The Saint Meets the Tiger s-1 Page 5

  " '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 toward midnight, and I can't let them down."

  "Miss Holm will make your excuses," urged Bit-lie, 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 ao 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 fingernails, 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 nightshirts."

  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 Bittte 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 top late.

  Bittle was a fraction quicker on the uptake. The Saint caught Patricia's eye and made an almost imperceptible motion toward 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 toward 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 armchair. A couple of burly figures blocked the doorway, but Patricia arid Simon were out of the beam thrown by the corridor lights.

  Before she realized 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 manoeuvre 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 toward 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 realized 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 recognized 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 minimize 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 relocate 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 passerby.

  Simon Templar, however, declined to let these portents oppress his gay recklessness. There seemed to be some reorganization 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 toward 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 snuffling. 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 bloodhounds 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 other 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 wo
uld 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 W 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.