The Saint Meets the Tiger s-1 Page 8

  "We shall be careful," Bittle assured him.

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

  He sauntered to the French windows and opened them.

  "If you don't mind — I have a rooted dislike for dark corridors. One never knows, does one?"

  "Mr. Templar." The millionaire stopped him. "Before you go — "

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

  "Comrade?"

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

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

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

  He dropped lightly to the ground, pulled on the tattered coat, and struck off away from the wall after no more than a couple of seconds' pause to listen and scan the blackness in every direction. Guided by an innate bump of locality, he established his bearings at once and set off on a wide detour -that would bring him eventually into the grounds at the back of the Manor. He advanced in short rushes, stopping and crouching in cover every twenty yards or so, straining eyes and ears for sign of stalkers behind or an ambush before. Nothing happened. The night was quiet and peaceful.

  He saw a light go on in an upper window of Bittle's house, and the distant hiss of the surf mingled with the rustle of grasses brushed by the breeze, but there was neither sight nor sound of any human being.

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

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

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

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

  Chapter VII

  THE FUN CONTINUES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "No? Really?" said the Saint.

  "Yes!" returned Carn loudly.

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

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

  "In another minute — '

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

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

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

  "Didn't Miss Holm tell you?" "1 didn't feel I could ask her."

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

  "When I opened the door and saw her, I thought something had happened and she was coming to me for — er — first aid. But she said it was only for a 1 chat, so I overcame my — 'um — professional instincts, and said nothing. I rather think you were leading up to something when Mr. Templar came ' in, weren't you, Miss Holm? ... I see that you A were. But as a — er — um — ah — " Carn caught the I Saint's accusing eye for the third time, and spluttered. "As a doctor," said Carn defiantly, "I was trained to let my patients make the running. The old school, but a good one. And then you arrive-”

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

  "So sad!" he drawled. "And now I suppose you'll be in agonies of curiosity for weeks."

  Carn shrugged.

  "That depends."

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

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

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

  "Do," urged Carn, in an unguarded moment.

  'Til tell you," said Simon confidentially. "It was like this. ..."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Hush!" he said. "Not before the Doc. You'll be -putting ideas into his head."

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

  "You see?" said the Saint. "You're embarrassing him."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Carn nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

  "Bung-no troops," he said. "Here's to a good race, Carn."

  The detective looked back.

  ''''Reasonablygood hunting, Saint," he replied grimly, and Simon grinned and drank.

  "All things considered, worthy chirurgeon, I think — ''

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

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

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

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

  "Ho," said the voice. "There'e is."

  The Saint looked up.

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

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

  "I amConstable George 'Opkins," he said, "and if the Doctor will hixcuse me I shall arrest you on a charge of burglary annassault."

  "Smoke!" said the Saint to himself.

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

  "My good man, you're dippy!" said the Saint languidly. "Who makes this charge, anyway?"

  "I do."

  It was Bloem. Bloem with his leathery face perfectly composed, and just the ghost of a light of triumph in his slitted eyes betraying him. Bloem, walking past Carn into the room with just the right shade of deference and just the right suggestion of regret for having to make a scen6 — but quite firmly the law-abiding citizen determined to do his duty and bring the criminal to justice.

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

  Patricia tossed her head.

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

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

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