The Saint Meets the Tiger s-1 Page 24

  "You, at least, will not laugh much longer," said Bittle, and put the muzzle of one of his revolvers in the Saint's face.

  "Half a sec.!" Simon's voice ripped out like a gunshot, and Bittle hesitated with his finger tightening on the trigger. "While I'm being so communicative, you might as well hear the rest of the yarn — it may help you, though I doubt it. Let me tell you your second mistake. I've got another stiff one ready to shoot at you! This is mostly Orace's story, but he won't mind my cribbing it. Orace, you know, hasn't been wasting his time. Orace went below and laid out your engineer and put on his clothes. You spoke to him yourself, and never guessed — I'll bet that makes you hop! Then I arrived, and also mistook Orace for the genuine article, and I'd nearly killed him before I found out my error. Orace and I knew enough about motors to obey the telegraph, and we were the ones took this bateau out for you. After we'd finished I made Orace take off the overalls, so that you wouldn't suspect anything; but the real engineer is still locked up below, and he must be pretty cramped and peevish by this time! But that's not the whole yarn — not by a mile!"

  Bittle had lowered his gun as the Saint talked on, for it was dawning upon Bittle that the Saint had an even bigger trump card yet to play. Prince of bluffers though the Saint might be, Bittle could not believe that he could bluff for his life in such a casual manner. The Saint smiled all the time, and he was smiling in such a way as almost to invite the others to doubt his word, yet every now and then he handed them out one perfect gem of verifiable fact to shatter their illusions and force them back as to credulity. He used his facts as pegs on which to hang the decorations with which his egotism compelled him to embellish the tale, but for all that those facts stuck out as stark and uncontrovertible as a forest of spears. And all the time Bittle could sense that the Saint, in his mild and lingering way, was working up to an even more devastating bombshell. What that bombshell was going to be Bittle could not divine, but the conviction was borne in upon him that a mine of some sort was going to be exploded somewhere in his vicinity. And therefore he waited for the Saint to have his say, for he was hoping to minimize his danger by letting the Saint forearm him against it.

  Simon was gazing through a porthole at the dark horizon, and something that he saw there seemed to please him. His smile trembled on the verge of laughter, as at some secret jest, and when he went on there was a trace of excitement creeping into his voice.

  "Orace and I," said the Saint, "have brains, and Orace used to be a Sergeant of Marines, so he was able to provide the raw material for our ingenuity to work on. Before we started the picnic, we put your bilge pump out of action and opened up one of the scuttles in the keel. My nautical knowledge is very scanty, and I'm not sure if that's the way a sailor would describe the gadgets, but I expect Maggie will tell you what I mean. Anyway, a lot of water started pouring in, and we legged it out of the way without waiting to see what happened next. Still, I notice that we seem to have lost a lot of speed, and unless my eyes are failing I should say that we had developed what I understand is called a list to starboard, so I suppose the old tub really is going down. Check me up if I'm wrong….”

  Maggs started up, and the others looked wildly about them. The Saint had spoken the truth. The list had developed very slowly at first, so that no one had noticed it in their absorption in more tempestuous things, but now that the Saint had called their attention to it the fact was indisputable.

  Suddenly there was a stampede for the door.

  Bittle leaped forward, raving like a maniac, and quelled the panic. He fought in between the ter-. rified mob and the door, and held them off at revolver point. Then he himself opened the door and looked out.

  The ship had lost way considerably, and was now heeling over so much that it was difficult to walk on the sloping decks.

  Bloem was swaying drunkenly toward the door.

  "The gold!" he blubbered. "The gold! ... It'll sink! ... Bittle, make them get the gold into the boats!"

  "You're a fool!"

  Bittle pushed the man back — he was easily the calmest of them all. His rage had simmered down, now, out of visibility, but it gleamed behind his small pale blue eyes like the molten lava which oozes down the sides of a volcano when the eruption has died down. Both his guns went up.

  "You beat me in the end. Templar!" he shouted. "But I can see that you never enjoy it." Like one possessed, he kicked aside a man who stood in his line of fire. "Laugh now, Templar!" he babbled. "It's your last laugh!"?

  And the Saint chuckled, throwing back his head joyously, for he had seen the final shock which he had allowed for dovetail in according to schedule.

  "Put up your hands, Bittle!"

  The voice cracked into the room like a bared sabre.

  Bittle turned and saw the man who had appeared in the doorway, and his revolvers thudded to the carpet from his nerveless fingers.

  He shrank away into the farthest corner, and his face had gone gray and horrible.

  Algy took a step into the room, a heavy automatic in each hand, and the men retreated before him. He swept them with hard, merciless eyes.

  "I think you all know me," said Mr. Lomas-Coper, in the same metallic voice,

  He looked at the girl, and read bewilderment in her face.

  "I am the Tiger," said Algy.

  Chapter XX

  THE LAST LAUGH

  "Things have gone very badly," said the Tiger. "As Bittle said, Mr. Templar, you have beaten us. I bear you no malice. Perhaps it was ordained that it should end like this. You need not be afraid that I shall kill you, as that man would have done — that would be profitless. I might still have won, if I had had a fair chance, but the men I trusted double-crossed me. Now the ship is going down, and all my work is lost. I can fight no more. Fate has been against me from the beginning, and I am very tired.”

  He passed a hand across his eyes. The fatuous pose which went with the character of Algy Lomas-Coper had fallen from his shoulders like a discarded cloak, and it was an ordinary man who spoke. More than that, it was a broken man. There was something which filled the Saint with a sneaking sense of tragedy about this sudden transition from the effervescent Algy to the grim, weary figure of the Tiger facing the end.

  "But you — “

  The Tiger's burning gaze raked over Bitfle and Bloem and Maggs like a searing iron. Once again the Tiger's voice took on that biting tang of steel, and the men cringed from the lash of it.

  "But you — you treacherous dogs, you perfidious scum, you abject rats, you shabby, contemptible, paltry vermin — against you I do bear malice. I came down to meet you on the quay — do you remember? — and you shot me down without a word. It was only a graze, but it stunned me, and to make sure you shot me again in the body as I lay there. I found the bullet afterward, and there was the bruise on my chest under my heart to prove it, But I always wear a bullet-proof waistcoat — you couldn't know that. I lived, and swam out here with that girl to win back what was mine. I might have done it, but I am not such a good swimmer as I thought I was, and it took me a long time to recover after I got on board. So I only arrived in time to hear your speeches, Bittle, and hear Templar tell you how he had beaten you."

  The Tiger looked out at the sea.

  "We are sinking quite slowly," he said. "There will be plenty of time for all of you to put off in the boats. I mean you." He looked around at the guard. "You at least are not traitors — you have simply obeyed the orders of these three men, and it was not your place to question them. I have no grudge against you. You are >only the tools. You may go."

  The men stared at each other and at the Tiger incredulously, as though they could not believe their ears. The Tiger stepped out of the doorway and waved them through, his lips curling contemptuously. One by one they crept furtively past him, and, as they gained the deck, made a rush for the companions to the boat level, casting fearful backward glances as though they expected him to repent of his decision and call them back. At last they had all gone.

&nb
sp; The Saint stood up and stretched himself, and the ropes fell away from his wrists and ankles. He even had time to enjoy and appreciate the sensation which his escape act caused to everyone present. "Quite a good curtain," he remarked.

  He looked at the Tiger, and smiled ruefully.

  "I congratulate you, Algy — you had me guessing all the time. Well, it's been a good dust-up.... And now may I undo Orace?"

  "Certainly."

  Simon walked up to Bittle and took Anna and Belle from the man's pockets. In a few quick slashes Orace was free and chafing his hands and stamping up and down to restore the circulation.

  Then the Saint replaced the knives in their sheaths and went over to Patricia. He took her in his arms and kissed her; and, the reaction coming at last, she clung to him like a child, and the Saint was murmuring soothing and meaningless things to stop her trembling.

  "Now, Mr. Templar," said the Tiger, "you may take your friends and get away in one of the boats. I am staying behind to settle accounts with my friends.”

  Simon passed the girl over to Orace.

  "I'll follow in a moment."

  Patricia went, with Orace's protecting arm around her, but the Tiger stopped them at the door||B and took the girl's hand.

  "You will never be able to forgive me," he said, "and I am only thankful, now, that the power to do you any harm was taken away from me. I am a bad man, and I have blood on my hands, but you are the first woman who ever tempted me to forget my chivalry."

  He kissed her hand, and then Orace led her away.

  The Tiger looked at Simon.

  "It is a queer whim," he said, “but I should like to shake hands with you."

  "You make it difficult for me," answered the Saint. '"I'm rather sorry you've taken things so sportingly. But I'll shake hands for that very reason."

  The Saint held out his hand and smiled....

  Crack!

  The bullet actually grazed Simon's arm, and he saw Algy's eyes glaze over suddenly. The Saint was still holding the Tiger's hand. A great silence followed the reverberation of the shot, and in that silence, without a word, the Tiger swayed and toppled to the floor. He lay there on his back, and above his heart, in the dark stuff of the bathing costume which he still wore, a darker stain was spreading....

  The Saint bent over him, but the man was dead.

  Simon took in the situation out of the corner ofhis eye. Maggs and Bloem were crouching back against the bulkhead, but Bittle stood up, still holding the smoking revolver which he had snatched from the floor while the Tiger's attention was distracted.

  The Saint straightened up, and in the same movement Anna flashed from her sheath to his hand and whistled across the saloon like a humming flake of light. It drove into Bittle's exposed wrist, severing flesh and sinew and grating on the bone, for the Saint could throw knives with unerring accuracy. Bittle's hand relaxed limply. He dropped the revolver and flinched back, clawing at the knife which still hung from his arm.

  The Saint was standing across the Tiger's body with both the Tiger's automatics trained on the little group.

  "Treacherous to the last, Bittle," said the Saint. "But I saw you, and for that shot you will hang at Exeter in about three months' time."

  And at that instant the ship was flooded with blinding light. Over the Saint's shoulder, the three men could see, far astern, the blinding eyes of two powerful searchlights which converged on the ship.

  "That will be Carn," said Simon, without taking his gaze from his prisoners, and at that moment Orace and Patricia returned, sick with fear, for they had heard Bittle's shot,

  "Only scratched me," the Saint reassured them. "But he got the Tiger.”

  He passed the automatics over to Orace and went out on deck. The pursuers were still a long way behind, but they were creeping up fast, and the ship could not have hoped to escape them, with those great beams of light turning darkness into day.

  “This is the end of the adventure,” said the Saint, with his arm round Patricia's shoulders. "But, by the grace of God, it is also a beginning."

  It was some minutes later that he remembered an important detail — he was reminded of it by seeing the sea swelling up alarmingly close to the starboard scuppers, and in the next second he nearly lost his balance as the deck canted farther over,

  The Saint sprinted astern, sliding and stumbling all over the place. The girl saw him disappear down a companion from the poop, and waited, clinging to a handrail, for balance was becoming more and more difficult. It was some time before he came back, and by then the pursuit was barely a quarter of a mile away.

  The Saint went into the saloon and found Orace braced against the table for support, but still dutifully covering the now terror-stricken trio. Simon used up the remains of the rope which had been employed on Orace and himself, and at the end of the performance Bittle and Bloem and Maggs were trussed hand and foot beyond all possibility of escape. The Samt and Orace between them dragged the men out on deck.

  By then the ship had stopped altogether, and rolled low and sluggishly in the oily billows. The pursuing boats were closing in on either side, and the Saint climbed to the upper deck and stood in the full glare of the searchlights. In a moment Carn's voice hailed him through a megaphone.

  "What's happened? Are you all right?"

  "Marvellous!" Simon called back cheerfully. "We've got three prisoners and one corpse waiting for you."

  "I'll be on board in two minutes." said Carn, and was as good as his word.

  He came up the rope ladder, and the Saint met him on the deck...

  "You look as if you'd been wrecked," were his first words. "We can talk later — better hurry up and get everybody off before she goes down."

  The Saint surprised Patricia as much as Carn.

  "Wrecked nothing! I told Bittle and Co. we were going down, but we aren't. Orace and I just fixed the pumps and left 'cm running so as to run all the water out of the port ballast tank and fill up the starboard one! I've just reversed the arrangement — see? She's evening up already."

  Simon showed Carn all the exhibits, and the detective was staggered.

  "That Tiger had us all skinned," he said.

  They sat in the saloon and exchanged notes. Carn had been lucky enough to find a couple of new submarine-chasing motor boats lying at II fracombe at the end of a trial run, and he was able to catch them with his posse when they were on the :point of returning to Bristol.

  "All the same," he remarked, "I should have been too late to be any use to you. I take my hat off to you, Saint."

  "What was Lapping in this?" asked Patricia.

  She told him about her interview that afternoon, and the detective smiled.

  "Lapping knew all about me, of course," he said. "And I told him all about how the Saint was trying to cut me out. I expect he thought you were having a dab at pumping him for the Saint's benefit."

  The Saint did not consider himself bound to say anything about Harry the Duke. Before he let Harry go back to the past of Agatha Girton, he had warned him about the dangers of private feuds, and Harry had seen reason — the Saint had a means to control him.

  "You can tell Lapping that Harry the Duke has decided to forgive him," he said enigmatically.

  Carn was mystified, but Simon let him be puzzled, and passed on.

  "Now we're all satisfied," murmured Simon. "You've got the villains of the piece to take home with you, and I've got the gold."

  Carn goggled.

  "I'd forgotten that — I was so worried about you and the Tiger," he said, and the Saint chuckled.

  "I hadn't forgotten it. I waited to start any ruc— tions until they'd got it all aboard for me — I couldn't bear to think of all my work being wasted." The Saint looked steadily at the detective. "Shall we cry quits, Carn? You know I'm straight, and I want to work this hooker across to New York and return the ducats to the Confederate Bank's agents and collect my reward. It'll just make enough for me to retire on comfortably. And you get all the kudos out of
the affair for nabbing the Tiger. Is that a bet?"

  Carn held out his hand, and they both smiled,

  "Miss Holm goes with you, I suppose?"

  "I'll ask her," promised the Saint. "It'll be easy — these motor ships are dead simple to run, and Orace has as much expert knowledge as we need. America's a big place, anyway. We can't miss it altogether, and as soon as we strike the coast we'll be able to find out where we are, and probably get a navigator. We'll only be able to run in daylight, of course, so it won't be a quick passage — but I can think of worse honeymoons!"

  One of the motor boats had already been sent back in search of the crew which the Tiger had allowed to go, and Algy and the three prisoners were taken down into the other boat, and the armed men who had swarmed all over the ship returned to their own little craft.

  Carn was the last to go.

  "Good-bye, Saint, and a good voyage," he said.

  "May you fill many prisons in the course of a prosperous career," returned the Saint piously.

  * * *

  It has already been recorded that Orace was in the habit of calling his master every morning with a cup of tea, and commenting on the beauty of the weather.

  On a certain morning Orace came up a companion with a cup of tea in each hand. He paused outside a door, and put the cups down so that he could knock. But he did not knock. Instead, he scratched his chin and argued within himself long and earnestly. Then he picked up the cups again and went back to the galley and drank them himself.

  Only one thing could upset Orace's ingrained sense of discipline, and that was his ingrained sense of the proprieties.