The Saint Meets the Tiger

Scanned and proofed by jakath. Spelling and punctuation have been carefully checked against the book and are as written by the author. Special attention was paid to the cockney accent spoken by Orace throughout the book.

MEET THE SAINT!

“This reprint will probably bring great joy to a number of Saint fans who have been trying for some decades to get a glimpse of the very first volume of the Saga, a book which was never expected at the time to launch a series.”

—Leslie Charteris, from The Introduction.

The long-out-of-print first Saint novel with a new introduction by the author!

THE SAINT

MEETS THE TIGER

by

LESLIE CHARTERIS

CHARTER

NEW YORK

A DIVISION OF CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS INC.

A GROSSET & DUNIAP COMPANY

THE SAINT MEETS THE TIGER

Copyright 1929 by Leslie Charteris

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Charter Book published by arrangement with Doubleday & Co., Inc

First Charter Printing September 1980

Published simultaneously in Canada

Manufactured in the United States of America

2468097531

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ITHE PILL BOX

IITHE NATURALIST

IIIA LITTLE MELODRAMA

IVA SOCIAL EVENING

VAUNT AGATHA IS UPSET

VITHE KINDNESS OF THE TIGER

VIITHE FUN CONTINUES

VIIITHE SAINT IS DENSE

IXPATRICIA PERSEVERES

XTHE OLD HOUSE

XICARN LISTENS IN

XIITEA WITH LAPPING

XIIITHE BRAND

XIVCAPTAIN PATRICIA

XVSPURS FOR ALGY

XVIIN THE SWIM

XVIIPIRACY

XVIIITHE SAINT RETURNS

XIXTHE TIGER

XXTHE LAST LAUGH

INTRODUCTION

This reprint will probably bring great joy to a number of Saint fans who have been trying for some decades to get a glimpse of the very first volume of the Saga, a book which was never expected at the time to launch a series.

It has been out of print for more years than I can guess at, and with no complaints from me. Personally I would have been very happy to leave it quietly in limbo: I was still under 21 when I wrote it, more than fifty years ago, and I am no more anxious to parade it than any other youthful indiscretion. Looking at it now, with absolute objectivity, I can see so much wrong with it that I am humbly astonished that it got published at all. In extenuation, it was only the third book I’d written, and the best I would say for it is that the first two were even worse.

However, I can’t deny writing it, its existence is a historical fact, and I suppose that anyone who is interested enough in backtracking into Simon Templar’s and my own adolescent beginnings has a right to access to the awful truths.

“Adolescent”, of course, is not literally accurate in Simon’s case. Cleverly judging that no adult reader would accept a swashbuckling hero of my own age, I started the Saint out at 25, giving him a head start on myself which would forever haunt me. For it would be even harder today to put over in a contemporary setting a Simon Templar four years more ancient even than I.

Well, to clutch at a cliche, that is all water under the bridge. If there were to be any Saint books at all, obviously there had to be a first, and this is it. And I still think it was a good thing to have started. And that the fiction world today needs a Saint more than it ever did.

For too many years now that scene has been dominated by the “anti-heroes”—those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hypergadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas.

I was always sure that there was a solid place in escape literature for a rambunctious adventurer such as I dreamed up in my own youth, who really believed in the oldfashioned romantic ideals and was prepared to lay everything on the line to bring them to life. A joyous exuberance that could not find its fulfilment in pinball machines and pot. I had what may now seem a mad desire to spread the belief that there were worse, and wickeder, nut cases than Don Quixote.

Even now, half a century later, when I should be old enough to know better, I still cling to that belief. That there will always be a public for the old-style hero, who had a clear idea of justice, and a more than technical approach to love, and the ability to have some fun with his crusades.

That is how and why the Saint was born, and why I hope he may eventually occupy a niche beside Robin Hood, d’Artagnan, and all theother-immortal true heroes of legend.

Anyway, on this date, I can say that I’ll always be glad I tried.

LESLIE CHARTERIS

St Jean - Cap Ferrat

21 March 1980

Chapter I

THE PILL BOX

Baycombe is a village on the North Devon coast that is so isolated from civilization that even at the height of the summer holiday season it is neglected by the rush of lean and plump, tall and short, papas, mammas, and infants. Consequently, there was some sort of excuse for a man who had taken up his dwelling there falling into the monotony of regular habits—even for a man who had only lived there for three days—even (let the worst be known) for a man so unconventional as Simon Templar.

It was not so very long after Simon Templar had settled down in Baycombe that that peacefully sedate village became most unsettled, and things began to happen there that shocked and flabbergasted its peacefully sedate inhabitants, as will be related; but at first Simon Templar found Baycombe as dull as it had been for the last six hundred years.

Siman Templar … in some parts of the world he was quite well known, from his initials, as the Saint …was a man of twenty-seven, tall, dark, keen faced, deeply tanned, blue eyed. That is a rough description. It was not long before Baycombe had observed him more closely, and woven mysterious legcnds about him. Baycombe did that within the first two days of his arrival, and it must be admitted that he had given some grounds for speculation.

The house he lived in (it may perhaps be dignified with the title of “house,” since a gang of workmen from Ilfracombe had worked without rest for thirty-six hours to make it habitable) had been built during the war as a coast defence station, at a time when the War Office were vaguely alarmed by rumours of a projected invasion at some unlikely point. Possibly because they thought Baycombe was the last point at which any enemy strategist would expect them to look for an invasion, the War Office had erected a kind of Pill Box on the tor above the village. The work had been efficiently carried out, and a small garrison had been installed; but apparently the War Office had been cleverer than the German tacticians, for no attempt was made to land an army at Baycombe. In 1918 the garrison and the guns had been removed, and the miniature concrete fortress had been abandoned to the games of the local children until Simon Templar, by some means known only to himself, had discovered that the Pill Box sand the quarter of a square mile of land in which it stood were still the property of the War Office, and in some secret way had managed to persuade the said War Office to sell him the freehold for twenty-five pounds.

In this curious home the Saint had installed himself, together with a retainer who went by the name of Orace. And the Saint had been so overcome with the dullness of Baycombe that within three days he was the victim of routine.

At 9 a. m. on this third day (the Saint had a rooted objection to early rising) the man who went by the name of Orace entered his master’s bedroom bearing a cup of tea and mug of hot water.

“Nice morning, sir,” said Orace, and retired.

Orace had remarked on the niceness of the morning for the last eight years, and he had never allowed the weather to change his pleasant custom.

The Saint yawned, stretched himself like a cat, and saw with half-closed eyes that a stream of sunlight was pouring in through the embrasure which did duty for a window. The optimism of Orace being justified, Simon Templar sighed, stretched himself again, and after a moment’s indecision leaped 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. A hundred and fifty foot drop lay beneath him, but handholds were plentiful, and he descended to the beach as nonchalantly as he would have descended a flight of stairs. The water was ripplingly calm. He covered a quarter of a mile at racing speed, turned on his back and paddled lazily shoreward, finishing the last hundred yards like a champion. Then he lay at the edge of the surf, basking in the strengthening sun.

All these things he had done as regularly on the two previous mornings, and he was languidly pondering the deadliness of regular habits when the thing happened that proved to him quite conclusively that regular habits could be more literally deadly than he had allowed for.

Phhhew-wuk!

Something sang past his ear, and the pebble at which he had been staring in an absent-minded sort of way leaped sideways and was left with a silvery streak scored across it, while the thing that had sung changed its note and went whining seaward.

“Bad luck, sonny,” murmured the Saint mildly. “Only a couple of inches out….”

But he was on his feet before the sound of the shot had reached him.

He was on one of the arms of the bay, which was roughly semicircular. The village was in the centre of the arc. A quick calculation told him that the bullet had come from some point on the cliff between the Pill Box and the village, but he could see nothing on the skyline. A moment later a frantic silhouette appeared at the top of the tor, and the voice of Orace hailed down an anxious query. The Saint waved his towel in response and, making for the foot of the cliff, began to climb up again.

He accomplished the difficult ascent with no apparent effort, quite unperturbed by the thought that the unknown sniper might essay a second round. And presently the Saint stood on the grass above, hands on hips, gazing keenly down the slope toward the spot from where the bullet had seemed to come. A quarter of a mile away was a broad clump of low bushes; beyond the copse, he knew, was a cart track leading down to the village. The Saint shrugged and turned to Orace, who had been fuming and fidgeting around him.

“The Tiger knows his stuff,” remarked Simon Templar with a kind of admiration.

“Like a greenorn!” spluttered Orace. “Like a namachoor! Wa did ja expect? An’ just wotcha deserved—an’ I ‘ope it learns ya! You ain’t ‘urt, sir, are ye?” added Orace, succumbing to human sympathy.

“No—but near enough,” said the Saint.

Orace flung out his arms.

“Pity he didn’t plug ya one, just ter make ya more careful nex’ time. I’d a bin grateful to ‘im. An’ if I ever lay my ‘ands on the swine ‘e’s fore it,” concluded Orace somewhat illogically, and strutted back to the Pill Box.

Orace, as a Sergeant of Marines, had received a German bullet in his right hip at Zeebrugge, and had walked with a lop-sided strut ever since.

“Brekfuss in narf a minnit,” Orace flung over his shoulder.

The Saint strolled after him at a leisurely pace and returned to his bedroom whistling. Nevertheless, Orace, entering the sitting room with a tray precisely half a minute later, found the Saint stretched out in an armchair. The Saint’s hair was impeccably brushed, and he was fully dressed—according to the Saint’s ideas of full dress—in shoes, socks, a dilapidated pair of gray flannel trousers and a snowy silk tennis shirt. Orace snorted, and the Saint smiled.

“Orace,” said the Saint conversationally, lifting the cover from a plate of bacon and eggs, “one gathers that things are just about to hum.”

” ‘Um,” responded Orace.

“About to ‘urn, if you prefer it,” said the Saint equably. “The point is that the orchestra are in their places, the noises off have hitched up their hosiery, the conductor has unkemped his hair, the seconds are getting out of the ring, the guard is blowing his whistle, the skipper has rung down for full steam ahead, the—the––”

“The cawfy’s getting cold,” said Orace. The Saint buttered a triangle of toast. “How unsympathetic you are, Orace!” he complained. “Well, if my flights of metaphor fail to impress you, let us put it like this: we’re off.”

‘“Um,” agreed Orace, and returned to the improvised kitchen.

Simon finished his meal and returned to the armchair, from which he had a view of the cliff and the sea beyond. He skimmed through the previous day’s paper (Baycombe was at least twenty-four hours behind the rest of England) and then smoked a meditative cigarette. At length he rose, fetched and pulled on a well-worn tweed coat, picked up an unwieldy walking stick, and went to the curtained breach in the fortifications which was used for a front door.

“Orace!”

“Sir!” answered Orace, appearing at the threshold of the kitchen.

“I’m going to have a look round. I’ll be back for lunch.”

“Aye, aye, sir…. Sir!”

The Saint was turning away, and he stopped. Orace fumbled under his apron and produced a fearsome weapon—a revolver of pre-war make and enormous calibre—which he offered to his master.

“It ain’t much ter look at,” said Orace, stroking the barrel lovingly, “and I wouldn’t use it fer fancy shooting; but it’ll make a bigger ‘ole in a man than any o’ those pretty ortymatics.”

“Thanks,” grinned the Saint. “But it makes too much noise. I prefer Anna.”