The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

His lungs seemed to freeze achingly against the walls of his chest, and a parching dryness came into his throat that filled him with a presentiment that if he released the scream which was struggling for outlet just below his wishbone it could only have materialized as a thin, croaking whisper. The hand that dragged the automatic from his pocket was shaking so much that he almost dropped it. The sudden appearance of that quivering knife was uncanny, supernatural. The opposite door had been closed all the time, for he had been pacing towards it when the thing happened; the ports and sky­light also were fastened. From the angle at which it had driven into the door it should have flashed past his face, barely missing him as he walked; but he had not seen it.

If he had been in any state in which he could think coherently, he might have hit on the explanation in a few moments; but he was not in that state. It never occurred to him that the door behind him might have been opened, the knife driven home, and the door rapidly and silently closed again, with just that very object of misleading his attention which it had achieved.

Which was indubitably very foolish of Mr. Galbraith Stride.

Filled with the foreboding that a second attack would almost instantly follow the first unsuccessful one, trembling in the grip of a cold funk that turned his belly to water, he backed slowly and shakily towards the door where the knife had struck, facing in the direction from which he believed the danger threatened. Curiously enough, his only idea was that Abdul Osman had de­cided to take no chances on his regretting his bargain, and had sent one of his men stealthily to eliminate that possibility. If he had thought of anything else, it is possible that the scream which he ached to utter would not have been suppressed.

Back . . . back . . . three paces, four paces. . . . And then suddenly he saw the bulkheads on each side of him, and realized with an eerie thrill of horror that he was actually passing through them-that the door which should have come up against his back had been opened noiselessly behind him, and he was stepping backwards over the threshold.

He opened his mouth to cry out, turning his head as he did so; but the cry rattled voicelessly in his throat. A brown shirt-sleeved arm whipped round his neck from behind and strangled him in the crook of its elbow, while fingers like bars of steel fastened on his wrist just behind the gun. His head was dragged back so that he looked up into the inverted vision of twin blue eyes that were as clear and cold as frozen ultramarines; and then the intruder's mouth spoke against his ear.

"Come and pay calls with me, Galbraith," he heard; and then he fainted.

CHAPTER VII

ABDUL OSMAN had also been drinking, but with him it had been almost a festive rite. He had put on a dinner suit, with a red tarboosh; and his broad soft stomach, swelling out under the sloping expanse of a snowy shirt front, gave him the appearance of a flabby pyramid walking about on legs, as if a bloated frog had been dressed up in European clothes. His wide sallow face was freshly shaved and had a slightly greasy look around the chin. Although he wore Western clothes, cut by the best tailors in London, the saloon of his yacht, in which he was walking about, was decorated entirely in the Oriental style, which was the only one in which he felt truly comfortable. The rugs on the floor were Bokhara and Shiraz, virtually priceless; the tables ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl; the couches low, covered with dark silk brocades, heavily strewn with cushions. Even the prosaic portholes were framed with embroidered hangings and barred with iron grilles so that they should not clash with the atmosphere, and the dim concealed lights left corners full of shadows. Osman, in his dinner jacket and white starched shirt front, fitted into those surroundings with a paradoxical effect, like an ardent nudist clinging to his straw hat and pince-nez; but he was incapable of perceiving the incongruity.

He was preening himself before a mirror, a half emptied glass in one hand, the other smoothing an imperceptible crease out of his bow tie, a thin oval cigarette smouldering between his lips, when he heard the approaching sputter of a motor launch. He listened in immobile expectancy and heard the engine cut off and the sound of voices. Then the Arab seaman, Ali, knocked on the door and opened it, and Laura Berwick stood in the entrance.

Abdul Osman saw her in the mirror, from which he had not moved; and for a second or two he did not stir. His veins raced with the sudden concrete knowledge of triumph. Cold-blooded ? The corners of his mouth lifted fractionally, wrinkling up his eyes. At their very first meeting, the formal touch of her hand had filled him with a hunger like raging furnaces: now, seeing her gloriously modelled face and shoulders standing out brilliantly pale in the dark doorway, his heart pounded molten flame through his body.