The Saint Meets the Tiger (29 page)

At last a man came across the deck and knocked on the door. Bittle jerked it open, and let out an exclamation.

“What the blazes—”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t find Mr. Bloem.”

“Can’t find him? You lazy swine—you haven’t looked! The ship’s small enough, isn’t it? What in hell d’you mean?—can’t find him!”

“Gawd’s truth, sir. I looked everywhere, and Lopez and Abbot ‘ve bin ‘elping me. Mr. Bloem don’t seem to be on board.”

“Mr. Bloem is on board,” snarled Bittle. “Go and look again—and don’t come to me with any more excuses like that.”

And then came a startling interruption that made Bittle go white and sent the girl to her feet with her heart leaping madly, for from somewhere on the lower deck aft rang out a cheerful hail that could have shaped itself in only one mouth, and that the mouth of a man who had died that afternoon

“Ahoy, there, Bittle!”

Bittle shrank back, temporarily possessed by a superstitious terror. Patricia sprang forward, but he caught her and flung her on to the bunk with the strength of a maniac,

“Pat!” sang out that cheery voice. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Saint—Ah, Saint, is that you?”

“Sure!”

Bittle wrenched the guns from his pocket.

“Get him—don’t stand about staring like a lot of stuck pigs!” he screamed. “Go to the armoury—heel yourselves!… A hundred pounds to the man who kills him!”

The Saint’s laugh pealed out as she had thought she would never hear it again.

“Can’t you make it more than that dearest cherub?”

And then Patricia saw him. He was standing up on the rail at the poop, and there were two men beside him. She thought at first that the third member of the party was Algy, until she saw that the limp figure which Orace was holding like a shield was fully dressed. She heard a rush of feet on the decks below, and four men emerged on the upper deck and ran toward the stern. They were carrying rifles—the quartermaster or someone must have had a duplicate key to the gun room.

Then the Saint stepped down, and there were three men clustered in a little group by the taffrail.

“Tell ‘em to be careful how they shoot, Bittle,” warned Simon. “This here sandbag we’re sheltering behind is the long-lost Bloem himself!”

“Stop!”

Bittle had collected himself.

He seized the girl by the arm and dragged her out into the moonlight so that the Saint could see her distinctly, and he held the girl in front of him see that her body was between him and the Saint.

“Be careful how you shoot. Templar!” shouted Bittle. “Be careful even of what you say and do— because, unless you and your friends surrender within three minutes, I am going to kill Miss Holm with my own hands!”

Chapter XIX

THE TIGER

Precisely three minutes later, Simon Templar and Orace were led into the saloon under an armed guard.

“Good-evening, dear Bittlekins,” murmured the Saint affably. “Fancy meeting you!—as the vicar said when he saw one of the leading lights of the parish Mothers’ Union dancing at the Forty-Three. Sit down and tell me all the news.”

Bittle smiled.

“We all make slips,” he said, “but I scarcely imagined you would overlook such an obvious factor as Miss Holm.”

“I was just hoping that you yourself might overlook it,” explained the Saint. “I honestly thought you were slow enough on the uptake for that. Still, we all make our mistakes, as the bishop said, even the very youngest and most inexperienced of us—and very few mistakes are irreparable.”

Bittle nodded slowly.

“Very few,” he agreed. “I made a bad one when I presumed your death—but, as you see, that error has been rectified. Even now, Templar, you are a dead man.”

The Saint let his gaze travel round the saloon.

“Quite comfortable,” he admitted, “but I really thought heaven would be a bit more luxurious. Besides—” he surveyed the six tough customers who had ranged themselves round him in a semicircle that fairly bristled with knives and revolvers— “these don’t look like angels; and you don’t, either, my pet, if it comes to that. Do you think I could have missed the bus and arrived in hell by mistake?”

His sodden trousers were shapeless, and the white of his torn shirt was marked with grease, but still, by the exercise of his inimitable gift, he was able to look debonair and immaculate. And, for all the apparently overwhelming odds against him, he retained his air of unshakable confidence. But this time Bittle could see no loophole in the trap in which he had the Saint, and he refused to be awed by anything so intangible as the Saint’s assured bearing.

“Have they been searched?” he asked one of the guard, but it was Simon who answered.

“I gave up my gun when I surrendered.”

“And kept your knife—I remember that trick,” said Bittle.

He himself removed Anna, and by making a thorough examination he found also her twin sister strapped to the Saint’s leg. The discovery pleased him.

“I’m not making any more mistakes. Templar.”

“So glad!” drawled Simon. “May I have my cigarette case back, please? Anna and Belle aren’t any use to anyone but myself, but the cigarette case is really silver—I won it in the Open Ludo Tournament at Bournemouth in ‘13.”

Bittle examined the case, and, failing to find anything suspicious about it, returned it to the Saint, who replaced it in his hip pocket.

The Saint turned suddenly on his heel, and the guard sprang back a pace and put up their weapons, and Simon laughed.

“Your men aren’t very brave, are they?” he remarked. “I’m unarmed, and each of them looks like a travelling arsenal—but watch!”

He feinted at one of the tough-looking customers, and the man flinched away. The Saint tweaked his nose ungently, and, wheeling round, tripped up another man and sent him crashing to the floor. Bittle sprang up with an oath, reaching for his revolver, but the Saint turned back with a light chuckle and put up his hands.

“Merely a demonstration of moral superiority,’ he said airily. “Even now, you see, I can scare you!”

“I’ll soon stop that,” Bittle grated, furious at having let himself be alarmed by the exhibition, and pointed to one of the men. “Fetch a rope—we’ll see what he can do when he’s trussed up.”

“Anything you like,” said the Saint boastfully. “Houdini is my middle name, and knots mean nothing to me.”

The rope was brought, and Simon’s hands were tied securely behind his back. The man knew his job, and, since he was the gentleman whose nose the Saint had taken liberties with, he did not consider the prisoner’s comfort at all. The cords bit savagely into Simon’s wrists, tightened up by a violent hand, but the Saint only smiled.

“Mind you don’t break the rope,” he said solicitously.

The man knelt down to bind the Saint’s ankles, but the Saint, without any haste or heat, put his foot in the man’s face and pushed him over.

“If there’s no objection,” he murmured, “I’ll sit down first.”

He crossed the saloon nonchalantly and took one of the swivel chairs. Then he let the seaman tie his ankles together. The same brutal force was exerted there, and when the operation was complete the man straightened and deliberately struck Simon on the mouth. The Saint did not move, and the man spat in his face.

“I congratulate you,” said the Saint in a low voice. “You are the first man that has ever done that to me, and I am pleased to think that before morning you will make the thirteenth man I have killed.”

“That’ll do,” rapped Bittle, as^he manraisedlns fist again. “Tie up his servant.”

Orace clenched his hands and looked round belligerently.

“Cummernava try!” he challenged.

Orace was game enough, but there were men all round him, and he could only knock two of them flying before the rest were clinging to his arms and legs and bearing him, still struggling and swearing sulphurously, to the floor. He was trussed up even more comprehensively than the Saint, perhaps because his crude form of defiance was more understandable to the inferior mentalities of the guard; and then one of the men was sent to bring in the girl, and Simon braced himself up for the meeting.

Patricia walked into the saloon with her head held high, but her calm was not proof against the sight of the Saint’s bruised face and the thin trickle of blood running down his cbia from the corner of his mouth.

“Simon!” she sobbed, and would have run to him, but two of the guard clutched at her and dragged her back against the wall.

“It’s all right, old darling,” said the Saint urgently. “Don’t let the swine see you break down…. I’m not hurt. Just been in a vulgar brawl, and it’s nothing to what the blister who did it will look like when I’ve finished with him…. Now, Pat, old thing, cast an eye over that nasty object across the way. It’s old fat Bittle himself, and he’s going to make a speech about his triumph—I can see it written all over the boil he calls bis face.”

Bittle nodded.

“You must confess,” he said, “that I have some cause to be satisfied with the conclusion of our little rivalry.”

Conclusion my sock-suspenders!” snorted the Saint. “I haven’t started yet!”

“In that case, Templar, you would appear to have sacrificed your chance forever…. But your diagnosis, in a way, was quite correct—I^was about to outline to you the programme which I propose to follow with regard to your immediate future.”

“Careers for our Boys,” quoth Simon irreverently.

Bittle clasped his hands across his stomach.

“Before we proceed with that interesting exposition, however,” he said, “I think there are two members of the company who would like to be present.” He turned to one guard. “Lambert, will you go and see if Mr. Bloem and Mr. Maggs have recovered sufficiently to join us?”

The man left the saloon, and there was silence for a moment. Presently Bittle said;

“While we’re waiting, perhaps you’d care to tell me how you managed to escape?”

The Saint grinned.

“Nothing is easier. When I was an infant, a celebrated clairvoyant and cardsharper told me that I had been born under the sign of the Zodiac known to astronomers as Humpty Dumpty and to the lay public as the Egg. Taking his words to heart, I early applied myself to the study of the science of Levitation, in the hope of averting the doom which had been prophesied for me. I succeeded so well, by virtue of years of practice and self-denial and hours of fasting and prayer, that I can now back myself to bounce to almost unlimited heights. Consequently, when I fell into your little trap, I was able to fall out again, if you get the idea. I think that’s the whole story—except that an aunt of mine once had an under-gardener whose nephew knew a man whose father had once shaken hands with a lady who remembered meeting a dentist in Maida Vale whose second cousin twice removed was the divorced wife of a Manchester stockbroker who once ate a pint of whelks with a lawn mower on Wigan Pier for a bet. In fact,” went on Simon, warming to his subject, “we are a very distinguished family. Another aunt of mine had gout and a mother-in-law whose cook married a gas-fitter who—”

“Spare us your humour,” pleaded Bitfle wearily. “It doesn’t amuse me.”

“But it amuses me!—as the actress said on an auspicious occasion,” said the Saint, and would have continued in that vein if Bloem and Maggs had not arrived at that moment.

Both looked much the worse for wear, and their heads bore abundant tokens of the cold water which had been liberally used in resuscitating them. In addition, Bloem’s forehead was disfigured by a bruise which was rapidly taking to itself all the brighter hues of the rainbow, and the way he glared at the Saint was not friendly.

“The compliments of the season, Mynheer,” drawled Simon. “And who’s the other little ray of sunshine, Mr. Chairman?”

“Our captain, Mr. Maggs,” Btttle introduced that injured warrior suavely. “You have not met him before, Templar, but our dear friend Miss Holm knocked him out an hour or two ago.”

“Delighted!” murmured the Saint. “She seems to have made a good job of it, Maggie—or did you always look like that?”

Mr. Maggs lowered.

“My name’s Maggs,” he blustered.

“But I shall call you Maggie,” insisted the Saint. “It’s more matey, and it suits you better. And really I didn’t mean to be rude about your face. You’ve got a nice kind face, like a cow.”

Mr. Maggs turned away with a growl, and stalked over to the girl. Then the Saint was afraid, and the veins stood out purply on his forehead as he wrestled with his bonds.

Maggs took the girl’s chin in his thick fingers and tilted up her face, leering down at her.

“You might’ve killed me,” he said—“hitting me like that. But I’ll make you apologize later, and I like my apologies sweet.”

“Sit down, Maggs,” snapped Bittle.

Maggs still persisted.

“Give us a kiss to be getting on with, like a good girl.”

“Sit—down—Maggs!”

Bittle was on his feet, and there was death in his hand. Grumbling, Mr. Maggs lurched into a. chair and sat staring at Patricia in his ugly way.

Bloem went round to the chair opposite Maggs, but Bittle remained standing at one end of the table. The Saint sat at the other end.

Bittle paused for a moment, and the men grouped round the walls fidgeted into stillness. A macabre atmosphere of fiendish cold-bloodedness began to fill the room. It came from the hate-smouldering eyes of all those silent men, and k clouded malevolently behind the stocky figure of John Bittle. Bittle was posing at the end of the table, waiting for the theatrical effect of the gathering to tense up to a nerve-tearing pitch, and a sensitive man could have felt the silence keying up to the point at which unreasoning terror crowds in like a foul vapour. Seconds throbbed away in that pulsating suspense….

The Saint cleared his throat.

“Rising to address this general meeting at the close of such a successful year,” he prompted, “I feel—Go on, Bittle. Declare the dividend, and make sure all your braces buttons are safe before you bow to the applause.”

His gently mocking tones broke down Some of the tension. He looked across at the girl, and she smiled back.

“I’m not taking any notice,” she said in a clear voice. “He’s only indulging his love for melodrama.”