The Saint Meets the Tiger (25 page)

He could see all the cave in which he lay—the height and the length and the breadth of it. The light was so dim that it hardly amounted to more than normal darkness, but after the appalling blind blackness in which he had wandered for so many hours it was as startling a contrast as the rising of the sun after night. Almost sobbing with thankfulness, he dragged himself to his feet and went reeling on. There was another bend about fifty yards ahead, and at that corner it seemed as if the light was a little stronger. He reached the angle of rock and stumbled around it in a torment of apprehension lest after all he should have been deceived. But before him lay a short stretch of widening cave, and at the end of that showed a great rough-hewn opening. And through that opening he saw the blessed sky—an infinitely deep and clean blue evening sky sprinkled with merry, winking stars.

Somehow he reached the opening and saw all the glory of the radiant night, the jewelled heavens above and the quiet sea below. He stood and gazed, supremely happy, marvelling at all these | things as a man might do who had seen none of | them before and would see none of them again.

“Oh, God!” said the Saint in a breathless whisper.

Then he sagged limply against the wall and slid down to the ground in a dead faint.

It was three hours before he opened his eyes again, though this the Saint did not know. He had fallen in the entrance of the cave, and he was awakened by the light of the rising moon shining across his face. Slowly he opened his eyes and gazed unwinkingly into the round white luminous disk that was heaving itself out of the sea. A memory of the nightmare of blindness through which he had passed seethed horribly across his half-consciousness, and he sprang up with a cry. The movement roused him completely, and he found himself leaning against the wall with his heart thudding like a triphammer and his breath coming in short gasps. He smiled crookedly, collecting himself. He must have had it badly! Never before had he passed out like that.

He waited, gathering his wits and trampling the aftermath of the nightmare. It was then that he looked at his watch and found that it was half-past eleven. The rest had revived him—the crazy muzziness had gone from his head, and he felt his strength welling back in great refreshing waves. Elbows and knees were grazed and sore, his knuckles were skinned, tender bumps were coming up all over his skull, and his entire body throbbed like one big bruise, but this was where his strenuous training stood him in good stead: so great were the recuperative powers of his matchless constitution that already he was stretching his limbs experimentally to see whether he could honestly certify himself fit and tuned up for the next round.

And gradually the awareness of a singular noise began to percolate his brain, and that noise was the faint, clanking, chugging noise of machinery. He stiffened, and turned his head. The sound faded away into silence, and he wondered if his ears were playing him tricks and he was hearing nothing but the singing of his own battered cranium. Then that gentle rattling started up again—only the muffled phantom of a bated whisper of a noise, but quite unmistakable to the Saint.

He looked out, and blinked incredulously.

The island called the Old House lay in the quiet sea below. A little farther out a long, lean, black shape rode at anchor, picked out in delicately stippled high lights where the moon touched it—a picture to rejoice the heart of an artist or a seaman. And presently, while Simon watched, the tinkle of the engine stopped again. In a moment a small boat shot out from under the shadow of the ship’s hull and began to pull swiftly over to the island, and at the same time another boat emerged from behind the Old House and worked over toward the motor ship. The boat which came from the island wallowed low in the water and moved sluggishly; the Saint could see a squat pile of crates loaded amidships. The night was so still that his keen hearing could even detect the faint jar of the rowlocks.

“God bless my soul!” ejaculated the Saint mildly.

The inconceivable good luck which had stood by him throughout his lawless career, and which had been prodigiously attentive to him in this adventure, was still working overtime. There he was, alive and more or less well, when he ought by rights to have been drowned in the underground stream or lost in the interminable blackness of the caves— and no sooner had his little guiding star picked him out of that mess, and given him a few minutes to get his wind, than he was handed out this incredible gift! It seemed to him that he was streets ahead of the mortal for whom mere manna falls from heaven: to the .Saint, for no reason that he could cudgel out of his brains, Heaven seemed to spend all its spare time dispatching perfectly cooked eight-course dinners with a selection of appropriate wines complete, what time he did nothing more than providing the silver and cutlery. His gods had landed him up in pretty good order at exactly the place where he wanted to be, at exactly the hour he wanted to arrive, and had thoughtfully thrown in the fact that by then the Tiger would be working his gang overtime patting himself on the back for having so slickly annihilated the thorn which for so long had been playing the devil with their ugly hides!

That was certainly an unhoped-for blessing. The Tiger thought Mr. Templar was dead. Well, Mr. Templar decided to let the Tiger cherish that harmless little delusion for a space. Being theoretically dead, the Saint was going to stay dead till it suited his book to stage a resurrection.

There were, of course, contrary considerations. By that time Orace and Pat and Carn would have turned Baycombe inside out, and they would have found only that gaping hole in the floor of the inn. Wherefore at least two of that party, and one of them especially, would be—But that had got to stand aside. They’d have presumed him dead for some hours now, and it would only mean delaying the homecoming a few more hours. Against that he could set the help it gave him to know that Patricia would be safely out of the fireworks, though he would feel the absence of Orace. All the same, taking it by and large, he reckoned that debit and credit weren’t so far off balancing. With a continuance of his miraculous luck, the curtain could be rung down a lot sooner, now that everything was arranged for him to catch the Tiger on the hop….

“The Saint versus the Tiger,” murmured Simon. “This is where all the early Christian martyrs will look down from heaven and see the old game played under rules they’d never heard of in Rome —and, we hope, with a surprise ending that Nero never saw.”

It was the Saint himself who spoke. All his bubbling optimism was sparkling up through his system again. He was tired, naturally, but he still felt fit enough to tackle anything the Tiger Cubs were prepared to hand out to him, and he had never reviewed an impending struggle more eagerly, for by all the omens it was going to be the last of his exploits, and his sense of theatre demanded that he should finish up in a blaze of glory.

He searched for his weapons, and found them securely in their places. The cigarettes in his case, which might have been useful, had been ruined by the wet; but the case itself, with the fine steel blade running along one edge of it, was a tried asset in emergencies, and this went into the hip pocket of his trousers. His coat he left in the cave.

Looking down, he saw that there were only a dozen yards to climb down to the beach. With the moon to help him, this was no difficult task. He swung over the edge at once, and in a few minutes he stood on the crunching shingle with the water lapping round his ankles. There was a longish swim yet to get through, but by now he felt capable of all that and more. He waded out up to his waist and then slithered forward into the ripples without a splash, like an otter, and struck out for the Tiger’s ship with clean, powerful strokes.

His arms rose and fell rhythmically, making not the least sound as they cleared the water and then dived back at full stretch. The Saint could keep up that graceful overarm for hours, but on this occasion he had no need for such a display of stamina. His trained muscles drove him forward tirelessly at a pace that ate up distance. He steered a wide circling course to keep well out of the danger zone between the Old House and the ship, where he might have been spotted by a pair of keen eyes in one of the rowboats or by anyone who happened to be looking across that reach of water from either side, for the moonlight was strengthening with every minute—an act of cussedness on the part of Nature which made the job in hand a more ticklish proposition for both Saint and Tiger alike. Even so, it was not very long before he came up under the motor ship’s cruiser stern, after covering the last hundred yards under water with only three cautious floatings-up for breath.

He clung there for a moment’s rest, and then worked his way along the seaward side, where it would be safest, forward to the bows, hugging close in to the hull. It then occurred to him that the climb up the anchor chain, in full view of the island and the ship’s bridge, would be a very chancy method. Yet the vessel’s sides rose sheer and unbroken for six feet before they were cut by the lowest row of portholes.

But once more his luck held. As he swam slowly along, pondering this problem, he ran right into a rope ladder which hung .down from the deck. It couldn’t have been more conveniently provided if he had asked for it to be lowered against his arrival, but a little thought gave him the reason for its presence. It must have been dropped for the Tiger and his principals to come aboard, and since then the tide must have swung the ship right round on her moorings. And there it was, temporarily forgotten, and just the very thing he wanted.

The noise of the donkey engine, throttled down though it was, and the creaking of the derricks which were taking the gold on board, was louder now, and he could hear the sound of sea boots grating on the deck, and the subdued voices of men. As far as he could gather on his way up they were working on the after hold, for he heard nothing from directly above him.

The Saint came level with the deck and peeped over. All was clear at that point and forward of it, but he could see a few figures clustered round the small hatch aft, and an arm of timber stood out against the sky with a square case dangling at the end of it. Fortunately, they were all intent on their task, and already he had banked on the ship being short-handed, so that all the crew there was would be occupied with other things than loafing about getting in his way. With a quick heave, the Saint gained the rail, went over, and landed on the deck without sound. Facing him was an open door and a companionway. He jumped for it.

On the first step he paused and listened, but the work was going steadily on, and clearly nobody had noticed the dripping dark shape that had slipped over the rail and leaped across the exposed bit of deck.

“So far, so very good!” said the Saint, and a smile of joyous anticipation flitted across his lips. “Once aboard the lugger and the gold is mine!”

The companion ran down into a dimly lighted alleyway, and there the Saint hesitated. That was a risky place to loiter in. Cabins were also risky— they needed only the turning of a key to turn them into prisons. But he wanted a few seconds to rest and plan the next move, and bad to take his chance.

There was a promising-looking door right opposite him, and he tiptoed across the alley and turned the handle very softly. But the door must have been locked, for his gently increasing pressure failed to make it budge. The Saint was promptly intrigued by that locked door. It immediately drove all thoughts of safety and rest and scheming out of his head, and in his reckless fashion he resolved to have a look inside that cabin with the least possible delay, whether it was occupied or not—and, listening with his ear to a panel, he came to the conclusion that the unbroken silence within laid more than a shade of odds on its being empty. But to open a locked door required more implements than he had on him, and he was about to go in search of the engine-room workshop to collect suitable apparatus when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

In a flash he located their origin—round the nearest corner of the passage. The Saint retreated a little way up his companion ladder—an unwise move, since it left him with a very groggy line of withdrawal if the man glimpsed him and raised the alarm; but Simon, ever an opportunist, was curious to see who it was that had time to spend below when all hands were toiling to get the cargo loaded in the shortest practicable time.

He peeped one eye round the angle of the bulkhead, and then drew back sharply.

It was Bloem, carrying a tray on which was a plate with a pile of sandwiches and a siphon. The Saint glanced back over his shoulder, but behind him the deck was still deserted, though he was in imminent danger of discovery by anyone who happened to pass and glance down. For an instant he meditated flight—but only for an instant. The deck would be an unhealthy place for Simon Templar to wander around just then, and, besides, there was the door to open and Bloem to tail up in case the Boer were bringing the Tiger a little supper.

The Saint flattened himself atainst the bulkhead; and, as the footsteps drew level with him, he tensed up ready to take instant action, if Bloem noticed him. But the Boer was already turning away when he came into view, and Simon’s eyes fired up as he saw that Bloem was making for the locked door.

Bloem set the tray down on the floor, fumbled for a key, and turned it in the lock. He pushed the door half open, and the Saint could see one corner of the cabin, for the lights were on inside. Then Bloem bent down to pick up the tray, and as he did so Simon dived from the eighth stair.

The Saint landed on one hunched shoulder, and that shoulder impinged accurately over Bloem’s kidneys. The man gave a grunt of agony. All the weight of Simon’s leaping, falling body was hurtling on behind that muscular shoulder, and Bloem was caught off his equilibrium. The impact sent the Boer toppling over, and his head was bumped forcefully against the floor as Simon crashed on top of him.

Bloem was absolutely out, but the sound of the scuffle might possibly have been heard. The Saint was on his feet again with the speed of a fighting panther. He- grabbed Bloem by the collar and yanked him into the cabin; then he snatched in the tray. In a moment he had the door shut and had turned with his back to it to see what his impulse had let him in for.