The Saint Meets the Tiger (9 page)

Bloem raised the gun a trifle, and his knuckles whitened under the brown skin of his hand.

“It is easily settled,” he muttered, and the Saint saw death staring him in the face.

“No!” shouted Bittle.

The millionaire flung himself forward, knocking up the pistol. Bittle was trembling. He mopped his brow with a large white handkerchief, breathing heavily.

“You fool!” he jerked. “The girl’s been here—he helped her get away. If anything happens to him she’ll talk, D’you want to put a rope round all our necks?”

“You always did argue soundly, Bittle darling,” said the Saint appreciatively.

He seated himself on the table, swinging his legs, and the proverbial cucumber would have looked smoking hot beside him.

“It must be arranged so as to look like an accident,” said Bittle. “That damned girl will have the police buzzing about our ears unless the circumstances are above suspicion.”

Bloem shrugged.

“The girl can be silenced,” he stated dispassionately

“You’ll leave the girl alone,” snarled Bittle. “Where’s the Chief?”

The Saint saw Bloem’s face convulse with a warning scowl.

“He will return later.”

“Now, that’s good news, said Simon. “Am I really going to meet the celebrated Tiger at last? You’ve no idea how much I want to see him. But he’s such an elusive cove—always incog.”

“You need have no fear, Mr. Templar,” said Bittle, “that the Tiger will show himself to you unless ‘he is quite certain that you will never be able to use your knowledge against him. I think,” added the millionaire suavely, “that you may expect to meet the Tiger tonight.”

The Saint realized that Bittle’s panic of a few foments past had been caused by the fear of being involved in a police inquiry rather than by the horror of witnessing a cold-blooded murder. 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 afterthought was delivered would have struck terror into the souls 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.”

“I hope,” said Bittle, “that the Tiger will prove to be as clever as you are.”

“Hope on, sonnikins,” said the Saint cheerfully.

They had searched him from crown to toe when he came in from the garden, but they had left him his cigarette case, and for this he was duly thankful. The case was a large one, and carried a double bank of cigarettes. There were some peculiarities about the cigarettes on one side of the case which the Saint had not felt bound to explain to Bittle when he returned it; for several of the victories which Templar had scored against apparently impossible odds in the course of his hectic career as a gentleman adventurer had been due to his habit of invariably keeping at least one card up his sleeve—even when he had not got aces parked in his belt, under his hat, and in the soles of his shoes. Meanwhile, it had not yet come to the showdown, and the Saint did not believe in performing his particular brand of parlour tricks simply to amuse the assembled company. He selected a cigarette from the other side of the case (which in itself was not quite an ordinary case, for one of the edges, which was guarded when the case was shut, was as sharp as a razor) and began to smoke with a sublime indifference to the awkwardness of his predicament.

Bittle and Bloem were arguing in low tones at the other end of the room, and both were armed. The pugilistic butler was posted at the door, and it was unlikely that he would be caught napping a second time. The Saint could probably have beaten him in a straight fight, but it would not have been an easy job, and the audience in this case would most certainly interfere. The other two men stood by the French windows, to prevent a repetition of the Saint’s earlier unceremonious exit: they were both hard and husky specimens, and the Saint, weighing up the prospects with a fighter’s eye, decided that that retreat was effectually barred for the time being. There were few men that the Saint, in splendid training, would have hesitated to tackle singlehanded, and few men that he would not have backed himself to tie in knots and lay out all neat and tidy inside five minutes, into the bargain; but he had to admit that a team of three heavyweights and a couple of automatics totalled up to something a bit above his form. Wherefore the Saint stayed sitting on the table and placidly smoked his cigarette, for he had never believed in getting worked up before the fireworks started.

He looked at his watch, and found that there was a clear half-hour to go before he could expect any help from outside. He blessed his foresight in telling Patricia to go to Carn if anything went wrong, but that was a last resource which the Saint hoped he would not have to call upon. Simon wanted nothing less than to be under any sort of obligation to the detective, and he certainly did not want to give Carn a better hand than the deal had given him. Nevertheless, it was comforting to know that Carn was at hand in case of a hitch—not to mention the admirable Orace, who would shortly be getting restive, even if he had not started to move already. And it was satisfying to find that a similar reflection was cramping the style of the ungodly considerably.

The Saint’s meditations were interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the depths of the house. The sound was very faint, but the Saint’s hearing was abnormally keen, and he caught what most other men would have missed—the eccentric rhythm of the ringing. He had noted this down and pigeonholed it in his mind when a knock came on the door and a man entered. He muttered something to Bittle, and the millionaire left the room. Bloem strolled over to the Saint, who welcomed him with a smile.

“Our one and only Tiger at last?”

Bloem nodded, and looked curiously at the Saints

“You have given us mow trouble than you know,” he said. “You have been extraordinarily lucky—but even the most astounding luck comes to an end.”

“Just what they told me at Monte,” agreed the Saint.“They say the Bank always wins in the long run.”

Watching closely, Simon could just note the least flicker of Bloem’s eyelids,

“Fernando, of course, “said Bloem, half to himself.

“Even so,” murmured the Saint. “I know everything but the answer to the two most important questions of all—Who is the Tiger? and Where has he cached the loot? And I’ve a feeling that it won’t be long now before I get next to even those secrets.”

“You’re very confident,” said Bloem.

The man’s self-control was not far from perfection, but the Saint also played poker, and he had summed up Bloem to the last full stop in the course of that brief conversation. Bloem’s nerves were none too good—no man who was reasonably sure of himself would have been made to feel vaguely uneasy by such a slender bluff. That put the Saint one up on Bloem, but the Saint did not disclose his knowledge of the state of the score. His smile did not vary its quiet assurance one iota.

“I’m an odds-on chance,” said the Saint lightly. “Which reminds me—how are T. T. Deeps?”

Bloem did not answer, and the Saint prattled on:

“Now, I must say you had me thinking very hard over that dud gold mine. Why should any sane man—you observe. Mynheer, that I credit you with being sane—why should any sane man want to get control of a gold mine that hasn’t turned up any gold for two years? That’s what I said to my broker, and he sent a cable out to the Transvaal especially to find out. Back comes the reply: We Don’t Know. The mine hasn’t been worked for ages, and only the greenhorn prospectors bother to look over the district—the old hands know that there isn’t enough pay dirt for a hundred square miles around the T. T. borings to stop a snail’s tooth. And yet our one and only Hans is raking in all the shares he can find, reminding ‘Change of a stock they’d all forgotten existed, and every poor little rabbit of a mug investor is hunting up his scrip and wondering whether to unload while the unloading’s good or chance his arm for a fortune. All of which, to a nasty, suspicious mind like mine, is distinctly odd.”

“I’m glad to see the worry hasn’t prematurely aged you, Mr. Templar,” said Bloem.

“Oh, not at all,” said the Saint. “You see, just when I was on the point of going off my rocker with the strain, and my relatives were booking a room for me in a nice quiet asylum, along comes a flash of inspiration. Just suppose, Bloem—only suppose—that a bunch of bad hats had brought off one of the biggest bank breaks in history. Suppose they’d got away with something over a cool million in gold. Suppose they’d humped the stuff all the way over the Atlantic, and fetched up and settled down and stowed the body away in an English village so far off the beaten track that it’d be lost for good if it wasn’t for the railway time-tables. And then suppose—mind you, this is only a theory-suppose they felt quite happy that the dicks weren’t on the trail, and began to puzzle out how they were going to cash the proceeds of the dirty work. First of all, melt it down—there aren’t so many warriors hawking golden American Eagles around that the money-changers don’t look twice at you when you try to pass off a sack of ‘em. Right. But now you aren’t so much better off, because a golden million tots up to a hairy great ingot, and people would start asking where the stuff came from—whether you grow it in the kitchen garden or make it in the bathroom before breakfast. What then?”

“What, indeed?” prompted Bloem in a tired voice.

“Why,” exclaimed the Saint delightedly, as though he had caught Bloem with a conundrum, “what’s wrong with getting hold of a dead-as-mut-ton gold mine, losing a lot of gold in it, and then finding it again?”

“Quite,” said Bloem with purely perfunctory interest.

Simon shook his head.

“It won’t wash, Angel Face,” he said. “It won’t wash. Really it won’t. And you know it. They may have christened me Simon, but I’ve got a lot less simple since then.”

Bloem turned away very wearily, as if he found the Saint’s monologues so boring that he had great difficulty in keeping awake, but that did not stop him hearing the Saint’s soft chuckle of sheer merriment. Bloem was good, but he was not-quite good enough. There had been few doubts m the Saint’s mind about the accuracy of his diagnosis, and those that had existed were now gloriously dispelled. Nearly all the threads were in his hands, and the tangle was gradually straightening out.

But who was the Tiger? That was the most important question of all, barring only the whereabouts of the spoil. Who in all Baycombe kept under his modest hat the brain that had conceived and organized that stupendous coup? Bloem, Bit-tie, and Carn could be ruled out. That left the highly respected Sir Michael Lapping, the pleasant but brainless Mr. Lomas-Coper, the masculine Miss Girton, and the two retired and retiring I.C.S. men, Messrs. Shaw and Smith. Five runners, and a darned sight too little help from the form book. The Saint frowned. Tackling the problem in the light of the law of probability, every one of the possibles had to be ruled out, which was manifestly absurd. Wiring into it with any mystery story as a textbook, it at once appeared that Lapping was too far above suspicion to escape it, Algy was too frankly brainless to be anything but the possessor of the Great Brain, Agatha Girton was quite certain to turn out to be a man masquerading as a woman, and Shaw and Smith kept too much in the background to avoid the limelight. Which once again was manifestly absurd. And the order of seniority was of little assistance, for Bloem, Algy, Agatha Girton, and Bittle had all been living in Baycombe for some time before the Tiger smashed the strong-room of the Confederate Bank of Chicago—on a general estimate, Simon reckoned that the Tiger had spent at least five years over that crime. And that was a deduction that confirmed the Saint’s respect for the Tiger’s brilliance without going any distance to aid the solution of the mystery of the Tiger’s identity.

The Saint had got no further when Bittle returned and drew Bloem to one side. Simon could only hear a word here and there. He gathered that the Tiger was furious with Bittle for taking so long and making so much noise over capturing the prisoner; that Bittle would have liked to see the Tiger do better himself; that the Tiger had an Idea. There followed some mutterings that the Saint did not catch, and then came one sentence quite distinctly:

“The Tiger says we must let him go.”

Bloem gave an exclamation, and Bittle talked further. The Saint’s brain was whirring like a buzz saw. Let him go, with so much given away and most of the court cards in their hands? Simon wondered if he had heard aright, but in a moment Bittle left Bloem and came over to confirm the sensitiveness of the Saint’s auditory nerves.

“It is getting late, Mr. Templar,” said the millionaire, “and we all feel that the festivities have been kept up long enough. Pray do not let us detain you any longer.”

“Meaning?” suggested Simon, with as much levelness as he could command.

“Meaning that you are free to go as soon as you like.”

Bittle looked hard at the Saint as he spoke, and the malevolence that glittered in his eyes belied the geniality of his speech. Bittle was clearly upset at having to carry out such a command. He barked an order, and the escort of roughnecks sidled, out of the room, closing the door behind them. Bloem was fidgeting with his tie, and he kept one hand in a pocket that bulged heavily.

“That’s nice of you,” drawled the Saint. You won’t mind if I take Anna, will you?”

He strolled coolly over to the secretaire, jerked open a drawer, and retrieved the knife that they had taken from him, slipping it back into the sheath under his sleeve. Then he faced the two men again.

“Really,” he remarked in a tone of polite inquiry, “your kindness overwhelms me. And I never put you down for a brace of birds too gravely burdened with faith, hope, and charity. Is Miss Holm such an insuperable obstacle—to Supermen like yourselves?”

“I think,” said Bittle smoothly, “that you would be wise not to ask too many questions. It is quite enough for you to know, Mr. Templar, that your phenomenal luck has held—perhaps for the last time. You had better say good-night before we change our minds.”