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being stripped from him, if it had not been for the words that had stunned his
ears early that afternoon. He was that strange psychological freak, a criminal
possessed of an imagination that amounted almost to mania; and when Osman had
told him that the Saint was still at large an overstrained bulwark on the
borders of his reason seemed to have crashed in-wards. He was still fighting
for all he could hope to save from the disaster, but it was a dumb stubborn
fight without vitality.
He sent for Laura Berwick at nine o'clock. Her slender young body looked
particularly beautiful in the black evening gown she was wearing; in some way
its cool sweetness was framed in that sombre setting with an effect that was
pulse-quickeningly radiant from the contrast. To do him justice, Galbraith
Stride felt a momentary twinge of remorse as he saw her.
"My dear, I want you to take a note over to Mr. Osman. It's rather important,
and I'd feel relieved if you delivered it yourself."
He had been drinking, but the whisky that reeked on his breath had thickened
his voice without making him drunk. It served the purpose of nipping that
twinge of remorse in the bud, before he had time to forget his own danger.
"Couldn't one of the crew go?" she asked, in some surprise.
"I'm afraid there are reasons why they can't," he said. "They er hum I may be
able to explain later. A matter of business. It's vitally important "
"But what about Mr. Almido?"
"Mr. Almido," said Stride, "is a fool. Between ourselves, I don't trust him.
Some funny things been happening to my accounts lately. No, my dear, you must
do this for me. I'd go myself, only I I'm not feeling very well. You can take
the motorboat."
He was staring at her with the fixed and glassy eyes of semi-intoxication she
could see that but there was something besides alcohol in his stare that
fright-ened her. His excuses for requiring her to go over in person seemed
absurd; and yet it seemed equally absurd to imagine that there could be
anything serious behind them. She was fond of him, in a purely conventional
way chiefly because he was the only relative she had had since she was six
years old. She knew nothing of his business; but in his remotely fussy way he
had been kind to her.
"All right I'll go for you. When do you want it done?"
"At once." He pressed a sealed envelope into her hand, and she felt that his
own hand was hot and sticky. "Run along right away, will you?"
"Right-ho," she said; and wondered, as she went to the door, why her own words
rang in her ears without a trace of the artificial cheerfulness that she had
tried to put into them.
She left him sitting at the table, squinting after her with the same glazed
stare; and went up on deck to find Toby Halidom.
"Daddy wants me to go over to the Luxor and deliver a note," she said, and he
was naturally perplexed.
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"Why shouldn't one of the crew go or that Dago secretary with the Marcel
wave?"
"I don't know, Toby." Out under the stars, the vague impressions she had
received in the saloon seemed even more absurd. "He was rather funny about it,
but he seemed to want it particularly badly, so I said I'd go."
"Probably suffering from an attack of liver," haz-arded Toby heartily. "All
the same, he ought to know better than to ask you to pay calls on a reptile
like that at this hour of the night. I'd better come with you, old thing I
don't like you to go and see that ugly nigger alone"
It was not Toby Halidom's fault that he had been brought up to that
inscrutable system of English thought in which all coloured men are niggers
unless they happen also to be county cricketers; but on this occasion at least
his apprehensions were destined to be fully justified. They had both met Abdul
Osman once before during their stay, and Laura knew that her fiance had shared
her instinctive revulsion. She felt relieved that he had spontaneously offered
to go with her.
"I'd be glad if you would come, Toby."
Galbraith Stride heard the motorboat chugging away from the side, and listened
to it till the sound died away. Then he went over and pressed a bell in the
panelling. It was answered by the saturnine Mr. Almido.
"We shall be leaving at ten," he said; and his secre-tary was pardonably
surprised.
"Why, sir, I thought "
"Never mind what you thought," said Stride thickly. "Tell the captain."
Almido retired; and Stride got up and began to pace the saloon. The die was
cast. He had abdicated to Abdul Osman. He had saved his liberty perhaps he
could even save himself from the Saint. The reaction was starting to take hold
of him like a powerful drug, spurring him with a febrile exhilaration and
scouring an unnatural brightness into the glaze of his eyes. He had no
compunction about what he had done. Laura Berwick was not his own flesh and
blood that would have been his only excuse, if he had bothered to make any.
The thought of her fate had ceased to trouble him. It counted for nothing
beside his own safety. For a brief space he even regretted the feebleness of
his surrender wondered if a card like Laura could not have been played to far
better effect....
It was only another twist in the imponderable thread that had begun to weave
itself when the boom of the Claudette's dinghy had swung over against Laura
Ber-wick's head that morning; but the twist was a short one. For Fate, masking
behind the name which Galbraith Stride feared more than any other name in the
world, had taken a full hand in the game that night.
There were two doors into the saloon. One of them opened into a microscopic
vestibule, from which a broad companion gave access to the deck and an
alley-way led out to other cabins and the crew's quarters forward; the other
opened into Stride's own stateroom. In his restless pacing of the saloon,
Stride had his back turned to the second door when he heard a sharp swish and
thud behind him. He jerked round, raw-nerved and startled; and then he saw
what had caused the sound, and his heart missed a beat.
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Standing straight out from the polished woodwork of the door was a long
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