in the yacht. As C.B. had pointed out, their contract was to get her to England by the 6th, and they now had barely two days in which to do the job. It must be that Jules had got hold of her much earlier than he had expected; so brought her to the yacht as a temporary measure until his father had completed their other arrangements. The Marquis had arrived only to collect her, and was now in the act of doing so.
In an instant John forecast the next move. The Marquis would put Christina in the car, get in himself, then give a swift order to his men. They would seize him, so that he could not attempt to follow, while the Marquis drove off, carrying Christina to some dive where she would be doped, then put on a plane for England. There were only a matter of seconds to go and John raked his mind frantically for a means to sabotage this plan at the last moment.
There were four men round him and others within close call; so he knew that any attempt to stop the car or rescue Christina was far beyond his powers. The only thing he could do was to anticipate the order to seize him. If, the second his foot was on the wharf, he dodged between the men about him and ran for it, he might get away. Should he succeed, he could be with C.B. at Henri’s bar in ten minutes; and although he would temporarily have lost Christina, they could at once set about tracing the car in which she had been kidnapped.
These swift thoughts had barely coursed through John’s mind when the Marquis reached the head of the gangway. Still keeping hold of Christina’s arm, he halted and looked back. Suddenly he shot out his free hand, pointed it at John and cried: ‘Throw him down the hatch!’