Pavan put the shotgun down in a corner by the door and went out.
Slowly the sharp agony in the Saint’s ear died down to a dull throbbing, and the sequins stopped dancing in front of his eyes.
Netchideff stood at the window gazing out, rubbing his square jaw on his clenched fist, apparently deep in thought.
“How did you get into this?” Simon asked the girl quietly. “Don’t answer if it’s any help to the enemy.”
“They know,” she said. “I’m in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”
“What — with no horse? No red coat?”
His flippancy was as cool as if they had been making conversation at a cocktail party. Tired and desperate as she must have been, it still managed to bring the wraith of a smile to her lips.
“These days, we’re also a Canadian FBI,” she said. “And they haven’t advertised it, but they’ve let a few women in. There are cases sometimes when they can do more than men.”
“And they tried you on Julius.”
“I got a job as his secretary.”
“So he’d already been tabbed as the main dope source that everyone’s been looking for?”
“Oh, no. It was much more like a wild suspicion. Until I had a couple of lucky breaks, that is. But I guess this unlucky one wipes them out.”
“I followed you up from Nanaimo last night,” Simon said. “I’d been watching you and wondering about the set-up before that, of course. I saw the two of you pile into his motor-boat and push off from the dock where he keeps it, and somehow I felt that something was wrong and that you were scared deep inside. But it was only a feeling, and there were too many facts against trying to get a boat and follow you in the dark. I stopped at a motel and figured I wouldn’t have too much trouble locating you after daybreak, but I’ll admit I didn’t sleep too well.”
“Were you after the same thing that I was?”
He nodded.
“Ever since a bloke in Singapore reminded me how long it was since I last did anything really valuable and altruistic for the human race.”
“I was damned scared,” she said. There seemed to be so much that they had to tell each other, even though a strange understanding had grown from nowhere between them that made the most skeletal explanation full and sufficient. “I had a sixth sense telling me that something had gone wrong and Pavan was on to me, but I tried to tell myself it was only nerves. This was my first important assignment, and I wanted to be a hero. I figured that if I wasn’t being brought here to be murdered, this might be the big break. I just had to take the gamble.”
“What was the reason he gave for bringing you up here?”
“To work on the prospectus of a housing development he’s interested in.”
“You couldn’t possibly have believed that that was all he meant to work on, at least.”
“I wasn’t afraid of what you’re thinking,” she said. “This was one of those jobs I mentioned where it was an advantage to be a woman. I have news for you. He’s queer.”
“That’s a switch,” said the Saint. “Now you may have to protect me.”
They had been ignoring the pilot unconsciously — it didn’t seem that anything he heard now could do any more harm, and indeed he had appeared to be completely immersed in his own cogitations. But now they saw him looking at them again with sphinx-like intensity, and became aware that he had never stopped listening.
Suddenly he thumped his chest.
“I am not queer,” he proclaimed proudly.
“Well, congratulations,” said the Saint.
‘Netchideff stalked closer, with an almost feral compactness of movement for a few steps.
His course tended towards the girl. He stood looking down at her, studying separate details with his pale eyes. Then, as if to confirm his observation, he cupped a hand over one of her breasts.
Marian Kent kicked at him savagely, but he turned skilfully and her foot only struck him in the thigh.
Netchideff slapped her face hard, but by no means with his full strength. Then he put his hands on his hips and roared with laughter.
“You son of a bitch,” said the Saint.
He couldn’t kick Netchideff effectively himself because of his position around the corner of the bunk, but hoped that the pilot might be tempted into a move that would remedy that.
Netchideff regarded him thoughtfully, but then the door opened again and Pavan returned.
Pavan carried the Saint’s fly rod and tackle box. He put the tackle box down by the wall and waved the end of the rod up and down, feeling the action of it, before he stood it up in the corner.
“Nice rod,” he said. “That’s all he had in the boat. He must have rented it from a camp down the lake.” His dark eyes shifted from one direction to another, and made certain deductions. “Were they giving you trouble?”
“No.” Netchideff laughed again. He moved back to the table, took a cigarette from the Saint’s package and lighted it, then looked a second time at the match booklet he had used. “Lake Cowichan Auto Court,” he read from it. “That is where he stayed last night.”
“Very likely. It looks like one of their boats.”
“When will they wonder why he does not come back?”
“Not before dark — and probably not even then.”
“Good. Then we do not have to worry all day. I will look after them while you take your boat down the lake and buy the part that will mend the engine of my plane.”
Pavan’s heavy brows drew together.
“Why me? I don’t know anything about engines.”
“It is a very simple part. I will write it down for you. It was invented by Russian engineers, but the spies of Henry Ford stole the design from our trucks which they saw in Europe and they now use it in all their cars. That is what it says in my emergency instructions.”
Simon exchanged fascinated glances with Marian.
“I’d probably still have to drive to Duncan for it,” Pavan said. “And that’s another twenty miles.”
“But you know the way, and you will know where to go, and no one will wonder about your accent,” Netchideff insisted jovially. “You need not be afraid for me. I have been listening to them talk, and I am quite sure they are alone and do not expect any friends to come to rescue them very soon. You should be back in three hours, and I shall not be bored. But that is no reason to waste time, Julius. You will start at once, please.”
5
The pilot came back from seeing Pavan off with Simon’s three rainbows dangling on a string. He held them up and admired them.
“This is very nice of you,” he said. “I shall enjoy them for lunch.”
“I hope you choke on a bone,” said the Saint pleasantly.
Netchideff chuckled with great good humor. He could not have made it plainer that he knew that he could afford a robust invulnerability to mere verbiage.
He took the fish to the sink and began to clean them, humming to himself in a rich voice that swallowed up the last receding mutter of the departing motor-boat. He seemed to have forgotten about sex as capriciously as a child might have been distracted from a toy.
Simon tried tentatively to keep it that way.
“I guess it’s a lot better than the lunch you’d get on your submarine,” he remarked.
The pilot stopped humming.
After a moment he said, “The Russian Navy is the best fed in the world. But did you know I came from a submarine, or did you guess?”
“It was a fairly simple deduction,” said the Saint. “Your clothes have a sea-going look. Your seaplane is painted a naval color. But all the insignia and identification marks have been painted out. Therefore you’re on a secret mission. Your seaplane is a type that could be launched from a large submarine. The safest craft to come sneaking close enough to this coast to launch it would be a submarine. So I bet on the submarine.”