The Tiger
Precisely three minutes later, Simon Templar and Orace were led into
the saloon under an armed guard.
“Good-evening, dear Bittlekins,” murmured the Saint affably. “Fancy
meeting you!—as the vicar said when he saw one of the leading lights
of the parish Mothers’ Union dancing at the Forty-Three. Sit down and
tell me all the news.”
Bittle smiled.
“We all make slips,” he said, “but I scarcely imagined you would
overlook such an obvious factor as Miss Holm.”
“I was just hoping that you yourself might overlook it,” explained the
Saint. “I honestly thought you were slow enough on the uptake for
that. Still, we all make our mistakes, as the bishop said, even the
very youngest and most inexperienced of us—and very few mistakes are
irreparable.”
Bittle nodded slowly.
“Very few,” he agreed. “I made a bad one when I presumed your
death—but, as you see, that error has been rectified. Even now,
Templar, you are a dead man.”
The Saint let his gaze travel round the saloon.
“Quite comfortable,” he admitted, “but I really thought Heaven would
be a bit more luxurious. Besides”—he surveyed the six tough customers
who had ranged themselves round him in a semi-circle that fairly
bristled with knives and revolvers—“These don’t look like angels; and
you don’t, either, my pet, if it comes to that. Do you think I could
have missed the bus and arrived in Hell by mistake?”
His sodden trousers were shapeless, and the white of his torn shirt
was marked with grease, but still, by the exercise of his inimitable
gift, he was able to look debonair and immaculate. And, for all the
apparently overwhelming odds against him, he retained his air of
unshakable confidence. But this time Bittle could see no loophole in
the trap in which he had the Saint, and he refused to be awed by
anything so intangible as the Saint’s assured bearing.
“Have they been searched?” he asked one of the guard, but it was Simon
who answered.
“I gave up my gun when I surrendered.”
“And kept your knife—I remember that trick,” said Bittle.
He himself removed Anna, and by making a thorough examination he found
also her twin sister strapped to the Saint’s leg. The discovery
pleased him.
“I’m not making any more mistakes, Templar.”
“So glad!” drawled Simon. “May I have my cigarette-case back, please?
Anna and Belle aren’t any use to anyone but myself, but the
cigarette-case is really silver—I won it in the Open Ludo Tournament
at Bournemouth in ’13.”
Bittle examined the case, and, failing to find anything suspicious
about it, returned it to the Saint, who replaced it in his hip pocket.
The Saint turned suddenly on his heel, and the guard sprang back a
pace and put up their weapons, and Simon laughed.
“Your men aren’t very brave, are they?” he remarked. “I’m unarmed, and
each of them looks like a travelling arsenal—but watch!”
He feinted at one of the tough-looking customers and the man flinched
away. The Saint tweaked his nose ungently, and, wheeling round,
tripped up another man and sent him crashing to the floor. Bittle
sprang up with an oath, reaching for his revolver, but the Saint
turned back with a light chuckle and put up his hands.
“Merely a demonstration of moral superiority,” he said airily. “Even
now, you see, I can scare you!”
“I’ll soon stop that,” Bittle grated, furious at having let himself be
alarmed by the exhibition, and pointed to one of the men. “Fetch a
rope—we’ll see what he can do when he’s trussed up.”
“Anything you like,” said the Saint boastfully. “Houdini is my middle
name, and knots mean nothing to me.”
The rope was brought, and Simon’s hands were tied securely behind his
back. The man knew his job, and, since he was the gentleman whose nose
the Saint had taken liberties with, he did not consider the prisoner’s
comfort at all. The cords bit savagely into Simon’s wrists, tightened
up by a violent hand, but the Saint only smiled.
“Mind you don’t break the rope,” he said solicitously.
The man knelt down to bind the Saint’s ankles, but the Saint, without
any haste or heat, put his foot in the man’s face and pushed him over.
“If there’s no objection,” he murmured, “I’ll sit down first.”
He crossed the saloon nonchalantly and took one of the swivel chairs.
Then he let the seaman tie his ankles together. The same brutal force
was exerted there, and when the operation was complete the man
straightened and deliberately struck Simon on the mouth. The Saint did
not move, and the man spat in his face.
“I congratulate you,” said the Saint in a low voice. “You are the
first man that has ever done that to me, and I am pleased to think
that before morning you will make the thirteenth man I have killed.”
“That’ll do,” rapped Bittle, as the man raised his fist again. “Tie up
his servant.”
Orace clenched his hands and looked round belligerently.
“Cummernava try!” he challenged.
Orace was game enough, but there were men all round him, and he could
only knock two of them flying before the rest were clinging to his
arms and legs and bearing him, still struggling and swearing
sulphurously, to the floor. He was trussed up even more
comprehensively than the Saint, perhaps because his cruder form of
defiance was more understandable to the inferior mentalities of the
guard; and then one of the men was sent to bring in the girl, and
Simon braced himself up for the meeting.
Patricia walked into the saloon with her head held high, but her calm
was not proof against the sight of the Saint’s bruised face and the
thin trickle of blood running down his chin from the corner of his
mouth.
“Simon!” she sobbed, and would have run to him, but two of the guard
clutched at her and dragged her back against the wall.
“It’s all right, old darling,” said the Saint urgently. “Don’t let the
swine see you break down. . . . I’m not hurt. Just been in a vulgar
brawl, and it’s nothing to what the blister who did it will look like
when I’ve finished with him. . . . Now, Pat, old thing, cast an eye
over that nasty object across the way. It’s old fat Bittle himself,
and he’s going to make a speech about his triumph—I can see it written
all over the boil he calls his face.”
Bittle nodded.
“You must confess,” he said, “that I have some cause to be satisfied
with the conclusion of our little rivalry.”
“Conclusion my sock-suspenders!” snorted the Saint. “I haven’t started
yet!”
“In that case, Templar, you would appear to have sacrificed your
chance for ever. . . . But your diagnosis, in a way, was quite
correct—I was about to outline to you the programme which I propose to
follow with regard to your immediate future.”
“Careers for our Boys,” quoth Simon irreverently.
Bittle clasped his hands across his stomach.
“Before we proceed with that interesting exposition, however,” he
said, “I think there are two members of the company who would like to
be present.” He turned to one of the guard. “Lambert, will you go and
see if Mr. Bloem and Mr. Maggs have recovered sufficiently to join
us?”
The man left the saloon, and there was silence for a moment. Presently
Bittle said:
“While we’re waiting, perhaps you’d care to tell me how you managed to
escape?”
The Saint grinned.
“Nothing is easier. When I was an infant, a celebrated clairvoyant and
cardsharper told me that I had been born under the sign of the Zodiac
known to astronomers as Humpty Dumpty and to the lay public as the
Egg. Taking his words to heart, I early applied myself to the study of
the science of Levitation, in the hope of averting the doom which had
been prophesied for me. I succeeded so well, by virtue of years of
practice and self-denial and hours of fasting and prayer, that I can
now back myself to bounce to almost unlimited heights. Consequently,
when I fell into your little trap, I was able to fall out again, if
you get the idea. I think that’s the whole story—except that an aunt
of mine once had an under-gardener whose nephew knew a man whose
father had once shaken hands with a lady who remembered meeting a
dentist in Maida Vale whose second cousin twice removed was the
divorced wife of a Manchester stockbroker who once ate a pint of
whelks with a lawn-mower on Wigan Pier for a bet. In fact,” went on
Simon, warming to his subject, “we are a very distinguished family.
Another aunt of mine had gout and a mother-in-law whose cook married a
gas-fitter who——”
“Spare us your humour,” pleaded Bittle wearily. “It doesn’t amuse me.”
“But it amuses me!—as the actress said on an auspicious occasion,”
said the Saint, and would have continued in that vein if Bloem and
Maggs had not arrived at that moment.
Both looked much the worse for wear, and their heads bore abundant
tokens of the cold water which had been liberally used in
resuscitating them. In addition, Bloem’s forehead was disfigured by a
bruise which was rapidly taking to itself all the brighter hues of the
rainbow, and the way he glared at the Saint was not friendly.
“The compliments of the season, Mynheer,” drawled Simon. “And who’s
the other little ray of sunshine, Mr. Chairman?”
“Our captain, Mr. Maggs,” Bittle introduced that injured warrior
suavely. “You have not met him before, Templar, but our dear friend
Miss Holm knocked him out an hour or two ago.”
“Delighted!” murmured the Saint. “She seems to have made a good job of
it, Maggie—or did you always look like that?”
Mr. Maggs lowered.
“My name’s Maggs,” he blustered.
“But I shall call you Maggie,” insisted the Saint. “It’s more matey,
and it suits you better. And really I didn’t mean to be rude about
your face. You’ve got a nice kind face, like a cow.”
Mr. Maggs turned away with a growl, and stalked over to the girl. Then
the Saint was afraid, and the veins stood out purply on his forehead
as he wrestled with his bonds.
Maggs took the girl’s chin in his thick fingers and tilted up her
face, leering down at her.
“You might’ve killed me,” he said—“hitting me like that. But I’ll make
you apologise later, and I like my apologies sweet.”
“Sit down, Maggs,” snapped Bittle.
Maggs still persisted.
“Give us a kiss to be getting on with, like a good girl.”
“Sit—down—Maggs!”
Bittle was on his feet, and there was death in his hand. Grumbling,
Mr. Maggs lurched into a chair and sat staring at Patricia in his ugly
way.
Bloem went round to the chair opposite Maggs, but Bittle remained
standing at one end of the table. The Saint sat at the other end.
Bittle paused for a moment, and the men grouped round the walls
fidgeted into stillness. A macabre atmosphere of fiendish
cold-bloodedness began to fill the room. It came from the
hate-smouldering eyes of all those silent men, and it clouded
malevolently behind the stocky figure of John Bittle. Bittle was
posing at the end of the table, waiting for the theatrical effect of
the gathering to tense up to a nerve-tearing pitch, and a sensitive
man could have felt the silence keying up to the point at which
unreasoning terror crowds in like a foul vapour. Seconds throbbed away
in that pulsating suspense. . . .
The Saint cleared his throat.
“Rising to address this general meeting at the close of such a
successful year,” he prompted, “I feel—— Go on, Bittle. Declare the
dividend, and make sure all your braces buttons are safe before you
bow to the applause.”
His gently mocking tones broke down some of the tension. He looked
across at the girl, and she smiled back.
“I’m not taking any notice,” she said in a clear voice. “He’s only
indulging his love for melodrama.”
“Melodrama,” replied Bittle, “is a thing for which I have an
instinctive loathing. Yet, in a situation such as this, it is very
hard to avoid overstepping the bounds of banality. However, I will try
to be as precise and to the point as possible.” He fixed his malignant
gaze on the Saint. “This man, Templar, whom you see, has elected to
interfere in matters which do not concern him. By a succession of
miracles, he has so far managed to avoid the various arrangements
which we have made for disposing of him; but now, on the open sea, I
hardly think he can escape. He has put us to great inconvenience, and
I don’t think anyone here has any cause to bear him any good will.
While he lives, no one here is safe. I believe I am merely the
spokesman of everyone present when I say that he must die.”
He looked from face to face, and there was a mutter of assent. He
looked at the Saint again.
“I endorse that verdict,” he said.
“Blatherskite and brickdust!” said the Saint disparagingly.
Bittle continued.
“Then there is this man—Orace. He is also a man against whom some of
you will bear a personal grudge. In any case, he is in Templar’s
confidence, and therefore I say that he too must die.”
“Pure banana oil,” jeered the Saint.
“Finally,” said Bittle, “there is the girl. I propose to marry her
myself, and Maggs will conduct the service as soon as the sentence has
been carried out upon Templar and Orace.” He picked up a revolver from
the table and waved it meaningly. “If there is anyone here—Maggs
included—who objects to that, he can speak now.”
Nobody moved.
“Scat!” remarked the Saint.
“Is that all the protest even our redoubtable Mr. Templar can make?”
Bittle sneered. “I’m disappointed—you’ve talked so much about what you
were going to do to all of us that I was expecting something
interesting.”
Simon yawned.
“Before I die,” he said, “may I tell you my celebrated joke about a
man called Carn? I wonder if you’ve heard it before? There was once a
physician called Carn, but nobody cared worth a darn—if a man said ‘By
Heck! That bloke might be a ’tec!’ the others would simply say ‘Garn!’
And yet it happens to be true. Isn’t it odd?”
“Patricia”—Bittle rolled the name out with relish—“has already told me
that story. If it is any comfort to you, I can assure you that it will
only make me more careful of her health. The same ultimatum which
brought you into my power will, I think, discourage Carn. It will
certainly be an awkward dilemma for him, but I imagine that his
humanity will triumph over his sense of duty.”
“If that is so,” said Simon slowly, “I think he will be sure to give
the order to fire—and blow this ship and everyone on board to
smithereens.”
Bittle shrugged, and signed to one of the men whom Orace had floored.
“We will start with the servant,” he said.
“Yah!” gibed Orace. “Yer a lotter thunderin’ ’eroes, you are! Undo me
’ands, and cummaht on the deck, any sixeryer, an’ I’ll showyer wotter
rough-’ouse feels like!”
Beads of perspiration broke out on the man’s face as he slowly raised
the revolver.
“Sorlright, sir,” Orace ground out. “Don’ think I care a damn fer wot
ennyer these bleedin’ barstids do. . . . Shoot, yer maggot! Wotcha
skeered of? ’Fraid I’ll bite yer? . . . Git on wiv it, an’ be blarsted
to yer!”
“Wait!”
The Saint’s mildest voice scarcely masked the whiplash crack of his
command, and the man lowered his gun. Bittle turned to him.
“Have you, after all, something to say before the sentence is carried
out?” he inquired ironically. “Perhaps you would like to go down on
your knees and beg me to spare you? Your prayers will not move me, but
the spectacle of Mr. Templar grovelling at my feet would entertain me
vastly. . . .”
“Not this journey,” said the Saint.
Already he had worked the cigarette-case from his pocket and cut
through the cords which had bound his hands, though it had been a long
and difficult feat. Now he had slid forward in the chair and tucked
his legs well back, and he was patiently sawing away at the ropes
which pinioned his ankles.
“You see,” said the Saint, in the same leisured tone, “we are all, as
you recently observed, liable to make our mistakes, and you have made
three very big ones. You must understand, my seraph, that your own
loathing for melodrama is only equalled by my love for it, and I think
I can say that I staged this little conversazione simply for my own
diversion. It seemed to me that this adventure ought to finish off in
a worthily dramatic manner, and if all goes well you’ll have to bear
the agony of watching enough melodrama concentrated into the next few
minutes to fill a book. Things, from approximately now onwards, will
go with a kick strong enough to set the Lyceum gasping. How does that
appeal to you, beloved?”
“I’ll tell you when I hear,” said Bittle brusquely, but the Saint
declined to be hurried.
“The speechifying,” he remarked, “will now come from the principal
shareholder, so please don’t fluster me. Sit down and listen—you’ve
had your turn. . . . Well, here we all are, just like a happy family,
and exactly where I wanted you all. I grant you I took a big risk, but
I had to do it to get the scene nicely set and the audience all worked
up and palpitating in their pews. Also, it happened to be necessary to
pass a little time before the moment was ripe for trotting out the big
thrill. Now, if you’re ready, I’ll send up the first balloon.” The
Saint paused, and smiled from Bloem to Bittle. “Where is Harry the
Duke?”
If he had detonated a charge of thermite under their feet he could not
have produced a greater sensation. The men looked from one to another,
suspicion and rage and fear chasing over their faces deliriously. For
a space there was an electric silence, while the Saint leaned back in
his chair, smiling beatifically, and felt the last strand of rope
break away from his ankles.
Then the storm broke loose. Bittle reached forward and pawed at
Bloem’s shoulder frenziedly.
“What’s happened to Harry?” he snarled.
Bloem jumped to his feet and struck down Bittle’s hand.
“Leave me alone!” Bloem’s nerves were raw and jagged. “It isn’t my
fault—you never asked me, and you’ve been too busy talking yourself
for me to tell you.” He glared round at the Saint. “That meddling
puppy got me—I was just taking Harry some food—the door was open, and
he got me. I knew he’d found Harry!”
Bittle sprang at the Boer like a wild beast, his face contorted with
demoniac fury, and Bloem reeled back from a vicious blow. In an
instant Bittle had grabbed a couple of revolvers, and was holding them
threateningly in his quivering hands, and Bloem cowered sullenly back
from the flaming passion that blazed in Bittle’s eyes. Bittle, in that
towering paroxysm, would have murdered the other where he stood, given
the slightest provocation, and the Boer knew it.
“Search the ship!” Bittle shrilled. “You—all of you! Get out and
search the ship!”
“Why bother?” asked the Saint in his silkiest manner. “If you want to
find Harry the Duke, my little ones, you’ll have to go all the way
back to Baycombe!”
Bittle swung round.
“Meaning?” he prompted dangerously.
“Meaning that when I’d dented old Bloem’s cranium, I went into the
cabin and found Harry the Duke, _alias_ Agatha Girton,” said Simon.
“We had quite a long chat. He told me how Agatha died years and years
ago, at Hyères, and Harry took her place. The Tiger found him out—and
that was another bad bloomer. You’d have thought any sane man would
have been satisfied with a cool million; but no, the Tiger was so
greedy he had to blackmail Harry for Miss Holm’s money, and that made
Harry sore. Harry’s a dangerous man when he’s sore, and he tried to
kill the Tiger. Then the Tiger saw what a mug he’d been, and decided
to take Harry off on the cruise and dump him over the side with a
couple of firebars spliced to his feet, which is a very effective way
of killing a man and has the advantage that it leaves no incriminating
corpses about. Harry was able to tell me quite a lot of interesting
things about Tigers and Tiger Cubs. Then I told him a few things _he_
didn’t know, and after that we shook hands—he was really a sportsman,
because he did try to put the kibosh on your hanky-panky with Miss
Holm, whom he was rather fond of—and I let him slip over the side and
swim back to Baycombe on condition he wrote an anonymous letter to
Carn telling him all those things about Tigers and Tiger Cubs which
we’d discussed.” The Saint looked almost apologetic. “And, therefore,
one and only—thank God—Bittle, I can assure you that the police will
come aboard with the pilot if you so much as show the tip of your
bowsprit outside Cape Town harbour, and the Mounted will be camped all
round T. T. Deeps in case you manage to sneak in by the back way.
Rather upsetting, isn’t it?”
“You at least, will not laugh much longer,” said Bittle, and put the
muzzle of one of his revolvers in the Saint’s face.
“Half a sec!” Simon’s voice ripped out like a gunshot, and Bittle
hesitated with his finger tightening on the trigger. “While I’m being
so communicative, you might as well hear the rest of the yarn—it may
help you, though I doubt it. Let me tell you your second mistake. I’ve
got another stiff one ready to shoot at you! This is mostly Orace’s
story, but he won’t mind my cribbing it. Orace, you know, hasn’t been
wasting his time. Orace went below and laid out your engineer and put
on his clothes. You spoke to him yourself, and never guessed—I’ll bet
that makes you hop! Then I arrived, and also mistook Orace for the
genuine article, and I’d nearly killed him before I found out my
error. Orace and I knew enough about motors to obey the telegraph, and
it was us what took this here _bateau_ out for you. After we’d
finished I made Orace take off the overalls, so that you wouldn’t
suspect anything; but the real engineer is still locked up below, and
he must be pretty cramped and peevish by this time! But that’s not the
whole yarn—not by a mile!”
Bittle had lowered his gun as the Saint talked on, for it was dawning
upon Bittle that the Saint had an even bigger trump card yet to play.
Prince of bluffers though the Saint might be, Bittle could not believe
that he could bluff for his life in such a casual manner. The Saint
smiled all the time, and he was smiling in such a way as almost to
invite the others to doubt his word, yet every now and then he handed
them out one perfect gem of verifiable fact to shatter their illusions
and force them back to credulity. He used his facts as pegs on which
to hang the decorations with which his egotism compelled him to
embellish the tale, but for all that those facts stuck out as stark
and uncontrovertible as a forest of spears. And all the time Bittle
could sense that the Saint, in his mild and lingering way, was working
up to an even more devastating bombshell. What that bombshell was
going to be Bittle could not divine, but the conviction was borne in
upon him that a mine of some sort was going to be exploded somewhere
in his vicinity. And therefore he waited for the Saint to have his
say, for he was hoping to minimise his danger by letting the Saint
forearm him against it.
Simon was gazing through a porthole at the dark horizon, and something
that he saw there seemed to please him. His smile trembled on the
verge of laughter, as at some secret jest, and when he went on there
was a trace of excitement creeping into his voice.
“Orace and I,” said the Saint, “have brains, and Orace used to be a
Sergeant of Marines, so he was able to provide the raw material for
our ingenuity to work on. Before we started the picnic, we put your
bilge-pump out of action and opened up one of the scuttles in the
keel. My nautical knowledge is very scanty, and I’m not sure if that’s
the way a sailor would describe the gadgets, but I expect Maggie will
tell you what I mean. Anyway, a lot of water started pouring in, and
we legged it out of the way without waiting to see what happened next.
Still, I notice that we seem to have lost a lot of speed, and unless
my eyes are failing I should say that we had developed what I
understand is called a list to starboard, so I suppose the old tub
really is going down. Check me up if I’m wrong. . . .”
Maggs started up, and the others looked wildly about them. The Saint
had spoken the truth. The list had developed very slowly at first, so
that no one had noticed it in their absorption in more tempestuous
things, but now that the Saint had called their attention to it the
fact was indisputable.
Suddenly there was a stampede for the door.
Bittle leapt forward, raving like a maniac, and quelled the panic. He
fought in between the terrified mob and the door, and held them off at
revolver point. Then he himself opened the door and looked out.
The ship had lost way considerably, and was now heeling over so much
that it was difficult to walk on the sloping decks.
Bloem was swaying drunkenly towards the door.
“The gold!” he blubbered. “The gold! . . . It’ll sink! . . . Bittle,
make them get the gold into the boats!”
“You’re a fool!”
Bittle pushed the man back—he was easily the calmest of them all. His
rage had simmered down, now, out of visibility, but it gleamed behind
his small pale blue eyes like the molten lava which oozes down the
sides of a volcano when the eruption has died down. Both his guns went
up.
“You beat me in the end, Templar!” he shouted. “But I can see that you
never enjoy it.” Like one possessed, he kicked aside a man who stood
in his line of fire. “Laugh now, Templar!” he babbled. “It’s your last
laugh!”
And the Saint chuckled, throwing back his head joyously, for he had
seen the final shock which he had allowed for dovetail in according to
schedule.
“_Put up your hands, Bittle!_”
The voice cracked into the room like a bared sabre.
Bittle turned and saw the man who had appeared in the doorway, and his
revolvers thudded to the carpet from his nerveless fingers.
He shrank away into the farthest corner, and his face had gone grey
and horrible.
Algy took a step into the room, a heavy automatic in each hand, and
the men retreated before him. He swept them with hard, merciless eyes.
“I think you all know me,” said Mr. Lomas-Coper, in the same metallic
voice.
He looked at the girl, and read bewilderment in her face.
“I am the Tiger,” said Algy.