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: