Captain Patricia
“He branded me—the Tiger——” Agatha Girton’s voice was pitched
hysterically. “By God . . .”
Her face had become the face of a fiend. Hard and grim it always
was—now, with smears of blood from brow to chin and her hair
straggling damply over her temples, it was devilish.
“I’ll get even for this one day. . . . I’ll make him crawl. . . .
Red-hot irons are too good for that——”
“But, Aunt Agatha——”
Patricia was full of questions, and it seemed the right moment to let
some of them off, but Miss Girton turned on her like a wild beast, and
the girl recoiled a step from the blaze of fury in those smouldering
eyes.
“Go away.”
“Was that the man who’s been blackmailing you?”
“Go away.”
“And is he the Tiger?”
Miss Girton took a pace forward and pointed to the door.
“Leave me, child,” she said in a terrible voice. “Go back to your
Saint before I forget—— If you aren’t outside in a second I’ll throw
you out.”
She meant it. Patricia had never seen and hoped she would never see
again the face of a woman so contorted with passion. There was nothing
to do.
“Very well,” said Patricia steadily. “I’ll go. I hope you won’t be
sorry.”
“Go, then.”
The girl flung up her head and marched to the door.
Go back to Simon? She would. There wasn’t much risk about walking over
to the Pill Box, she thought, and the feel of the automatic in her
pocket gave her all the courage she needed. The Saint wouldn’t be
expecting her, but he could hardly object, considering the news she
was bringing him. It had been an eventful afternoon—more eventful than
he could possibly have foreseen—and, since there was nothing more that
she could achieve on her own, it was essential that he should be
provided with all the news up to date.
The time had passed quickly. It was twenty to seven when she set out;
she came in sight of the Pill Box towards a quarter past, having taken
it easy, and by that time it was nearly dark.
The sea shone like dull silver, reflecting all the last rays of
twilight, and from the top of the cliff Patricia strained to see the
ship they had observed that morning. She thought she could make out
the tiniest of black dots on the horizon, but she would not have sworn
to it. That was the ship that the Saint and Orace and she were
scheduled to capture by themselves, and the monumental audacity of the
scheme made her smile. But it was just because the scheme was so
impossible that the prospect of attempting to carry it out did not
bother her at all: it was the sort of reckless daredevil thing that
people did in books and films, the forlorn hope that always
materialised in time to provide a happy ending. She could think of no
precedent for it in real life, and therefore the only thing to go by
was the standard of fiction—according to which it was bound to
succeed. But she wondered if any man living except the Saint—her
Saint—would have had the imagination to think of it, the courage to
work out the idea in all seriousness, the heroic foolhardiness to try
and bring it off, and the personality to captain the adventure. She
and Orace were nothing but his devoted lieutenants: the whole fate of
the long hazard rested on the Saint’s broad shoulders.
With a shrug and a smile that showed her perfect teeth—a smile of
utter fearlessness that Simon would have loved to see—the girl turned
away and strolled across to the Pill Box. There was a light in the
embrasure which she knew served for a window in the
dining-drawing-smoking-sitting-room, but when she peeped in she saw
only Orace laying dinner. She went in, and he swung round at the sound
of her footsteps.
She was amused but perplexed to see his face light up and then fall
again as he recognised her.
“Where’s Mr. Templar?” she asked, and he almost glared at her.
“Back ut arf pas’ sevin,” he growled.
He picked up his tray and stalked off towards the kitchen, and the
girl stared after him in puzzlement. Orace, though a martinet, was
only actually rude to Tiger Cubs and detectives: she had already seen
through his mask of ferocity and discovered the kindly humanist
underneath. On the last occasion of his escorting her home his manner
had been even paternal, for Simon Templar’s friends were Orace’s
friends. But this, now, was a ruffled Orace.
She followed him to the kitchen.
“Can I help with anything?” she inquired cheerfully.
“Naow, don’t think sa, miss,” he replied gruffly. “I’m use ter
mannidging alone—thanks.”
“Then could you tell me where Mr. Templar’s gone? I could walk on and
meet him.”
Orace hammered the point of a tin-opener into a can of salmon with
quite unnecessary violence.
“Dunno anythink about it,” he said. “You can betcha life, miss, ’e’ll
be ’ome when ’e said ’e would, if ’e can ’umanly possibly do ut. Most
thunderin’ punctual man alive, ’e is, an ’e’ll come in the door just
when the clock strikes. So yer got nuffin ta worry about.”
He ended on a more gentle note, but there was no doubt that he was
very upset.
“Why—has anything happened to make you think I’d be likely to worry?”
Patricia queried, with her heart thumping a little faster. “Was he
going to do anything special this afternoon?”
“_Naaow!_” snarled Orace, unconvincingly derisive, and went on hacking
at the tin.
The girl went back to the sitting-room and dropped into a chair. The
Saint’s cigarette-box was handy to her elbow, and she took a cigarette
and lighted it thoughtfully.
Whether she was intended to worry or not, there could be no denying
the obvious fact that Orace was distinctly agitated. She found it was
twenty minutes and a bit past seven, and wondered if the Saint would
be as punctual as Orace had predicted, and whether they would have to
assume that something had happened to him if he hadn’t arrived within
five minutes of the half-hour. Where could he have gone? There was
nothing to be done about the Tiger’s ship at that hour. Had he gone on
a preliminary reconnaissance of the island? Had he taken it into his
head to inspect the Old House at closer quarters? Or had he gone over
to beard Bittle or Bloem again—the sort of senseless bravado that
would give a man like him a thrill?
She watched the minute hand of her watch travel down to the
twenty-five-past mark, and reflected that she had been spending a good
deal of her time lately with one eye on the clock, wondering if the
Saint was going to be punctual or not. Heavens, he wasn’t the only one
who could be worried!
Orace came in and laid a place for her. Then he tugged an enormous
silver turnip from his trousers pocket.
“In a minnit er two,” he said. “Thunderin’ punctual, ’e always is.”
He nodded to her encouragingly, and strutted out. She heard his boots
on the concrete floor outside, and guessed that he had gone to the
entrance to see if he could spot the Saint coming up the hill.
At twenty-five to eight there was still no sign of the Saint.
Patricia took to moving restlessly about the room. She felt suddenly
depressed. The Saint had gone swashbuckling off into the blue, without
a word to anyone—and had blasted his reputation for punctuality. He
might have been in so many different places, trying to do so many
different things: she raged at her helplessness. She could only wait
and wait and wait, and he’d either turn up or he wouldn’t. No
clue. . . . Anything might have happened to him. She racked her brains
to deduce where he would be most likely to have gone, and an appalling
number of possibilities made faces at her and invited her to take her
pick.
Orace came in again. He had taken off his apron and put on his coat
and a cap. One of his pockets bulged and sagged.
“I’m gonna see if I can find ’im, miss,” he said. “But wiv yore
permission I’ll see you ’ome fust.”
She stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Jus lookin rahnd, miss. ’E tole me wun or two plyces ta try. I’ll
find ’im orlright—don chew worry.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said at once.
He shook his head.
“Carnt ave ya doin that. Fennything wuz ta appen to yer, ’e’d kill
me.”
“Where do we go first?” she demanded, ignoring his reply.
“Where do _I_ go fust?” he amended. “Well, I can tell ya that.”
He fished the Saint’s note out of his pocket and gave it to her. She
read it through with growing apprehension. It had somehow failed to
occur to her that he would automatically spend the time before evening
in investigating the second possibility of the other Old House—the
disused inn behind the village. That was where he must have gone.
Perhaps he had been trapped there. . . .
“Come on,” she rapped, and led the way.
Outside, she took the path which led down to the inland end of the
village, instead of the one which led to the opposite tor by way of
the quay, and Orace hurried after her and caught her arm.
“Wrong wy, miss,” he said.
She looked at him.
“This is the way I’m going.”
“Sorry, miss,” he persisted. “I carnt letcha do that.”
“Can’t you?” she said slowly. “I’m sorry, but I must. I’ll show you——”
With a lightning twist she shook off his hand and ran. She could hear
him racing lamely after her, shouting and imploring her to stop and
think what the Saint would say, but she ran on like the wind. She went
down the slope at break-neck speed, surefooted as a cat, but Orace
limped along behind doggedly, sliding and stumbling in the steep
darkness. Then a stone rolled under her foot: she jumped to save
herself, caught her other foot in a tuft of grass, floundered, and
went down in a heap. He had grabbed her before she could rise.
“I’m sorry, miss, but it’s me dooty, an ’e’d sy the syme.”
She got to her feet, shaken and breathless, but relieved to find that
she had not even slightly twisted her ankle.
Orace felt something hard dig into his ribs, and knew what it was.
“Will this show you I’m serious?” she panted. “I’d hate to have to
hurt you, Orace; but I will if you drive me to it. I’ve got to go.”
He waited without stirring for a long time. He could easily have
grabbed her wrist and taken the gun from her, but it was the sob in
her voice that stopped him.
“Orlright,” he said at last. “If it’ll myke it easier for yer. . . .”
She knew then that he feared the worst.
They hurried on down the hill. She remembered his limp and let him set
the pace, but he managed to struggle on at a good jog-trot in spite of
his lameness. They went through the village until the black bulk of
the Old House loomed before them.
“Will ya lead the wy, miss, since yer ere? I dunno this plice too
well.”
She took him round by the approach the Saint had used, but there was
no need for the same caution, for the moon would not rise for another
three hours. He stopped her at the door.
“Lemme go fust.”
He thrust her behind him and blocked the way by his greater strength
and weight, and she had to obey. She heard him fumble in his pockets,
and then he kicked open the door and at the same moment a beam of
light stabbed down the passage from the electric torch in his hand.
“See them footmarks?” he whispered. “Men’s bin ’ere lytely, and I’ll
betcha they wuz Tiger Cubs.”
The shaft of luminance broke on the table at the end of the corridor.
The Saint had turned the box round, and from the side elevation its
function was more easily deducible. Even so, it was creditably astute
of Orace to stop dead in his tracks and turn suddenly to an
examination of the door through which they had just come. He found the
scar in the wood where the bullet had splintered it, and went back to
make a study of the ground outside.
“Naow!” he announced at length. “_That_ didn’t catch Mr. Templar, like
it ud uv cort me fee adn’t put it ahter action.”
He went down the passage again, keeping to the centre, so that she was
forced to walk behind him and be shielded by his body. Her hand was on
the automatic in her pocket, and, though every one of her nerves was
tense and tingling, her muscles felt strangely cold and calm. Just as
a boxer, trained to a milligramme, is a bundle of tortured nerves up
to the moment he enters the ring, when all at once his brain becomes
clear and ice-cold as an Arctic sky and his body soothes down in a
second into smooth efficiency—so Patricia’s agony of fear and anxiety
had frozen into a grim chilled-steel determination. The Saint had been
there: they were on his track. The suspense and anguish of inaction
was over.
Orace had halted just before he came to the open door.
“We better lookaht ’ere,” he said.
She was looking round his shoulder as he turned the ray of the torch
into the room, and they both saw the emptiness of it and the yawning
square hole in the floor just inside the threshold.
Orace heard the girl give a strangled cry that choked in her throat.
She would have rushed past him, but he caught and held her, though she
fought him like a fury.
“Wyte—in a minnit!” he urged hoarsely.
He kept her back and edged towards the trap-door, testing the
soundness of the floor inch by inch as he advanced. It was not until
he had thus satisfied himself about the safety of the footing right up
to the edge of the opening that he would allow her to approach it.
They knelt down and turned the light of the torch into the gap. It
shot down far into the blackness till it lost itself in space. Higher
up they could see that the shaft was circular and lined with green,
slimy brick. Evidently they were looking down the remains of a well
over which the Old House had been built: Patricia thought that she
could detect a faint glimmer of reflection of the torch’s light from
the surface of the water. Orace fetched one of the empty beer bottles
from across the room, and they dropped it down the pit. It seemed an
eternity before the hollow sound of the splash returned to their ears.
“Bouter nundred feet,” Orace guessed, and in this he was approximately
right, being no more than sixty feet out.
The girl leaned over and cupped her hands.
“Simon!” she called. “Simon!”
Only the echo answered her.
“Mr. Templar, sir—Orace speakin,” bellowed the man, but it was only
his own voice that boomed back out of the darkness in reply.
Patricia’s face was bowed in her hands.
“Saint, Saint. . . . Oh, God. . . . My darling. . . .” The words came
brokenly, dazedly. “Dear God, if you can save him now, give me his
life!”
Presently she looked at Orace.
“Are you sure he went that way? The other trap didn’t catch him.”
Orace had been examining the pitfall, and now, by the light of the
torch, he pointed to the evidence. A square of the flooring had been
cut out with a keyhole saw, leaving only the flimsiest connections at
the corners which the weight of a man would destroy at once. The
jagged ends of broken wood could be seen at once, and from one of
these Orace plucked a shred of tweed and brought it close to the
light.
“That there’s is,” he said huskily. “Looks like ’e weren’t expectin’
it. . . . But don chew lose art, miss—’e always wuz the luckiest man
wot ever stepped. P’raps ’e’s as right as ryne, lyin aht comfitible
somewhere jus’ lettin the Tiger _think_ ’e’s a goner an get keerless,
an orl set ready ter pop up an’ ’av the larf on ’im lyter.”
It was not Orace’s fault if he did not sound very convincing. His arm
went clumsily about her, and drew her gently away and outside the
room.
“One thing,” he observed in an exaggeratedly commonplace tone, “ther
carn’t be no Tiger Cubs angin arahnd ’ere naow—the noise we’ve myde,
they’d uv bin buzzin in like ornets be this time, if ther ’ad bin.”
“Could we get a rope and go down?” she asked, striving to master her
voice.
“I’ll git sum men from the village to ’av a look,” he promised. “Ain’t
nothink we can do fer im fee _is_ dahn there—’e’d uv gorn howers
ago. . . .”
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. Perhaps he had struck
his head in the fall. . . .
And then, slowly, a change came over her.
There was still that hurtful lump in her throat, and the dead numbness
of her heart, but she was no longer trembling. Instead, she found
herself cold and quiet. The darkness was speckled with dancing, dizzy
splashes of red. . . .
This was the Tiger’s doing—he was the man who had sent Simon Templar
to his death. And, with a bitter, dead, icy certainty, Patricia Holm
knew that she would never rest until she had found the Tiger.
“Come along, Miss Patricia,” pleaded Orace. “It aint so bad—we don’t
_know_ ’e ever went dahn. Lemme tyke yer back, anjer can lie on the
bed while I go explorin; an’ as soons ever I ears anythink I’ll come
an tell ya.”
“No.”
She snapped out the word in a voice that was as clear and strong as a
tocsin.
“There ain’t nothink——”
“There is,” said Patricia. Her hands closed fiercely on Orace’s
shoulders. “There is. _We’ve got to go on with the job._ It’s up to
us. It’s what he’d have wished—he wouldn’t have had any patience with
our going home to weep in our corner and chuck in the towel and let
the Tiger get away. If the Saint gave his life to get the Tiger, we
can’t waste the sacrifice. Orace,” she said—“will you carry on with
me?”
He only hesitated a moment; then she heard him suck in his breath.
“Yes, Miss Patricia,” said Orace. “I guess yer right—we carn’t let the
Tiger get awy wiv it, and we carn’t let Mr. Templar ave gorn under fer
nuffin. An fees gorn, I guess yer must inerit Orace, miss. I’m on.” He
paused. “But adn’t we better get told uv Dr. Carn, miss? ’E’s a
detective, really, Mr. Templar tole me, an ’e’s after the Tiger.”
“I suppose so. . . . We must hurry!”
They passed through the village, and Patricia set off up the hill at a
raking pace, with Orace toiling gamely along just behind.
Carn’s cottage was in darkness, and the girl fairly flew to the front
door and tugged at the bell furiously. She kept it up for a full
minute, but no one answered, though they could hear the metallic
clamour reverberating through the house.
“He’s away,” she said flatly.
The man could see her white face and compressed lips.
“I remember,” he said. “’E kyme up this afternoon ter warn me an Mr.
Templar that the Tiger was meanin’ ter do us in to-night. An’ I sore
’im drivin orf along the Ilfracombe road in the farmer’s trap, me eyes
bein’ rather good. . . . Carn’s fahndart somefing. Wod did ’e wanter
go ter Ilfracombe for?”
“If he _has_ found out anything,” said the girl swiftly, “he probably
went off to call in some reinforcements. Perhaps he found out about
the ship coming in to-night. And in that case he’ll be back soon.”
“Mos’ likely,” agreed Orace cautiously. “But yer carn’t bet on it, yer
know.”
She bit her lip.
“That’s true. We’ve got to make our arrangements and leave him out. If
he arrives, so much the better. I don’t know,” said Patricia slowly,
“that I wouldn’t rather find the Tiger before Carn does.”
Orace, that simple soul, was amazed at the concentrated savageness of
her low, even voice. Women, in his philosophy, did not behave like
this. But Patricia had the gift of leadership, and he had ceased to
question her authority. He made no comment.
“We must wait till they come in for the gold,” she said. “We might as
well go back to the Pill Box and have dinner. We shall want all our
strength.”
Of a sudden the girl had become a remorseless fighting machine. She
had fallen into her part as if she had been born and trained for no
other purpose. It was not so much that the _rôle_ fitted her as that
she was able to adapt herself to the _rôle_. She ruthlessly suppressed
her grief, finding that the rush of action took her mind off the awful
thought of Simon’s fate. She allowed place in her brain for no other
thought than that of trapping the Tiger and squaring up the account,
and she concentrated on the task with every atom of force she could
muster.
A sense of the unreality of the whole affair possessed her, drying up
tears and crushing out sentiment. Her world was reeling and racing
about her—the landmarks were hopelessly lost—but she felt herself
poised above the chaos, remote and stable. The sword in her hand
wielded her. _She was going on with the job._ The fight was going to
be battled out to the last second, with the last ounce of vital energy
in her body; for the time, she seemed to be beyond human limitations.
When it was all over and settled one way or the other the tension
would snap and she would hurtle down into black abysses of terror and
despair; but while the war was still to be waged she knew that hers
was a strength greater than herself—knew that she could stand on the
brink of the chasm in the blinding light and fight tirelessly on to
the death.
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.
“Is that you, Pat?” he said. “I thought I recognised your voice.”
He was surprised at the firmness with which she grasped the limp paw
he extended.
“I was just looking for you,” she said crisply. “Come over to the Pill
Box. We’re going to have some dinner and hold a council of war.”
“W-w-what?” stammered Algy.
“Don’t waste time. I’ll tell you when we get there.”
There was so much crisp command in her tone that he fell in beside
them obediently.
“But, dear old peach,” he protested weakly. “There’s no comic old war
on, don’t you know! Is it a joke? I’ll buy it. Never say Algy isn’t a
sportsman, old darling.”
“There’s nothing very funny about it,” she said, and something deadly
about her obvious seriousness made him hold his peace for the rest of
the journey.
In the Pill Box, she sat down at once to the food Orace provided,
though Algy excused himself. He had already dined, and as a matter of
fact, he explained, he had been on his way to visit her at the Manor.
While she ate she talked—in curt, cold sentences which held even the
fatuous Algy intent. She told him the whole story from beginning to
end, and his jaw sagged lower and lower as the recital proceeded. And
when it was finished she looked anxiously at him, wondering whether he
would say something foolish and soothing about the heat of the day and
the probability that she would feel better in the morning—or, if he
believed her, whether he would show up yellow.
She was satisfied to find that her estimate had been correct. While
she looked, he closed his mouth with a snap, and the tightening of his
mouth lent a new strength to his face. His eyes were gazing steadily
back at her, and there was a steady soberness in them which
transformed him.
“Just like a shilling shocker—what?” said Algy quietly, but there was
not much flippancy in his voice.
She outlined their plan, and he was staggered.
“You’ve a nerve!” he remarked. “But isn’t that old Carn’s job?”
“It was the Saint’s idea,” she told him; “and it’s such a desperate
gamble that it might as easily succeed as not. As for Carn—we daren’t
bank on him. He mightn’t know as much as we think, and he mayn’t have
gone into Ilfracombe for the reason we suppose—we can only hope for
the best. But we’ve got to be prepared to take the field without him.
And, besides, as you’ll understand, I’ve rather a special desire to
meet the Tiger and talk to him alone. . . .”
For an amazing moment Algy saw death in her eyes; then, with the
clenching of a small fist, the ferocity passed, and she was once again
the cold, calculating general planning an attack.
“I know you swim pretty well,” she said. “Can you do the distance?”
He nodded.
“I think so.”
“Will you?”
No more than two seconds ticked away into eternity before he held out
his hand.