Meet the Tiger

by

Leslie Charteris

The First ‘Saint’ Novel

Contents

Chapter I.
The Pill Box

Baycombe is a village on the North Devon coast that is so isolated from civilisation that even at the height of the summer holiday season it is neglected by the rush of lean and plump, tall and short, papas, mammas, and infants. Consequently, there was some sort of excuse for a man who had taken up his dwelling there falling into the monotony of regular habits—even for a man who had only lived there for three days—even (let the worst be known) for a man so unconventional as Simon Templar.

It was not so very long after Simon Templar had settled down in Baycombe that that peacefully sedate village became most unsettled, and things began to happen there that shocked and flabbergasted its peacefully sedate inhabitants, as will be related; but at first Simon Templar found Baycombe as dull as it had been for the last six hundred years.

Simon Templar—in some parts of the world he was quite well known, from his initials, as the Saint—was a man of twenty-seven, tall, dark, keen-faced, deeply tanned, blue-eyed. That is a rough description. It was not long before Baycombe had observed him more closely, and woven mysterious legends about him. Baycombe did that within the first two days of his arrival, and it must be admitted that he had given some grounds for speculation.

The house he lived in (it may perhaps be dignified with the title of “house,” since a gang of workmen from Ilfracombe had worked without rest for thirty-six hours to make it habitable) had been built during the war as a coast defence station, at a time when the War Office were vaguely alarmed by rumours of a projected invasion at some unlikely point. Possibly because they thought Baycombe was the last point any enemy strategist would expect them to expect an invasion at, the War Office had erected a kind of Pill Box on the tor above the village. The work had been efficiently carried out, and a small garrison had been installed; but apparently the War Office had been cleverer than the German tacticians, for no attempt was made to land an army at Baycombe. In 1918 the garrison and the guns had been removed, and the miniature concrete fortress had been abandoned to the games of the local children until Simon Templar, by some means known only to himself, had discovered that the Pill Box and the quarter of a square mile of land in which it stood were still the property of the War Office, and in some secret way had managed to persuade the said War Office to sell him the freehold for twenty-five pounds.

In this curious home the Saint had installed himself, together with a retainer who went by the name of Orace. And the Saint had been so overcome with the dullness of Baycombe that within three days he was the victim of routine.

At 9 a.m. on this third day (the Saint had a rooted objection to early rising) the man who went by the name of Orace entered his master’s bedroom bearing a cup of tea and mug of hot water.

“Nice morning, sir,” said Orace, and retired.

Orace had remarked on the niceness of the morning for the last eight years, and he had never allowed the weather to change his pleasant custom.

The Saint yawned, stretched himself like a cat, and saw with half-closed eyes that a stream of sunlight was pouring in through the embrasure which did duty for a window. The optimism of Orace being justified, Simon Templar sighed, stretched himself again, and after a moment’s indecision leapt out of bed. He shaved rapidly, sipping his tea in between whiles, and then pulled on a bathing costume and went out into the sun, picking up a length of rope on his way out. He skipped energetically on the grass outside for fifteen minutes. Then he shadow-boxed for five minutes. Then he grabbed a towel, knotted it loosely round his neck, sprinted the couple of dozen yards that lay between the Pill Box and the edge of the cliff, and coolly swung himself over the edge. A hundred and fifty foot drop lay beneath him, but handholds were plentiful, and he descended to the beach as nonchalantly as he would have descended a flight of stairs. The water was rippling calm. He covered a quarter of a mile at racing speed, turned on his back and paddled lazily shorewards, finishing the last hundred yards like a champion. Then he lay at the edge of the surf, basking in the strengthening sun.

All these things he had done as regularly on the two previous mornings, and he was languidly pondering the deadliness of regular habits when the thing happened that proved to him quite conclusively that regular habits could be more literally deadly than he had allowed for.

Phhhew-wuk!

Something sang past his ear, and the pebble at which he had been staring in an absent-minded sort of way leapt sideways and was left with a silvery streak scored across it, while the thing that had sang changed its note and went whining seawards.

“Bad luck, sonny,” murmured the Saint mildly. “Only a couple of inches out. . . .”

But he was on his feet before the sound of the shot had reached him.

He was on one of the arms of the bay, which was roughly semi-circular. The village was in the centre of the arc. A quick calculation told him that the bullet had come from some point on the cliff between the Pill Box and the village, but he could see nothing on the skyline. A moment later a frantic silhouette appeared at the top of the tor, and the voice of Orace hailed down an anxious query. The Saint waved his towel in response and, making for the foot of the cliff, began to climb up again.

He accomplished the difficult ascent with no apparent effort, quite unperturbed by the thought that the unknown sniper might essay a second round. And presently the Saint stood on the grass above, hands on hips, gazing keenly down the slope towards the spot where the bullet had seemed to come from. A quarter of a mile away was a broad clump of low bushes; beyond the copse, he knew, was a cart-track leading down to the village. The Saint shrugged and turned to Orace, who had been fuming and fidgeting around him.

“The Tiger knows his stuff,” remarked Simon Templar with a kind of admiration.

“Like a greenorn!” spluttered Orace. “Like a namachoor! Wa did ja expect? An’ just wotcha observed—an’ I ope it learns ya! You ain’t ’urt, sir, are ye?” added Orace, succumbing to human sympathy.

“No—but near enough,” said the Saint.

Orace flung out his arms.

“Pity ’e didn’t plug ya one, just ter make ya more careful nex’ time. I’d a bin grateful to ’im. An’ if I ever lay my ’ands on the swine ’es fore it,” concluded Orace somewhat illogically, and strutted back to the Pill Box.

Orace, as a Sergeant of Marines, had received a German bullet in his right hip at Zeebrugge, and had walked with a lopsided strut ever since.

“Brekfuss in narf a minnit,” Orace flung over his shoulder.

The Saint strolled after him at a leisurely pace and returned to his bedroom whistling. Nevertheless, Orace, entering the sitting-room with a tray precisely half a minute later, found the Saint stretched out in an arm-chair. The Saint’s hair was impeccably brushed, and he was fully dressed—according to the Saint’s ideas of full dress—in shoes, socks, a dilapidated pair of grey flannel trousers and a snowy silk tennis shirt. Orace snorted, and the Saint smiled.

“Orace,” said the Saint conversationally, lifting the cover from a plate of bacon and eggs, “one gathers that things are just about to hum.”

“Um,” responded Orace.

“About to ’um, if you prefer it,” said the Saint equably. “The point is that the orchestra are in their places, the noises off have hitched up their hosiery, the conductor has unkemped his hair, the seconds are getting out of the ring, the guard is blowing his whistle, the skipper has rung down for full steam ahead, the—the——”

“The cawfy’s getting cold,” said Orace.

The Saint buttered a triangle of toast.

“How unsympathetic you are, Orace!” he complained. “Well, if my flights of metaphor fail to impress you, let us put it like this: we’re off.”

“Um,” agreed Orace, and returned to the improvised kitchen.

Simon finished his meal and returned to the arm-chair, from which he had a view of the cliff and the sea beyond. He skimmed through the previous day’s paper (Baycombe was at least twenty-four hours behind the rest of England) and then smoked a meditative cigarette. At length he rose, fetched and pulled on a well-worn tweed coat, picked up an unwieldy walking stick, and went to the curtained breach in the fortifications which was used for a front door.

“Orace!”

“Sir!” answered Orace, appearing at the threshold of the kitchen.

“I’m going to have a look round. I’ll be back for lunch.”

“Aye, aye, sir. . . . Sir!”

The Saint was turning away, and he stopped. Orace fumbled under his apron and produced a fearsome weapon—a revolver of pre-war make and enormous calibre—which he offered to his master.

“It ain’t much ter look at,” said Orace, stroking the barrel lovingly, “and I wouldn’t use it fer fancy shooting; but it’ll make a bigger ’ole in a man than any o’ those pretty ortymatics.”

“Thanks,” grinned the Saint. “But it makes too much noise. I prefer Anna.”

“Um,” said Orace.

Orace could put any shade of meaning into that simple monosyllable, and on this occasion there was no doubt about the precise shade of meaning he intended to convey.

The Saint was studying a slim blade which he had taken from a sheath strapped to his forearm, hidden under his sleeve. The knife was about six inches long in the blade, which was leaf-shaped and slightly curved. The haft was scarcely three inches long, of beautifully carved ivory. The whole was so perfectly balanced that it seemed to take life from the hand that held it, and its edge was so keen that a man could have shaved with it. The Saint spun the sliver of steel high in the air and caught it adroitly by the hilt as it fell back; and in the same movement he returned it to its sheath with such speed that the knife seemed to vanish even as he touched it.

“Don’t you be rude about Anna,” said the Saint, wagging a reproving forefinger. “She’d take a man’s thumb off before the gun was half out of his pocket.”

And he went striding down the hill towards the village, leaving Orace to pessimistic disgust.

It was early summer, and pleasantly warm—a fact which made the Saint’s selection of the Pill Box for a home less absurd than it would have seemed in winter. (There was another reason for his choice, besides a desire for quantities of fresh air and the simple life, as will be seen.) The Saint whistled as he walked, swinging his heavy stick, but his eyes never relaxed their vigilant study of every scrap of cover that might hide another sniper. He walked boldly down to the bushes which he had suspected that morning and spent some time in a minute search for incriminating evidence; but there had been no rain for days, and even his practised eye could make little of the spoor he found. Near the edge of the cliff he caught a golden gleam under a tuft of grass, and found a cartridge-case.

“Three-one-five Mauser,” commented the Saint. “Naughty, naughty!”

He dropped the shell into his pocket and studied the ground closely, but the indistinct impressions gave him no clue to the size or shape of the unknown, and at last he resumed his thoughtful progress towards the village.

Baycombe, which is really no more than a fishing village, lies barely above sea-level, but on either side the red cliffs rise away from the harbour, and the hills rise behind, so that Baycombe lies in a hollow opening on the Bristol Channel. Facing seawards from the harbour, the Pill Box would have been seen crowning the tor on the right, the only building to the east for some ten miles; the tor on the left was some fifty feet lower, and was dotted with half a dozen red brick and grey stone houses belonging to the aristocracy. The Saint, via Orace, who had drunk beer in the public-house by the quay to some advantage, already knew the names and habits of this oligarchy. The richest member was one Hans Bloem, a Boer of about fifty, who was also reputed to be the meanest man in Devonshire. Bloem frequently had a nephew staying with him who was as popular as his uncle was unpopular: the nephew was Algernon de Breton Lomas-Coper, wore a monocle, was one of the Lads, and highly esteemed locally for a very pleasant ass. The Best People were represented by Sir Michael Lapping, a retired Judge; the Proletariat by Sir John Bittle, a retired Wholesale Grocer. There was a Manor, but it had no Lord, for it had passed to a gaunt, grim, masculine lady, Miss Agatha Girton, who lived there, unhonoured and unloved, with her ward, whom the village honoured and loved without exception. For the rest, there were two Indian Civil Servants who, under the prosaic names of Smith and Shaw, survived on their pensions in a tiny bungalow; and a Dr. Carn.

“A very dull and ordinary bunch,” reflected Simon Templar, as he stood at the top of the village street pondering his next move. “Except, perhaps, the ward. Is she the luvverly ’eroine of this blinkin’ adventure?”

This hopeful thought directed his steps towards the “Blue Moon,” which was at the same time Baycombe’s club and pub. But the Saint did not reach the “Blue Moon” that morning, because as he passed the shop which supplied all the village requirements, from shoes to ships and sealing-wax, a girl came out.

“I’m so sorry,” said the Saint, steadying her with one arm.

He retrieved the parcel which the collision had knocked out of her hand, and in returning it to her he had the chance of observing her face more closely. He could find no flaw there, and she had the most delightful of smiles. Her head barely topped his shoulder.

“You must be the ward,” said Simon. “Miss Pat—the village doesn’t give you a surname.”

She nodded.

“Patricia Holm,” she said. “And you must be the Mystery Man.”

“Not really—am I that already?” said the Saint with interest, and she saw at once that the desire to hide his light under a bushel was not one of his failings.

It is always a question whether the man inspires the nickname or the nickname inspires the man. When a man is known to his familiars as “Beau” or “Rabbit” there is little difficulty in supplying the answer; but a man who is called “Saint” may be either a lion or a lamb. It is doubtful whether Simon Templar would have been as proud of his title as he was if he had not found that it provided him with a ready-made, effective, and useful pose; for the Saint was pleasantly egotistical.

“There are the most weird and wonderful rumours,” said the girl, and the Saint looked milder than ever.

“You must tell me,” he said.

He had fallen into step beside her, and they were walking up the rough road that led to the houses on the West Tor.

“I’m afraid we’ve been very inhospitable,” she said frankly. “You see, you set up house in the Pill Box, and that left everybody wondering whether you were possible or impossible. Baycombe society is awfully exclusive.”

“I’m flattered,” said the Saint. “Accordingly, after seeing you home, I shall return to the Pill Box and sit down to consider whether Baycombe society is possible or impossible.”

She laughed.

“You’re a most refreshing relief,” she told him. “Baycombe is full of inferiority complexes.”

“Fortunately,” remarked Simon gently, “I don’t wear hats.”

Presently she said:

“What brings you to this benighted spot?”

“A craving for excitement and adventure,” answered the Saint promptly—“reinforced by an ambition to be horribly wealthy.”

She looked at him with a quick frown, but his face confirmed the innocence of sarcasm which had given a surprising twist to his words.

“I shouldn’t have thought anyone would have come here for that,” she said.

“On the contrary,” said the Saint genially, “I should have no hesitation in recommending this particular spot to any qualified adventurer as one of the few places left in England where battle, murder, and sudden death may be quite commonplace events.”

“I’ve lived here, on and off, since I was twelve, and the most exciting thing I can remember is a house on fire,” she argued, still possessed of an uneasy feeling that he was making fun of her.

“Then you’ll really appreciate the rough stuff when it does begin,” murmured Simon cheerfully, and swung his stick, whistling.

They reached the Manor (it was not an imposing building, but it had a homely air) and the girl held out her hand.

“Won’t you come in?”

The Saint was no laggard.

“I’d love to.”

She took him into a sombre but airy drawing-room, finely furnished; but the Saint was never self-conscious. The contrast of his rough, serviceable clothes with the delicate brocaded upholstery did not impress him, and he accepted a seat without any appearance of doubting its ability to support his weight.

“May I fetch my aunt?” asked Miss Holm. “I know she’d like to meet you.”

“But of course,” assented the Saint, smiling, and she was left with a sneaking suspicion that he was agreeing with her second sentence as much as with her first.

Miss Girton arrived in a few moments, and Simon knew at once that Baycombe had not exaggerated her grimness. “A norrer,” Orace had reported, and the Saint felt inclined to agree. Miss Girton was stocky and as broad as a man: he was surprised at the strength of her grip when she shook hands with him. Her face was weather-beaten. She wore a shirt and tie and a coarse tweed skirt, woollen stockings, and heavy flat-heeled shoes. Her hair was cropped.

“I was wondering when I should meet you,” she said immediately. “You must come to dinner and meet some people. I’m afraid the company’s very limited here.”

“I’m afraid I’m prepared for very little company,” said Templar. “I’d decided to forget dress clothes for a while.”

“Lunch, then. Would you like to stay to-day?”

“May I be excused? Don’t think me uncivil, but I promised my man I’d be back for lunch. If I don’t turn up,” explained the Saint ingenuously, “Orace would think something had happened to me, and he’d go cruising round with his revolver, and somebody might get hurt.”

There was an awkward hiatus in the conversation at that point, but it was confined to two of the party, for Templar was admiring a fine specimen of Venetian glass, and did not seem to realise than he had said anything unusual. The girl hastened into the breach.

“Mr. Templar has come here for adventure,” she said, and Miss Girton stared.

“Well, I wish him luck,” she said shortly. “On Friday, then, Mr. Templar? I’ll ask some people. . . .”

“Delighted,” murmured the Saint, bowing, and now there was something faintly mocking about his smile. “On the whole, I don’t see why the social amenities shouldn’t be observed, even in a vendetta.”

Miss Girton excused herself soon after, and the Saint smoked a cigarette and chatted lightly and easily with Patricia Holm. He was an entertaining talker, and he did not introduce any more dark and horrific allusions into his remarks. Nevertheless, he caught the girl looking at him from time to time with a kind of mixture of perplexity, apprehension, and interest, and was hugely delighted.

At last he rose to go, and she accompanied him to the gate.

“You seem quite sane,” she said bluntly as they went down the path: “What was the idea of talking all that rot?”

He looked down at her, his eyes dancing.

“All my life,” he replied, “I have told the truth. It is a great advantage, because if you do that nobody ever takes you seriously.”

“But talking about murders and revolvers——”

“Perhaps,” said the Saint, with that mocking smile, “it will increase the prominence of the part which I hope to play in your thoughts from now onwards if I tell you that from this morning the most strenuous efforts will be made to kill me. On the other hand, of course, I shall not be killed, so you mustn’t worry too much about me. I mean, don’t go off your feed or lie awake all night or anything like that.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said lightly.

“You don’t believe me,” accused Templar sternly.

She hesitated.

“Well——”

“One day,” said the Saint severely, “you will apologise for your unbelief.”

He gave her a stiff bow and marched away so abruptly that she gasped.

It was exactly one o’clock when he arrived home at the Pill Box, and Orace was flustered and disapproving.

“If ya ’adn’t bin ’ome punctual,” said Orace, “I’d a bin out looking for yer corpse. It ain’t fair ter give a man such a lotta worry. Yer so careless I wonder the Tiger ’asn’t putcha out ’arf a dozen times.”

“I’ve met the most wonderful girl in the world,” said Simon impenitently. “By all the laws of adventure, I’m bound to have to save her life two or three times during the next ten days. I shall kiss her very passionately in the last chapter. We shall be married——”

Orace snorted.

“Lunch ’narf a minnit,” he said, and disappeared.

The Saint washed his hands and ran a comb through his hair in the half-minute’s grace allowed him; and the Saint was thoughtful. He had his full measure of human vanity, and it tickled his sense of humour to enter the lists with the air of a Mystery Man straight out of a detective story, but he had a solid reason for giving his caprice its head. It struck him that the Tiger knew all about him and his quest, and that therefore no useful purpose would be served by trying to pretend innocence; whereas a shameless bravado might well bother the other side considerably. They would be racking their brains to find some reason for his brazen front, and crediting him with the most complicated subtleties: when all the time there was nothing behind it but the fact that one pose was as good as another, and the opportunity to play the swashbuckler was too good to be missed.

The Saint was whistling blithely when Orace brought lunch. He knew that the Tiger was in Baycombe. He had come half-way across the world to rob the Tiger of a million dollars, and the duel promised to be exhilarating as anything in the Saint’s hell-for-leather past.

Chapter II.
The Naturalist

Algernon de Breton Lomas-Coper was one of the genial Algys made famous by Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, and accordingly he often ejaculated “What? What?” to show that he could hardly believe his own brilliance; but now he ejaculated “What? What?” to show that he could hardly believe his own ears.

“It’s perfectly true,” said Patricia. “And he’s coming to lunch.”

“Wow!” gasped Algy feebly, and relapsed into open-mouthed amazement.

He was one of those men who are little changed by the passage of time: he might have been twenty-five or thirty-five. Studying him very closely—which few took the trouble to do—one gathered that the latter age was more probably right. He was fair, round-faced, pink-and-white.

“He was quite tame,” said Patricia. “In fact, I thought he was awfully nice. But he would keep on talking about the terrifying things that he thought were going to happen. He said people were trying to murder him.”

“Dementia persecutoria,” opined Algy. “What?”

The girl shook her head.

“He was as sane as anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Extensio cruris paranoia?” suggested Algy sagely.

“What on earth’s that?” she asked.

“An irresistible desire to pull legs.”

Patricia frowned.

“You’ll be thinking I’m crazy next,” she said. “But somehow you can’t help believing him. It’s as if he were daring you to take him seriously.”

“Well, if he manages to wake up this backwater I’ll be grateful to him,” said the man. “Are you going to invite me to stay and meet the ogre?”

He stayed.

Towards one o’clock Patricia sighted Templar coming up the road, and went out to meet him at the gate. He was dressed as he had been the day before, but he had fastened his collar and put on a tie.

He greeted her with a smile.

“Still alive, you see,” he remarked. “The ungodly prowled around last night, but I poured a bucket of water over him, and he went home. It’s astonishing how easy it is to damp the ardour of an assassin.”

“Isn’t that getting a bit stale?” she protested, although she was annoyed to find that the reproof she forced into her tone lacked conviction.

“I’m surprised you should say that,” he returned gravely. “Personally, I’m only just beginning to appreciate the true succulence of the jest.”

“At least, I hope you won’t upset everybody at lunch,” she said, and his eyes twinkled.

“I’ll try to behave,” he promised. “At any other time it would have been a fearful effort, but to-day I’m on my party manners.”

There were cocktails in the drawing-room (Baycombe society prided itself on being up to date), and there Algy was brought forward and introduced.

“Delighted—delighted—long expected pleasure—what?” he babbled.

“Is it really?” asked the Saint guilelessly.

Algy screwed a pane of glass into his eye and surveyed the visitor with awe.

“So you’re the Mystery Man!” he prattled on. “You don’t mind being called that? I’m sure you won’t. Everybody calls you the Mystery Man, and I honestly think it suits you most awfully well, don’t you know. And fancy taking the Pill Box! Isn’t it too frightfully draughty? But of course you’re one of these strong, hearty he-men we see in the pictures.”

“Algy, you’re being rude,” interrupted the girl.

“Am I really? Only meant for good-fellowship and all that sort of thing. What? What? No offence, old banana pip, you know, don’t you know.”

“Do I? Don’t I?” asked the Saint, blinking.

The girl rushed into the pause, for she already had a good estimate of the Saint’s perverse sense of fun, and dreaded its irresponsibility. She felt that at any moment he would produce a revolver and ask if they knew anyone worth murdering.

“Algy, be an angel and go and tell Aunt Agatha to hurry up.”

“That is Mynheer Hans Bloem’s nephew,” observed the Saint calmly as the door closed behind the talkative one. “He is thirty-four. He lived for some years in America; in the City of London he is known as a man with mining property in Transvaal.”

Patricia was astonished.

“You know more about him than I do,” she said.

“I make it my business to pry into my neighbour’s affairs,” he answered solemnly. “It mayn’t be courteous, but it’s cautious.”

“Perhaps you know all about me?” she was tempted to challenge him.

He turned on her a clear blue eye which held a mocking gleam.

“Only the unimportant things. That you were educated at Mayfield. That Miss Girton isn’t your aunt, but a very distant cousin. That you’ve led a very quiet life, and travelled very little. You’re dependent on Miss Girton, because she has the administration of your property until you’re twenty-five. That is for another five years.”

“Are you aware,” she demanded dangerously, “that you’re most impertinent?”

He nodded.

“Quite unpardonably,” he admitted. “I can only plead in excuse that when there’s a price on one’s head one can’t be too particular about one’s acquaintances.”

And he looked meditatively at the yellow-golden contents of his glass, which he had held untasted since it was given him.

“Your health,” he wished her; and, as he set down the empty glass, he smiled and added: “At least I’ve no fear of you.”

She had no time to find an adequate answer before Algy returned with Miss Girton and a tall, thin, leather-faced man who was introduced as Mr. Bloem.

“Pleased to meet you,” murmured the Saint. “So sorry T. T. Deeps are going badly in the market, but this is just the time to make your corner.”

Bloem started, and his spectacles fell off and dangled at the length of their black watered ribbon as the Boer stared blankly at Simon Templar.

“You must be very much on the inside in the City, Mr. Templar,” said Bloem.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” agreed Simon, with his most saintly smile.

Then he was being introduced to a new arrival, Sir Michael Lapping. The ex-judge shook hands heartily, peering short-sightedly into the Saint’s face.

“You remind me of a man I once met in the Old Bailey—and I’m hanged if I can remember whether it was a professional encounter or not.”

“I was just going to,” said the Saint blandly, if a trifle cryptically. “His name was Harry the Duke, and you gave him seven years. He escaped abroad six years ago, but I hear he’s been back in England some months. Be careful how you go out after dark.”

It should have fallen to the Saint to take Miss Girton in to lunch, but his hostess passed him on to Patricia, and the girl was thus able to get a word with him aside.

“You’ve already broken your promise twice,” she said. “Do you have to go on like this?”

“I’m merely attracting attention,” he said. “Having now become the centre of interest, I shall rest on my laurels.”

He was as good as his word, but Patricia was unreasonably irritated to observe that he had succeeded in attaining his shamelessly confessed object. The others of the party felt vaguely at a disadvantage, and favoured the Saint with furtive glances in which was betrayed not a little superstitious awe. Once the Saint caught Patricia’s eye, and the silent mirth that was always bubbling up behind his eyes spread for a moment into an open grin. She frowned and tossed her pretty head, and entered upon an earnest discussion with Lapping; but when she stole a look at the Saint to see how he had taken the snub she saw that beneath his dutifully decorous demeanour he was shaking with silent laughter, and she was furious.

The Saint had travelled. He talked interestingly—if with a strong egotistical bias—about places as far removed from civilisation and from each other as Vladivostok, Armenia, Moscow, Lapland, Chung-king, Pernambuco, and Sierra Leone. There seemed to be few of the wilder parts of the world which he had not visited, and few of those in which he had not had adventures. He had won a gold rush in South Africa, and lost his holding in a poker game twenty-four hours later. He had run guns into China, whisky into the United States, and perfume into England. He had deserted after a year in the Spanish Foreign Legion. He had worked his passage across the Atlantic as a steward, tramped across America, fought his way across Mexico during a free-for-all revolution, picked up a couple of thousand pounds in the Argentine, and sailed home from Buenos Aires in a millionaire’s suite—to lose nearly all the fruit of his wanderings on Epsom Downs.

“You’ll find Baycombe very dull after such an exciting life,” said Miss Girton.

“Somehow, I don’t agree,” said the Saint. “I find the air very bracing.”

Bloem adjusted his spectacles and enquired:

“And what might your employment be at the moment?”

“Just now,” said the Saint suavely, “I’m looking for a million dollars. I feel that I should like to end my days in luxury, and I can’t get along on less than fifteen thousand a year.”

Algy squawked with merriment.

“Haw-haw!” he yapped. “Jolly good! Too awfully horribly priceless! What? What?”

“Quite,” the Saint concurred modestly.

“I fear,” said Lapping, “that you will hardly find your million dollars in Baycombe.”

The Saint put his hands on the tablecloth and studied his finger-nails with a gentle smile.

“You depress me, Sir Michael,” he remarked. “And I was feeling very optimistic. I was told that there were a million dollars to be picked up here, and one can hardly disbelieve the word of a dying man, especially when one has tried to save his life. It was at a place called Ayer Pahit, in the Malay States. He’d taken to the jungle—they’d hunted him through every town in the Peninsular, ever since they located him settling down in Singapore to enjoy an unjust share of the loot—and one of their Malay trackers had caught him and stuck a kris in him. I found him just before he passed out, and he told me most of the story. . . . But I’m boring you.”

“Not a bit, dear old sprout, not a bit!” rejoined Algy eagerly, and he was supported by a chorus of curiosity.

The Saint shook his head.

“But I’m quite certain I shall bore you if I go on,” he stated obstinately. “Now suppose I’d been talking about Brazil—did you know there was a village behind an almost impassable range of hills covered with thick poisonous jungle where some descendants of Cortes’ crowd still live? They’re gradually being absorbed into the native stock—Mayas—by intermarriage, but they still wear swords and talk good Castilian. They could hardly believe my rifle. I remember . . .”

And it was impossible to wheedle him back to any further discussion of his million dollars.

He made his excuses as soon after coffee as was decently possible, and spoke last to Patricia.

“When you get to know me better—as you must—you’ll learn to forgive my weakness.”

“I suppose it’s nothing but a silly desire to cause a sensation,” she said coldly.

“Nothing but that,” said the Saint with disarming frankness, and went home with a comfortable feeling that he had had the better of the exchange.

In spite of the protestations of Orace, he took a walk during the afternoon. He wanted to be familiar with the territory for some distance around, and thus his route took him inland towards the uplands which sheltered the village on the south. It was the first time he had surveyed the ground, but his hunting experience had given him a good eye for country, and at the end of three hours’ hard tramping he had every detail of the district mapped in his brain.

It was on the homeward hike that he met the stranger. His walk had been as solitary as a walk in North Devon can be: he had not even encountered any farm labourers, for the land for miles around was unclaimed moor. But this man was so obviously harmless, even at a distance of half a mile, that the Saint frowned thoughtfully.

The man was in plus-fours of a dazzling purple hue. He had a kind of haversack slung over his shoulder, and he carried a butterfly net. He moved aimlessly about—sometimes in short violent rushes, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling and rooting about on his hands and knees. He did not seem to notice Templar at all, and the Saint, moving very silently, came right up and stood over him during an exceptionally zealous burrowing exploration among some gorse bushes. While Simon watched, the naturalist made a sudden pounce, accompanied by a gasp of triumph, and wriggled back into the open with a small beetle held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The haversack was hitched round, a matchbox secured, the insect imprisoned therein, and the box carefully stowed away. Then the entomologist rose to his feet, perspiring and very red in the face.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he remarked genially, mopping his brow with an appallingly green silk handkerchief.

“So it is,” agreed the Saint.

Mr. Templar had a disconcerting trick of taking the most conventional speech quite literally—a device which he had adopted because it threw the onus of continuing the conversation upon the other party.

“An innocuous and healthy pastime,” explained the stranger, with a friendly and all-embracing sweep of his hand. “Fresh air—exercise—and all in the most glorious scenery in England.”

He was half a head shorter than the Saint, but a good two stone heavier. His eyes were large and child-like behind a pair of enormous horn-rimmed glasses, and he wore a straggly pale walrus moustache. The sight of this big middle-aged man in the shocking clothes, with his ridiculous little butterfly net, was as diverting as anything the Saint could remember.

“Of course—you’re Dr. Carn,” said the Saint, and the other started.

“How did you know?”

“I always seem to be giving people surprises,” complained Simon, completely at his ease. “It’s so simple. You look less like a doctor than anyone but a doctor could look, and there’s only one doctor in Baycombe. How’s trade?”

Suddenly Carn was no longer genial.

“My profession?” he said stiffly. “I don’t quite understand.”

“You are one of many,” sighed the Saint. “Nobody ever quite understands me. And I wasn’t talking about your new profession, but about your old trade.”

Carn looked very closely at the younger man, but Simon was gazing at the sea, and his face was inscrutable except for a faintly mocking twist at the corners of his mouth—a twist that might have meant anything.

“You’re clever, Templar——”

“Mr. Templar to the aristocracy, but Saint to you,” Simon corrected him benevolently. “Naturally I’m clever. If I wasn’t, I’d be dead. And my especial brilliance is an infallible memory for faces.”

“You’re clever, Templar, but this time you’re mistaken, and persisting in your delusion is making you forget your manners.”

The Saint favoured Carn with a lazy smile.

“Well, well,” he murmured, “to err is human, is not it? But tell me, Dr. Carn, why you allow an automatic pistol to spoil the set of that beautiful coat? Are you afraid of a scarabæus turning at bay? Or is it that you’re scared of a Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga jumping out of a bush?”

And the Saint swung his heavy staff as though weighing its efficiency as a bludgeon, and the clear blue eyes with that lively devil of mischief glimmering in their depths never left Carn’s red face. Carn glared back chokingly.

“Sir,” he exploded at length, “let me tell you——”

“I, too, was once an Inspector of Horse Marines to the Swiss Navy,” the Saint encouraged him gently; and, when Carn’s indignation proved to have become speechless, he added: “But why am I so unsociable? Come along to the Pill Box and have a spot of supper. I’m afraid it’ll only be tinned stuff—we stopped having fresh meat since a seagull died after tasting the Sunday joint—but our brandy is Napoleon . . . and Orace grills sardines marvellously. . . .”

He linked his arm in Carn’s and urged the naturalist along, chattering irrepressibly. It is an almost incredible tribute to the charm which the Saint could exert, to record that he coaxed Carn into acceptance in three minutes and had him chuckling at a grossly improper limerick by the time they reached the Pill Box.

“You’re a card, Templar,” said Carn as they sat over Martinis in the sitting-room, and the Saint raised indulgent eyebrows.

“Because I called your bluff?”

“Because you didn’t hesitate.”

“He who hesitates,” said the Saint sententiously, “is bossed. No mughopper will ever spiel this baby.”

They talked politics and literature through supper (the Saint had original and heretical views on both subjects) as dispassionately as the most ordinary men, met together in the most ordinary circumstances, might have done.

After Orace had served coffee and withdrawn, Carn produced a cigar-case and offered it to the Saint. Templar looked, and shook his head with a smile.

“Not even with you, dear heart,” he said, and Carn was aggrieved.

“There’s nothing wrong with them.”

“I’m so glad you haven’t wasted a cigar, then.”

“If I give you my word——”

“I’ll take it. But I won’t take your cigars.”

Carn shrugged, took one himself and lighted it. The Saint settled himself more comfortably in his arm-chair.

“I’m glad to see you don’t pack a gun yourself,” observed the Doctor presently.

“It makes one so unpopular, letting off artillery and things all over Devonshire,” said Simon. “You can only do that in shockers: in real life, the police make all sorts of awkward enquiries if you go slaughtering people here and there because they look cock-eyed at you. But I don’t advise anyone to bank on my consideration for the nerves of the neighbourhood when I’m in my own home.”

Carn sat forward abruptly.

“We’ve bluffed for an hour and a half by the clock,” he said. “Suppose we get down to brass tacks?”

“I’ll suppose anything you like,” assented Simon.

“I know you’ve got some funny game on; and I know you aren’t one of those dude detectives, because I’ve made enquiries. You aren’t even Secret Service. I know something about your record, and I gather you haven’t come to Baycombe because you got an idea you’d like to vegetate in rural England and grow string beans. You aren’t the sort that goes anywhere unless they can see easy money or big trouble waiting for collection.”

“I might have decided to quit before I stopped something.”

“You might—but your sort doesn’t quit while there’s a kick left in ’em. Besides, what do you think I’ve been doing all the time I’ve been down here?”

“Huntin’ the elusive Wugga-Wugga, presumably,” drawled the Saint.

Carn made a gesture of impatience.

“I’ve told you you’re clever,” he said, “and I meant every letter of it—in capital italics. But you don’t have to pretend you think I’m a fool, because I know you know better. You’re here for what you can get, and I’ve a good idea what that is. If I’m right, it’s my job to get in your way all I can, unless you work in with me. Templar, I’m paying you the compliment of putting the cards on the table, because from what I hear I’d rather work with you than against you. Now, why can’t you come across?”

The Saint had sunk deeper into his arm-chair. The room was lighted only by the smoky oil lamp that Orace had brought in with the coffee, for the sky had clouded over in the late afternoon and night had come on early.

“There are just one million reasons why I shouldn’t come across,” said the Saint tranquilly. “They were lost to the Confederated Bank of Chicago quite a time ago, and I want them all to myself, my good Carn.”

“You don’t imagine you could get away with it?”

“I can think of no limits to my ingenuity in getting away with things,” said the Saint calmly.

He moved in the shadows, and a moment later he said quietly:

“There is a million-and-first argument which prevents me coming across just now, Carn—and that is that I never allow Tiger Cubs to listen-in on my confessions.”

“What do you mean?” asked Carn.

“I mean,” said the Saint in a clear strong voice, “that at this moment there’s some son-of-a-gun peeking through that embrasure. I’ve got him covered, and if he so much as blinks I’m going to shoot his eyelids off!”

Chapter III.
A Little Melodrama

Carn sprang to his feet, his hand flying to his hip, and the Saint laughed softly.

“He’s gone,” Templar said. “He ducked as soon as I spoke. But maybe now you realise how hard it is not to be killed when someone’s really out for your blood. It looks so easy in stories, but I’m finding it a bit of a strain.”

The Saint was talking in his usual mild leisurely way, but there was nothing leisurely about his movements. He had turned out the lamp at the same instant as Carn had jumped up, and his words came from the direction of the embrasure.

“Can’t see anything. This bunch are as windy as mice trying to nibble a cat’s whiskers. I’ll take a look outside. Stay right where you are, sonny.”

Carn heard the Saint slither out, and there were words in the kitchen. A few seconds later Orace came in, bearing a lighted candle and clasping his beloved blunderbuss in his free hand. Orace did not speak. He set the candle down in a corner, so that the light did not interfere with his view of the embrasure, and waited patiently with the enormous revolver cocked and at the ready.

“You have an exciting life,” remarked Carn, and Orace turned an unfriendly eye—and the revolver upon the Doctor.

“Um,” said Orace noncommittally.

The Saint was back in ten minutes by the clock.

“Bad huntin’,” he murmured. “It’s as black as coffee outside, and he must have hared for home as soon as I scared him. . . . Beer, Orace.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the silent one, and faded out as grimly as he had entered.

Carn gazed thoughtfully after the retreating figure with its preposterous armoury and its preposterous strut.

“Any more in the menagerie?” he enquired.

“Nope,” said the Saint laconically.

He was relighting the lamp, and the flare of the match threw his face into high relief for an instant. Carn became more thoughtful. His life had been devoted to dealing with men of all sorts and conditions. He had known many clever men, not a few dangerous men, and a number of mysterious men, but at that moment he wondered if he had ever met a man who looked more cleverly and dangerously and mysteriously competent to deal with any kind of trouble that happened to be floating around.

“I’d rather have you on my side than against me, Saint,” said Carn. “You’d get a rake-off. Think it over.”

Hands on hips, the Saint regarded the red-faced man quizzically.

“Can I take that as official?”

“Naturally not. But you can take it from me that it can be arranged on the side.”

“Thanks,” said the Saint. “I don’t feel impressed with your balance sheet. Taken by and large, the dividend don’t seem fat enough to tempt this investor. Now try this one: come in with me, and I’ll promise you one third. Think it over, Detective Inspector Carn.”

“Dr. Carn.”

The Saint smiled.

“Need we keep it up?” he asked smoothly. “What on earth, dear lamb, did you think you were getting away with?”

Carn wrinkled his nose.

“Just as you like,” he agreed. “You have the advantage of me, though. I’m hanged if I can place you.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard for some time,” said the Saint cheerfully.

Carn rose to go after a couple of pints of beer had vanished, and Templar rose also.

“Better let me see you home,” said the Saint. “I’ll feel safer.”

“If you think I need nursing,” began Carn with some heat, but Simon linked his arm in that of the detective with his most charming smile.

“Not a bit. I’d enjoy the stroll.”

Carn was living in a miniature house the grounds of which backed on the larger grounds of the Manor. Templar had already noticed the house, and had wondered whom it belonged to; and for some unaccountable reason, which he could only blame on his melodramatic imagination, he felt relieved at the news that Patricia had a real live detective within call.

On the walk, the Saint learned that Carn had been on the spot for three months. Carn was prepared to be loquacious up to a point: but beyond that limit he could not be lured. Carn was also prepared to talk about the Saint—a fact which pleased Simon’s egotism without hypnotising his caution.

“I think it should be an interesting duel,” Carn said.

“I hope so,” agreed Templar politely.

“The more so because you are the second most confident crook I’ve ever met.”

The Saint’s white teeth flashed.

“You’re premature,” he protested. “My crime is not yet committed. Already an idea is sizzling in my brain which might easily save me the trouble of running against the law at all. I’ll write my solicitor to-morrow and let you know.”

He declined Carn’s invitation to come in for a doch-an-doris, and, saying good-bye at the door, set off briskly in the general direction of the Pill Box.

This expedition, however, lasted only for so long as he judged that Carn, if he were curious, would have been able to hear the departing footsteps. At that point the Saint stepped neatly off the road on to the grass at the side and retraced his steps, moving like a lean grey shadow. A short distance away he could see the gaunt lines of Sir John Bittle’s home, and it had occurred to him that his investigations might very well include that wealthy upstart. It was just after ten o’clock, but the thought that the household would still be awake never gave the Saint a moment’s pause: his was a superbly reckless bravado.

The house was surrounded by a high stone wall that increased its sinister and secretive air, making it look like a converted prison. The Saint worked round the wall with the noiseless surefootedness of a Red Indian. He found only two openings. There was a back entrance which looked more like a mediæval postern gate, and which could not have been penetrated without certain essential tools that were not included in Templar’s travelling equipment. At the front there was a large double door a few yards back from the road, but this also was set into the wall, which would have formed a kind of archway at that spot if the doors had been opened.

It was left for the Saint to scale the wall itself. Fortunately he was tall, and he found that by standing on tiptoe and straining upwards he was able to hook his fingers over the top. Satisfied, he took off his coat and held it with the tab between his teeth; then, reaching up, he got a grip and hauled himself to the full contraction of his muscles. Holding on with one hand, he flung his coat over the broken glass set into the top of the wall, and so scrambled over, dropping to the ground on the other side like a cat.

The Saint moved swiftly along the wall to the back entrance which he had observed, conducted a light-fingered search for burglar alarms, and found one which he disconnected. Then he unbarred the door and left it slightly ajar in readiness for his retreat.

That done, he went down on his knees and crawled towards the house. If the light had been strong enough to make him visible, his method of progress would have seemed to border on the antics of a lunatic, for he wriggled forward six inches at a time, his hands waving and weaving about gently in front of him. In this way he evaded two fine alarm wires, one stretched a few inches off the ground and the other at the level of his shoulder. He rose under the wall of the house, chuckling inaudibly, but he was taking no chances.

“Now let’s take a look at the warrior who looks after himself so carefully,” said the Saint, but he said it to himself.

The side of the house on which he found himself was in darkness, and after a second’s thought he worked rapidly round to the south. As soon as he rounded the angle of the building he saw two patches of light on the grass, and crept along till he reached the french windows from which they were thrown. The curtains were half-drawn, but he was able to peer through a gap between the hangings and the frames.

He was looking into the library—a large, lofty, oak-panelled room, luxuriously furnished. It was quite evident that Sir John Bittle’s parsimony did not interfere with his indulgence of his personal tastes. The carpet was a rich Turkey with fully a four-inch pile; the chairs were huge and inviting, upholstered in brown leather; a costly bronze stood in one corner, and the walls were lined with bookshelves.

These things the Saint noticed in one glance, before anything human caught his eye. A moment later he saw the man who could only have been Bittle himself. The late wholesale grocer was stout: the Saint could only guess at height, since Bittle was hunched up in one of the enormous chairs, but the millionaire’s pink neck overflowed his collar in all directions. Sir John Bittle was in dinner dress, and he was smoking a cigar.

“Charming sketch of home life of Captain of Canning Industry,” murmured the Saint, again to his secret soul. “Unconventional Portraits of the Great. Picture on Back Page.”

The Saint had thought Bittle was alone, but just as he was about to move along he heard the millionaire’s fat voice remark:

“And that, my dear young lady, is the position.”

The Saint stood like a man turned to granite.

Presently a familiar voice answered:

“I can’t believe it.”

The Saint edged away from the wall, so that he could see into the room through the space between the half-drawn curtains. Patricia was in the chair opposite Bittle, tight-lipped, her handkerchief twisted to a rag between her fingers.

Bittle laughed—a throaty chuckle that did not disturb the comfortable impassiveness of his florid features. Templar also chuckled. If that chuckle could have been heard, it would have been found to have an unpleasant timbre.

“Even documents—bonds—receipts—won’t convince you, I suppose?” asked the millionaire. He pulled a sheaf of papers from the pocket of his dinner jacket and tossed them into the girl’s lap. “I’ve been very patient, but I’m getting tired of this hanky-panky. I suppose just seeing you made me silly and sentimental—but I’m not such a sentimental fool that I’m going to take another mortgage on an estate that isn’t worth one half of what I’ve lent your aunt already.”

“It’ll break her heart,” said Patricia, white-faced.

“The alternative is breaking my bank.”

The girl started up, clutching the papers tensely.

“You couldn’t be such a swine!” she said hotly. “What’s a few thousand to you?”

“This,” said Bittle calmly: “it gives me the power to make terms.”

Patricia was frozen as she stood. There was a silence that ticked out a dozen sinister things in as many seconds. Then she said, in a strained, unnaturally low voice:

“What terms?”

Sir John Bittle moved one fat hand in a faint gesture of deprecation.

“Please don’t let’s be more melodramatic than we can help,” he said. “Already I feel very self-conscious and conventional. But the fact is, I should like to marry you.”

For an instant the girl was motionless. Then the last drop of blood fled from her cheeks. She held the papers in her two hands, high above her head.

“Here’s my answer, you cad!”

She tore the documents across and across and flung the pieces from her, and then stood facing the millionaire with her face as pale as death and her eyes flaming.

“Good for you, kid!” commented the Saint inaudibly.

Bittle, however, was unperturbed, and once again that throaty chuckle gurgled in his larynx without kindling any corresponding geniality in his features.

“Copies,” he said simply, and at that point the Saint thought that the conversational tension would be conveniently relieved with a little affable comment from a third party.

“You little fool!” said Bittle acidly. “Did you think I worked my way up from mud to millions without some sort of brain? And d’you imagine that a man who’s beaten the sharpest wits in London at their own game is going to be baulked by a chit of a country child? Tchah!” The millionaire’s lips twisted wryly. “Now you’ve made me lose my temper and get melodramatic, just when I asked you not to. Don’t let’s have any more nonsense, please. I’ve put it quite plainly: either you marry me or I sue your aunt for what she owes me. Choose whichever you prefer, but don’t let’s have any hysterics.”

“No, don’t let’s,” agreed the Saint, standing just inside the room.

Neither had noticed his entrance, which had been a very slick specimen of its kind. He had slipped in through one of the open french windows, behind a curtain, and he stepped out of cover as he spoke, so that the effect was as startling as if he had materialised out of the air.

Patricia recognised him with a gasp. Bittle jumped up with an exclamation. His fat face, which had paled at first, became a deeper red. The Saint stood with his hands in his pockets and a gentle smile on his open face.

Bittle’s voice broke out in a harsh snarl.

“Sir——”

“To you,” assented the Saint smoothly. “Evening. Evening, Pat. Hope I don’t intrude.”

And he gazed in an artlessly friendly way from face to face, as cool and self-possessed and saintly-looking a six-foot-two of toughness as ever breezed into a peaceful Devonshire village. Patricia moved nearer to him instinctively, and Simon’s smile widened amiably as he offered her his hand. Bittle was struggling to master himself: he succeeded after an effort.

“I was not aware, Mr. Templar, that I had invited you to entertain us this evening,” he said thickly.

“Nor was I,” said the Saint ingenuously. “Isn’t it odd?”

Bittle choked. He was furious, and he was apprehensive of how long Templar might have been listening to the duologue; but there was another and less definite fear squirming into his consciousness. The Saint was tall, and although he was not at all massive there was a certain solid poise to his body that vouched for an excellent physique in fighting trim. And there was a mocking hell-for-leather light twinkling in the Saint’s level blue eyes, and something rather ugly about his very mildness, that tickled a cold shiver out of Bittle’s spine.

“Shall we say, as men of the world, Mr. Templar—it’s hardly necessary to beat about the bush—that your arrival was a little inopportune?” said Bittle.

The Saint wrinkled his brow.

“Shall we?” he asked vaguely, as though the question was a very difficult riddle. “I give it up.”

Bittle shrugged and went over to a side table on which stood decanter, siphon, and glasses.

“Whisky, Mr. Templar?”

“Thanks,” said the Saint, “I’ll have one when I get home. I’m very particular about the people I drink with. Once I had a friend who was terribly careless that way, and one day they fished him out of the canal in Soerabaja. I should hate to be fished out of anywhere.”

“To show there’s no ill-feeling. . . .”

“If I drank your whisky, son,” said the Saint, “I’m so afraid there might be all the ill-feeling we could deal with.”

Bittle came back to the table and crushed the stump of his cigar into an ashtray. He looked at the Saint, and something about the Saint’s quietness sent that draughty shiver prickling again up Bittle’s vertebræ, The Saint was still exactly where he had stood when he emerged from behind the curtain; the Saint did not seem at all embarrassed; and the Saint seemed to have all the time in the world to kill. The Saint, in short, looked as though he was waiting for something and in no particular hurry about it, and Bittle was beginning to get worried.

“Hardly conduct befitting a gentleman, shall we say, Mr. Templar?” Bittle temporised.

“No,” said the Saint fervently. “Thank the Lord I’m not a gentleman. Gentlemen are such snobs. All the gentlemen around here, for instance, refuse to know you—at least, that’s what I’m told—but I don’t mind it in the least. I hope we shall get on excellently together, and that this meeting will be but the prelude to a long and enjoyable acquaintance, to mutual satisfaction and profit. Yours faithfully.”

“You leave me very little choice, Mr. Templar,” said Bittle, and touched the bell.

The Saint remained where he was, still smiling, until there was a knock on the door and a butler who looked like a retired prize-fighter came in.

“Show Mr. Templar the door,” said Bittle.

“But how hospitable!” exclaimed the Saint, and then, to the surprise of everyone, he walked coolly across the room and followed the butler into the passage.

The millionaire stood by the table, almost gasping with astonishment at the ease with which he had broken down such an apparently impregnable defence.

“I know these bluffers,” he remarked with ill-concealed relief.

His satisfaction was of very short duration, for the end of his little speech coincided with the sounds of a slight scuffle outside and the slamming of a door. While Bittle stared, the Saint walked in again through the window, and his cheery “Well, well, well!” brought the millionaire’s head round with a jerk as the door burst open and the butler returned.

“Nice door,” murmured the Saint.

He was breathing a little faster, but not a hair of his sleek head was out of place. The pugilistic butler, on the other hand, was not a little dishevelled, and appeared to have just finished banging his nose on to something hard. The butler had a trickle of blood running down from his nostrils to his mouth, and the look in his eyes was not one of peace on earth or goodwill towards men.

“Home again,” drawled the Saint. “This is a peach of a round game, what? as dear Algy would say. Now can I see the offices? House-agents always end up their advertisements by saying that their desirable property is equipped with the usual offices, but I’ve never seen one of the same yet.”

“Let me attim,” uttered the butler, shifting round the table.

The Saint smiled, his hands in his pockets.

“You try to drop-kick me down the front steps, and you get welted on the boko,” said Simon speculatively, adapting style to audience. “Now you want to whang into my prow—and I wonder where you get blipped this time?”

Bittle stepped between the two men, and in one comprehensive glance summed up their prospects in a rough-house. Then he looked at the butler and motioned towards the door.

The ex-pug went out reluctantly, muttering profane and offensive things, and the millionaire faced round again.

“Suppose you explain yourself?”

“Just suppose!” agreed Templar enthusiastically.

Bittle glowered.

“Well, Mr. Templar?”

“Quite, thanks. How’s yourself?”

“Need you waste time playing the fool?” demanded Bittle shortly.

“Now I come to think of it—no,” answered the Saint amiably. “But granny always said I was a terrible tease. . . . Well, sonny, taken all round I don’t think your hospitality comes up to standard; and that being so I’ll see Miss Holm back to the old roof-tree. S’long.”

And he took Patricia’s arm and led her towards the french window, while Bittle stood watching them in silence, completely nonplussed. It was just as he seemed about to pass out of the house without further parley that the Saint stopped and turned, as though struck by a minor afterthought.

“By the way, Bittle,” he said, “I was forgetting—you were going to pass over a few documents, weren’t you?”

Bittle did not answer, and the Saint added:

“All about your side line in usury. Hand over the stuff and I’ll write you a cheque now for the full amount.”

“I refuse,” snapped the millionaire.

“Please yourself,” said the Saint. “My knowledge of Law is pretty scrappy, but I don’t think you can do that without cancelling the debt. Anyway, I’ll tell my solicitor to send you a cheque, and we’ll see what happens.”

The Saint turned away again, and in so doing almost collided with Patricia, who had preceded him into the garden. The girl was caught in his arms for a moment to save a fall, and the Saint was surprised to see that she was gasping with suppressed terror. A moment later the reason was given him by a ferocious baying of great hounds in the darkness.

In one swift movement Simon had the girl inside the room, and had slammed the french windows shut. Then he stood with his back to the wall, half-covering Patricia in the shelter of his wide shoulders, his hands on his hips, and a very saintly meekness overspreading his face.

“Um—as Orace would say in the circumstances,” murmured the Saint. “Bigger than Barnums. Do you mind playing the Clown while I open the Unique Mexican Knife-throwing Act?”

And Bittle, with a tiny automatic in his hand, was treated to a warning glimpse of the fine steel blade that lay along Simon Templar’s palm.

Chapter IV.
A Social Evening

“No,” said the Saint, shaking his head sadly, “it can’t be done. It can’t really. For one thing, we’re getting all melodramatic, and I know how you hate that. For another thing, we’ve got the set all wrong. You’ve got to get into training for looking evil—just now, you’re as harmless-looking a blackguard as I’ve ever met. I’m strong for getting the atmosphere right. What d’you say to adjourning, and we can arrange to meet in Limehouse in about two months, which’ll give you time to grow a beard and develop a cast in one eye and employ a few tame thugs by way of local colour. . . .”

The Saint rambled on in his free-and-easy manner, while his brain dealt rapidly with the situation. Bittle had not raised his automatic. It pointed innocuously into the carpet, held as loosely as it could be without falling, for Simon’s eyes were narrowed down to glinting chips of steel that missed nothing, and Sir John Bittle had an uncomfortable feeling that those eyes were keen enough to note the slightest tightening of a muscle. The Saint was giving an admirable imitation of a man pretending to be off his guard, but the millionaire knew that the sight of the least threatening movement would telegraph an instant message to the hand that played with that slim little knife—and the Saint’s general manner suggested that he felt calmly confident of being able to reproduce any and every stunt in any and every Mexican knife-throwing act that ever was, with a few variations and trimmings of his own.

“You are not conversational, Bittle,” said the Saint, and Bittle smiled.

“My style is, to say the least of it, cramped,” replied the millionaire. “If I move, what are the chances of my being pricked with your pretty toy?”

“Depends how you move,” answered the Saint. “If, for instance, you relaxed the right hand, so as to allow the ugly toy now reposing there to descend upon the carpet with what is known to journalists as a sickening thud—then, I might say that the chances are about one thousand to one against.”

Bittle opened his hand, and the gun dropped. He stepped to one side, and the Saint, with a swift sweeping glide, picked up the weapon and dropped it into his pocket. At the same time he replaced his own weapon in its concealed sheath.

“Now we can be matey again,” remarked Simon with satisfaction. “What’s the next move? Taking things in a broad way, I can’t credit your bunch with much brilliance so far. Dear old Spittle, why on earth must you make such an appalling bloomer? Don’t you know that according to the rules of this game you ought to remain shrouded in mystery until Chapter Thirty? Now you’ve been and gone and spoilt my holiday,” complained the Saint bitterly, “and I don’t know how I shall be able to forgive you.”

“You are a very extraordinary man, Mr. Templar.”

The Saint smiled.

“True, O King. But you’re quite as strange a specimen as ever went into the Old Bailey. For a retired grocer, your command of the Oxford language is astonishing.”

Bittle did not answer, and the Saint gazed genially around and seemed almost surprised to see Patricia standing a little behind him. The girl had not known what to make of most of the conversation, but she had recovered from her immediate fear. There was a large assurance about everything the Saint did and said which inspired her with uncomprehending courage—even as it inspired Bittle with uncomprehending anxiety.

“Hope we haven’t bored you,” murmured Simon solicitously. “Would you like to go home?”

She nodded, and Templar looked at the millionaire.

“She would like to go home,” Templar said in his most winning voice.

A thin smile touched Bittle’s mouth.

“Just when we’re getting matey?” he queried.

“I’m sure Miss Holm didn’t mean to offend you,” protested Simon. He looked at the girl, who stared blankly at him, and turned to Bittle with an air of engaging frankness. “You see? It’s only that she’s rather tired.”

Bittle turned over the cigars in a box on a side table near the Saint, selected one, amputated the tip, and lighted it with the loving precision of a connoisseur. Then he faced Templar blandly.

“That happens to be just what I can’t allow at the moment,” said Bittle in an apologetic tone. “You see, we have some business to discuss.”

“I guess it’ll keep,” said the Saint gently.

“I don’t think so,” said Bittle.

Templar regarded the other thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then, with a shrug, he jerked the millionaire’s automatic from his pocket and walked to the french windows. He opened one of them a couple of inches, holding it with his foot, and signed to the girl to follow him. With her beside him, he said:

“Then it looks, Bittle, as if you’ll spend to-morrow morning burying a number of valuable dogs.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bittle.

There was a quiet significance in the way he said it that brought the Saint round again on the alert.

“Go hon!” mocked Simon watchfully.

Bittle stood with his head thrown back and his eyes half closed, as though listening. Then he said:

“You see, Mr. Templar, if you look in the cigar-box you will find that the bottom sinks back a trifle under quite a light pressure. In fact, it acts as a bell-push. There are now three men in the garden as well as four bloodhounds, and two more in the passage outside this room. And the only dog I can imagine myself burying to-morrow morning is an insolent young puppy who’s chosen to poke his nose into my business.”

“Well, well, well,” said the Saint, his hands in his pockets. “Well, well, WELL!”

Sir John Bittle settled himself comfortably in his arm-chair, pulled an ashstand to a convenient position, and continued the leisurely smoking of his cigar. The Saint, looking at him in a softly speculative fashion, had to admire the man’s nerve. The Saint smiled; and then Patricia’s hand on his arm brought him back with a jerk to the stern realities of the situation. He took the hand in his, pressed it, and turned the Saintly smile on her in encouragement. Then he was weighing Bittle’s automatic in a steady hand.

“Carrying on the little game of Let’s Pretend,” suggested Simon, “let’s suppose that I sort of pointed this gun at you, all nervous and upset, and in my agitation I kind of twiddled the wrong knob. I mean, suppose it went off, and you were in the way? Wouldn’t it be awkward!”

Bittle shook his head.

“Terribly,” he agreed. “And you’re such a mystery to Baycombe already that I’m afraid they’d talk. You know how unkind gossip can be. Why, they’d be quite capable of saying you did it on purpose.”

“There’s something in that,” said Templar mildly, and he put the gun back in his pocket. “Then suppose I took my little knife and began playing about with it, and it flew out of my hand and took off your ear? Or suppose it sliced off the end of your nose? It’s rotten to have only half a nose or only one ear. People stop and stare at you in the street, and so forth.”

“And think of my servants,” said Bittle. “They’re all very attached to me, and they might be quite unreasonably vindictive.”

“That’s an argument,” conceded the Saint seriously. “And now suppose you suggest a game?”

Bittle moved to a more comfortable position and thought carefully before replying. The time ticked over, but the Saint was too old a hand to be rattled by any such primitive device, and he leaned nonchalantly against the wall and waited patiently for Bittle to realise that the cat-and-mouse gag was getting no laughs that journey. At length Bittle said:

“I should be quite satisfied, Mr. Templar, if you would spend a day or two with me, and during that time we could decide on some adequate expression of your regret for your behaviour this evening. As for Miss Holm, she and I can finish our little chat uninterrupted, and then I will see her home myself.”

“Um,” murmured the Saint, lounging. “Bit of an optimist, aren’t you?”

“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, Mr. Templar,” said Bittle cordially. “In fact, I expect your room is already being prepared.”

The Saint smiled.

“You almost tempt me to accept,” he said. “But it cannot be. If Miss Holm were not with us—well, I should be very boorish to refuse. But as a matter of fact I promised Miss Girton to join them in a sandwich and a glass of ale towards midnight, and I can’t let them down.”

“Miss Holm will make your excuses,” urged Bittle, but the Saint shook his head regretfully.

“Another time.”

Bittle moved again in the chair, and went on with his cigar. And it began to dawn upon the Saint that, much as he was enjoying the sociable round of parlour sports, the game was becoming a trifle too one-sided. There was also the matter of Patricia, who was rather a handicap. He found that he was still holding her hand, and was reluctant to make any drastic change in the circumstances, but business was business.

With a sigh the Saint hitched himself off the wall which he had found such a convenient prop, released the hand with a final squeeze, and began to saunter round the room, humming light-heartedly under his breath and inspecting the general fixtures and fittings with a politely admiring eye.

“This room is under observation from two points,” Bittle informed him as a tactful precaution.

“Pity we haven’t got a camera—the scene’d shoot fine for a shocker,” was the Saint’s only criticism.

And Simon went on with his tour of the room. He had taken Bittle’s warning with the utmost nonchalance, but its reactions on the problem in hand and his own tentative solution were even then being balanced up in his mind. Bittle, meanwhile, smoked away with a large languidness which indicated his complete satisfaction with the entertainment provided and a sublime disregard for the time spent on digesting it. Which was all that the Saint could have asked.

In its way, it was a classical performance. Anyone with any experience of such things, entering the room, would have sensed at once that both men were past masters. Nothing could have been calmer than their appearance, nothing more polished than their dispassionate exchange of backchat.

The Saint worked his unhurried way round the room. Now he stopped to examine a Benares bowl, now an etching, now a fine old piece of furniture. The patina on a Greek vase held him enthralled for half a minute: then he was absorbed in the workmanship of a Sheraton whatnot. In fact, an impartial observer would have gathered that the Saint had no other interest in life than the study of various antiques, and that he was thoroughly enjoying a free invitation to take his time over a minute scrutiny of his host’s treasures. And all the while the Saint’s eyes, masked now by lazily drooping lids, were taking in all the details of the furnishing to which he did not devote any ostentatious attention, and searching every inch of the walls for the spyholes of which Bittle had spoken.

The millionaire was unperturbed, and the Saint once again permitted the shadow of a smile to touch the corners of his mouth as he caught Patricia’s troubled eyes. The smile hardly moved a muscle of his face, but it drew an answering tremor of the girl’s lips that showed him that her spirits were still keeping their end up.

The Saint was banking on Bittle’s confidence as a bluffer, and he was not disappointed. Bittle knew that, for all the guards with whom he had surrounded himself, his personal safety hung by the slender thread of a simulated carelessness for it. Bittle knew that to show the least anxiety, the faintest flutter of uncertainty, would have been to throw an additional weapon into Templar’s already dangerously comprehensive armoury, and that was exactly what Bittle dared not do. Therefore the millionaire affected not to notice the Saint’s movements, and never changed his position a fraction or allowed his eyes to betray him by following Simon round the room. Bittle leaned back among the cushions and gazed abstractedly at a water-colour on the opposite wall. At another time he studied the pattern on the carpet. Then he looked expressionlessly at Patricia. Once he pored over his finger-nails, and measured the length of ash on his cigar against his cuff. All the while the Saint was behind him, but Bittle did not turn his head, and the Saint was filled with hope and misgiving at the same time. He had located one peephole, cunningly concealed below a pair of old horse-pistols which hung on the wall, but the second he had failed to find. It might have been a bluff; in any case, the time was creeping on, and the Saint could not afford to carry his feigned languor too far. He would have to chance the second watcher.

He began a second circuit, deliberately passing in front of Bittle, and the millionaire looked up casually at him.

“Don’t think I’m hurrying you,” said Bittle, “but it’s getting late, and you might have rather a tiring day to-morrow.”

“Thanks,” murmured Simon. “It takes a lot to tire me. But I’ve decided to spend the night with you, at any rate. You might tell the big stiff with the damaged proboscis to fill the hot-water bottle and lay out some night-shirts.”

Bittle nodded.

“I can only commend your discretion,” he remarked, “as sincerely as I appreciate your simple tastes.”

“Not at all,” murmured the Saint, no less suave. “Would it be troubling you too much to ask for the loan of a pair of bedsocks?”

The Saint was now behind Bittle again. He was standing a bare couple of feet from the millionaire’s head, one hand resting lightly on the back of a small chair. The other hand was holding a bronze statuette up to the light, and the whole pose was so perfectly done that its hidden menace could not have struck the watchers outside until it was too late.

Bittle was a fraction quicker on the uptake. The Saint caught Patricia’s eye and made an almost imperceptible motion towards the window; and at that moment the millionaire’s nerve faltered for a split second, and he began to turn his head. In that instant the Saint sogged the statuette into the back of Bittle’s skull—without any great force, but very scientifically. In another lightning movement, he had jerked up the chair and flung it crashing into the light, and blackness fell on the room with a totally blinding density.

The Saint sprang towards the window.

“Pat!” he breathed urgently.

He touched her groping hand and got the french window open in a trice.

There was a hoarse shouting in the garden and in the corridor, and suddenly the door burst open and a shaft of light fell across the room, revealing the limp form of Bittle sprawled in the arm-chair. A couple of burly figures blocked the doorway, but Patricia and Simon were out of the beam thrown by the corridor lights.

Before she realised what was happening, the girl felt herself snatched up in a pair of steely arms. Within a bare five seconds of the blow that removed Sir John Bittle from the troubles of that evening the Saint was through the window and racing across the lawn, carrying Patricia Holm as he might have carried a child.

The complete manœuvre was carried through with so faultless a technique that Simon Templar, for all his burden, passed right between the two men who were waiting outside the french window, and the ambush was turned into a cursing pursuit. As soon as that danger was past, Simon paused for a moment to set the girl down again; and then, still keeping hold of her hand, he ran her towards the obscurity of a clump of bushes at the end of the lawn.

They had a flying start, and they reached the shrubbery with a lead of half a dozen yards. Without hesitation the Saint plunged into the jungle, finding by instinct the easiest path between the bushes, doubling and dodging like a wild animal and dragging Patricia after him with no regard for the twigs and branches that ripped their clothes to shreds and grazed blood from the exposed skin. Presently he stopped dead, and she stood close beside him, struggling to control her breathing, while he listened for the sounds of pursuit. They could hear men ploughing clumsily through the shrubbery, calling to-one another, crashing uncertainly about. Then, as the hunters realised that their quarry was running no longer, the noise died down, and was succeeded by a tense and straining hush.

Patricia heard Simon whispering in her ear.

“We’re right by the wall. I’m going to get you over. Go home and don’t say anything to your aunt. If I don’t turn up in an hour, tell Dr. Carn. Get me? Don’t, whatever you do, start raising hell in less than an hour.”

“But aren’t you coming?”

Her lips were right against his ear, so that she could feel his head move negatively, though she could not see it.

“Nope. I haven’t quite had my money’s worth yet. Come along.”

She felt him move her so that she could touch the wall. Then he had stooped and was guiding her foot on to his bent knee. As he raised her other foot to his shoulder, while she steadied herself against the wall, a twig snapped under his heel, and the hunt was up again.

“Quick!” he urged.

He straightened up with her standing on his shoulders.

“Mind the glass on top. My coat’s up there. Found it? . . . Good. Over you go. Have some beer waiting for me—I’ll need it.”

“I hate leaving you.”

She could just see a tiny flashing blur of white as he moved a little away from the wall, for she was now nearly over, and she recognised it for his familiar smile.

“Tell me that some time when I can make an adequate reply,” he said. “Tinkety-tonk!”

Then she was gone—he drew himself up and almost thrust her down into the road outside.

The pursuers were very near, and the Saint broke off along the wall with a cheery “Tally-ho!” so that there should be no mistake as to his whereabouts. His job at the moment was to divert the attention of the hunt until the girl had reached safety. He also had a vague idea of taking a look at some of the other rooms of the house—it was only a vague idea, for the Saint was the most blithely irresponsible man in the world, and steadfastly refused to burden himself with a cut-and-dried programme.

Again he distanced the pursuit, working away from the wall to minimise the risk of being cornered, and trying to make enough noise to persuade the enemy that they were still chasing two people. Once, pausing in silence to re-locate the trackers, he heard a scuffle not far away, which shortly terminated in an outburst of profanity and mutual recrimination; and the Saint chuckled. In being saved the trouble of distinguishing friend from foe he had an incalculable advantage over the others, although it made him wonder how long it would be before the search became more systematic and electric torches were brought into service. Or would they decide to wait until daylight? The Saint began to appreciate the numerous advantages attached to a garden wall which so effectively shut out the peering of the stray passer-by.

Simon Templar, however, declined to let these portents oppress his gay recklessness. There seemed to be some reorganisation going on among the ungodly, following the unfortunate case of mistaken identity, and it occurred to the Saint that the fun was losing the boisterous whole-heartedness which had ennobled its early exuberance. No sooner had this chastening thought struck him than he set out to restore the former state of affairs. Creeping along towards the main gate, where he expected to find a guard posted, he almost fell over a man crouching by a tree. Templar had the sentinel by the throat before he could cry out; then, releasing the grip of one hand, he firmly but unmistakably tweaked the man’s nose. Before the sentinel had recovered from the surprise, the Saint had thrown him into a thorny bush and was sprinting for the cover on the other side of the drive. He had scarcely gained the gloom of another clump of bushes before the man’s bellow of rage drifted like music to his ears. The cry was taken up from four different points, and the Saint chuckled.

A moment later he was frozen into immobility by the sound of a voice from the house rising above the clamour.

“Stop shouting, you blasted fools! Kahn—come here!”

“Tush!” murmured the Saint. “I can’t have dotted you a very stiff one, honey, but it certainly hasn’t improved your temper!”

He waited, listening, but he could make nothing of the mutter of voices. Then came the muffled sounds of someone running across the lawn, followed by the dull thud of a wooden bar being thrown back. Then a clinking of metal.

Suddenly there was a snuffling whine, which sank again into a more persistent snuffing. The whine was taken up in three other different keys. Abruptly, the fierce deep-throated baying of a great hound rent the night air. Then there was only a hoarse whimpering.

“Damn their eyes!” said Templar softly. “This is where, item, one Saint, slides off in the direction of his evening bread and milk.”

Even then he was fumbling for the bolts which held the heavy main gates. He had one back and was wrestling with the other when a dog whimpered eagerly only a few yards away. The Saint tore desperately at the metal, thanking his gods for the darkness of the night, and the bolt shot back. At the same instant there was a thunderous knocking on the door, and a vociferous barking replaced the whining of blood-hounds temporarily distracted from the scent.

“To be continued in our next, I think,” grinned the Saint.

He pulled back the heavy door.

“So glad you’ve come, brothers,” remarked the Saint in loud and hospitable accents. “We’re hunting a real live burglar. Care to lend the odd paw?”

“Quietly,” advised a voice.

A blinding beam of light flashed from the hand of the man who had stepped first through the opening. It stabbed at the Saint’s eyes, dazzling him for a moment; then into the ray of it came a hand which held a small automatic pistol with a curious cylindrical gadget screwed to the muzzle. The Saint knew the gadget for a silencer, and there was no doubt whatever about the accuracy of the aim.

“Quietly, Mr. Templar,” repeated the crooning voice.

“Dear me!” said the Saint, who never swore when he was seriously annoyed, and put up his hands.

Chapter V.
Aunt Agatha is Upset

Patricia Holm landed safely on her feet in the road outside the wall and set off steadily for home. She ran easily and smoothly, as a healthy girl can who has spent most of her life away from tubes and ’buses and taxis, although she was somewhat out of breath from keeping up with the Saint’s deadly speed.

She had heard the Saint’s cheery “Tally-ho!” and felt that there was a message for her in it, besides the surface bravado which was meant for the men in the garden—it was at the same time a spur to her pace, to remind her that it was up to her not to waste the advantage which his own actions were winning for her, and an encouragement, to tell her that he was as fit as a fiddle and ready for any amount of rough stuff and that there was no need for anyone to start fretting about him. So Patricia ran, obediently; and it was not until the echoes of the commotion had died away behind her and lost themselves in the other indistinguishable noises of the night, and she had slackened off into a brisk walk, that she grasped the full significance of the situation. Up to that point, the whole proceeding had been so fantastical and nightmarish, and the rush of astonishing events had come with such a staggering velocity, that she had been temporarily bereft of the power of coherent thought. Now, in the anti-climax of easing up her headlong flight, she was able for the first time to see the general outline of the mystery and the danger.

She looked at her wrist watch, and saw from the luminous dial that it was five minutes to eleven. Say the Saint had given his orders five minutes ago: that meant that if anything went wrong she was still forbidden to summon the help of Carn until ten to twelve. And by that time. . . . She shuddered, remembering the dogs. . . .

There was something sinister about Bittle and the big house behind that ominous wall. Of that she could be certain, for the mere intrusion of the Saint upon a private conversation—however compromising—could hardly have led even that impetuous young man to go to such lengths, any more than it could have made Bittle resort to such violent means to prevent their departure. She recalled the rumours which the Saint’s eccentric habits had given rise to in the village, but her recollection of her brief association with him took away all the plausibility of current gossip even while it increased his mysteriousness. Patricia racked her brain for a theory that would hold water, and found none. She assembled the outstanding facts. Templar had some reason for being in the garden that night, and some reason for butting in on the millionaire, and she could not believe that the millionaire’s proposal of marriage would have given the Saint sufficient provocation for what he had done, considering the casualness of their acquaintance. Bittle, for his part, seemed to fear and hate the Saint. Templar disliked Bittle enough to seize a convenient opportunity of dotting the millionaire one with a hefty bit of bronze. That was after Bittle had produced an automatic. And the general trend of things suggested that Bittle’s house was staffed with a tough bunch of bad hats who were quite ready to deal with unwelcome visitors in a most unusual fashion—almost as though they expected unwanted interference. And normal houses and normal millionaires did not have secret bell-pushes in cigar boxes and peepholes from which their libraries could be watched. . . .

The girl had to give it up. At least, her faith in the Saint remained unshaken. It was impossible to believe that there was anything evil about the man. At that rate, Bittle was equally above suspicion—but Bittle’s apparent harmlessness was of the bluff kind that might cover a multitude of sins, whereas the Saint’s chief charm was his unreserved boyishness and his air of exaggerated masquerading. She felt that no sane wolf in sheep’s clothing would have taken such elaborate pains to look like a pantomime wolf.

Whoever and whatever the Saint was, he had done her no injury. He had been her friend—and she had left him behind to face whatever music Bittle’s myrmidons had the desire and brains to provide. . . . And the tuning-up of the orchestra which she had heard gave her a vivid impression that it was no amateur affair. . . . It was some consolation to reflect that the Saint’s little solo, which had opened the concert, itself showed a truly professional touch; nevertheless, she was cursing herself right back to the Manor for deserting him, although she knew that if she had stayed she would only have hampered him.

She had hoped to be able to steal into the house unnoticed, but as she approached she saw a dark figure leaning on the front gate, and in a moment the figure hailed her with the voice of Miss Girton.

“Yes, it’s me,” said Patricia, and followed the woman to the door.

“I heard a lot of noise, and wondered what it was all about,” Miss Girton explained. “Do you know?”

“There’s been some excitement. . . .”

It was all Patricia could think of on the spur of the moment.

She had forgotten the damage inflicted on her clothes and her person by the game of hide-and-seek in the shrubbery, and was at first surprised at the way Miss Girton stared at her in the light of the hall. Then she looked down at her torn skirt and the scratches on her arms.

“You don’t seem to have missed much,” remarked the older woman grimly.

“I can’t explain just now,” said a weary Patricia. “I’ve got to think.”

She went into the drawing-room and sank into a chair. Her guardian took up a position before her, legs astraddle, manlike, hands deep in the pockets of her coat, waiting for the account that she was determined to have.

“If Bittle’s been getting fresh——”

“It wasn’t exactly that,” said the girl. “I’m quite all right. Please leave me alone for a minute.”

The darkening alarm which had showed on Miss Girton’s face gave way to a look of perplexity when she heard that her instinctive suspicion was ungrounded. She could be reasonably patient—it was one of her unfeminine characteristics. With a shrug of her heavy shoulders she took a gasper from a glaring yellow packet and lighted it. She smoked like a man, inhaling deeply, and her fingers were stained orange with nicotine.

Patricia puzzled over what excuse she was going to invent. She knew that Miss Girton could be as acute and ruthless in cross-examination as a lawyer. But the Saint’s orders had been to say nothing before the hour had expired, and Patricia thought only of carrying out his orders. Doubtless the reason for them would be given later, together with some sort of elucidation of the mystery, but at present the sole considerations that weighed with her were those of keeping faith with the man whom she had left in such a tight corner and of finding some way to help him out of it if necessary.

“It was like this,” Patricia began at last. “This afternoon I had a note from Bittle asking me to call after dinner without saying anything to anybody. It was most important. I went. After a lot of beating about the bush he told me that he’d had a mortgage on the Manor for years, and that you owed him a lot of money and were asking for more, and that he’d have to foreclose and demand payment of your debts. Was that true?”

“It was,” replied Agatha Girton stonily.

“But why did you have to—— Oh, surely, there can’t have been any need to borrow money? I always understood that Dad left a small fortune.”

Miss Girton shrugged.

“My dear child, I had to draw on that.”

Patricia stared incredulously. Miss Girton, with a face of wood and in a coldly dispassionate voice, added, like an afterthought:

“I’ve been blackmailed for six years.”

“Who by?”

“Does that matter to you? Go on with your story.”

Patricia jumped up.

“I think, in the circumstances, I’ll please myself what I tell you,” she said with a dangerous quietness. “It might be more to the point if you told me what you’ve done with the money entrusted to you. Six years, Aunt Agatha? That was three years after I came here. . . . You were always making trips abroad, and kept me on at school as long as you could. . . . Weren’t you in Africa six years ago? You were away a long time, I remember——”

“That will do,” said Miss Girton harshly.

“Will it?” asked the girl.

If her aunt had been tearful and frightened, Patricia would have been ready to comfort her, but weakness was not one of Miss Girton’s failings, and her aggressively impenitent manner could provoke nothing but resentment. A storm was perilously near when an interruption came in the shape of a ring at the front door. Miss Girton went to answer it, and Patricia heard in the hall the spluttering of an agitated Algy. In a moment the immaculate Mr. Lomas-Coper himself came into the drawing-room.

“Why, there you are!” he gasped fatuously, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. “And, I say!—what? Been bird’s-nestin’ in your party frock!”

And Algy stood goggling through his monocle at the girl’s disarray.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” she smiled, though inwardly she was cursing the arrival of another person to whom explanations would have to be made. “Aunt Agatha simply sagged when she saw me.”

“I should think so!” said Algy. “What happened to the eggs? Tell me all about it.”

“But what have you come here in such a flurry for?” she countered.

Mr. Lomas-Coper gaped, groping feebly in the air.

“But haven’t you heard? Of course not—I forgot to tell you. You know we’re next door to old Bittle? Well, there’s been no end of a shindy. Lots of energetic souls whooflin’ round the garden, yellin’ blue murder, an’ all Bittle’s pack of maneatin’ hounds howlin’ their heads off. So old Algy goes canterin’ round for news, thinks of you, and comes rampin’ along to see if you’ve heard anything about it an’ find out if you’d like to totter along to the Château Bittle an’ join the game. And here you are, lookin’ as if you’d been in the thick of it yourself. Doocid priceless! Eh? What? What?”

He beamed, full of an impartial good humour, and not at all abashed by the unenthusiastic reception of his brilliance. Miss Girton stood over by the settee, lighting a fresh gasper from the wilting stump of the last, a rugged and gaunt and inscrutable woman. Patricia was suddenly glad of the arrival of Algy. Although a fool, he was a friend: as a fool, he would be easily put off with any facile explanation of her dishevelment, and as a friend he was an unlooked-for straw to be caught at in the turmoil that had flooded the girl’s life that night.

“Sit down, Algy,” she pleaded tolerantly. “And for Heaven’s sake don’t stare at me like that. There’s nothing wrong.”

Algernon sat down and stopped staring, as commanded, but it was more difficult to control his excited loquacity.

“I’m all of a dither,” he confessed superfluously. “I don’t know whether I’m hoofin’ it on the old Gibus or the old Dripeds, sort of style, y’know.”

Patricia looked at her watch. It was twenty past eleven. That meant half an hour to go before she could appeal to Carn. Why Carn?—she wondered. But Algy was still babbling on.

“Abso-jolly-old-lutely, all of a doodah. It’s shockin’. I always thought the Merchant Prince was too good to be true, an’ here he is comin’ out into the comic limelight as a sort of what not. I could have told you so.”

“Aren’t you rather jumping to conclusions?” asked Patricia gently, and Algy’s mouth dropped open.

“But haven’t you been lookin’ up the grocery trade?”

She shook her head.

“I haven’t been near the place. I went out for a walk and missed the edge of the cliff in the dark. Luckily I didn’t fall far—there was a ledge—but I had a stiff climb getting back.”

He collapsed like a marionette with the strings cut. “And you haven’t been fightin’ off the advances of a madman? No leerin’ lunatic tryin’ to rob you of life and or honour?”

“Of course not.”

“Oo-er!” The revelation was too much for Mr. Lomas-Coper—one might almost have thought that he was disappointed at the swift shattering of his lurid hypothesis. “Put the old tootsy into it, haven’t I? What? . . . I’d better be wobblin’ home. Stammerin’ out his apologies, the wretched young man took his hat, his leave, and his life.”

She caught his sleeve and pulled him back.

“Do be sensible,” she begged. “Was your uncle worried?”

“Nothing ever moves the old boy,” said Algy. “He just takes a swig at the barleywater and says it reminds him of Blitzensfontein or something. Unsympathetic, I call it.”

The girl’s mind could give only a superficial attention to Algy’s prattle. She had not known that the noise had been great enough to rouse the neighbourhood, and she wondered how that would affect the Saint’s obscure plans. On the other hand, Bittle would hardly dare go to extremes while she was at large and could testify to some of the events of the evening, and while other people’s curiosity had been aroused by the resultant hullabaloo. Then she remembered that Bittle’s house and Bloem’s stood some distance apart from the others, and it was doubtful whether enough of the din could have been heard outside to attract the notice of Sir Michael Lapping or the two retired Civil Servants—whose bungalows were the next nearest. But Bloem and Algy knew, and their knowledge might save the Saint.

Miss Girton, who had been holding aloof for some time, suddenly said:

“What’s the fuss about, anyhow?”

“Oh, a noise. . . .” Algy, abashed, was unwontedly reticent, and seemed to want nothing more than the early termination of the discussion. He fidgeted, polishing his monocle industriously. “Sir John Bittle kind of giving a rough party, don’t you know.”

“I think we’ve had quite enough nonsense for one evening,” remarked Agatha Girton. “Everyone’s a bundle of nerves. Is there any need for all this excitement?”

She herself had lost her usual sangfroid. Under the mask of grim disapproval she was badly shaken—Patricia saw the slight trembling of the big rough hand that held the limp cigarette.

“Right as per,” agreed Algy weakly. “Sorry, Aunt Agatha.”

Miss Girton was absurdly pettish.

“I decline to adopt you as a nephew, Mr. Lomas-Coper.”

“Sorry, Aunt—Miss Girton. I’ll tool along.”

Patricia smiled and patted his hand as she said good-bye, but the ordinarily super-effervescent Algy had gone off the boil. He contrived a sickly smile, but he was clearly glad of an excuse to leave the scene of his faux pas.

“Come and see us to-morrow,” invited Patricia, and he nodded.

“Most frightfully sorry, and all that rot,” he said. “I never did have much of a brain, anyway. Let me know if there’s anything I can do, or anything, y’know. What? Cheer-tiddly-ho!”

He offered a hand to Miss Girton, but she looked down her nose at it and turned away.

“Honk-honk!” said Algy feebly, and departed.

They heard the front door close with a click, and were impressed with Mr. Lomas-Coper’s humility. Among his more normal habits was that of slamming doors with a mighty bang.

“You were very hard on Algy,” said Patricia resentfully.

“I can’t be bothered with the fool,” responded Miss Girton brusquely. “Thank Heavens he swallowed that wild yarn of yours about falling off a cliff. If he’d had any brains, the whole village would have been talking about you to-morrow. Now, what’s the truth?”

Patricia looked at her watch again. The time was crawling. Eleven-thirty. She looked up and responded:

“That yarn’s as good as another.”

“Not for me.” Agatha Girton came and stood over the girl. She looked very forbidding and masculine at that moment, and Patricia had a fleeting qualm of fear. “What happened at Bittle’s?”

“Oh, nothing. . . . He told me that the only way to save you was for me to marry him.”

“Did he?” said Miss Girton harshly. “The swine!”

“Aunt Agatha!”

“You make me sick! He is a swine—why shouldn’t I say so? And with an adjective, if I choose. Why didn’t you tell him so yourself? What did you say?”

“I——” Patricia pulled herself up. The Saint’s volcanic arrival had ended the discussion somewhat abruptly. “I didn’t know what to say,” answered Patricia truthfully.

Miss Girton glowered down at the girl.

“And then he got fresh?”

“Not—not exactly. You see——”

“Then who did?”

Patricia covered her eyes.

“Oh, leave me alone! Tell me how you got into his debt.”

“There’s nothing much to tell,” replied Agatha Girton coldly. “When Bittle first came, and was trying to get into Baycombe society, nobody returned his calls. Then he called on me and insisted on seeing me—I suppose because he thought the Manor had the most influence. He knew I was hard up—I don’t know how—and if I helped him he’d help me. It was my only way out. I agreed. You know he’s been here several times, but even then I couldn’t make anyone else take him up, although he didn’t seem at all uneducated and behaved perfectly. They’re all snobs here. . . . I had to go on borrowing from him, and he didn’t seem to mind, though he wasn’t getting much return for it. That’s all there is to it.”

Patricia bit her lip.

“I see. And even though you were using my money you didn’t condescend to tell me anything about it.”

“What good would that have done?”

“Wasn’t there anything——”

“Nothing whatever,” said Miss Girton flatly.

Patricia looked at her.

“Then might I ask what you propose to do now you’ve come to the end of your resources?”

Agatha Girton started another cigarette, and her hands were a little more unsteady. For a moment she failed to meet the girl’s eye, and stared fixedly out of the window. Then she looked at Patricia again.

“You must leave that to me,” said Miss Girton, in a low inhuman voice that sent an involuntary tingle of dread crawling up Patricia’s spine.

The girl rose and walked to another part of the room, to get away from the dull frightening eyes of Agatha Girton. At any other time she would have known better how to deal with the revelation that had been made to her, but now all her thoughts were with the Saint, and she could not concentrate on this new problem—and, if she had been able to, she would not have dared to tackle it, for fear of creating a situation which might prevent her carrying out his instructions if he failed to put in an appearance at the appointed time. Miss Girton was as strong as an ordinary man, and her temper that night was not to be trusted.

Fifteen minutes still to go—three quarters of an hour since she left the Saint in the garden.

“What’s the matter with you, child?” Agatha Girton’s rasping voice demanded sharply. “Why do you keep looking at your watch?”

“To see the time.”

She felt an absurd desire to smile. The retort would have tickled the Saint to death—she could visualise his impish delight—but Agatha Girton was less easily satisfied.

“Why should you bother about the time?”

“I’m not going to be badgered like this!” flamed Patricia unexpectedly.

Her patience had worn very thin during the last quarter of an hour, and she knew that her anxiety was desperately near to driving her into indiscreet anger or a flood of tears for relief. She faced Miss Girton mutinously.

“I’ll see you to-morrow,” she said, and left the room without another word.

She went up to her bedroom and paced up and down restlessly. Leaning out of the wide open window, she could hear nothing from the direction of Bittle’s house. Looking the other way, she could see the black shape of Carn’s cottage. There was a light in one downstairs window: apparently the doctor had not yet retired. She thought of going round and chatting to him until the time had run out, for if all was well and the Saint arrived and found her out he would be sure to try Carn first for news of her. For a little while she hesitated: her acquaintance with Carn was very slight. But in a moment the sound of the windows downstairs being closed and secured filled her with an unreasoning panic.

She opened her door and flew down the stairs. She could hear Miss Girton pacing heavily across the lounge; but she sped past the door as silently as she could, crossed the hall, and let herself out.

The cool breath of the night air restored her to reason, but she did not turn back. She closed the door without a sound and walked resolutely round to Carn’s house. Her ring was answered at once by the man himself, and she remembered that he kept no servant on the premises.

The doctor’s genial red face was one florid expression of surprise.

“My dear Miss Holm!”

“Am I disturbing you?” she smiled. “I began to feel terribly dull and depressed, and I thought a little course of you would be a tonic. That is, if you can bear it?”

He became aware of the fact that he was preventing her from entering, and stood aside.

“You honour me,” he said. “But I’m quite alone. . . .”

“Doctors are above suspicion, aren’t they?” she laughed. “And I promise to behave.”

He still seemed a little self-conscious, but led the way into his study. She was a little puzzled at his awkwardness, and wondered why even such an uncouth man as he had not been smoothed down by his professional training. Nevertheless, his manner, if ungraceful, was plainly irreproachable. He brought up an armchair for her and swept a mass of papers off the table into a drawer. She noticed that there were some sections of large-scale surveys among them, and he explained:

“I’m interested in geology as well as bugs, you know. I’m afraid you’d find it rather a dull subject, but it amuses me. And I’m very interested in my fellow-men.”

Before she realised what she was doing, she had asked his opinion of Simon Templar.

“Templar? A very interesting specimen. I don’t think I can make a pronouncement yet—I met him for the first time to-day. A very—er—unusual young man, but quite charming to talk to.” Carn did not seem to wish to continue the analysis, and she was left with the idea that he would prefer to be sure of her estimate of the Saint before committing himself. “Would you like some tea? Or some ginger-beer? It’s all I’ve got in the house.”

“No, thanks, if you don’t mind.” She thought. “It’s rather difficult. . . . You see—— Is Mr. Templar in any danger?”

Carn looked at her with a keenness that was unforeseen in a man of his type.

“What makes you ask that, Miss Holm?”

“Well, he talks a lot about it, doesn’t he?”

Carn pursed his lips.

“Yes, he does,” he admitted guardedly. “I shouldn’t venture to give a definite opinion at this stage. Might one enquire, first, what Mr. Templar is to you? Is he a particular friend of yours, for instance?”

“I’ve known him such a short time,” she replied, as cautiously. “But I must say I like him very much.”

“Would it be impertinent to ask if you were in love with him?” pursued Carn; and, seeing her blush, he averted his eyes and babbled on in an embarrassed attempt at a fatherly tone: “I see that it would. But perhaps Mr. Templar is more susceptible. As a friend, you would do him a great service by using whatever influence you have to persuade him of his foolhardiness.”

“Then he is in danger?”

Carn sighed.

“Purely of his own making,” he said. “Mr. Templar has elected to play a very dangerous game. I can’t say any more. Perhaps he’ll tell you himself.”

Patricia looked at her watch for the twentieth time. There were still six minutes to pass.

Chapter VI.
The Kindness of the Tiger

“Here we are again,” murmured the Saint. “Seeing quite a lot of each other to-night, aren’t we? And how’s the occiput? Not dented beyond repair, I hope.”

Bittle inclined his head.

“A trifle primitive,” he said urbanely, “but very effective. I have views of my own, however, on the subject of physical violence, which I shall present you with in due course.”

“Splendid,” said Templar.

He looked around for the man who had been covering him, and bowed to that gentleman with a smile.

“Dear old bloomin’ Bloem, of course,” remarked the Saint sociably. “I knew we’d find you in the thick of the fun. Quite one of the dogs of the dorp, or village, aren’t you? And, just in case of accidents, would you rather be blipped on the jaw or in the solar plexus? A jolt in the tum-tum is more painful; but, on the other hand the cove who stops one just where his face changes its mind is liable to carry a scar around with him for some time. Just as you like, of course—I always try to oblige my customers in these little details.”

“That will do, Mr. Templar,” Bittle’s voice broke in curtly. “I think you’ve talked quite enough for one evening.”

“But I haven’t started yet,” complained the Saint. “I was just going to tell one of my favourite stories. Old Bloem’s heard it before, but it might be a new one on you. The one about an Italian gentleman called Fernando, who double-crossed some of the band-o. They got even for this with the aid of a kris—and that was the end of Fernando. Any applause?”

The Saint looked about him in his mild way, as though he literally expected an outburst of clapping. Nobody moved. Bloem still had his automatic accurately trained on the Saint, and the Boer’s leathery face betrayed nothing. Bittle had gone ashy pale. The butler and a couple of other hard nuts who had followed the party into the library stood like graven images.

“I told you—he knows too much,” said Bloem. “Better not take any chances this time.”

“I’m very upset about this,” said Simon earnestly. “That one usually gets a rousing reception. Poor old Fernando—he used up so much energy cursing Tigers and things that he didn’t live quite long enough to tell me where the spondulicks were. ‘Baycombe, in England, Devonshire,’ gasps Fernando, with the haft of the kris sticking out of him, and the blood choking his throat. ‘The old house . . .’ And then he died. Just like in a story-book, and deuced awkward, with so many old and oldish houses lying about. But Fernando certainly hated Tigers, and you can’t blame him.”

Bloem raised the gun a trifle, and his knuckles whitened under the brown skin of his hand.

“It is easily settled,” he muttered, and the Saint saw death staring him in the face.

“No!” shouted Bittle.

The millionaire flung himself forward, knocking up the pistol. Bittle was trembling. He mopped his brow with a large white handkerchief, breathing heavily.

“You fool!” he jerked. “The girl’s been here—he helped her get away. If anything happens to him she’ll talk. D’you want to put a rope round all our necks?”

“You always did argue soundly, Bittle darling,” said the Saint appreciatively.

He seated himself on the table, swinging his legs, and the proverbial cucumber would have looked smoking hot beside him.

“It must be arranged so as to look like an accident,” said Bittle. “That damned girl will have the police buzzing about our ears unless the circumstances are above suspicion.”

Bloem shrugged.

“The girl can be silenced,” he stated dispassionately.

“You’ll leave the girl alone,” snarled Bittle. “Where’s the Chief?”

The Saint saw Bloem’s face convulse with a warning scowl.

“He will return later.”

“Now, that’s good news,” said Simon. “Am I really going to meet the celebrated Tiger at last? You’ve no idea how much I want to see him. But he’s such an elusive cove—always incog.”

“You need have no fear, Mr. Templar,” said Bittle, “that the Tiger will show himself to you unless he is quite certain that you will never be able to use your knowledge against him. I think,” added the millionaire suavely, “that you may expect to meet the Tiger to-night.”

The Saint realised that Bittle’s panic of a few moments past had been caused by the fear of being involved in a police enquiry rather than by the horror of witnessing a cold-blooded murder. Bittle was quite calm again, but there was no trace of human pity in his faded eyes, and the level tone in which his significant after-thought was delivered would have struck terror into the soul of most men. But the Saint’s nerves were like chilled steel and his optimism was unshakeable. He met Bittle’s eyes steadily, and smiled.

“Don’t gamble on it,” advised the Saint. “I’ve lived pretty dangerously for eight years, and nobody’s ever killed me yet. Even the Tiger mightn’t break the record.”

“I hope,” said Bittle, “that the Tiger will prove to be as clever as you are.”

“Hope on, sonnikins,” said the Saint cheerfully.

They had searched him from crown to toe when he came in from the garden, but they had left him his cigarette-case, and for this he was duly thankful. The case was a large one, and carried a double bank of cigarettes. There were some peculiarities about the cigarettes on one side of the case which the Saint had not felt bound to explain to Bittle when he returned it; for several of the victories which Templar had scored against apparently impossible odds in the course of his hectic career as a gentleman adventurer had been due to his habit of invariably keeping at least one card up his sleeve—even when he had not got aces parked in his belt, under his hat, and in the soles of his shoes. Meanwhile, it had not yet come to the showdown, and the Saint did not believe in performing his particular brand of parlour tricks simply to amuse the assembled company. He selected a cigarette from the other side of the case (which in itself was not quite an ordinary case, for one of the edges, which was guarded when the case was shut, was as sharp as a razor) and began to smoke with a sublime indifference to the awkwardness of his predicament.

Bittle and Bloem were arguing in low tones at the other end of the room, and both were armed. The pugilistic butler was posted at the door, and it was unlikely that he would be caught napping a second time. The Saint could probably have beaten him in a straight fight, but it would not have been an easy job, and the audience in this case would most certainly interfere. The other two men stood by the french windows, to prevent a repetition of the Saint’s earlier unceremonious exit: they were both hard and husky specimens, and the Saint, weighing up the prospects with a fighter’s eye, decided that that retreat was effectually barred for the time being. There were few men that the Saint, in splendid training, would have hesitated to tackle single-handed, and few men that he would not have backed himself to tie in knots and lay out all neat and tidy inside five minutes, into the bargain; but he had to admit that a team of three heavyweights and a couple of automatics totalled up to something a bit above his form. Wherefore the Saint stayed sitting on the table and placidly smoked his cigarette, for he had never believed in getting worked up before the fireworks started.

He looked at his watch, and found that there was a clear half-hour to go before he could expect any help from outside. He blessed his foresight in telling Patricia to go to Carn if anything went wrong, but that was a last resource which the Saint hoped he would not have to call upon. Simon wanted nothing less than to be under any sort of obligation to the detective, and he certainly did not want to give Carn a better hand than the deal had given him. Nevertheless, it was comforting to know that Carn was at hand in case of a hitch—not to mention the admirable Orace, who would shortly be getting restive, even if he had not started to move already. And it was satisfying to find that a similar reflection was cramping the style of the ungodly considerably.

The Saint’s meditations were interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the depths of the house. The sound was very faint, but the Saint’s hearing was abnormally keen, and he caught what most other men would have missed—the eccentric rhythm of the ringing. He had noted this down and pigeon-holed it in his mind when a knock came on the door and a man entered. He muttered something to Bittle, and the millionaire left the room. Bloem strolled over to the Saint, who welcomed him with a smile.

“Our one and only Tiger at last?”

Bloem nodded, and looked curiously at the Saint.

“You have given us more trouble than you know,” he said. “You have been extraordinarily lucky—but even the most astounding luck comes to an end.”

“Just what they told me at Monte,” agreed the Saint, “They say the Bank always wins in the long run.”

Watching closely, Simon could just note the least flicker of Bloem’s eyelids.

“Fernando, of course,” said Bloem, half to himself.

“Even so,” murmured the Saint. “I know everything but the answer to the two most important questions of all—Who is the Tiger? and Where has he cached the loot? And I’ve a feeling that it won’t be so long now before I get next to even those secrets.”

“You’re very confident,” said Bloem.

The man’s self-control was not far from perfection, but the Saint also played poker, and he had summed up Bloem to the last full stop in the course of that brief conversation. Bloem’s nerves were none too good—no man who was reasonably sure of himself would have been made to feel vaguely uneasy by such a slender bluff. That put the Saint one up on Bloem, but the Saint did not disclose his knowledge of the state of the score. His smile did not vary its quiet assurance one iota.

“I’m an odds-on chance,” said the Saint lightly. “Which reminds me—how are T. T. Deeps?”

Bloem did not answer, and the Saint prattled on:

“Now, I must say you had me thinking very hard over that dud gold mine. Why should any sane man—you observe, Mynheer, that I credit you with being sane—why should any sane man want to get control of a gold mine that hasn’t turned up any gold for two years? That’s what I said to my broker, and he sent a cable out to the Transvaal especially to find out. Back comes the reply: We Don’t Know. The mine hasn’t been worked for ages, and only the greenhorn prospectors bother to look over the district—the old hands know that there isn’t enough pay dirt for a hundred square miles around the T. T. borings to stop a snail’s tooth. And yet our one and only Hans is raking in all the shares he can find, reminding ’Change of a stock they’d all forgotten existed, and every poor little rabbit of a mug investor is hunting up his scrip and wondering whether to unload while the unloading’s good or chance his arm for a fortune. All of which, to a nasty, suspicious mind like mine, is distinctly odd.”

“I’m glad to see that the worry hasn’t prematurely aged you, Mr. Templar,” said Bloem.

“Oh, not at all,” said the Saint. “You see, just when I was on the point of going off my rocker with the strain, and my relatives were booking a room for me in a nice quiet asylum, along comes a flash of inspiration. Just suppose, Bloem—only suppose—that a bunch of bad hats had brought off one of the biggest bank breaks in history. Suppose they’d got away with something over a cool million in gold. Suppose they’d humped the stuff all the way over the Atlantic, and fetched up and settled down and stowed the body away in an English village so far off the beaten track that it’d be lost for good if it wasn’t for the railway timetables. And then suppose—mind you, this is only a theory—suppose they felt quite happy that the dicks weren’t on the trail, and began to puzzle out how they were going to cash the proceeds of the dirty work. First of all, melt it down—there aren’t so many warriors hawking golden American Eagles around that the moneychangers don’t look twice at you when you try to pass off a sack of ’em. Right. But now you aren’t so much better off, because a golden million tots up to a hairy great ingot, and people would start asking where the stuff came from—whether you grow it in the kitchen garden or make it in the bathroom before breakfast. What then?”

“What, indeed?” prompted Bloem in a tired voice.

“Why,” exclaimed the Saint delightedly, as though he had caught Bloem with a conundrum, “what’s wrong with getting hold of a dead-as-mutton gold mine, losing a lot of gold in it, and then finding it again?”

“Quite,” said Bloem with purely perfunctory interest.

Simon shook his head.

“It won’t wash, Angel Face,” he said. “It won’t wash. Really it won’t. And you know it. They may have christened me Simon, but I’ve got a lot less simple since then.”

Bloem turned away very wearily, as if he found the Saint’s monologues so boring that he had great difficulty in keeping awake, but that did not stop him hearing the Saint’s soft chuckle of sheer merriment. Bloem was good, but he was not quite good enough. There had been few doubts in the Saint’s mind about the accuracy of his diagnosis, and those that had existed were now gloriously dispelled. Nearly all the threads were in his hands, and the tangle was gradually straightening out.

But who was the Tiger? That was the most important question of all, barring only the whereabouts of the spoil. Who in all Baycombe kept under his modest hat the brain that had conceived and organised that stupendous coup? Bloem, Bittle, and Carn could be ruled out. That left the highly respected Sir Michael Lapping, the pleasant but brainless Mr. Lomas-Coper, the masculine Miss Girton, and the two retired and retiring I.C.S. men, Messrs. Shaw and Smith. Five runners, and a darned sight too little help from the form book. The Saint frowned. Tackling the problem in the light of the law of probability, every one of the possibles had to be ruled out, which was manifestly absurd. Wiring into it with any mystery story as a textbook, it at once appeared that Lapping was too far above suspicion to escape it, Algy was too frankly brainless to be anything but the possessor of the Great Brain, Agatha Girton was quite certain to turn out to be a man masquerading as a woman, and Shaw and Smith kept too much in the background to avoid the limelight. Which once again was manifestly absurd. And the order of seniority was of little assistance, for Bloem, Algy, Agatha Girton, and Bittle had all been living in Baycombe for some time before the Tiger smashed the strong-room of the Confederate Bank of Chicago—on a general estimate, Simon reckoned that the Tiger had spent at least five years over that crime. And that was a deduction that confirmed the Saint’s respect for the Tiger’s brilliance without going any distance to aid the solution of the mystery of the Tiger’s identity.

The Saint had got no further when Bittle returned and drew Bloem to one side. Simon could only hear a word here and there. He gathered that the Tiger was furious with Bittle for taking so long and making so much noise over capturing the prisoner; that Bittle would have liked to see the Tiger do better himself; that the Tiger had an Idea. There followed some mutterings that the Saint did not catch, and then came one sentence quite distinctly:

“The Tiger says we must let him go.”

Bloem gave an exclamation, and Bittle talked further. The Saint’s brain was whirring like a buzz-saw. Let him go, with so much given away and most of the court cards in their hands? Simon wondered if he had heard aright, but in a moment Bittle left Bloem and came over to confirm the sensitiveness of the Saint’s auditory nerves.

“It is getting late, Mr. Templar,” said the millionaire, “and we all feel that the festivities have been kept up long enough. Pray do not let us detain you any longer.”

“Meaning?” suggested Simon, with as much levelness as he could command.

“Meaning that you are free to go as soon as you like.”

Bittle looked hard at the Saint as he spoke, and the malevolence that glittered in his eyes belied the geniality of his speech. Bittle was clearly upset at having to carry out such a command. He barked an order, and the escort of roughnecks sidled out of the room, closing the door behind them. Bloem was fidgeting with his tie, and he kept one hand in a pocket that bulged heavily.

“That’s nice of you,” drawled the Saint. “You won’t mind if I take Anna, will you?”

He strolled coolly over to the secretaire, jerked open a drawer, and retrieved the knife that they had taken from him, slipping it back into the sheath under his sleeve. Then he faced the two men again.

“Really,” he remarked in a tone of polite inquiry, “your kindness overwhelms me. And I never put you down for a brace of birds too gravely burdened with faith, hope and charity. Is Miss Holm such an insuperable obstacle—to Supermen like yourselves?”

“I think,” said Bittle smoothly, “that you would be wise not to ask too many questions. It is quite enough for you to know, Mr. Templar, that your phenomenal luck has held—perhaps for the last time. You had better say good-night before we change our minds.”

The Saint smiled.

“You have no minds,” he said. “The Tiger says ‘Hop!’ and you blinkin’ well hop. . . . I wonder, now, is it because you’re scared of Orace? Orace is a devil when he’s roused, and if you’d bumped me off and he’d got to know about it there’d’ve been hell to pay. Possibly you’re wise.”

“Possibly,” snarled Bloem, as though he did not believe it, and the Saint nodded.

“There is always the chance that I might go and talk to the police, isn’t there?”

Bittle was lighting a cigar, and he looked up with a twisted mouth.

“You are not a man who loses his nerve and goes yelping to Scotland Yard, Mr. Templar,” he answered. “Also, there is quite a big prize at stake. I think we can rely on you.”

The Saint stared back with a kind of reluctant admiration.

“Almost I see in you the makings of sportsmen,” he said.

“I can only hope,” returned Bittle impassively, “that you will find the sport to your liking.”

Simon shook his head.

“You won’t disappoint me, Beautiful One,” he murmured. “I feel it in my bones. . . . And so to bed. . . . Give the Tiger my love, and tell him I’m sorry I wasn’t able to meet him.” And the Saint paused, struck by a sudden thought. “By the way—about Fernando. You know somebody’s going to swing for him, don’t you? I mean, if things start to go badly, make sure the Tiger gets all the blame to himself, or else you might swing with him.”

“We shall be careful,” Bittle assured him.

“Splendid,” said the Saint. “Well, cheerio, souls. Sleep tight, and pleasant dreams.”

He sauntered to the french windows and opened them.

“If you don’t mind. . . . I have a rooted dislike for dark corridors. One never knows, does one?”

“Mr. Templar.” The millionaire stopped him. “Before you go——”

The Saint turned on the terrace and looked back into the room. He was still debonair and smiling, and although the shrubbery had given the coup de grace to his ancient and disreputably comfortable clothes, he contrived by some subtle gift of personality to look immaculate enough to wander into Claridge’s without the commissionaire spotting him and shooing him round to the tradesman’s entrance. Only the Saint knew what an effort that air of careless ease cost him. The atmosphere was positively dripping with the smell of rats, but Simon Templar never twitched a nostril.

“Comrade?”

“It might save you spending a sleepless night, and catching your death of cold,” observed Bittle, “if I told you that the Tiger has already left. So you needn’t bother to hang about outside.”

“Thanks,” said the Saint. “I won’t. And it might save you a longish walk and a lot of trouble if I told you that Orace and I sleep in watches, turn and turn about, so that any of your pals who call round in the hope of being able to catch us napping will have to be very fly. . . . S’long!”

He vanished into the darkness like a wraith, almost before the men in the library could have realised that he was gone. He went scraping through the shrubbery again to the wall, got his coat over the top as before, and was over like a cat.

He dropped lightly to the ground, pulled on the tattered coat, and struck off away from the wall after no more than a couple of seconds’ pause to listen and scan the blackness in every direction. Guided by an innate bump of locality, he established his bearings at once and set off on a wide detour that would bring him eventually into the grounds at the back of the Manor. He advanced in short rushes, stopping and crouching in cover every twenty yards or so, straining eyes and ears for sign of stalkers behind or an ambush before. Nothing happened. The night was quiet and peaceful. He saw a light go on in an upper window of Bittle’s house, and the distant hiss of the surf mingled with the rustle of grasses brushed by the breeze, but there was neither sight nor sound of any human being.

“Damned odd!” said Templar to himself, scratching his head, as he lay under a hedge, watching and listening like a frontiersman, after at least a dozen of these rushes. “Flaming odd! Or did I slip them by going over the wall?”

He had fully expected to find some spicy parting gift waiting for him as soon as he had got far enough away from Bittle’s vicinity, when they would be hoping to take him off his guard, but nothing had interfered with his departure, and there had been no trace of even the feeblest attempt to create trouble for him when he arrived in the narrow lane that ran between the Manor and Carn’s house.

“Hell!” said the Saint, almost indignantly. “Now, why in blazes did they want to let me go?”

He had seen no lights in any of the Manor windows, and with a sudden apprehension he looked at the luminous dial of his watch. He was already a couple of minutes overdue. He swung round and sprinted up the path to Carn’s cottage. The Saint literally fell on the bell.

Chapter VII.
The Fun Continues

It was only a moment before Carn opened the door. Simon could have fallen on the detective’s neck when he saw that Carn’s features registered nothing more than a faint surprise, but he concealed his joy and assumed the slightly mocking smile that went with his Saintly pose.

“Thought I’d find you up,” murmured the Saint. “Mind if I split a small lemonade with you?”

He had sidled past Carn into the miniature hall before the detective could answer, and Carn closed the front door resignedly.

“I didn’t expect to be honoured again so soon, Mr. Templar,” said the detective. “As a matter of fact, I’ve a visitor with me. . . .”

The last sentence was uttered in a tone that was intended to convey a gentle hint, as man of the world to man of the world, that the Saint should pause and consult his host before making himself at home, but the Saint had opened the door of the study before the detective had finished speaking.

“Why, it’s Miss Holm!” exclaimed the Saint. “Fancy meeting you!” He turned to Carn, who was reddening silently on the threshold. “I hope I’m not interrupting a consultation, Doc? Throw me out of the window if I cramp your style, won’t you? I mean, people never stand on ceremony with me. . . .”

“As a matter of fact,” said Carn, on the defensive, “Miss Holm simply came round for a chat.”

“No? Really?” said the Saint.

“Yes!” returned Carn loudly.

“Well, well!” said Simon, who was enjoying himself hugely. “And how are we, Miss Holm?”

He was wondering just how much she had told Carn, and she read the unspoken question in his eyes, and answered it.

“In another minute——”

“I shall get my face smacked,” the Saint took her up swiftly. “And quite right, too. Try to forgive me. I never could see an elastic leg without being irresistibly impelled to find out how far it would stretch.”

He cast a reproachful glance at Carn which made the detective take on an even deeper purple hue. Then he was smiling at Patricia with a message that was not for broadcasting. It showed his complete satisfaction with the way things had fallen out. There must have been a difference of a couple of minutes between their watches, and those two minutes had been just long enough to save the beans from being spilt all over the place. And the smile added: “Well played, kid! I knew I could rely on you. And everything in the garden’s lovely. . . . Which means, incidentally, that it’s our job to lead Carn up the garden. Watch your step!” And the girl smiled back, to show that she understood—but there was rather more in her smile than that. It showed that she was very glad to see him again, and the Saint had a struggle to stop himself grabbing her up in his arms and kissing her on the strength of it.

“You seem to have been in the wars, Mr. Templar,” remarked Carn, and the Saint nodded tolerantly.

“Didn’t Miss Holm tell you?”

“I didn’t feel I could ask her.”

The Saint raised his eyebrows, for although the girl had made some effort to tidy herself it was still glaringly evident that she had not spent the evening playing dominoes in the drawing-room. Carn explained:

“When I opened the door and saw her, I thought something had happened and she was coming to me for—er—first aid. But she said it was only for a chat, so I overcame my—um—professional instincts, and said nothing. I rather think you were leading up to something when Mr. Templar came in, weren’t you, Miss Holm? . . . I see that you were. But as a—er—um—ah——” Carn caught the Saint’s accusing eye for the third time, and spluttered. “As a Doctor,” said Carn defiantly, “I was trained to let my patients make the running. The old school, but a good one. And then you arrive——”

The detective broke off with a gesture that comprehended Patricia’s ragamuffin appearance and the Saint’s own tattered clothes, and Simon grinned.

“So sad!” he drawled. “And now I suppose you’ll be in agonies of curiosity for weeks.”

Carn shrugged.

“That depends.”

The detective was a passably good actor, but he was heavily handicapped by the suggestion of malicious glee that lurked in the Saint’s twinkling eyes. And he dared not seem to notice that the Saint was quietly laughing at him, because it was essential for him to maintain the rôle of Dr. Carn in the presence of a witness. Which goes some way to explain why his florid face remained more rubicund even than it normally was, and why there was a certain unnatural restraint in his voice.

Patricia was perplexed. She had expected to find that the Saint and Carn were familiar friends: instead, she found two men fencing with innuendo. It was beyond her to follow the subtleties of the duel, but there was no doubt that Simon was quite happy and Carn was quite annoyed, for it was indisputably the Saint’s game.

“Shall I tell you all about it, Doc?” asked the Saint insinuatingly, for it was a weakness of his to exaggerate his pose to the borders of farce.

“Do,” urged Carn, in an unguarded moment.

“I’ll tell you,” said Simon confidentially. “It was like this. . . .”

Carn drew nearer. The Saint frowned, blinked, scratched his head, and stared blankly at the detective.

“Do you know,” said Simon, in simulated dismay, “it’s a most extraordinary thing—I can’t remember. Isn’t that funny?”

The detective was understood to reply that he was not amused. He said other things, in a low voice that was none the less pregnant with emotion, for the Saint’s ears alone, and Simon turned away with a pained expression.

“I don’t agree,” said Simon. “The Ten-Toed Tripe-Hopper is nothing like the Wall-Eyed Giraffe. Try Keating’s.”

“As a matter of fact,” interposed Patricia, who felt that things looked like getting out of hand, “Mr. Templar’s been with me most of the evening. We were taking a walk along by the cliff, and——”

Simon raised his hand.

“Hush!” he said. “Not before the Doc. You’ll be putting ideas into his head.”

“Grrrr,” said Carn fiercely, which a man might well say when goaded to the limits of human endurance, and then he coughed energetically to cover it up.

“You see?” said the Saint. “You’re embarrassing him.”

Simon was perfect. His smiling, polished ease made Carn’s red-faced discomfort look like an intentional effort of the detective to entertain a children’s party with a few “faces” between the ice-creams and the Punch and Judy, and Patricia was weak with suppressed laughter. It was unpardonable, of course, but it was the only way to dispose of Carn’s burning curiosity. To have been secretive and mysterious, much as the Saint would have loved playing the part, would have been fatal.

Carn suddenly realised that he was being futile—that the elasticity of his leg was being sorely tried. The Saint had been watching for that, and instantly he became genuinely apologetic.

“Perhaps I ragged you a bit too much,” he hastened to confess. “Really, though, you were asking for it, by being so infernally suspicious. Almost as if you suspected me of just having murdered somebody, or robbing the till of the village Post Office. It’s really quite simple. Miss Holm and I were walking along the cliffs, and——”

“I fell over,” Patricia explained, jumping in as soon as the Saint hesitated. “I landed on a ledge, and I wasn’t seriously hurt, but Mr. Templar had an awful job getting me back.”

Carn frowned. He had been badly had. The Saint’s merciless leg-pulling had achieved its object. So masterly was the transition from teasing to sober seriousness that the seriousness went unquestioned, and Carn swallowed whole a story that he would certainly have disbelieved if it had been told him in the first place without any nonsense.

“No offence, old thing,” pleaded the Saint contritely. “I couldn’t miss such a marvellous opportunity to make you imagine the worst.”

Carn looked from one to the other; but Patricia, pulling her weight and more also, met the detective’s searching stare unabashed, and the Saint’s face displayed exactly what the Saint wanted it to display.

“I tried to tell you once,” Patricia pointed out, “only Mr. Templar interrupted.”

Simon flashed her a boatload of appreciation in a glance. Ye gods! What a girl! There wasn’t an actress in the world who could have taught her anything about the kind of acting that gets over without any stage effects—she had every woman in every Secret Service in Europe skinned a mile. There she was, cool as you please, playing up to her cue like an old hand. And, marvel of marvels, asking no questions. The Saint hadn’t the foggiest notion why a girl he’d only known a couple of days should back him up like that, when every flag on the mast would have told any ordinary person that the Saint was more likely to be wrong than not. Ordinary respectable people did not go in for the hobbies that she had seen the Saint indulging in—like bending statuettes over millionaire knights’ skulls after walking mysteriously out of the night through their library windows, or being chased round gardens by men and bloodhounds, or chucking their lady friends over eight-foot walls. And yet she trusted him implicitly, took her line from him, and postponed the questions till afterwards! And not the least remarkable fact was that the Saint, that consummate egotist, never thought of the obvious explanation. . . .

Carn reddened again, recovered his normal colour, and his stolid features gradually lost their strained appearance and relaxed into a wry smile.

“You certainly did try to save me, Miss Holm,” he admitted. “You see, the Saint—that is, Mr. Templar—he’s always running into trouble, and seeing him like that I couldn’t help thinking of his habits. It didn’t occur to me that you were with him—I was so dense it didn’t strike me that you might have got mussed up at the same time as he did—and, of course, I know all about you, Miss Holm, so——”

“Half-time!” begged the Saint dazedly. “We’re getting all tied up. Let’s call it quits.”

Carn nodded.

“Saint,” he said, “it wasn’t fair. I’m taking this game seriously, and that’s quite bad enough without tangling it any more.”

“That’ll be all right,” said the Saint heartily. “And now what about that Baby Polly we were going to split?”

Carn busied himself with decanter and glasses, and the Saint offered up a short prayer of thanksgiving. That was a nasty corner taken on two wheels in the devil of a skid, but they were round it somehow with the old bus still right side up, and the road looked pretty clear—at least as far as the next bend.

Simon caught the girl’s eye while Carn’s back was turned. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. The Saint grinned back and spread out his hands. Then, quite shamelessly, he blew her a kiss.

Carn brought the drinks, and the Saint raised his glass.

“Bung-ho, troops,” he said. “Here’s to a good race, Carn.”

The detective looked back.

“Reasonably good hunting, Saint,” he replied grimly, and Simon grinned and drank.

“All things considered, worthy chirurgeon, I think——”

The Saint broke off at the sound of a thunderous knocking on the front door. Then a bell pealed long and insistently at the back of the house, and the knocking was resumed. Simon set down his glass carefully.

“You’re popular to-night, son,” he murmured. “Someone in a tearing hurry, too. Birth or death—what’s the betting?”

“Hanged if I know,” said Carn, and went out.

The Saint crossed the room swiftly and opened the casement windows wide, as an elementary precaution. Apparently the evening’s party was not yet over. He had not the vaguest idea what the next move was going to be, but the air tingled with an electric foreboding that something was about to happen. The girl looked at him inquiringly. He dared not speak, but he signed to her to keep her end up and go on trusting him.

Outside, a voice which the Saint did not know was asking if Mr. Templar was there, and Carn answered. There was a tramp of heavy feet, and somebody arrived in the doorway. Simon was leaning on the mantelpiece, looking the other way, a study in disinterested innocence.

“Ho,” said the voice. “There ’e is.”

The Saint looked up.

A man in uniform had entered, and the symptoms pointed to his being the village constable. Simon had not even realised that such an official existed in Baycombe, but that was undoubtedly what the gentleman with the pink face and the ill-fitting uniform was. The constable had clearly been dragged out of bed and rushed into his uniform—he was dishevelled, and his tunic was buttoned lopsidedly.

All these details the Saint observed in a slow surprised once-over. Then the policeman advanced importantly and clapped a hand on Simon’s shoulder.

“I am Constable George ’Opkins,” he said, “and if the Doctor will hixcuse me I shall arrest you on a charge of burglary annassault.”

“Smoke!” said the Saint to himself.

That was a move! Simon seemed astonished and rather annoyed, as if he were wondering how the mistake had been made and was quite satisfied that it would be cleared up in a moment, but beneath his outward poise his mind was working at breakneck speed. The counter-attack, and the rapidity with which it had been launched, were worthy of the Tiger, but it was fighting over very thin ice.

“My good man, you’re dippy!” said the Saint languidly. “Who makes this charge, anyway?”

“I do.”

It was Bloem. Bloem with his leathery face perfectly composed, and just the ghost of a light of triumph in his slitted eyes betraying him. Bloem, walking past Carn into the room with just the right shade of deference and just the right suggestion of regret for having to make a scene—but quite firmly the law-abiding citizen determined to do his duty and bring the criminal to justice.

“A thousand pardons, Doctor.” Bloem bowed to Carn, and then turned and bowed to the girl. “I am deeply sorry, Miss Holm, that I should be compelled to do this in your presence. Perhaps you would like to retire for a minute. . . .”

Patricia tossed her head.

“Thanks—I’ll stay,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a mistake, and perhaps I can help. I’ve been with Mr. Templar most of the evening.”

Bloem’s eyes rested long and significantly on the girl’s torn frock and scratched arms, but she met his gaze boldly, and at last he turned away with a lift of shoulder and eyebrow.

“I’ll explain,” he said. “I was reading in my study, shortly after eleven this evening, when this man walked in. He threatened me with a revolver, making some remark which I did not understand. I am not a young man, but I have led a hard life, and I did not hesitate to grapple with him. He is very strong, however, and he managed to hit me with the butt of the revolver. I remember nothing more until the time when I came to and found him rifling my desk. Since he was armed, and had already beaten me once in a hand-to-hand tussle, I pretended to be still unconscious. He searched the room minutely, but apparently failed to find whatever it was he was looking for. When he left I followed him, and traced him here. Then I went and fetched Hopkins. That is the complete story.”

“Anjew better come along quietly,” advised the policeman, tightening his grip on the Saint’s shoulder and holding his truncheon at the ready.

“Fine,” said the Saint softly. “I should like to be searched now, so that your statement about the revolver can be verified.”

Bloem smiled.

“You left it behind,” he said. “Here it is.”

Carn took the weapon from Bloem’s hand and examined it.

“Belgian make,” he said. “Is this yours, Mr. Templar?”

“It is not,” answered Simon promptly. “I object to firearms on principle. They make such a noise.”

“Come along,” urged the constable, jerking the Saint forward.

Simon was not easily peeved, but one thing that made him see red was anybody trying to haze him. For a second he forgot his saintly pose. He caught the policeman’s wrist with both hands and twisted like an eel. There was a flurry of arms and legs, a yell, and George Hopkins landed with a crash on the other side of the room, with most of the breath knocked out of him.

The Saint straightened his tie, and looked bang into the muzzle of an automatic in Bloem’s hand, but that he ignored.

“Anyone who wants a quiet life is advised to keep their filthy hands off me,” murmured the Saint. “Don’t do it again, son.”

The constable was getting shakily to his feet.

“That’s assaulting the police,” he stormed.

“Oh, don’t be childish,” drawled the Saint, cool again. “When we want your little chatter we’ll ask for it. Just now, Bloem, we’ll argue this out by ourselves. We can soon smash this cock-and-bull yarn of yours. One: were you alone in the house?”

“I was.”

“Where was Algy?”

“He’d gone over to see Miss Holm.”

That knocked the bottom out of a neat little alibi that the Saint had thought of trying to put over, but he did not show his disappointment.

“Two: didn’t anyone follow me here with you?”

“I refuse to be cross-examined. I’ve told you I was alone——”

“You’re talking,” said the Saint coldly. “Don’t. Be a good boy and just answer when you’re spoken to. And the point is, if you’ve been quite alone all this time, as you say you have, what’s your word against mine? Suppose I say I called in for a chat, and you stuck me up with that gun and tried to pinch my watch? Why shouldn’t you be run in yourself?”

“Let ’im tell that to the judge,” growled the constable.

“I think,” said Bloem acidly, “that my reputation will survive your wild accusations.”

The Saint was not impressed.

“We had a stand-up fight, did we?” he went on. “I grant you I look as if I’d been in some rough stuff. Now suppose you take off that mac and let’s see how you came out of it.”

Bloem smiled, a little wearily, and unbuttoned his coat. The Saint’s lips tightened. Bloem certainly had a convincing air of having been violently handled, and that put the Tiger another point to the good. Simon saw the Tiger’s score soaring skywards at an alarming rate, but the only effect of that was to key up his own nerves, while his easy and confident manner never faltered. There were still a few more minutes to play.

“It’s rather hopeless, isn’t it?” said Bloem.

He was appealing to the audience, and the constable grunted his agreement.

“What was this remark you didn’t understand?” asked Carn. “When he—as you say—threatened you with the revolver.”

“It was most mysterious,” said Bloem. “He said: ‘I’m looking for the tiger’s den, and I think I’m getting warm.’ I still can’t make out what he meant.”

Simon fished out his cigarette-case and began to tap a cigarette thoughtfully on his thumbnail. Apparently bored with the whole proceeding, he nevertheless saw Carn’s face become a mask. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Bloem, and the Boer’s bland demeanour almost took his breath away. The colossal audacity of that last statement was the crowning stroke to a truly masterly bluff. The Saint wondered if Carn himself was suspect, but Bloem’s gaze rested only on the Saint. No—the gang knew nothing about Carn’s real profession. Bloem was simply taking a vindictive pleasure in kicking the man whom he thought he had got where he wanted him.

And it looked dangerously as if he had got the Saint tied hand and foot and gagged. Patricia could not help him, and Carn could not—even if he cared to. It was Bloem’s word against Simon’s, and there was no doubt which the Bench would prefer to accept. And Bloem knew that the Saint knew that any reference to the evening’s entertainment at Bittle’s would be futile. Bittle would lie like a Trojan, and the Tiger was sure to have provided him with a plausible explanation of the noise that had occurred earlier that night.

The Saint grasped the consummate efficiency of the Tiger’s tactics. Simon was to be shopped, and the shopping had been slickly done. He would be lucky to get away with six months hard—and taken in conjunction with the assault upon the police in the execution of its duty the whole charge-sheet might well put the Saint behind bars for upwards of a year. And in that time T. T. Deeps could be salted, and the Tiger Cubs could fade gracefully away. The Saint lounged even more languidly against the mantelpiece. This last deal had certainly given the Tiger one Hades of a hand.

Yet indisputably the Saint dominated the situation. They were all waiting for him. Bloem, watching him through narrowed lids, and still training the automatic upon him, was utterly confident of the strength of his combination. He was just waiting for the Saint to confess defeat. The constable, more wary after his taste of the Saint’s anger, was hanging about in the background waiting for somebody else to start the next dance. Patricia was looking anxiously at the Saint, powerless to help him, and wondering if any daring sideslip was being planned behind that lazy exterior. The one certain thing was that she did not believe Bloem’s story for an instant. At any other time she might have credited it, but seen in the light of previous events that evening it savoured of nothing but the complicated web of mystery which had caught her up in its meshes and which threatened her Saint with the most sinister things. And Carn had nothing to say. As far as Bloem’s story was concerned, it might or might not be true—his knowledge of the Saint inclined him to believe it. But in any case the Saint was working against him, even if he was also working against the Tiger. And to have disclosed himself as Central Detective Inspector Carn of Scotland Yard would have written Finis to every chance he had of succeeding on his mission.

“We’re waiting,” said Bloem at last.

“So I see,” drawled Simon. “If you can wait a bit longer, there are just one or two more points to clear up. The first is that I’m sure you won’t mind the Doctor just examining the bump I must have raised on your cranium when I knocked you out.”

He was watching Bloem closely as he spoke, and his heart sank when he saw that the man was not at all put out. Carn walked up to Bloem with a query, and Bloem nodded.

“Just behind my left ear,” he said.

“Sweetest lamb,” said the Saint through his teeth, “I’ll bet you just hated getting that bit of realism!”

Carn looked at the Saint and shrugged.

“Someone certainly hit him very hard,” he said. “Saint, you’ve put your foot in it this time.”

“So I don’t think we’ll prolong this unpleasant duty,” said Bloem briskly. “Constable—you have the handcuffs? I’m covering him, and I shall shoot if he attacks you again.”

And then the congregation was increased by one, for a man strutted out of the darkness and stood framed in the open window.

“ ’Ere, wassal this?” demanded Orace truculently.

Chapter VIII.
The Saint is Dense

Bloem wheeled with a smothered exclamation, for the interruption came from behind him. Then the Boer slowly lowered his automatic—because Orace was carrying the enormous revolver which was his pride and joy, and that fearsome weapon was waving in a gentle semicircle so that it covered everyone in the room in turn. Orace leaned on the windowsill, well pleased with the timeliness of his entrance and the sensation it had caused.

“Snoldup,” declared Orace brightly. “Ni jus’ come in the nicker time. Looks like a dangerous carrickter, too. Orfcer,” said Orace, with a lordly sweep of his free hand, “you ’ave the bracelets. Do yer dooty!”

“My good fellow——”

Orace waggled the blunderbuss threateningly in Bloem’s direction.

“Lay orf ‘me good fellerin’ ’ me!” commanded Orace ferociously. “Caught in the yack, that’s wot you are, an’ jer carn’t wriggle out av it! Constible! Wot the thunderin’ ’ell are yer wytin’ for? Look slippy an’ clap the joolry on ’im! An’ jew jusurryup an’ leggo that popgun, or I’ll plugua!”

Bloem let the automatic fall, and the Saint picked it up, in case of accidents.

“I can explain,” persisted Bloem.

“Corse yer can,” agreed Orace scornful. “Never knew a crook ’oo couldn’t.”

“Oh, but he can,” said the Saint. “You can stop flourishing that cannon, Orace, and come right in. I was just wondering how to get hold of you.”

Orace looked doubtful, but eventually he obeyed, clambering lamely over the sill and treating Bloem to a menacing glare as he did so.

“Yessir?”

“A simple case of mistaken identity,” remarked the Saint to the assembled company, in the manner of counsel opening the defence. “But Mr. Bloem was so very obstinate. . . . Well, this is Orace, late of His Majesty’s Royal Marines, and my servant for years. Orace will now testify that I reached home just after eleven, and didn’t leave again until about twenty to twelve.”

The Saint did not even look at Orace as he spoke, for he knew his man. Carn, however, did, and saw Orace register surprise.

“Tha’s so,” said Orace. “ ’Oo said yer didn’t?”

“You see,” Simon explained, “Mr. Bloem there was held up by an armed man to-night, and he had the idea that it was me, so he’s been trying to arrest me.”

Orace nodded, tilting his head away from Bloem as if the man offended his nostrils.

“Ar,” said Orace derisively. “The idea!”

The Saint turned to Bloem.

“Perhaps you will now apologise?” he suggested. “Come, Mr. Bloem, admit that you didn’t get a good view of your assailant, and for reasons of your own you jumped to the conclusion that it was me. He might even have been masked. . . .”

The two men’s eyes met. There was no misconstruing the Saint’s meaning. He was offering Bloem a graceful retreat. Bloem knew that he had weakened his case by confessing that no one but himself had seen the bandit, and his story would never hold water in the face of Simon’s alibi. Orace was the one factor which the Tiger, by some incomprehensible oversight, had utterly overlooked. It might even be said that only Orace’s arrival at that precise moment made him a factor to be considered: if any time had elapsed between the arrest and its coming to Orace’s ears, Orace might by then have been trapped into admitting that he had not seen the Saint since dinner, and possibly the Tiger had banked on some such manœuvre. But Orace had turned up just when he was wanted, which he had an uncanny gift for doing, and thereby he had upset the Tiger’s applecart irretrievably.

And Bloem knew it. He did not show it with a muscle of his face, but his eyes glowed venomously. And the Saint, smiling a little, gazed back with a little blue devil of unholy glee dancing about just behind his lazily lowered lids. For the Saint was thinking of the whack behind the ear which Bloem had suffered for the good of the cause, and that thought made his ribs ache with noiseless laughter. . . .

“I am deeply humiliated,” said Bloem in a strangled voice. “As a matter of fact, the man was masked. I let him leave the room, and then followed. When I came out of the garden, I saw Mr. Templar walking away, and immediately concluded that it was he. The real man must have gone off in another direction. I apologise.”

“I accept your apology, Mr. Bloem,” said the Saint stiffly. “Don’t let it occur again.”

His dignity was terrific, and for that shrewd cut he was rewarded with a look from Bloem which ought by rights to have made him vanish in a puff of smoke, leaving a small greasy stain on the carpet, but the Saint’s armour was impregnable.

“I’m very sorry, Doctor,” said Bloem unevenly. “Try to forgive me, Miss Holm. I’d better go.”

The Saint stepped up with the automatic.

“You might need this, with a hold-up man in the neighbourhood,” he murmured mockingly. “If you meet him again, I trust you will not spare the lead.”

Bloem gazed back malignantly.

“You need have no fear of that, Mr. Templar,” he replied.

He was just going out when Mr. Hopkins awoke to the realisation that he had been cheated of the glory of arresting an armed desperado, and that this coolly smiling man who, was getting off scot-free had flung him across the room, bruised and shaken him severely, and nearly broken his arm.

“ ’Ere,” said the constable, whose idiom was much the same as that of Orace, “wassal this? Whatever you say, that don’t dispose of the charge of assaultin’ the police.”

“When an innocent man is treated like a criminal,” said Simon virtuously, “he may be pardoned for losing his temper. I’m sure Mr. Bloem will agree with me? . . . In fact,” added the Saint, taking Mr. Hopkins coaxingly by the arm, “I’m sure that if you mentioned the matter to Mr. Bloem, he’d stand you a glass of milk and put a penny in your money-box. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Bloem?”

“Naturally,” said Bloem, without enthusiasm, “naturally I must accept the responsibility for that.”

“Spoken like a gent,” approved the Saint. “Now toddle along and talk big business under the stars, like good children.”

And he urged Bloem and the constable towards the door. They went obediently, for different reasons. It was a victory that the Saint could not help rubbing in.

He slammed the front door on the pair, and returned hilariously.

“Honour is vindicated, mes enfantes,” he said happily. “What about splitting another lemonade on it, Carn?”

The detective looked at the Saint and nodded slowly.

“I think we might,” he assented. “Such luck ought to be celebrated. I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask how Orace came to arrive so fortunately?”

“But why indiscreet?” cried the Saint. “All’s fair and above board. Orace, tell the gentleman how you happened to blow in on your cue.”

Orace cleared his throat.

“Being accustomed to take a constitooshnal,” he began, in the stilted language which he would have employed before his orderly officer, “I’m in the ’abit of walking this wy of a nevenin’; and the winder bein’ open an’ me ’avin’ good eyesight——”

“Of course I believe you,” said Carn. “You deserve to be believed. There’s some whisky in the kitchen, Orace.”

Orace saluted and marched out, and the Saint doubled up with silent mirth.

“Orace is unique,” he said.

“Orace is all that, and then some,” Carn returned ruefully.

Soon afterwards Simon and Patricia left. They walked the short distance to the Manor without speaking, for the Saint was enjoying the novel experience of finding his flow of small talk entirely dried up. He had thought of nothing to say until the girl was opening the door, and then he could only make a postponement.

“May I see you to-morrow morning?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“I’ll come right after breakfast.”

Suddenly she remembered Agatha Girton.

“I think—would you mind if I came over to you instead?”

“I’d love you to. And if I haven’t bored you to tears by then, you can stay for lunch. Tell me what time you’ll be leaving, and I’ll send Orace over to fetch you.”

She was surprised.

“Is that necessary?”

“Very necessary,” replied the Saint gravely. “Tigers have nasty suspicious minds, just like me, and by this time one Tiger is wondering just how dangerous you are, Pat. Yes, I know it’s screamingly funny, but let me send Orace—for my own peace of mind.”

“Well—— About half-past ten, if you like.”

“I do. And Orace will adore it. One other thing. Will you do me a great favour?”

She had found the switch in the hall, and she turned on the light to see his face better, but he was not joking.

“Lock your door, and put the key under the pillow. Don’t open to anybody—not even your aunt. I don’t really think anything’ll happen so soon, but Tigers can hustle. Will you?”

She nodded.

“You’re very alarming,” she said.

“I’m full of ideas to-night,” he said. “I’ve had a taste of the Tiger’s speed, and nobody ever stung the Saint in the same way twice. Don’t believe any messages except they’re brought by Orace. Don’t trust anybody but me, Orace, or old Carn at a pinch. I know it’s a tall order, but there are one or two rough days—not to mention rough nights—in store for the old brigade. You’ve been perfectly marvellous so far. Can you keep it up?”

“I’ll try,” she said.

He took her hand.

“God bless you, Pat, old pal.”

“Saint——”

He was going when she stopped him. It was odd to hear that nickname fall from her lips—the name wherewith the Saint had been christened in strange and ugly places, by hard and godless men. He had grown so used to it that he had come to accept it without question, but now the sound of it brought a flood of memories. Once again he stood in the Bosun’s smoky bar at the back of Mexico City, looking from the huddled corpse of Senhor Miguel Grasiento to the girl called Cherry, and heard the rurales pounding on the door. He had got her away, on an English tramp bound for Liverpool. “ ‘Saint,’ ” she had said—“that was a true word spoken in jest.” And he had never heard the name uttered in the same tone since until that moment. . . .

“Saint, did you really go to Bloem’s?”

“I did not,” he answered. “That was a frame-up. But Mynheer Bloem is certainly one of the Tiger Cubs. Watch him! I’ll tell you the whole yarn to-morrow. Bye-bye, kid.”

The Saint found Orace in the lane, curled up under the hedge, philosophically smoking his pipe.

“We’ll work inland round the village,” said Simon, “I’m hoping the Tiger’s had enough for one night, but you never know. Nobody’s got any proof that Bloem was lying about that hold-up merchant, except me, and a fairy tale like that cuts both ways. If our bodies were found in a field in the morning, the whole thing’d fit in beautifully.”

Nevertheless, they were not molested on the way back—a fact which might well have been due to the Saint’s foresight. It took an hour of the Saint’s killing pace to do the journey which would have lasted only fifteen minutes by the obvious route, and even then Simon was not satisfied.

When the outline of the Pill Box loomed dimly up against the dark sky, he stopped.

“Booby traps have caught mugs before now,” he murmured. “Just park yourself in the nettles here, Orace, while I snoop round.”

The Saint could have given most shikars points when it came to moving across country without being noticed. Orace simply saw a tall shape melt soundlessly away into the gloom, and thereafter could trace nothing until the tall shape materialised again beside him.

“All clear,” said Simon. “That means our Tiger’s burning the midnight oil thinking out something really slick and deadly.”

The Saint was right. Although he and Orace never relaxed their vigilance, taking it in turns to sleep and keep watch, they were left in peace. The Tiger had taken one blind shot, and it had not come off. Moreover, if his organisation had been only a shade less thorough, it might have landed him in the tureen. As it was, he had come out of the encounter none too well. And for the future he intended to have his moves mapped out well in advance, with every possible set-back and development legislated for.

None of these reflections disturbed the Saint’s sleep. He had taken the first watch, and so the sun was shining gaily through the embrasures when he awoke for the second time, to find Orace setting a cup of tea down by his bedside.

“Nice morning,” remarked Orace, according to ritual, and vanished again.

Since the episode of the bullet out of the blue, Simon had reluctantly decided to forgo his morning dip until the air had become clearer. However, he skipped and shadow-boxed in the sun with especial vigour, and finished up with Orace splashing a couple of buckets of water over him, what time the Saint lay on the grass drawing deep grateful breaths and blessing his perfect condition. For the Saint saw a fierce and wearing scrap ahead, and he reckoned that he would need all his strength and stamina if he was going to be on his feet when the gong clanged for the last round.

“Brekfuss narf a minnit,” said Orace.

The Saint was grinning as he dressed. Orace was nearly too good to be true.

They were late that morning, and Orace left to fetch Patricia as soon as he had served “brekfuss.” The girl arrived in half an hour, to find the Saint spread-eagled in a deck chair outside the Pill Box. He had managed to unearth another pair of flannel bags and another shooting-jacket that were nearly as disreputable as the outfit which had been wrecked in Bittle’s garden the night before, and he looked very fresh and comfortable, for his shirt, as usual, would have put snow to shame.

He jumped up and held out both his hands, and she gave him both of hers.

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” he said. “How are we?”

“Fine,” she told him. “And nothing happened.”

She was cool and slim in white, and he thought he had never seen anyone half so lovely.

“Something might have,” he said. “And when I was a Boy Scout they taught me to Be Prepared.”

He rigged a chair for her and adjusted the cushions, and then he sat down again.

“I know you’re bursting with curiosity,” he said, “so I’ll come straight to the ’osses.”

And without further ado he started on the long history. He told her about Fernando, dying out in the jungle with a Tiger Cub’s kris in him, and he told her Fernando’s story. He told her about the Tiger, who was for years Chicago’s most brilliant and terrible gang leader. He told her about some of the Tiger’s exploits, and finally came to the account of the breaking of the Confederate Bank. Some of the details Fernando had told him; the rest he had gathered together by patient investigation; the accumulation worked up into a plot hair-raising enough to provide the basis of the wildest film serial that was ever made.

“The Tiger’s very nearly a genius,” he said. “The way he got away with that mint of money and carted it all the miles to here is just a sample of his brain.”

Then he told her about the more recent events—the little he had learned while he had been in Baycombe. How he had been suspected from the day of his arrival, and how he had done his best to encourage that suspicion, in the hope that the other side would give themselves away by trying to dispose of him. Gradually the lie of the land took shape in her mind, while the Saint talked on, putting in a touch of character here and there, recalling points that he had omitted and referring to details that he had not yet given. The story was not told smoothly—it rattled out, paused, and rattled on again, decorated with the Saint’s typical racy idiom and humorous egotism. Nevertheless, it held her, and it was a convincing story, for the Saint had a gift for graphic description. She saw the scenes at which she had been present in a new light.

He ended up with a flippant account of the sport chez Bittle after he had helped her get away.

“And there you have it,” he concluded. “Heard in cold blood, with the sun shining and all that, it sounds preposterous enough to make dear old Munchausen look like gospel. But you’ve seen a bit of it yourself, and perhaps that’ll make it easier for you to believe the rest. And what it boils down to is that the Tiger is in Baycombe, and so am I, and so are the pieces of eight; and the Tiger wants my head on a tin tray, and I want his ill-gotten gains, and we’re both pretty keen to hang on to our respective possessions. So, taken by and large, it looks like we shall come to blows and other Wild and Woolly Western expressions of mutual ill-feeling. And the point is, Pat, and the reason why I felt you had a right to know all the odds—is that you’ve gone and cut in on the game. By last night, the Tiger had to face the risk that I might have talked to you, and the way you behaved generally won’t have eased his mind any. You might be a danger or you might not, but he can’t afford to take chances. To be on the safe side, he’s got to assume that you and I are as thick as thieves. So you see, old soul, you’re slap in the middle of this here jamboree, whether you like it or not. You’re cast for second juvenile lead in the bloodcurdling melodrama now playing, and your name’s up in red lights all round the Tiger’s den—and the question before the house is, What Do We Do About It?”

He was leaning forward so that he could see her face, and she knew that he was desperately serious. She knew, also, instinctively, that he was not a man to exaggerate the situation, however much he might play the buffoon in other directions.

“Now, here’s my suggestion,” said the Saint. “I know a bloke called Terry Mannering, who lives on the other side of Devonshire, and he can deal with fun and games as well as I can. He has a wife, whom you’ll love, and a very good line in yachts, being nearly as rich as I should like to be since his Old Man kicked the bucket. If I took you over and told Terry that it’d be good for all your healths if you went cruising off to the West Indies or somewhere else a long way off for a few months, till the tumult and the shouting dies, so to speak, and the Tigers and their Cubs depart—well, I know the three of you’d be on the high seas in no time. And the Tiger and I would be rude to each other for a bit, and when it was all over and he was decently buried I’d let you know and you could come back. What about it?”

Patricia studied her shoe; and she said, in a very Saintly way:

“What, indeed?”

“You said?” rapped Simon.

“What about it?” queried Patricia. “It might be rather a good idea some time, but you can’t rush it like that. Besides, I’m rather enjoying myself in Baycombe.”

Simon got up.

“Well, I’m not enjoying your enjoyment,” he said bluntly. “That sort of courage is all very fine when it’s to some purpose—but this time it isn’t. I’ve never dragged a woman into my little worries yet, and I’m not starting now. Perhaps you think this is going to be a picnic. I thought I’d made it plain enough that it isn’t. If you want to pack a few thrills into your young life, I’ll arrange a big-game shooting trip, or something else comparatively tame, later. But this particular spree is not in your line one bit, and you’d better be sensible and admit it.”

Patricia raised her eyebrows.

“So I gather you propose to kidnap me,” she said calmly. “I believe ‘shanghai’ is the word. Well, I should start planning right away—because nothing short of that is going to move me.”

“You’re a damned fool,” said the Saint.

She laughed, standing up to him and laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Dear man,” she said, “I refuse to lose my temper, because I know that’s just what you want me to do. You think that if you’re rude enough I’ll dash off and leave you to stew. And I can promise you I shan’t do anything of the sort. I know it isn’t going to be a picnic—but I’m sorry if you think I’m a girl that’s only fit for picnics. I’ve always fancied myself as the heroine of a hell-for-leather adventure, and this is probably the only chance I shall ever have. And I’m jolly well going to see it through!”

Simon held himself in check with an effort. He had a frantic impulse to take this stubborn slip of a girl across his knee and spank some sense into her; and coincidently with that he had an equally importunate desire to hug her and kiss her to death. For there was no doubt that she was determined to ride on to the kill, however dangerous the country her obstinate intention led her over. Why she should be so set on it beat the Saint. He could imagine a high-spirited girl fancying herself as the heroine of just such an adventure, but he had never dreamed of meeting a girl who’d go on fancying herself quite so keenly when it came to the point, and when she’d had a peek at some of the stern and spiky disadvantages. But there she was, smiling into his eyes, tranquilly announcing her resolution to see the shooting-match through with him, and boldly averring that she was perfectly prepared to eat the whole cake as well as the icing. She was going to be the blazes of a nuisance and the mischief of a worry to him—“But, Hell!” swore the Saint to himself—“I’m darn glad of it!” Wherein he betrayed his egotism. It would be a gruelling test for her, but he’d have her with him all the time. And if she came through it with flying colours, well, maybe after all he’d go the way of most confirmed bachelors. . . .

And since he saw that neither cajoling nor cursing would budge her, he accepted the situation like a wise man. And even then (with such an inferiority complex is Love afflicted) the sublime egotist did not spot the foundation of her determination, though it stuck out a mile. Nevertheless, in his blindness he was very near to blundering straight into the heart of the affair. His scowl relaxed, and he took her hand from his shoulder and held it.

“I’ve known some fool women,” said the Saint, “but I never met one whose foolishness appealed to me more than yours.”

“Then—it’s a bet?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You said it, partner. And the Lord grant we win. It’s not my fault if you insist on jazzing into the Tiger’s den, but it’ll be my unforgivable fault if I don’t yank you out again safely. Shake!”

“Bless you,” said Patricia softly.

Chapter IX.
Patricia Perseveres

“Well,” remarked Simon Templar, breaking a long silence as lightly as he could, “where do we go from here, old Pat?”

She disengaged her hand and sat down again; and he shifted his own chair round so that they were knee to knee. She was chilled by the definiteness with which he reverted to pure business, though later she realised that he did so only because he was afraid of letting himself go, and possibly incurring her displeasure by forcing the pace.

“I’ve also a story to tell,” she said, “and it came out only last night.”

And she gave him a full account of Agatha Girton’s confession.

For such a loquacious man, he was an astonishingly attentive listener. It was a side of his character which she had not seen before—the Saint concentrating. He did not interrupt her once, sitting back with his eyes shut and his face so composed that he might well have been asleep. But when she had finished he was frowning thoughtfully.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said the Saint. “So Aunt Aggie is one of the bhoys? But what in the sacred name of haggis could anyone blackmail Aunt Aggie with? Speaking quite reverently, I can’t imagine she was ever ravishing enough, even in her prime, to acquire anything like a Past.”

“It does seem absurd, but——”

The Saint scratched his head.

“What do you know about her?”

“Very little, really,” Patricia replied. “I’ve sort of always taken her for granted. My mother died when I was twelve—my father was killed hunting three years before that—and she became my guardian. I never saw much of her until quite recently. She spent most of her time abroad, on the Riviera. She had a villa at Hyères. I stayed on at school very late, and I was generally alone here during the holidays—I mean, she was away, though I usually had school friends staying with me, or I stayed with them. She didn’t do much for me, but my bills were paid regularly, and she wrote once a fortnight.”

“When did she settle down in Baycombe, then?”

“When she came back from South Africa. About six years ago I had a letter from her from Port Said, saying that she was on her way to the Cape. She was away a year, and I hardly had a line from her. Then one day she turned up and said she’d had enough of travelling and was going to live at the Manor.”

“And did she?”

“She used to go abroad occasionally, but they were quite short trips.”

“When was the last expedition?”

She pondered.

“About two years ago, or a bit less. I can’t remember the exact date.”

“Now think,” suggested the Saint—“roughly, you hardly saw her at all between the time she introduced herself as your guardian, when you were twelve, until she came back from South Africa, when you were sixteen or seventeen.”

“Nearer seventeen.”

“And in that time anything might have happened.”

She shrugged.

“I suppose so. But it’s too ridiculous. . . .”

“Of course it is,” agreed Simon blandly. “It’s all too shriekingly ridiculous for words. It’s ridiculous that our Tiger should have broken the Confederate Bank of Chicago and lugged the moidores over to Baycombe to await disposal. It’s ridiculous to think that there are some hundredweights of twenty-two carat gold hidden somewhere not two miles from here. But there are. What we’ve got to assume is that on this joy ride nothing is too ridiculous to be real. Which reminds me—what do you know about the old houses in Baycombe? There must be something conspicuously old enough for Fernando to have thought The Old House was sufficient address.”

He was surprised at her immediate answer.

“There are two that’d fit,” she said. “One is just out of the village, inland. It used to be an inn, and the name of it was The Old House. It’s falling to bits now—the proprietor lost his licence in the year Dot, and nobody took it over. It’s supposed to be haunted. The windows are all boarded up, and a dozen men could live there without being seen if they went in and out at night.”

The Saint smashed fist into palm, his eyes lighting up.

“Moonshine and Moses!” he whooped. “Pat, you’re worth a fortune to this partnership! And I was just thinking we’d come to a standstill. Why, we haven’t moved yet! . . . What’s the other one?”

“The island just round the point.” She waved her arm to the east. “The fishermen call it the Old House, but you wouldn’t have noticed it because it only looks like that from the sea. The sides are very steep, and on one side it juts right out over the water, like those old houses where the first floor is bigger than the ground floor.”

Simon jumped up and walked to the edge of the cliff, so that he could see the island. It was about a mile from the shore—nothing but an outcrop of rock thickly overgrown with bushes and stunted trees. He came back jubilant.

“It might be either,” he said exultantly, “or it might be both—the Tiger may have a home from home in your defunct pub, and he may have parked the doubloons on the island. Anyway, we’ll draw both covers and see. Thinking it over, I guess I’ve hit it. The Tiger’d want to have the gold in some place he could ship it from easily—remember it’s got to go to Africa. And by the same token . . . Here, hold on half a sec.”

He disappeared into the Pill Box and came back in a moment with field-glasses. Then he focused on the horizon and began to sweep it carefully from west to east. He had covered three-quarters of the arc when he stopped and stared for a full minute, suddenly rigid.

“And there she blows,” he muttered.

He handed her the binoculars and pointed north-east.

“See what you make of it.”

“It looks like a couple of masts sticking up.”

“Motor ship—no funnels,” he explained. “The Bristol shipping passes here, but we’re back in a sort of big bay, and I don’t think they’d stand in as near as that. But we’ll just make sure.”

He took the glasses from her again and went into the Pill Box, and she followed. He fossicked about in the kitchen till he found a piece of board, the remains of a packing-case, and this he settled in one of the embrasures, truing it up level with little wedges of newspaper. Then he put the field-glasses on it and took a sight on one of the masts by means of a couple of pins stuck in the board.

“We’ll give her five minutes.”

She grasped his meaning at once.

“You think they’re waiting to come in after dark?”

“No less. Comrade Bloem hasn’t done all he’d like to with T. T. Deeps, but he’ll have some weeks’ grace while the stuff’s getting to the mine. And he daren’t let it lie around here any longer, in case my luck holds and I don’t get bumped off according to schedule. I’ve rattled the Tiger!”

He was keeping an eye on his watch, and the minutes ticked away very slowly.

“Is Dr. Carn a detective?” she asked.

“That’s hit it in one,” affirmed the Saint. “But don’t let on you know. It wouldn’t be sporting not to give the old boy a fair run.”

“Then aren’t you a detective?” she stammered in bewilderment. “I thought you were friendly rivals—that was the only explanation I could work out last night.”

The Saint smiled grimly.

“Rivals—more or less friendly—yes,” he said. “But I’m not a detective, and never was. I’m playing for my own hand, with an enormous quantity of ha’pence coming to me if I win, and everybody’s kicks if I lose. Profession, gentleman adventurer: i.e., available for any job involving plenty of money and plenty of trouble, suitable for a man who doesn’t bother much about the letter of the law and who’s prepared to take his licking without a yelp if he gets landed. That’s me. Like this. I happened to find Fernando, and as soon as I’d got the thing taped out I took a trip to Chicago and saw the boss of the Confederate. ‘Here’s nearly a year since your strong room was busted,’ I said, ‘and the dicks haven’t brought you back one cent of the almighties. Now suppose you let me have a shot. Terms, twenty per cent. commission if I bring it off. Not a bean if I don’t. Me to work on my lonesome, without reporting to anybody, and to take all the blame if I’m run over.’ Well, that put them on something to nothing, so they bit. And there you are.”

He was looking steadily at her, but she did not change colour. But the Saint was never a faker, and this was his call to clean the whole sheet, so that she could take it or leave it as she chose and would never be able to say he hadn’t played square. He rubbed it in with brutal directness.

“That’s the way I’ve lived for years. Pretty well, all things considered, so that if this gamble turns up I’ll be able to retire and settle down as soon as I like, and not have to stint myself anywhere. In those years I’ve committed about half the crimes in the Calendar, at the expense of crooks. It’s a sporting game—man to man, and devil take the mug: and the police, for obvious reasons, aren’t invited to interfere by either side. Bloem’s the first to break that rule; but the Tiger isn’t a sportsman—he’s just a pot-hunter. Still, I doubt if your friends would appreciate my success in that career. D’you still want to be a partner in the firm?”

She sighed.

“Saint, you’re an ass,” she said. “And if you exhibit any symptoms of virulent imbecility I shall fire you and become managing director myself.”

“Hell’s bells,” ejaculated Simon, unwontedly moved, and swung away.

Very carefully, so as not to disturb the board, he took another sight at the ship’s masts; and presently he straightened up with a light of triumph breaking on his face.

“We’re in luck,” he said. “She hasn’t shifted a millimetre. Rotten bad navigation. I’d have known the height of my masts to an inch, and the height of the cliffs here ditto, and I’d have figured out my position to six places of decimals. . . . But the Tiger’s loss is our gain!”

“They’ll start to come in at sunset,” she took him up excitedly. “And——”

“And I’ll be there,” said the Saint. “It’s a moonlight swim for me to-night. That’s great—to let the Tiger Cubs themselves lead me to the cache! But the snag is . . . Holy Habbakuk . . . they’ll be waiting for me.” She stared. “They know I’ll invite myself, bless it!”

“Why?”

“Because they know I’m wise to this Old House joke. I let on, like a fool. That was a poisonous bad bloomer! I was ragging old Bloem about Fernando, just seeing how much breeze I could put up him, and I mentioned the Old House. They’ll think I knew exactly what and where it was. Oh, crumbs and crutches! D’you mind kicking me as hard as you can?”

She was as distressed as he was. It was in no half-hearted manner that she had enlisted in the army of adventurers. A setback stung her as much as anybody. She bit her lip.

“But they’re coming in,” she insisted.