Spurs for Algy
It was then ten o’clock.
“The boat should be coming in now,” said Patricia, and she and Algy
went outside to look round.
They lay on the grass at the edge of the cliff, gazing out to sea. It
was a cloudless night, and although there was as yet no moon, the
stars shone brightly and covered the world with a dim silvery
radiance. Starlight is the most deceptive and baffling of lights, but
water is the easiest thing on earth to see over in the dark. The
starlight etched in the tiny ripples over the sea, making it a wide,
smooth expanse of glistening black and luminous grey; the island
called the Old House sheered up from the calm flatness like some
fabulous swarthy beast rising from the depths of the ocean.
“I can see the jolly old tub,” breathed Algy excitedly.
The girl’s hand closed over his arm like a vice.
“The Saint was right,” she said.
But it was not so much seeing the ship as detecting a shadowy mast
silhouette against the sleek darkness of the waters. The hull could be
picked out in a profile of blurred outline, where there showed no
flicker of reflected luminosity from the facets of the wrinkled sea.
The Tiger’s barque must still have been six miles out from the coast,
if not more.
Patricia watched it till her eyes ached.
“They must be coming in very slowly,” she said. “They hardly seem to
have moved in the last five minutes. Right under the Saint’s bedroom
window, they’d have to be careful.”
“Smugglers and pirates all up to date—what?” remarked Algy. “Yo-ho-ho
and a bottle of Bass. . . .”
He was as eager as a schoolboy.
They returned to the Pill Box, and Patricia consulted her watch and
made a rough calculation.
“They should be in about eleven, at this rate,” she reckoned. “You’d
better go home and slip on a bathing costume. And do you happen to
have any firearms about the place?”
“I believe Uncle Hans stocks one.”
She smiled, and took the automatic from her pocket.
“He doesn’t now—Simon relieved him of it last night.”
“Perhaps he’s got another. I’ve an idea there used to be quite an
armoury. I’ll do my best.”
“How long will it take you?”
He thought.
“I’ll be back at eleven.”
“Don’t be later,” she ordered. “It’d make it a longer swim if we went
from the quay, but the tide’s only just turned, so we can’t get along
the beach. We’ll have to go over the cliff here—could you find enough
strong rope?”
“I’ll knock up a bloke in the village. He’s got miles and miles of
it—sells it to the stout mariners, y’know.”
She nodded.
“Go ahead, then, Algy. I’ll expect you back sharp at eleven.”
“Oh, most frightfully rather!” promised Mr. Lomas-Coper.
“Cheer-screamingly-ho, wuff, wuff!”
He pranced off in a realistically Wodehousian manner, and the girl
smiled. Algy was the goods, under his superficial fatuousness, and
even if he were not noticeably blessed with superfluous quantities of
grey matter he was at least a very willing horse. In the miasma of
dark suspicion which lay over most of the population of Baycombe, it
was a relief to find a man who was too foolish to be dangerous and
simple enough to be loyal. She had always suspected that Algy
cherished a fluffy and sentimental affection for her—he would call at
the Manor on romantically moonlit nights and try to make her stroll in
the garden with him, and, on these occasions, unless she exerted
herself to keep up an uninterrupted flow of idle impersonal chatter,
he was wont to become inarticulate and calf-eyed. Now, if never
before, she felt grateful for his incoherent adoration.
But with the departure of the effervescent and devoted Algy, and the
intervention of a blank reign of tenterhooks before the next move
could be made and the next rush of action and danger could sweep her
up in its course, the leering black devils that had been pushed back
out of sight for the time being came round her again, grinning and
gibing to torment her. She could think of her man again, and with the
clarity of a vision he seemed to stand before her. Her hands went out
to him, and then he vanished, and at her feet, in the floor of the
Pill Box, opened the square trap-door that she had seen in that room
of the Old House. She started back, covering her eyes, and dropped
into a chair.
Resolutely she bent to the conquest of her mind. It was no use going
to pieces—that would be fatal, when the reins of the adventure had
come into her hands and victory or defeat must come under her
leadership. To fail now would be an unforgivable treachery to the
Saint: to succeed would be a last tribute to his memory.
And once again she achieved the mastery of herself. Taut and quivering
like a bow drawn to the shaft in the hands of an archer, Patricia Holm
sat in the Saint’s chair with her head in her arms for a long time.
The effort was as much physical as mental, and every muscle ached.
There were hot unshed tears in her eyes, but they did not fall.
“Soldiers’ wives!” he had said to her, last thing before they parted,
and she knew that that was the only heroic game to play.
She lost track of time. She must have sunk into a kind of trance,
perhaps from sheer nervous weariness, for the sound of someone
tiptoeing about the room roused her with a jar, and it seemed as if
she had slept.
It was Orace, clad in an amazingly striped swimming suit, with a broad
leather belt about his waist. From the belt his mammoth revolver
dangled by a length of stout cord.
“Ain’t that thunderin’ flop-ears come back yet?” he demanded
scornfully, seeing that the girl was awake. “We’ll ’av ta go wivaht
’im—I spect ’e’s lorst ’is bed-socks an’ carn’t find the otwaterbol.
I’m orl ready when yer sy ‘Go,’ miss.”
She was stunned to find that it was ten past eleven.
“Go and have another look,” she said. “Go a little way down the hill
and see if he’s coming.”
Orace went, as though he thought it was waste of energy.
Patricia went out and looked down from the cliff edge again. Her
calculation had been a good one. The tip of the moon had just peeped
up over the rim of the sea, and that made the visibility an
infinitesimal fraction of a candle-power better. In an hour or two
there would be as much light as they wanted, and probably rather more.
And the Tiger’s motor ship was riding right under her eyes, quite easy
to see now, about three cables’ lengths off the island. Two black
midgets, which she recognised as the ship’s boats, were sculling
towards the Old House; she could hear, very faintly, the almost
imperceptible rattle of a smooth-running donkey engine. It was not for
some time after that she observed a third boat cruising diagonally
across the water towards the big ship. From its course she knew that
it must have come from the direction of the quay.
Was that Carn, possibly supported by other detectives, ferrying out to
catch the Tiger? If so, she was too late, and the law would have to
deal with the Tiger after its own protracted and quibbling
fashion. . . . But would Carn have been so foolish as to imagine that
he could approach the Tiger like that without being spotted by the
look out on board? She knew that detectives were popularly judged by
the standards of fiction, according to which all police officials have
big feet and small intelligence, but she could hardly believe that
even the flat-footed kind of oaf depicted by the novelist could be
such a flabbergasting imbecile.
Suddenly she saw the solution. The Tiger was in Baycombe, but with the
removal of his gold the reason for his stay was also taken away. That
boat must have been sent over to fetch him. The Tiger was even then
being rowed out to his ship—the ship they were to capture.
Patricia drew a deep breath. Things were clearing up. All the
widespread threads of the tangled web of mystery and terror that had
cast its shadow so unexpectedly over her life and her home had been
obligingly gathered up and dumped down in the few hundred square yards
of shining water below. The gold was there; the Tiger was there; the
Tiger Cubs were there. The gold was of secondary importance, and the
Tiger Cubs, being nothing without their leader, were of no importance
whatever except as a dangerous obstacle to be overcome. But the Tiger
was the big prize in the Lucky Dip, and that was a gamble she was
relentlessly determined to win. There would be no more mystery about
his identity, once she was on board: he could only be one of two
people. And then . . .
Orace loomed silently out of the dimness.
“Carn’t see ’im,” he said shortly, and with that he would have
dismissed the subject of Mr. Lomas-Coper. “Owda we get dahn this
plurry precipyse, Miss Patricia? I’d fergot—we ain’t got no rope ter
speak of ’ere.”
“He was going to bring some,” said the girl. “I wonder if anything’s
happened to him?”
She was at a loss to explain the defection of Algy. He had been so
thrilled with the adventure that she could not believe that he would
deliberately let her down, and she did not number cowardice among his
failings. Had Bloem found out that she had enlisted Algy? The
possibility of a spy listening outside the embrasure while she talked
had not occurred to her, and the thought sent her cold. If they had
been overheard, the Tiger Cubs would be waiting for them, and their
plan was foredoomed to failure—unless by some brilliant revision it
could be brought to bear from another angle.
Then she had an inspiration. If Algy had been returning punctually, he
would have passed by the quay about the time the boat she had seen was
picking up the Tiger himself. Algy knew all the facts, and if he had
noticed anything suspicious he would probably have stopped to
investigate. Then, like the impetuous ass he was, he’d have managed to
drop several large bricks. . . .
“They may have got him already,” she said. “I’ve got a hunch what must
have happened. We’ll go down and see.”
Already she was heading down the hill, and Orace followed
protestingly.
“’E ain’t werf it, miss, onestter Gawd, ’e ain’t.”
“He’s two more men than we can afford to lose,” Patricia retorted
crisply. “In any case, we’ve got to go this way. We must get some rope
and see if Carn’s back—I’d like to know that the police were going to
chip in later, in case we don’t bring it off.”
The quay, so called by courtesy, was no more than fifty yards by ten
of rough stone, littered with coils of rope, drying nets,
lobster-pots, and spars. Behind it were tarred wooden huts used by the
fishermen to repair their things; and from one end of it a stone jetty
ran out for no more than twenty yards.
They stopped and looked round.
From a very little distance came a slithering sound and a low groan.
Then a weak whisper: “Pat!”
Orace had thoughtfully brought his torch, but the girl stopped him
using it, aware that they could be seen from the ship if anyone
happened to be looking that way. She traced the voice, and almost at
once came upon the man lying against the wall of one of the huts.
“Is that you, Algy?”
“Right—first go,” he got out. “I’m a washout—to get—pipped—bang
off—like this!”
She was supporting his head with her arm, and Orace was hovering
ineffectually around.
“How did they get you?” she asked. “Is it bad?”
“Think I’ll pull—round—in a sec.,” he muttered with an effort. “I’m
not going to die—by a fluke.”
At this news Orace, finding that he had not to play odd man out at a
deathbed scene, moved the girl aside and picked Algy up. He carried
him round behind the hut and then switched the torch on him. Blood was
running down the side of Algy’s face from an ugly furrow which was
scored from the outside end of his eyebrow to the top of his ear, and
there was a black cordite burn on his temple.
“Point-blank,” he said. “It stunned me. But I’ll soon be as fit as a
fiddle.”
Orace had found a bucket, and in this he fetched water from the sea.
Algy heaved himself and plunged his head in the pail for three or four
long douches, coming up for breath in between. The salt water stung
his wound painfully, but his head was rapidly clearing.
While they tied a handkerchief round his head he told the story, and
it was much as the girl had surmised.
“So, like a little hero,” he concluded ruefully, “I walked up and said
‘Hands up!’ in the approved manner. And then I got this.”
“Did you recognise anybody?”
“It was too dark to see their faces—I didn’t even see the jolly old
pea-shooter they used on me. But one of them was short and fat, which
must have been the Sausage-meat Sultan, and I’m blowed if another
hadn’t got something doocid like the height and shape of Uncle Hans!”
“How many were there?”
“Three or four—they stood in a group, so I can’t be quite certain.”
He was struggling to his feet, and he stood leaning against the wall
of the hut. The shock must have been worse than he admitted, for his
face was white and drawn.
“How do you feel now?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said. “I feel as if the top of my head’s breaking off, but
otherwise I’m absolutely O.K. Let’s get along—the string’s where I
dropped it, round in front. Lead on!”
Orace had faded away to fetch the rope, and in a moment he returned
with a heavy coil of it slung over his shoulder.
“Don’t chew fink ya better go ’ome?” he asked. “Yer carn’t be yupter
much after this.”
The honourable wound which Mr. Lomas-Coper had received in the Cause
had immediately destroyed Orace’s animosity towards him. In another
second Orace would call him “sir.”
“No, I don’t,” said Algy strongly, and roughly he shook off their
hands. “I’m going through with this now. Blast it, those unmitigated
blighters shot me up! I’ve jolly well got to meet them again, and I
shall be fearfully vindictive about it. The cold water ’ll do me no
end of good, and by the time we’re aboard the lugger I’ll be ready for
anything.”
“Well, I’m glad jer nor worse ’urt, sir,” said Orace in a tone of
encouragement. “But if I might just take yerrarm while yer gettin yer
bref, so ter speak. . . .”
The girl also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way; in the
grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as
she was of sparing herself.
“But we ought to get Carn,” she said.
“I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back,” Algy
answered. “He hasn’t returned. We’ll have to do without him.”
The hope of legal reinforcements seemed to be receding, thought
Patricia, as they set off towards the Pill Box. It appeared that she
had been mistaken about Carn’s knowledge, for if he had been planning
to make his _coup_ that night he must have been on the spot by that
time. And, since he was not, the management of the bun-fight was left
entirely to the three of them.
In the Pill Box it was Algy who decided that the safest way to fix
their rope was to pass it round a section of the wall, by way of two
embrasures, tying it on the outside; though the actual work was left
to Orace, as a man with some nautical experience. A change had come
over Algy, sobering down his bubbling vapidness and turning him into a
sensible man. It had been done by the bullet which had so nearly
smashed him out of the adventure altogether—the fool had been stung by
a hard fact, and it had brought out into the open the character which
for years he had taken such pains to conceal. Automatically he rose
from the ranks to a commission, with Pat as his only superior: Orace
accepted the transformation philosophically.
They paid out the rope hand over hand, prone on the turf (by Orace’s
advice) so as not to be visible from below, for the moonlight was
strengthening. The rope itself ran down in a kind of big groove in the
rock, so that as they descended they would be almost hidden in the
shadow.
“It should be long enough,” said Algy. “I allowed plenty.” He was
peeling off his raincoat, and stood in bathing costume like the other
two. “Who goes first?”
“Final orders,” said Patricia—“tuck the artillery up in your belts and
mind it doesn’t clank against the rock; don’t make one-millionth of a
splash swimming; and don’t talk—you know how sound travels over water.
Now, good luck to everyone! Follow your leader. . . .”
Before either of the men could stop her she had twisted over the edge
with the rope in her hands, and was sliding down, bracing herself off
the cliff wall with her feet.
She was strong and without fear, and the rope was longer than it need
have been. She still had hold of it when her feet grounded on the
pebbly beach with the water lapping round her knees.
She stepped back and waved her arm.
Algy stood beside her in a minute, and Orace joined them after a
similar interval. Without a word they waded in and pushed off. All
three were strong swimmers, but one of them had a dud leg and another
was still recovering from the effects of that glancing bullet across
his skull. Before them lay two miles of sea, and at the end of it a
desperately daring hazard.
The water was ideally calm and not too chilly for the distance.
Patricia, who was like a fish in the water, hung a length behind the
others, so that she could see if either of them crocked up. She turned
over on her side and nestled her ear into the water, ploughing on with
long, easy, noiseless strokes.
At that particular moment Mr. Central Detective Inspector Carn and his
posse were plodding wearily through the darkness towards Baycombe,
their car having broken down with twelve miles still to go, and the
prospects of getting a lift on that lonely road, at that hour of the
night, being exactly _nil_.