The Saint Meets the Tiger (17 page)

Then another voice asked, “Can you arrange to guide us in?”

“I’ll post a man on the Old House, seaward side, with a green lantern.”

“Is there likely to be trouble?”

“I can’t say yet. I’m hoping to get rid of Templar this evening, but he was born lucky, and he might manage to escape again. Be on the safe side. I’ve just heard that that might make him back out, squeak to the dicks, and leave the rest to them. I think it’s too late for that to matter, but you’d better be prepared for anything.”

“I shall.”

“Good. Did you get the full crew?”

“Two oilers didn’t turn up. I heard just before midnight they were stewed to the gills downtown. I took a chance and left ‘em. You said I was to sail punctually.”

“Quite right—but that leaves you with only eleven, counting yourself, doesn’t it?”

“That’s so. Chief. But we can manage easy.”

“You’ll have to…. Now listen. I want you to send the first boat round to the quay. You’ll miss the fishermen—they’ll have gone out on the tide, at ten. Bittle and Bloem will be with me, and Templar might be, too. That depends on what happens, and what I decide to do with him. His servant will go over the cliff just about the time you’re picking us up. And I might have to bring the girl along as well. I’m still wondering whether Templar’s put her next this joke. In any case, she’s very easy on the eyes. I’ll get a report shortly, and then I’ll be able to think better what to do.”

“This is a new one on you, Chief—dragging a skirt in. You always swore you wouldn’t have it.”

The voice of the Tiger snapped back incisively:

“That’s my business, Maggs! When I want your opinions I’ll ask for them. All you’ve got to do is have the cabins ready and send that boat to the quay. Get off all the other boats you can man to the Old House. You can get three away, and still keep a guard. And keep the engineer below—if we do get raided, the boat crews must shift for themselves, Your men haven’t got to do anything but row—and if any man catches a crab or talks in the boat I’ll flay him alive. Tell ‘em that from me. I’ll have men on the island to help ‘em load, and there’s a small derrick there, the one we used for hauling the stuff up first, just waiting to be rigged. You ought to be able to get away by four, if you work.”

“Stand on me, Chief.”

“See that I don’t have to tread on you. Have you got that all in your head?”

“Down to the Amen, Chief.”

“Call me at seven, in case there are any alterations to be made in those orders. Good-bye.”

The Tiger’s transmission shut down with an audible click, and Carn removed the headphones and leaned back in his chair, gazing thoughtfully at the instrument which had enabled him to listen in on that enlightening chat.

Enlightening it certainly was, and no error. Almost the only thing it neglected to reveal to the detective was the identity of the Tiger himself—the voice of the man called “Chief had been studiously throttled down to a toneless flat key that was useless as a clue. The Tiger was taking no chances of being caught in person, and he had spoken throughout in a dead level monotone that anyone could have imitated—and, in addition, Carn knew the tricks which electricity plays even with a man’s natural voice, and he would have looked long and carefully before leaping to accuse anybody of being the Tiger on no other grounds than a fancied vocal resemblance after the valves and magnets and transformers had finished distorting a disguised intonation.

The one thing that puzzled Carn was the reference to the Old House, which apparently was an island. He got up and went over to where, on the wall, was pinned a large-scale ordnance map of the district. It was covered with patterns in various coloured inks, for ostensibly it was a record of Dr. Carn’s geological investigations; but in reality it was a diagram of the battlefield for the assistance of Inspector Carn’s criminal investigation. A search of the coast line located the Old House, which Carn had noticed on his bug-hunting expeditions without imagining that such a small hunk of land was dignified with a name all to itself, for he had been born and bred a long way from the sea.

That, then, was the Old House, from which something was to be taken on board at dead of night. Carn did not have to wonder what that something might be.

Everything had come into his hands in a few short minutes. The detective pulled up a chair and began to pack his pipe, and for all his practical cold-bloodedness he found that his fingers moved clumsily for the trembling of his hand. His agitation was pardonable, since the trailing of the Tiger was the biggest and stiffest undertaking he had yet brought to a triumphant conclusion. And regard it as a triumphant conclusion he did already, for with dexterous handling he could not conceive the triumph slipping through his fingers. All he had to fio was make his plans for the coup. He knew now where the gold was, and it was as safe there as if it had been lying in the vaults of the Confederate Bank. Even if the Saint also knew its whereabouts, Carn could not imagine even that supremely resourceful man being able to remove it singlehanded by morning—especially with several Tiger Cubs on the spot. And the Tiger had kindly informed Inspector Carn exactly where he could be found that night. There would be a number of men down at the quay, and the Tiger would be one of them. Ruling out Bloem, Bittle, and the Saint, it did not seem as if anyone could go far wrong in making a selection.

And possibly the Saint was to be discreetly removed. Carn had to think of that, and it annoyed him. His first duty was to warn Templar and make some arrangements for having him looked after— that was indisputable. The Saint was no ally of his, but neither was he an enemy, nor (so far) a criminal, and as a human life he had to be considered. But the time was so short.

As has been explained, Baycombe was as effectively shut off from the rest of England as if it had been lifted out of Devonshire and planted on the other side of the Channel—worse even than that, for there was neither telephone nor telegraph office in the village. To get hold of the men he required for that night’s work, Carn would have to go into Ilfracombe; and the dilapidated Ford of prehistoric vintage, which the local publican hired out to villagers whose business took them into the town, would take an unconscionable time over the journey—and would probably get up on its back axle and shriek boastfully if it went all the way without breaking down. Bittle had a Rolls, which the Saint might have had the immortal rind to borrow (with or without permission) in similar circumstances, but which Carn had to consider enviously and leave it at that. The only other car in the neighborhood was Mr. Lomas-Coper’s Morris. Carn reviewed that possibility and reluctantly ruled it out, for what Algy knew Bloem might be expected to find out.

And, once in Ilfracombe, men would have to be raised and brought to Baycombe. Even after nightfall, the number of officers Carn could assemble for the raid was strictly limited, for the Tiger must not be alarmed at all costs, and that was a difficult thing to insure with the doubtful Agatha Girton all but on the detective’s doorstep. In London, Miss Girton could have been temporarily removed, since London is a large place and its policemen hold their tongues, but Carn had no faith in the reticence of Mr. Hopkins. Then, since Carn would have to stake his success on the skill of a mere handful of men, he wanted if possible to ‘phone London and get those men specially sent down from the Yard by racing car—he had the Yard man’s congenital contempt for the provincial constabulary. That would be running it very fine, but he figured that it could just be wangled if he got a clear line and found the Assistant Commissioner quickly, and if the said Commissioner impressed it on the special squad that they would have to touch the ground in spots if they were going to be in at the kill, and if nothing went wrong with the police car. There were plenty of odds against him, but he reckoned that the importance of the occasion justified going to extremes—and, if the worst came to the very worst, he could still call in the country bumpkins and swear in the Saint and Orace, as he had the right to do, though it would gall his soul to have to make his arrest with their assistance.

Anyhow, whichever way the calculation was made, it was going to be a breathless neck-and-neck affair, with every minute rated at inestimable value. And, having got every item in the programme weighed up and docketed in his brain, Carn wasted no time wailing and gnashing his teeth against the cussedness of a Fate that had tossed him such a fine, big, juicy plum that day, for all the accompanying hail of thistles and cactus. Once he knew where all the thorns were, and had tested their precise degree of spikiness, he grabbed up his hat and stick and set out to blunt as many of them as possible.

He went down to the village as quickly as he could without seeming unduly flurried to any of the Tiger’s Cubs who might catch a glimpse of him, and on the way through he stopped at the inn.

“I’ve just had a letter from an old patient of mine,” he explained. “An Ilfracombe man—he’s had a heart attack. I’ve been his doctor for years,-and he wants me to attend to him now. It’s a beastly nuisance, but I feel bound to go. Can you let me have the car?”

It was a plausible lie, for a boy cycled over from Ilfracombe with the post every morning, and did not arrive until lunch time.

“I’m sorry, sir,” replied the publican, and Carn’s heart did a back-somersault and flopped sickeningly against his diaphragm—“two of the men from Sir John’s came down and hired the car early this morning to go into Ilfracombe for their day off.”

“Damn the gentlemen,” said Carn, but he said it to himself, and he did not call them gentlemen.

Aloud he said, with only a moderate display of annoyance:

“I ought to try and get over somehow—my patient’s in a bad way, and they’re expecting me. I suppose these fellows won’t be back till late?”

“They didn’t say, sir, but I’m not expecting them till the evening.”

“Hasn’t Horrick got a trap?”

Horrick was the nearest farmer, about half a mile out of the village, and the innkeeper opined that Horrick had something of the sort.

“I wonder if you could send a boy over te find out if he’d lend it to me?” suggested Carn.

The innkeeper cogitated at length, in the leisured manner of country people, while Carn masked his impatience as best he could. At last the man decided that it would be possible.

“Perhaps you’ll join me in a glass of beer, sir?” he invited, after making this momentous resolution.

“If I could see the boy now, he could be getting on his way while we down a quick one,” Carn mooted gently.

The publican sighed. The fidgetedness of city-bred people offended his placid spirit. Nevertheless, he shouted “Boy!” and after a decent interval, during which he embarked on a voluminous discussion of the weather and its influence on fish, a diminutive urchin answered his summons.

The urchin was instructed in the vernacular, but Carn was moved to add an exhortation in another language.

“Tell him it’s urgent,” he said, slipping a half-crown into the infant’s paw, “and hurry yourself. You can ride over in the trap, and I’ll stand you another of these if you’re back quickly.”

The boy nodded and disappeared at the double.

The innkeeper was working the beer engine, and Carn, outwardly impassive, gnawed mouthfuls out of the stem of his pipe in the effort of appearing calm. The absence of the Ford, however antique and rickety, was a disaster. It meant that unless he was remarkably lucky he would have to be content with the assistance of a mob of mutton-headed locals for the big job. They would be panting with excitement at the magnitude of it, twice as jumpy as so many cats on hot bricks, and good-naturedly clod-hopperly dense. The prospect of seeing the Tiger get away through their bungling almost broke Carn’s heart. He would have taken a chance and tackled the whole brigade of Tiger Cubs single-handed if he had seen the faintest hope of success, but he had been turned out of a different mould from Simon Templar’s, and his kind of brain did not run to schemes for capturing a boatload of bandits all by himself. As it was, he had more than half a mind to enlist the Saint. Templar was straight, he knew. And it would be better to pinch the Tiger with the Saint’s help than to see the Tiger get clean away.

That, however, would have to be resolved on the spur of the moment, for there was still a chance— the rapidly fading ghost of a chance, but a chance all the same—that the final humiliation would not be thrust upon him.

Carn gulped down his beer, thankful that the innkeeper was perfectly happy to conduct a monologue. “

“Have another?”

“I don’t mind if I do, thank you, sir.”

The detective cursed and fumed inwardly, but it had to be borne. If he had rushed out without standing his whack, every subsequent customer would hear the innkeeper’s comments on the doctor’s extraordinary behaviour. And that would get to the Tiger’s ears, and the Tiger, as Simon Templar had observed, owned a nasty, suspicious mind.

But the ordeal ended at last, and Carn was able to excuse himself. He went through the village and set out up the hill to the Pill Box. It was a sultry day, and Carn had accumulated a lot of spare avoirdupois since his London-to-Southend days. He climbed doggedly, with the perspiration streaming down into his collar, and gasped his relief when the slope commenced to flatten out.

He was still a dozen yards from the Pill Box when Orace appeared at the door. Orace made it elaborately obvious that he had simply come out for a breather. He surveyed the scenery with the concentrated interest of an artist, and honoured the detective with nothing but a nonchalant glance, but he kept his right hand behind his back.

“Mr. Templar in?” demanded Carn from a distance.

“Ain’t,” replied Orace laconically,

“D’you know where he is?”

Orace focussed the detective with unfriendly eyes.

“Dunno. Gorn fra walk, mos’ likely. ‘E might be chasin’ ‘ippopotamoscerosses acrorst Epping Forest,” enlarged Orace, become humorous, “or ‘e might be ‘oppin’ up’n dahn the ‘Ome Secrety’s chimbley looking fer Santiclaws. Or ‘e mightn’t. ‘Oo knows, as the actriss said to the bishup?”