Leslie Charteris

“ The optimism of Orace being justified, Simon Templar sighed, stretched himself again, and after a moment’s indecision leapt out of bed. He shaved rapidly, sipping his tea in between whiles, and then pulled on a bathing costume and went out into the sun, picking up a length of rope on his way out. He skipped energetically on the grass outside for fifteen minutes. Then he shadow-boxed for five minutes. Then he grabbed a towel, knotted it loosely round his neck, sprinted the couple of dozen yards that lay between the Pill Box and the edge of the cliff, and coolly swung himself over the edge. ”

“ Patricia found Lapping pottering about in his garden, arrayed in stained tweeds, coatless, bare-armed, with an ancient felt hat on the back of his head. He looked a picture of healthy rustic late-middle-age, and the expansive good humour with which he greeted her was in keeping with his appearance.
“My dear Miss Holm! We haven’t seen anything of you for far too long. How are you?”
“Splendid,” she told him. “And you’re looking younger than ever.”
He shook his head with a whimsical smile.
“Flattery, my dear, base flattery. I’m an old man, and youth belongs to youth.” ”

“ So Patricia realised as she stole down the dimly lighted alleyway aft in search of the galley. There she was, on the Tiger’s ship, with only two assistants, one of whom was temporarily hors de combat, and the odds against them were five to one, at a conservative estimate. The very forlornness of the adventure took away half its terrors, for with everything to lose—and as good as lost at the first slip—there was nothing to gain by footling and fiddling over the job. The only earthly chance of success was to blind recklessly ahead and chance the consequences. ”

“ And therefore he waited for the Saint to have his say, for he was hoping to minimise 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. ”

“ Orace whirled and leapt, but his feet slipped on the oily grating, and he sprawled headlong. His blunderbuss was underneath the borrowed overalls, and he had no time to fumble for it before his opponent had pounced on him and caught his throat in a deadly grip.
Except the thrill of a sporting burglary—such as a raid upon the home of a famous detective with the said detective in residence and, for preference, entertaining a select party of his fellow-sleuths—there is no thrill to be compared to the thrill of a refined form of piracy. ”

“ They would be panting with excitement at the magnitude of it, twice as jumpy as so many cats on hot bricks, and good-naturedly clod-hopperily dense. The prospect of seeing the Tiger get away through their bungling almost broke Carn’s heart. He would have taken a chance and tackled the whole brigade of Tiger Cubs single-handed if he had seen the faintest hope of success, but he had been turned out of a different mould from Simon Templar’s, and his kind of brain did not run to schemes for capturing a boatload of bandits all by himself. ”

“ But the onus of the adventure would rest almost entirely with Orace and Algy, and, regarded even in the most optimistic light, the odds against him were terribly heavy. She found herself daydreaming of wild far-fetched possibilities of victory, and pulled herself together with a kind of mental violence, for she knew that that was a forerunner of despair—when practical schemes for winning out seemed so hopeless that one was forced, in a final effort to stave off panic, to imagine help falling from the skies. ”

“ The Saint hadn’t the foggiest notion why a girl he’d only known 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 knights’ 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. ”

“ There is this about the thrill of action, the electric omnipresence of danger, and the necessity for keeping yourself keyed up taut and ready to make lightning decisions: it takes up all the time of all your faculties and holds your brain buzzing round and round that one sole pin-point of motive. Patricia was not callous. It wasn’t that she had forgotten the Saint and gone gaily cavorting off on this new spree in a manner that would make you think that piracy amused her just as much as petting. ”

“ She said, in that new, cold dispassionate voice:
“We shall want help—the odds are too great against two of us. I’ll get Mr. Lomas-Coper. He’s the only man here I could trust.”
“’Im?” spat the disgusted Orace. “That thunderin’ jelly-bag?”
“I know he’s not such an ass as he pretends to be,” said Patricia. “He’ll weigh in all right.”
They were nearing Bloem’s house at that moment, and a lean dark figure loomed startlingly out of the shadow of the hedge. A pencil of luminance leapt from Orace’s torch and picked up the pleasantly vacuous face of Algy himself. ”

“ To fall one hundred and sixty feet takes just a shade over three seconds, but it seems a lot longer. Simon Templar knew this very vividly, for he seemed to live through three æons between the instant of sickening breathlessness when he felt the cut-away flooring give way under his weight, through the four odd pulse-beats of hurtling down and down into darkness, till he struck water with a stinging splash. ”

“ She told him about Bittle’s amazing announcement and ultimatum, and about Agatha Girton’s confirmation of the millionaire’s statement. She dwelt at length on the Saint’s irregular behaviour, and on the curious incident at Carn’s. But she did not mention the Saint’s parting warning.
He listened attentively. Watching his face, she saw only a slight smile, as of a mellowed elder making allowances for the irresponsibility and supercharged imagination of youth, and that comprehensive tolerance hardly changed as she piled mystery upon mystery and thrill upon thrill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She leaned weakly against the wall, eyes closed and the tears starring on her cheeks, while Orace tried in his rough but kindly manner to console her. She hardly heard a word he said.
The Saint gone? A terrifying emptiness ached her heart. It was horrible to think of. Could a man like him be meant for such an end—to die alone in the unanswering darkness, drowned like a rat? He would have kept afloat for a long time, but if he had been alive and down there then he would have shouted back to them. ”

“ Bittle was quite calm again, but there was no trace of human pity in his faded eyes, and the level tone in which his significant after-thought was delivered would have struck terror into the soul of most men. But the Saint’s nerves were like chilled steel and his optimism was unshakeable. He met Bittle’s eyes steadily, and smiled.
“Don’t gamble on it,” advised the Saint. “I’ve lived pretty dangerously for eight years, and nobody’s ever killed me yet. Even the Tiger mightn’t break the record.” ”

“ She waited, supporting Algy with one arm. She kept a sharp look-out, and her disengaged hand held Bloem’s automatic, for they could not fail to be seen if anyone passed along that side of the deck. In which case the adventure was likely to terminate without further parley. . . . But luck was with them, and no one came, though they could hear the low voices of the men working aft, the thrum and groan of ropes and blocks and derricks, and the hum and clatter of the small winch. In a very brief space of time she saw Orace slinking back in the shadows. ”

“ 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—— Oh, 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!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Tiger was taking no chances of being caught in person, and he had spoken throughout in a dead level monotone that anyone could have imitated—and, in addition, Carn knew the tricks which electricity plays even with a man’s natural voice, and he would have looked long and carefully before leaping to accuse anybody of being the Tiger on no other grounds than a fancied vocal resemblance after the valves and magnets and transformers had finished distorting a disguised intonation. ”

“ The Tiger’s forces were large: the Saint could reckon on only Orace and the girl, besides himself. And he didn’t want to push a slip of a girl into the front line, however keen she might be to go. How to make three people—or nearer two and a half—do the work of a platoon was a poser worthy of the undivided attention of a great general. Manifestly, it could not be done by any ordinary means. Therefore, there must be subtlety.
And the Tiger had the added advantage of being the attacker. Simon’s cigarette began to smoulder down in his fingers unnoticed. ”

“ The Saint was now behind Bittle 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 too late.
Bittle was a fraction quicker on the uptake. The Saint caught Patricia’s eye and made an almost imperceptible motion towards the window; and at that moment the millionaire’s nerve faltered for a split second, and he began to turn his head. ”

“ The Saint was one man, nearly as far outside the law as the Tiger, and therefore the Tiger would not hesitate to accept the challenge. But Carn represented Authority, a vast and inexorable machinery backed up by arms and men, and if Carn showed up in his true colours they were the colours of Authority—and before that the Tiger would hesitate for a long time. Carn had no chance of accomplishing his mission unless he worked underground and in the dark, and that, in a way, was a handicap, though it suited his temperament. ”

“ An open valise was on the bunk, and some clothes had been unpacked, and lay strewn about. A faint odour of fresh tobacco proved that the occupant had not long been gone. Then an ash-tray on the ledge of the disappearing wash-basin caught her eye, and she discovered the origin of the smoky smell, for the cigar had only just been lighted.
Would Bittle have left his cigar behind him?
An indefinable suspicion of impending danger tingled up her spine like the caress of a thousand needle-points of ice. . . . ”