A Hero for Leanda

to be so trusting. I know that now.... I only hope it’s not too late.”
    Conway glanced up at the sail and hauled in the main-sheet a little. “What do you mean by that?”
    “Mike, he can’t be allowed to go back to Spyros. He’s wicked. He’s a destroyer, a fanatic. All he wants is power for himself . If he ever gets it, he’ll rain my country.”
    “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Conway said. “For a time, anyway.”
    “Mike,” she said eagerly, “we don’t have to carry out our original plan. I know it sounds fantastic, going to all this trouble and then wanting to undo everything—but the situation’s changed completely, and there is still time. We don’t have to take him to Malindi. Couldn’t we sail straight into Mombasa harbor—and hand him over to the authorities?”
    “So that’s what you’ve been thinking up!” Conway said. She nodded. “I’ve been going over and over everything.... I’ve been in torment, Mike!”
    He looked at her grimly. “If Kastella meant what he said, it’s nothing to the torment you’d be in if you helped to hand him over. Not when he got free again. He looks to me like a man with a long memory.”
    “If necessary I could change my name, disappear.... Anyway, I’ll have to take a chance.”
    Conway shook his head. “You won’t need to. I couldn’t take him to Mombasa even if I wanted to. We’ve already told him about Malindi—we’ve described it to him. A quiet, dark little beach. Mombasa ’s a blaze of lights from the sea. He’d know what we were up to at once, and he’d stop us. My guess is he’ll keep that gun by him until he’s satisfied he’s been put ashore in the right place.”
    ‘That’s probably his plan—but perhaps we could get the gun away from him.”
    ‘I don’t think so. Haven’t you noticed how he holds it all the time—with his firing finger on the trigger and his left hand low down on the barrel? It could come up in a split second. Even if he didn’t fire it, I couldn’t hope to get it away. In a struggle, he’d just about eat me.”
    “I know he’s much bigger and stronger,” Leanda said, “but there must be some way of dealing with him.”
    “Like knocking him on the head... ? No thank you, its much too risky.... Besides, aren’t you overlooking something rather important?”
    “You mean the money you’re going to get?”
    “Exactly!”
    “No, I hadn’t forgotten that. But I think Victor Metaxas would be glad to pay you for not letting Kastella go, now. When he made his agreement with you he had no idea what a horrible genie he was going to let loose—any more than I had.”
    “You can’t be certain of that. For all we know, he may be secretly behind Kastella.”
    “I’m sure he’s not!”
    “You were sure about Kastella!”
    “But, Mike, remember how Kastella spoke of him .“
    “That’s nothing to go by—if they were in cahoots Kastella might not want us to know about it.... In any case, I can’t take a chance on Metaxas changing his mind. He may be a romantic in politics, but he must be shrewd over money or he’d never have got where he has. He promised to pay me if I delivered the man to an agreed spot. That’s morally binding on him. If I make entirely new and contrary arrangements, to suit myself or you, I can’t expect payment and I don’t believe I’d get it. No man is going to pay out twenty thousand pounds on a broken contract.”
    Leanda said, “You’d still have the boat, Mike.”
    “I wouldn’t even have that—not legally. In spite of all the funny business with Ionides, it’s not in my name .“
    “Well, I don’t see what Victor could do about it.”
    “He could do plenty if he wanted to.... Anyway, I wouldn’t care to keep the proceeds of a contract I’d broken. What I want is the twenty thousand, fair and square.”
    “But Mike...!” Leanda broke off, in deep distress. “Oh, I know it’s a terrific lot of money, and I’ve absolutely no right to ask you to abandon it—but then you were ready to risk it all over the ketch, weren’t you? You were going to tow the boat in, even though you said yourself there was a fifty-fifty chance of our being caught.”
    “That was different,” Conway said. “There were lives at stake. Now there aren’t.”
    “There’ll be fives at stake on Spyros. You’ve seen what Kastella’s like; you know what he’s capable of.... Mike, you once told me that your way of life, sailing around the world in a boat, at