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.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlbrown head."But I couldn't do it.I should be frightened to death."The Saint passed on, swimming slowly and leisurely up to the bows.He eeledhimself round the stem and drifted down again, close up in the shadow of theother side.As he paddled under the saloon windows on the return journey,Vogel was offering more liqueurs.The man in the pink socks was snoring, andhis companion had lighted his pipe.The card game in the crew's quartersfinished a deal with a burst of raucous chaff, the letter-writer licked hisenvelope, and the men who had been reading still read.Simon Templar edged one hand out of the water to scratch the back of his ear.During the whole of that round tour of inspec-tion he hadn't collected oneglimpse or decibel of any sight or sound that didn't stand for completerelaxation and goodwill towards men.Except the faces of some of the crew,which may not have been their faults.But as for any watch on deck, he wasready to swear that it simply didn't exist.Meaning.Perhaps that Loretta had been caught the night before byaccident, through some sleepless mariner happening to amble up for a breath offresh air.But even if that was the explanation, a watch would surely havebeen posted afterwards to frustrate any second attempt.Unless.and hecould only see that one reason for the moment.unless Loretta had beenpromoted from a suspect to a certainty in which case, since she was there onboard, the watch could take an evening off.The Saint gave it up.By every ordinary test, anyhow, he could find nothing inhis way; and the only thing to do was to push on and search further.He hooked his fingers over the counter and drew himself up until he couldhitch one set of toes on to the deck.Only for an instant he might have beenseen there, upright against the dark water; and then he had flittednoiselessly across the dangerous open space and merged himself into the deepshadow of the su-perstructure.Again he waited.If any petrified watcher had escaped detec-tion on his firsttour, and had seen his arrival on board, no alarm had been raised.Either theman would be deliberating whether to fetch help, or he would be waiting tocatch him when he moved forward.And if the Saint stayed where he was, eitherthe man would go for help or he would come on to investigate.In either ofwhich events he would announce his presence unmis-takably to the Saint'stingling ears.But nothing happened.Simon stood there like a statue while the seconds tickedinto minutes on his drumming pulses, and the wetness drained down his legs andformed a pool around his feet, hardly breathing; but only the drone ofconversation in the sa-loon, and a muffled guffaw from the crew's quartersunder his feet, reached him out of the stillness.At last he relaxed, and allowed himself to glance curiously at hissurroundings.Over his head, the odd canvas-shrouded con-trivance which he hadobserved from a distance reached out aft like an oversized boom but there wasno mast at the near end to account for it.The Falkenberg carried no sail.Hestretched up and wriggled his fingers through a gap in the lacing, and feltsomething like a square steel girder with wire cables stretched inside it; andsuddenly the square protuberance, likewise covered with tarpaulin, on whichthe after end of the boom rested took on a concrete significance.At the endup against the deckhouse he found wheels, and the wire cables turned over thewheels, and ran down close beside the bulkhead to vanish through plated eyesin the deck at his feet.He was exploring a nifty, well-oiled, andup-to-date ten-ton grab!"Well, -well, well," murmured the Saint admiringly, to his guardian angel.And that curiously low flattened stern.It all fitted in.Divers could bedropped over that counter with the minimum of difficulty; and the grab couldtelescope out or swing round, and run its claw round to be steered on towhatever the divers offered it.While, forward of all those gadgets, therewere a pair of high-speed engines and a super-stream-lined hull to facilitatea lightning getaway if an emergency emerged.Which, how-ever priceless aconglomeration of assets, is not among the amen-ities usually advertised withPage 30ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlluxurious pleasure cruisers.A slow smile tugged at the Saint's lips; and he restrained him-self with acertain effort from performing an impromptu horn-pipe.The last lingeringspeck of doubt in his mind had been catastrophically obliterated in those fewseconds.Loretta Page hadn't been pulling his leg, or raving, or leading himup the garden.He wasn't kidding himself to make the book read accord-ing tothe blurb.That preposterous, princely, pluperfect racket did exist; and KurtVogel was in it.In it right up to the blue cornice of his neck [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]