The Saint Meets the Tiger (23 page)

“I’ll be back at eleven.”

“Don’t be later,” she ordered. “It’d make it a longer swim if we went from the quay, but the tide’s only just turned, so we can’t get along the beach. We’ll have to go over the cliff here—could you find enough strong rope?”

“I’ll knock up a bloke in the village. He’s got miles and miles of it—sells it to the stout mariners, y’know.”

She nodded.

“Go ahead, then, Algy. I’ll expect you back sharp at eleven.”

“Oh, most frightfully rather!” promised Mr. Lomas-Coper. “Cheer-screamingly-ho, wuff, wuff!”

He pranced off in a realistically Wodehousian manner, and the girl smiled. Algy was the goods, under his superficial fatuousness, and even if he were not noticeably blessed with superfluous quantities of gray matter he was at least a very willing horse. In the miasma of dark suspicion which lay over most of the population of Baycombe, it was a relief to find a man who was too foolish to be dangerous and simple enough to be loyal. She had always suspected that Algy cherished a fluffy and sentimental affection for her—he would call at the Manor on romantically moonlit nights and try to make her stroll in the garden with him, and, on these occasions, unless she exerted herself to keep up an uninterrupted flow of idle impersonal chatter, he was wont to become inarticulate and calf-eyed. Now, if never before, she felt grateful for his incoherent adoration,

But with the departure of the effervescent and devoted Algy, and the intervention of a blank reign of tenterhooks before the next move could be made and the next rush of action and danger could sweep her up in its course, the leering black devils that had been pushed back out of sight for the time being came round her again, grinning and gibing to torment her. She could think other man again, and with the clarity of a vision he seemed to stand before her. Her hands went out to him, and then he vanished, and at her feet,, in the floor of the Pill Box, opened the square trap-door that she had seen in that room of the Old House. She started back, covering her eyes, and dropped into a chair….

Resolutely she bent to the conquest of her mind. It was no use going to pieces—that would be fatal, when the reins of the adventure had come into her hands and victory or defeat must come under her leadership. To fail now would be an unforgivable treachery to the Saint: to succeed would be a last tribute to his memory.

And once again she achieved the mastery of herself. Taut and quivering like a bow drawn to the shaft in the hands of an archer, Patricia Holm sat in the Saint’s chair with her head in her arms for a long time. The effort was as much physical as mental, and every muscle ached. There were hot unshed tears in her eyes, but they did not fall. “Soldiers’ wives!” he had said to her, last thing before they parted, and she knew that that was the only heroic game to play.

She lost track of time. She must have sunk into a kind of trance, perhaps from sheer nervous weariness, for the sound of someone, tiptoeing about the room roused her with a jar, and it seemed as if she had slept.

It was Orace, clad in an amazingly striped swimming suit, with a broad leather belt about his waist. From the belt his mammoth revolver dangled by a length of stout cord.

“Ain’t that thunderin’ flop-ears come back yet?” he demanded scornfully, seeing that the girl was awake. “Well ‘ave ta go wivaht ‘im—I spect ‘e’s lorst ‘is bedsocks an’ carn’t find the ‘otwaterbol. I’m orl ready when yer sy ‘Go,’ miss.”

She was stunned to find that it was ten past eleven.

“Go and have another look,” she said. “Go a little way down the hill and see if he’s coming.”

Oraee went, as though he thought it was a waste of energy.

Patricia went out and looked down from the cliff edge again. Her calculation had been a good one. The tip of the moon had just peeped up over the rim of the sea, and that made the visibility an infinitesimal fraction of a candlepower better. In an hour or two there would be as much light as they wanted, and probably rather more. And the Tiger’s motor ship was riding right under her eyes, quite easy to see now, about three cables’ lengths off the island. Two black midgets, which she recognized as the ship’s boats, were sculling toward the Old House; she could hear, very faintly, the almost imperceptible rattle of a smooth-running donkey engine. It was not for some time after that she observed a third boat cruising diagonally across the water toward the big ship. From its course she knew that it must have come from the direction of the quay.

Was that Carn, possibly supported by other detectives, ferrying out to catch the Tiger? If so, she was too late, and the law would have to deal with the Tiger after its own protracted and quibbling fashion…. But would Carn have been so foolish as to imagine that he could approach the Tiger like that without being spotted by the lookout on board? She knew that detectives were popularly judged by the standards of fiction, according to which all police officials have big feet and small intelligence, but she could hardly believe that even the flat-footed kind of oaf depicted by the novelist could be such a flabbergasting imbecile.

Suddenly she saw the solution. The Tiger was in Baycombe, but with the removal of his gold the reason for his stay was also taken away. That boat must have been sent over to fetch him. The Tiger was even then being rowed out to his ship—the ship they were to capture.

Patricia drew a deep breath. Things were clearing up. All the widespread threads of the tangled web of mystery and terror that had cast its shadow so unexpectedly over her life and her home had been obligingly gathered up and dumped down in the few hundred square yards of shining water below. The gold was there; the Tiger was there; the Tiger Cubs were there. The gold was of secondary importance, and the Tiger Cubs, being nothing without their leader, were of no importance whatever except as a dangerous obstacle to be overcome. But the Tiger was the big prize in the Lucky Dip, and that was a gamble she was relentlessly determined to win. There would be no more mystery about his identity, once she was on board: he could only be one of two people. And then…

Orace loomed silently out of the dimness.

“Carn’t see ‘im,” he said shortly, and with that he would have dismissed the subject of Mr. Lomas-Coper. “Owda we get dahn this plurry precipyse, Miss Patricia? I’d fergot—we ain’t got no rope ter speak of’ere.”

“He was going to bring some,” said the girl. “I wonder if anything’s happened to him?”

She was at a loss to explain the defection of Algy. He had been so thrilled with the adventure that she could not believe that he would deliberately let her down, and she did not number cowardice among his failings. Had Bloem found out that she had enlisted Algy? The possibility of a spy listening outside the embrasure while she talked had not occurred to her, and the thought sent her cold. If they had been overheard, the Tiger Cubs would be waiting for them, and their plan was foredoomed to failure—unless by some brilliant revision it could be brought to bear from another angle.

Then she had an inspiration. If Algy had been returning punctually, he would have passed by the quay about the time the boat she had seen was picking up the Tiger himself. Algy knew all the facts, and if he had noticed anything suspicious he would probably have stopped to investigate. Then, like the impetuous ass he was, he’d have managed to drop several large bricks…

“They may have got him already,” she said. “I’ve got a hunch what must have happened. We’ll go down and see.”

Already she was heading down the hill, and Orace followed protestingly.

” ‘E ain’t werf it, miss, onestter Gawd, ‘e ain’t”

“He’s two more men than we can afford to lose,” Patricia retorted crisply. “In any case, we’ve got to go this way. We must get some rope and see if Carn’s back—I’d like to know that the police were going to chip in later, in case we don’t bring it off.”

The quay, so called by courtesy, was no more than fifty yards by ten of rough stone, littered with coils of rope, drying nets, lobster pots, and spars. Behind it were tarred wooden huts used by the fishermen to repair their things; and from one end of it a stone jetty ran out for no more than twenty yards.

They stopped and looked round.

From a very little distance came a slithering sound and a low groan. Then a weak whisper:

“Pat!”

Orace had thoughtfully brought his torch, but the girl stopped him using it, aware that they could be seen from the ship if anyone happened to be looking that way. She traced the voice, and almost at once came upon the man lying against the wall. of one of the huts.

“Is that you, Algy?”

“Right—first go,” he got out. “I’m a washout– to get—pipped—bang off—like this!”

She was supporting his head with her arm, and Orace was hovering ineffectually around.

“How did they get you?” she asked. “Is it bad?”

“Think I’ll pull—round—in a sec.,” he muttered with an effort. “I’m not going to die—by a fluke.”

At this news Orace, finding that he had not to play odd man out at a deathbed scene, moved the girl aside and picked Algy up. He carried him round behind the hut and then switched the torch on him. Blood was running down the side of Algy’s face from an ugly furrow which was scored from the outside end of his eyebrow to the top of his ear, and there was a black cordite burn on his temple.

“Point-blank,” he said. “It stunned me. But I’ll soon be as fit as a fiddle.”

Orace had found a bucket, and in this he fetched water from the sea. Algy heaved himself and plunged his head in the pail for three or four long douches, coming up for breath in between. The salt water stung his wound painfully, but his head was rapidly clearing.

While they tied a handkerchief round his head he told the story, and it was much as the girl had surmised,

“So, like a little hero,” he concluded ruefully, “I walked up and said ‘Hands up!’ in the approved manner. And then I got this.”

“Did you recognize anybody?”

“It was too dark to see their faces—I didn’t even see the jolly old pea-shooter they used on me. But one of them was short and fat, which must have been the Sausage-meat Sultan, and I’m blowed if another hadn’t got something doocid like the height and shape of Uncle Hans!”

“How many were there?”

“Three or four—they stood in a group, so I can’t be quite certain.”

He was struggling to his feet, and he stood leaning against the wall of the hut. The shock must have been worse than he admitted, for his face was white and drawn.

“How do you feel now?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. “I feel as if the top of my head’s breaking off, but otherwise I’m absolutely O. K. Let’s get along—the string’s where I dropped it, round in front. Lead on!”

Orace had faded away to fetch the rope, and in a moment he returned with a heavy coil of it slung over his shoulder.

“Don’t chew fink ya better go ‘ome?” he asked. “Yer carn’t be yupter much after this.”

The honourable wound which Mr. Lomas-Coper had received in the Cause had immediately destroyed Grace’s animosity toward him. In another second Orace would call him “sir.”

“No, I don’t,” said Algy strongly, and roughly he shook off their hands. “I’m going through with this now. Blast it, those unmitigated blighters shot me up! I’ve jolly well got to meet them again, and I shall be fearfully vindictive about it. The cold water’ll do me no end of good, and by the time we’re aboard the lugger I’ll be ready for anything.”

“Well, I’m glad jer not worse ‘urt, sir,” said Orace in a tone of encouragement. “But if I might jus’ take yerrarm while yer gettin’yer bref, so ter speak…”

The girt also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way: in the grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as she was of sparing herself.

“But we ought to get Carn,” she said.

“I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back,” Algy answered. “He hasn’t returned. We’ll have to do without him.”

The hope of legal reenforcements seemed to be receding, thought Patricia, as they set off toward the Pill Box. It appeared that she had been mistaken about Carn’s knowledge, for if he had been planning to make his coup that night he must have been on the spot by that time. And, since he was not, the management of the bunfight was left entirely to the three of them.

In the Pill Box it was Algy who decided that the safest way to fix their rope was to pass it round a section of the wall, by way of two embrasures, tying it on the outside; though the actual work was left to Orace, as a man with some nautical experience. A change had come over Algy, sobering down his bubbling vapidness and turning him into a sensible man. It had been done by the bullet which had so nearly smashed him out of the adventure altogether—the fool had been stung by a hard fact, and it had brought out into the open the character which for years he had taken such pains to conceal. Automatically he rose from the ranks to a commission, with Pat as his only superior: Orace accepted the transformation philosophically.

They paid out the rope hand over hand, prone on the turf (by Grace’s advice) so as not to be visible from below, for the moonlight was strengthening. The rope itself ran down in a kind of big groove in the rock, so that as they descended they would be almost hidden in the shadow.

“It should be long enough,” said Algy. “I allowed plenty.” He was peeling off his raincoat, and stood in bathing costume like the other two. “Who goes first?”

“Final orders,” said Patricia—“tuck the artillery up in your belts and mind it doesn’t clank against the rock; don’t make one millionth of a splash swimming; and don’t talk—you know how sound travels over water. Now, good luck to everyone! Follow your leader…”

Before either of the men could stop her she had twisted over the edge with the rope in her hands, and was sliding down, bracing herself off the cliff wall with her feet.

She was strong and without fear, and the rope was longer than it need have been. She still had hold of it when her feet grounded on the pebbly beach with the water lapping round her knees.

She stepped back and waved her arm.

Algy stood beside her in a minute, and Orace joined them after a similar interval. Without a word they waded in and pushed off. All three were strong swimmers, but one of them had a dud leg and another was still recovering from the effects of that glancing bullet across his skull. Before them lay two miles of sea, and at the end of it a desperately daring hazard.