The Saint Meets the Tiger s-1 Page 21

  He was halfway there when he heard the tramp of heavy feet coming toward him. Grace turned and scuttled back. He kept his head averted and bent low over the nearest motor. The feet grated on the companion above him, and halted.

  "All right down there, Joseph?"

  "Aye, aye, sir," replied Orace in a muffled voice, without looking up.

  "We'll be off in less than an hour. You needn't bother about running on the electric motors going out — we want to get off as quickly as we can."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "I'll ring down as soon as the last load's being taken in, and you can start up then and keep running till we go."

  The footsteps retired along the deck overhead, and Orace breathed again.

  He had noticed the iron door behind him, but had assumed that it led only to the fuel tanks. As a matter of fact, it did, but there was also a narrow alley running between the tanks and continuing forward till it reached the foot of an emergency companion. He heard the slight click of the door opening, and quickly bowed his head over the engines again.

  This man did not speak; but Orace, apparently intent on inspecting a spark plug, could hear the stealthy slither of feet over the greasy metal, and the hairs in the scruff of his neck prickled. There was something sinister about that wary approach — the man behind him moved so silently that Orace would never have noticed the sound if he had not been expecting it. The door itself had been unlatched so cautiously that that noise also would probably have escaped him if he had not been listening for the retreat of the man who had spoken to him.

  The stealthy feet drew nearer, step by step, while Orace kept his back turned and went on poring over the plug terminals. They were nearer now — only a couple of yards behind him, as far as he could judge. Another yard, and Orace gathered himself for a sudden movement. He had ceased to wonder whether the intruder regarded him as an innocent party. For some reason which he could not immediately divine Orace was suspect.

  Some premonition, the prompting of a sixth sense, made him swing aside in the nick of time, and the smashing blow that had been aimed at his head whizzed past his ear and clanged on the engine casing. Orace whirled and leaped, but his feet slipped on the oily grating, and he sprawled headlong. His blunderbuss was underneath the borrowed overalls, and he had no time to fumble for it before his opponent had pounced on him and caught his throat in a deadly grip.

  Except the thrill of a sporting burglary — such as a raid upon the home of a famous detective with the said detective in residence and, for preference, entertaining a select party of his fellow sleuths — there is no thrill to be compared to the thrill of a refined form of piracy.

  So Patricia realized as she stole down the dimly lighted alleyway aft in search of the galley. There she was, on the Tiger's ship, with only two assistants, one of whom was temporarily hors de combat, and the odds against them were five to one, at a conservative estimate. The very forlornness of the adventure took away half its terrors, for with everything to lose — and as good as lost at the first slip — there was nothing to gain by footling and fiddling over the job. The only earthly chance of success was to blind recklessly ahead and chance the consequences. To funk the bold game would be fatal. The bold game was the only one which offered .the vaguest possibility of success — a plan such as they had set themselves to carry out could only hope to succeed if it were executed in the same spirit of consummate cheek and hell-for-leather daring as that in which it had been conceived. And that was what Patricia Holm intended to do, starting in at that very instant.

  Even so, sir and madam — that was the determination which was glowing like hot steel in Patricia's brain. Orace had gone off to deal with an engineer, and Orace could look after himself as well as anybody. Having laid out the engineer, he would repair to the rendezvous, and when the girl failed to put in an appearance, after a reasonable time, he would set out in search other — incidentally disposing of any Tiger Cubs whom he encountered on the way. And, therefore, in a little while, there would be two vengeful people creeping about the ship and striking shrewd, secret blows at the enemy — here one moment, there the next, coming and going like wraiths, and leaving no more evidence of their passage than a Tiger Cub sleeping peacefully in the scuppers here and there. The girl guessed that Orace was still troubled with fears for her safety and doubts of her ability to pull her weight in the undertaking, and so, to save bothersome argument, she was going to take the bit between her teeth and leave him to fall into line behind — and, once she was started, he would have no option but to do exactly that, for the pace would be too hectic to allow any intervals for discussion.

  There is this about the thrill of action, the electric omnipresence of danger, and the necessity for keeping yourself keyed up taut and ready to make lightning decisions: it takes up all the time of all your faculties and holds your brain buzzing round and round that one sole pin-point of motive. Patricia was not callous. It wasn't that she had forgotten the Saint and gone gaily cavorting off on this new spree in a manner that would make you think that piracy amused her just as much as petting. It was simply that, having resolved to call the Tiger down to an audit of the ledger, the concentration which that task demanded would, until it was accomplished, leave no room in her mind for any of the thoughts which had inspired it.

  And so, as she crept nearer to the end of the alleyway, Patricia's nerve was neither dulled nor unbalanced by any irrelevant considerations. She was just one hundred and thirty pounds of smoothly functioning Tophet, actuated by one grim purpose, waiting to detonate all over anyone who got in her way. And that road ran straight as an arrow's flight to a point directly over the Tiger's shoe leather... .

  Men of the trade known to Orace as "per-taterstoors" may not be quite as other men are, but one specimen at least can be certified as possessing the gumption of ordinary men, for he heard the metallic note in Patricia's rapped command from the galley door, and, wisely, decided not to shout for help.

  "Up with 'em!" crisped the girl. "Don't even open your mouth to gasp — I might think you were going to yell, and then your children would all be orphans!"

  The man turned slowly, saucepan in hand.

  He saw a slim, straight slip of a girl in a tight-fitting Jantzen that emphasized the calmly efficient poise of her body. Beads of salt water glistened on her brown skin in the lamplight, and her wet hair was swept back from her forehead in an unruly mop. At any other time, the cook, who was a connoisseur, would have been able to admire the perfection of her figure and the miracle of a complexion which could survive a two-mile swim and lose no jot of its beauty — in his somewhat coarse and practical fashion. But now his eyes were riveted on the blue-black gleam of the automatic which her small brown hand pointed so steadily at his middle; and, raising those dilated eyes from the gun to her face, he was able to appreciate only the firm set of her lips and the bleak purposefulness of her gaze.

  "I'm getting tired of waiting." The words bit through the steamy air with the chilly menace of bright steel. "Stick 'em up. And jump to it!"

  He started to raise his arms, and then the heavy saucepan catapulted from his hand.

  The girl saw it flying at her head, and ducked instinctively. The pan thudded against the bulkhead behind her and clattered to the floor. She saw the man leaping toward her, and pulled the trigger twice.

  She was braced up for the expected stutter of explosion, and its failure to materialize was a physical shock. In that split second of panic she remembered the waterproof holster of which the Saint had spoken, and which she had forgotten to provide herself with. Her fire had produced no others sound than the snap of the cap — the prolonged immersion had damped the cordite charge, and the gun on which she was relying was no more use than a chunk of pig iron. The man was rushing at her with outstretched arms....

  Patricia had less than the twinkling of an eye in which to adjust herself to the sudden petrifying reversal of circumstances, but she achieved the feat, Hardly knowing what she did, she flung u
p her hand and hurled the useless automatic with all her strength. It struck the man squarely between the temples, and he went down in a heap.

  The girl stood tense and motionless, wondering if anyone had heard. Her heart was pounding furiously. That had nearly been a knock-out in the first round! But it seemed that none of the other Tiger Cubs had been near enough to notice anything, and gradually she got her breath back and found her pulse throttling down to normal again.

  The impetus of the man's onslaught had carried him halfway out of the door, and she had to drag him back into the galley. She picked up the saucepan he had thrown and chucked it in after him. Then she pulled the door to and turned the key on the outside.

  The next move was undoubtedly toward the bridge. There would only be the skipper up there, unless Bittle or Bloem or perhaps the Tiger himself happened to have gone up to watch the loading from that point, and even against those odds the girl felt capable of keeping her wicket up, if she could only find a weapon. And once again her luck was in. As she went back up the alleyway, she observed a door standing ajar, and through it she glimpsed a row of rifles and cutlasses and revolvers ranged neatly in racks. The Tiger was carrying a good armoury.

  She went in and selected a couple of revolvers. Boxes of ammunition she found stacked up on the shelves below the gunracks. She loaded, and went out again, locking the door behind her and tyirig the key to her belt. That at least would worry the Tiger Cubs if it came to a straight fight.

  The girl padded down the alleyway forward, her bare feet making no sound on the carpet. At the end, the alley she was following ran into another alley athwartships, and two doors faced her which she guessed would open into the saloon. On her right, a companion went upward into darkness. She would have seen the sky at the top of it if it had led on to the deck, and so she deduced that it led up into the deckhouse. Climbing, she came, as she had expected, into another alley, shorter and narrower than the one she had left, but the companion continued its ascent, and thus she emerged on the upper deck. Crouching under the shadow of a boat, she saw that she was just astern of the bridge.

  The upper deck was deserted. She could hear the winch aft thrumming spasmodically, and thanked her stars that all hands would still be engaged in getting the gold aboard. But they couldn't take very much longer over it, and before they were finished and bustling about getting up anchor she had got to corral the skipper and the Tiger and any of the more mature Cubs who happened to be loafing about up on the bridge.

  The bridge was built over a couple of big cabins. Certainly the Tiger would occupy one of those, and she marked them down for investigation later. But the first thing to do was to attack the bridge.

  The bridge companion faced her. She gained it in half a dozen paces and went up.

  There was a man leaning over the starboard rail; The moonlight revealed the dingy braid ton his uniform and the peaked cap tilted back from his forehead. He was gazing out to sea, chewing his pipe and wrapped up in his thoughts. If details are to be insisted upon, he was speculating about the riotous time he would have in Cape Town when he was paid off for the voyage. There was, for instance, Mulato Harry's place down by the docks — an unsavoury-looking joint enough from the outside, but provided with a room furnished in Oriental magnificence, to which only the favoured ones who were well provided with hard cash were admitted. In that room were delights for which the soul of Mr. Maggs hungered — better liquor than was served to the proletariat in the filthy bar beyond which the proletariat never penetrated, and decorative little pipes from which curled up thin wisps of seductive smoke, and houris of a more subtle loveliness than that of the painted half-caste women who frequented the better-known dives. Mr. Maggs visioned the orgy which the Tiger's money would purchase him; and, in his heavy and animal fashion, Mr. Maggs was a contented man, for he possessed the unlimited patience of the third-rate beast. And Mr. Maggs was stolidly champing over his dream for the umpteenth time since the Tiger had found him in a dockside bar in Bristol, and made the offer of a princely salary plus bonus, when something hard and round prodded Mr. Maggs in the spine and he heard a command which was not quite unfamiliar.

  "Hands up!"

  The order was hissed out very softly, but 'there was a sibilant menace permeating its quietness which made the experienced Mr. Maggs obey without question.

  A hand dipped into his jacket pocket, and he felt his gun being deftly extracted.

  "Now you can turn round."

  Mr. Maggs pivoted slowly, and his jaw dropped when he saw the girl.

  "You she-devil!" snarled Maggs, taking courage from the sight. "Sticking me up! Well, honey — "

  He started to lower his arms. Two revolver muzzles jerked up and held their aim at his chest. The hands that held them were as steady as the hands of a stone image, and his keen stare could detect no trace of nervousness in the face of their owner. Mr. Maggs, wise in his generation, read the threat of sudden death in the girl's cold eyes, and stopped.

  "Down the companion," said Patricia. "And don't try to get away or shout or anything. There's bound to be shooting sooner or later, and it might as well start on you."

  Maggs complied to the letter. He was too old a hand not to recognize a bluff when he saw one, and he knew that this slip of a girl with the two guns wasn't bluffing. He went slowly down the companion and waited, and in a moment he heard her step down on the deck' behind him, and again the revolver nosed into the small of his back.

  "Now — where's the Tiger?"

  He chuckled.

  "You're wrong there, you! The Tiger isn't coming on this trip — he was persuaded not to."

  "Where would you like to be shot?" she asked frostily.

  "That won't alter it," said Maggs. "I tell you, the Tiger isn't on board. I can't tell you why, and I can't tell you where he is, but the other guys arrived without him, and said he might come later or probably he mightn't come at all. You can ask Bittte."

  She could not decide whether the man was lying or not, but she sensed that he was manoeuvring for an opportunity to turn the tables on her. "

  "Where is Bittle?"

  "The left-hand cabin."

  "Lead right in there," said Patricia, and knew by the way he hesitated that he had lied, and that he had been hoping she would postpone entering that cabin and take him into the one on the right, where perhaps Bittle was.

  He opened the door, and there she stopped him:

  "Walk right in — and keep well away from the door. If you try to slam it in my face you'll get hurt."

  He submitted perforce, and she followed him in and kicked the door to. She was then in a dilemma — a man could have tied Maggs up and left him, but Patricia could not trust herself to do that, since she would have no chance against him if he turned on her while she was unarmed, and she could not truss him up effectively with one hand. And she could hardly lock him in loose, when he could smash a porthole and raise the alarm as soon as she passed on. In fact, there was only one way to eliminate Mr. Maggs...

  Swiftly she reversed the revolver in tier right hand, swept it up, and crashed it down with all her strength on the back of his head.

  The next moment she was looking down at his prostrate form, and she found that she was trembling. To embark on an evening's amateur piracy — even to the extent of holding up the skipper at the end of a gun — even to putting out a recalcitrant cook in fair fight — is one thing. To strike a man down in cold blood is another, especially when you do it for the first time in your uneventful life. She feared that she might have killed him, but a rapid examination showed that he was still breathing, though she reckoned by the vim she had put into the blow that he would have no interest in the entertainment for a long time. She regained her feet, considerably relieved.

  "Pull yourself together, Patricia Holm!" she admonished herself. "This isn't a vicarage tea party — you can't afford to be squeamish. They'll do worse to you if they get you, so let 'em have it while you can!"

  Now for Bittle....


  She locked Mr. Maggs in, and stowed the key away by a cleat, where it could be recovered later if required. Then she crossed to the other door, turned the handle noiselessly, and suddenly flung the door wide.

  The cabin was in darkness. She searched for the electric-light switch, and the darkness was wiped out in a glare that half blinded her, but she was able to see that the cabin was empty. An open valise was on the bunk, and some clothes had been unpacked and lay strewn about. A faint odour of fresh tobacco proved that the occupant had not long been gone. Then an ash tray on the ledge of the disappearing wash basin caught her eye, and she discovered the origin of the smoky smell, for the cigar had only just been lighted.

  Would Bittle have left his cigar behind him?

  An indefinable suspicion of impending danger tingled up her spine like the caress of a thousand needle points of ice…

  Or did it mean that he would be back in a moment? If so, she was asking for trouble by keeping the light on and standing full in the blaze of it. Hurriedly she clicked the lever over, and darkness descended again.

  She spun round with a start, and saw him at her shoulder, but he was too quick for her. He had caught her two guns, one in each hand, and torn them out of her grasp before she could move.

  Chapter XVIII

  THE SAINT RETURNS

  Bittle pushed the girl roughly into the cabin and slammed the door.

  "Now let's have a look at you."

  He was in his shirt sleeves, and the fact that he had loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar for comfort in the sultriness of the evening increased the ruffianly effect of his appearance. John Bittle was one of the men who are only tolerable when conventionally dressed. And his round red face was no longer genial.