The Saint Meets the Tiger (7 page)

Simon Templar, however, declined to let these portents oppress his gay recklessness. There seemed to be some reorganization going on among the ungodly, following the unfortunate case of mistaken identity, and it occurred to the Saint that the fun was losing the boisterous whole-heartedness which had ennobled its early exuberance. No sooner had this chastening thought struck him than he set out to restore the former state of affairs;

Creeping along toward the main gate, where he expected to find a guard posted, he almost fell over a man crouching by a tree. Templar had the sentinel by the throat before he could cry out; then, releasing the grip of one hand, he firmly but unmistakably tweaked the man’s nose. Before the sentinel had recovered from the surprise, the Saint had thrown him into a thorny bush and was sprinting for the cover on the other side of the drive. He had scarcely gained the gloom of another clump of bushes before the man’s bellow of rage drifted like music to his ears. The cry was taken up from four different points, and the Saint chuckled.

A moment later he was frozen into immobility by the sound of a voice from the house rising above the clamour.

“Stop shouting, you blasted fools! Kahn—come here!”

“Tush murmured the Saint. “I can’t have dotted you a very stiff one, honey, but it certainly hasn’t improved your temper!”

He waited, listening, but he could make nothing of the mutter of voices. Then came the muffled sounds of someone running across the lawn, followed by the dull thud of a wooden bar being thrown back. Then a clinking of metal.

Suddenly there was a snuffling whine, which sank again into a more persistent snuffling. The whine was taken up in three other different keys. Abruptly, the fierce deep-throated baying of a great hound rent the night air. Then there was only a hoarse whimpering.

“Damn their eyes’” said Templar softly. “This is where, item, one Saint, slides off in the direction of his evening bread and milk.”

Even then he was fumbling for the bolts which held the heavy main gates. He had one back and was wrestling with the other when a dog whimpered eagerly only a few yards away. The Saint tore desperately at the metal, thanking his gods for the darkness of the night, and the bolt shot back. At the same instant there was a thunderous knocking on the door, and a vociferous barking replaced the whining of bloodhounds temporarily distracted from the scent.

“To be continued in our next, I think, grinned the Saint.

He pulled back the heavy door.

“So glad you’ve come, brothers,” remarked the Saint in loud and hospitable accents. “We’re hunting a real live burglar. Care to lend the odd paw?”

“Quietly,” advised a voice.

A blinding beam of light flashed from the hand of the man who had stepped first through the opening. It stabbed at the Saint’s eyes, dazzling him for a moment; then into the ray of it came a hand which held a small automatic pistol with a curious cylindrical gadget screwed to the muzzle. The Saint knew the gadget for a silencer, and there was no doubt whatever about the accuracy of the aim.

“Quietly, Mr. Templar,” repeated the crooning voice.

“Dear me!” said the Saint, who never swore when he was seriously annoyed, and put up his hands.

Chapter V

AUNT AGATHA IS UPSET

Patricia Holm landed safely on her feet in the road outside the wall and set off steadily for home. She ran easily and smoothly, as a healthy girl can who has spent most of her life away from tubes and ”buses and taxis, although she was somewhat out of breath from keeping up with the Saint’s deadly speed.

She had heard the Saint’s cheery “Tally-ho!” and felt that there was a message for her in it, besides the surface bravado which was meant for the men in the garden—it was at the same time a spur to her pace, to remind her that it was up to her not to waste the advantage which his own actions were winning for her, and an encouragement, to tell her that he was as fit as a fiddle and ready for any amount of rough stuff and that there was no need for anyone to start fretting about him. So Patricia ran, obediently; and it was not until the echoes of the commotion had died away behind her and lost themselves in the other indistinguishable noises of the night, and she had slackened off into a brisk walk, that she grasped the full significance of the situation. Up to that point, the whole proceeding had been so fantastical and nightmarish, and the rush of astonishing events had come with such a staggering velocity, that she had been temporarily bereft of the power of coherent thought. Now, in the anti-climax of easing up her headlong flight, she was able for the first time to see the general outline of the mystery and the danger.

She looked at her wrist watch, and saw from the luminous dial that it was five minutes to eleven. Say the Saint had given his orders five minutes ago: that meant that if anything went wrong she was still forbidden to summon the help of Carn until ten to twelve. And by that time … She shuddered, remembering the dogs….

There was something sinister about Bittle and the big house behind that ominous wall. Of that she could be certain, for the mere intrusion of the Saint upon a private conversation—however compromising—could hardly have led even that impetuous young man to go to such lengths, any more than it could have made Bittle resort to such violent means to prevent their departure. She recalled the rumours which the Saint’s eccentric habits had given rise to in the village, but her recollection other brief association with him took away all the plausibility of current gossip even while it increased his mysteriousness. Patricia racked her brain for a theory that would hold water, and found none. She assembled the outstanding facts. Templar had some reason for being in the garden that night, and some reason for butting in on the millionaire, and she could not believe that the millionaire’s proposal of marriage would have given the Saint sufficient provocation for what he had done, considering the casualness of their acquaintance. Bittle, for his part, seemed to fear and hate the Saint. Templar disliked Bittle enough to seize a convenient opportunity of dotting the millionaire one with a hefty bit of bronze. That was after Bittle had produced an automatic. And the general trend of things suggested that Bittle’s house was staffed with a tough bunch of bad hats who were quite ready to deal with unwelcome visitors in a most unusual fashion—almost as though they expected unwanted interference. And normal houses and normal millionaires did not have secret bell pushes in cigar boxes and peepholes from which their libraries could be watched….

The girl had to give it up. At least, her faith in the Saint remained unshaken. It was impossible to believe that there was anything evil about the man. At that rate, Bittle was equally above suspicion—but Bittle’s apparent harmlessness was of the bluff kind that might cover a multitude of sins, whereas the Saint’s chief charm was his unreserved boyishness and his air of exaggerated masquerading. She felt that no sane wolf in sheep’s clothing would have taken such elaborate pains to look like a pantomime wolf.

Whoever and whatever the Saint was, he had done her no injury. He had been her friend—and she had left him behind to face whatever music Bittle’s myrmidons had the desire and brains W provide…. And the tuning-up of the orchestra which she had heard gave her a vivid impression that it was no amateur affair. … It was some consolation to reflect that the Saint’s little solo, which .had opened the concert, itself showed a truly professional touch; nevertheless, she was cursing herself right back to the Manor for deserting him, although she knew that if she had stayed she would only have hampered him.

She had hoped to be able to steal into the house unnoticed, but as she approached she saw a dark figure leaning on the front gate, and in a moment the figure hailed her with the voice of Miss Girton.

“Yes, it’s me,” said Patricia, and followed the woman to the door

“I heard a lot of noise, and wondered what it was all about,” Miss Girton explained. “Do you know?”

“There’s been some excitement….”

It was all Patricia could think of on the spur of the moment.

She had forgotten the damage inflicted on her clothes and her person by the game of hide-and-seek in the shrubbery, and was at first surprised at the way Miss Girton stared at her in the light of the hall. Then she looked at her torn skirt and the scratches on her arms.

“You don’t seem to have missed much,” remarked the older woman grimly

“I can’t explain just now,” said a weary Patricia. “I’ve got to think.”

She went into the drawing room and sank into a chair. Her guardian took up a position before her, legs astraddle, manlike, hands deep in the pockets of her coat, waiting for the account that she was determined to have.

“If Bittle’s been getting fresh—”’

“It wasn’t exactly that,” said the girl. “I’m quite all right. Please leave me alone for a minute.”

The darkening alarm which had showed on Miss Girton’s face gave way to a look of perplexity when she heard that her instinctive suspicion was ungrounded. She could be reasonably patient—it was one other unfeminine characteristics. With a shrug of her heavy shoulders she took a gasper from a glaring yellow packet and lighted it. She smoked like a man, inhaling deeply, and her fingers were stained orange with nicotine.

Patricia puzzled over what excuse she was going to invent. She knew that Miss Girton could be as acute and ruthless in cross-examination as a lawyer. But the Saint’s orders had been to say nothing before the hour had expired, and Patricia thought only of carrying out his orders. Doubtless the reason for them would be given later, together with some sort of elucidation of the mystery, but at present the sole considerations that weighed with her were those of keeping faith with the man whom she had left in such a tight corner and of finding some way to help him out of it if necessary.

“It was like this,” Patricia began at last. “This afternoon I had a note from Bittle asking me to call after dinner without saying anything to anybody. It was most important. I went. After a lot of beating about the bush he told me that he’d had a mortgage on the Manor for years, and that you owed him a lot of money and were asking for more, and that he’d have to foreclose and demand payment of your debts. Was that true?”

“It was,” replied Agatha Girton stonily.

“But why did you have to— Oh, surely, there can’t have been any need to borrow money? I always understood that Dad left a small fortune.”

Miss Girton shrugged.

“My dear child, I had to draw on that.”

Patricia stared incredulously. Miss Girton, with a face of wood and in a coldly dispassionate voice, added, like an afterthought:

“I’ve been blackmailed for six years.”

“Who by?”

“Does that matter to you? Go on with your story.” Patricia jumped her.

“I think, in the circumstances, I’ll please myself what I tell you,” she said with a dangerous quietness. “It might be more to the point if you told me what you’ve done with the money entrusted to you. Six years, Aunt Agatha? That was three years after 1 came here. … You were always making trips abroad, and kept me on at school as long as you could…. Weren’t you in Africa six years ago? You were away a long time, I remember—”

“That will do,” said Miss Girton harshly.

“Will it?” asked the girl.

If her aunt had been tearful and frightened, Patricia would have been ready to comfort her, but weakness was not one of Miss Girton’s failings, and her aggressively impenitent manner could provoke nothing but resentment. A storm was perilously near when an interruption came in the shape of a ring at the front door. Miss Girton went to answer it, and Patricia heard in the hall the spluttering of an agitated Algy. In a moment the immaculate Mr. Lomas-Coper himself came into the drawing room.

“Why, there you are!” he gasped fatuously, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. “And I say!— what? Been bird’s-nestin’ in your party frock!”

And Algy stood goggling through his monocle at the girl’s disarray.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” she smiled, though inwardly she was cursing the arrival of another person to whom explanations would have to be made. “Aunt Agatha simply sagged when she saw me.”

“I should think so!” said Algy. “What happened to the eggs? Tell me about it.”

“But what have you come here in such a flurry for?” she countered.

Mr. Lomas-Coper gaped, groping feebly in the air. “But haven’t you heard? Of course not—I forgot to tell you. You know we’re next door to old Bittle? Well, there’s been no end of a shindy. Lots of energetic souls whooflin’ round the garden, yellin’ blue murder, an’ all Bittle’s pack of.man-eatin’ hounds howlin’ their heads off. So old Algy goes canterin’ round for news, thinks of you, and comes rampin’ along to see if you’ve heard anything about it an’ find out if you’d like to totter along to the Chateau Bittle an’ join in the game. And here you are, lookin’ as if you’d been in the thick of it yourself. Doocid priceless! Eh? What? What?”

He beamed, full of an impartial good humour, and not at all abashed by the unenthusiastic reception of his brilliance. Miss Girton stood over by the settee, lighting a fresh gasper from the wilting stump of the last, a rugged and gaunt and inscrutable woman. Patricia was suddenly glad of the arrival of Algy. Although a fool, he was a friend: as a fool, he would be easily put off with any facile explanation of her dishevelment, and as a friend he was an unlooked-for straw to be caught at in the turmoil that had flooded the girl’s life that night.

“Sit down, Algy,” she pleaded tolerantly. “And for Heaven’s sake don’t stare at me like that. There’s nothing wrong.”

Algernon sat down and stopped staring, as commanded, but it was more difficult to control his excited loquacity.

“I’m all of a dither,” he confessed superfluously. “I don’t know whether I’m hoofin’ it on the old Gibus or the old Dripeds, sort of style, y’know.”

Patricia looked at her watch. It was twenty past eleven. That meant half an hour to go before she could appeal to Carn. Why Carn?—she wondered. But Algy was still babbling on.

“Abso-jolly-old-uutely, all of a doodah. It’s shockin’. I always thought the Merchant Prince was too good to be true, an’ here he is comin’ out into the comic limelight as a sort of what not. I could have told you so.”