The Saint Meets the Tiger

Chapter II THE NATURALIST

Algernon de Breton Lomas-Coper was one of the genial Algys made famous by Mr. P. G. Wode-house, and accordingly he often ejaculated "What? What?" to show that he could hardly believe his own brilliance; but now he ejaculated "What? What?" to show that he could hardly believe his own ears.

"It's perfectly true," said Patricia. "And he's coming to lunch."

"Now!" gasped Algy feebly, and relapsed info open-mouthed amazement.

He was one of those men who are little changed by the passage of time: he might have been twenty-five or thirty-five. Studying him very closely — which few took the trouble to do — one gathered that the latter age was more probably right. He was fair, round-faced, pink-and-white.

"He was quite tame," said Patricia. "In fact, I thought he was awfully nice. But he would keep on talking about the terrifying things that he thought were going to happen. He said people were trying to murder him.”

"Dementia persecutoria,"opined Algy. "What?" The girl shook her head.

"He was as sane as anyone I've ever met." "Extensio cruris paranoia?'' suggested Algy sagely.

"What on earth's that?" she asked.

"An irresistible desire to pull legs."

Patricia frowned.

"You'll be thinking I'm crazy next," she said. "But somehow you can't help believing him. It's as if he were daring you to take him seriously."

"Well, if he manages to wake up this backwater I'll be grateful to him," said the man. "Are you going to invite me to, stay and meet the ogre?"

He stayed.

Toward one o'clock Patricia sighted Templar coming up the road, and went out to meet him at the gate. He was dressed as he had been the day before, but he had fastened his collar and put on a tie.

He greeted her with a smile.

"Still alive, you see," he remarked. "The ungodly prowled around last night, but I poured a bucket of water over him, and he went home. It's astonishing how easy it is to damp the ardour of an assassin."

"Isn't that getting a bit stale?" she protested, although she was annoyed to find that the reproof she forced into her tone lacked conviction.

"I'm surprised you should say that," he returned gravely. "Personally, I'm only just beginning to appredate the true succulence of the jest."

"At least, I hope you won't upset everybody at lunch," she said, and his eyes twinkled.

"I'll try to behave," he promised. "At any other time it would have been a fearful effort, but to-day I'm on my party manners.''

There were cocktails in the drawing room (Baycombe society prided itself on being up to date), and there Algy was brought forward and introduced.

"Delighted — delighted — long-expected pleasure — what?" he babbled.

"Is it really?" asked the Saint guilelessly.

Algy screwed a pane of glass into his eye and surveyed the visitor with awe.

"So you're the Mystery Man!" he prattled on. "You don't mind being called that? I'm sure you won't. Everybody calls you the Mystery Man, and I honestly think it suits you most awfully well, don't you know. And fancy taking the Pill Box! Isn't it too frightfully draughty? But of course you're one of these strong, hearty he-men we see in the pictures."

"Algy, you're being rude," interrupted the girl.

"Am I really? Only meant for good-fellowship and all that sort of thing. What? What? No offence, old banana pip, you know, don't you know."

"Do I? Don't I?" asked the Saint, blinking.

The girl rushed into the pause, for she already had a good estimate of the Saint's perverse sense of fun, and dreaded its irresponsibility. She felt that at any moment he would produce a revolver and ask if they knew anyone worth murdering.

"Algy, be an angel and go and tell Aunt Agatha to hurry up."'

"That is Mynheer Hans Bloom's nephew," observed the Saint calmly as the door closed behind the talkative one. "He is thirty-four. He lived for some years in America; in the City of London he is known as a man with mining property in the Transvaal."

Patricia was astonished.

"You know more about him than I do," she said.

"I make it my business to pry into my nieigh-bours' affairs," he answered solemnly. "It mayn't be courteous, but it's cautious."

"Perhaps you know all about me?'' she was tempted to challenge him.

He turned on her a clear blue eye which held a mocking gleam.

"Only the unimportant things. That you were educated at Mayfietd. That Miss Girton isn't your aunt, but a very distant cousin. That you've led a very quiet life, and travelled very little. You're dependent on Miss Girton, because she has the administration of your property until you're twenty-five. That is for another five years."

"Are you aware," she demanded dangerously, "that you're most impertinent?"

He nodded.

"Quite unpardonably," he admitted. "I can only plead in excuse that when there's a price on one's head one can't be too particular about one's ac-quaintances.

And he looked meditatively at the yellow-golden contents of his glass, which he had held untasted since it was given him.

"Your health," he wished her; and, as he set down the empty glass, he smiled and added "At '"least I've no fear of you."

She had no time to find an adequate answer before Algy returnedwith Miss Girton and a tall, thin, leather-faced roan who was introduced as Mr. Bloem.

"Pleased to meet you," murmured the Saint. "So sorry T. T. Deeps are going badly in the market, but this is just the time to make your corner." " Bloem started, and his spectacles fell off and dangled at the length of their black watered ribbon as the Boer stared blankly at Simon Templar.

"You must be very much on the inside in the city, Mr. Templar," said Bloem.

"Extraordinary, isn't it?" agreed Simon, with his most saintly smile.

Then he was being introduced to a new arrival, Sir Michael Lapping. The ex-judge shook hands heartily, peering short-sightedly into the Saint's face.

"You remind me of a man I once met in the Old Bailey — and I'm hanged if I can remember whether it was a professional encounter or not."

"I was just going to," said the Saint blandly, if a trifle cryptically. "His name was Harry the Duke, and you gave him seven years. He escaped abroad six years ago, but I hear he's been back in England some months. Be careful how you go out after dark.

It should have fallen to the Saint to take Miss Girton in to lunch, but his hostess passed him on to Patricia, and the girl was thus able to get a word with him aside.

"You've already broken your promise twice,"

she said. "Do you have to go on like this?"

"I'm merely attracting attention," he said. "Having now become the centre of interest, I shall rest on my laurels."

He was as good as his word, but Patricia was unreasonably irritated to observe that he had succeeded in attaining his shamelessly confessed object. The others of the party felt vaguely at a disadvantage, and favoured the Saint with furtive glances in which was betrayed not a little superstitious awe. Once the Saint caught Patricia's eye, and the silent mirth that was always bubbling up behind his eyes spread for a moment into an open grin. She frowned and tossed her pretty head, and entered upon an earnest discussion with Lapping;

but when she stole a look at the Saint to see how he had taken the snub she saw that beneath his dutifully decorous demeanour he was shaking with silent laughter, and she was furious.

The Saint had travelled. He talked interestingly — if with a strong egotistical bias — about places as far removed from civilization and from each other as Vladivostok, Armenia, Moscow, Lapland, Chungking, Pernambuco, and Sierra Leone. There seemed to be few of the wilder parts of the world which he had not visited, and few of those in which he had not had adventures. He had won a gold rush in South Africa and lost his holding in a poker game twenty-four hours later. He had run guns into China, whisky into the United States, and perfume into England. He had deserted after a year in the Spanish Foreign Legion. He had worked his passage across the Atlantic as a steward, tramped across America, fought his way across Mexico during a free-for-all revolution, picked up a couple of thousand pounds in the Argentine, and sailed home from Buenos Aires in a millionaire's suite — to lose nearly all the fruit of his wanderings on Epsom Downs.

"You'll find Baycombe very dull after such an exciting life," said Miss Girton.

"Somehow, I don't agree," said the Saint. I findthe air very bracing."

Bloem adjusted his spectacles and inquired:

"And what might your employment be at the moment?"

"Just now," said the Saint suavely, "I'm looking for a million dollars. I feel that I should like to end my days in luxury, and I can't get along on less than fifteen thousand a year."

Algy squawked with merriment.

"Haw-haw!" he yapped. "Jolly good! Too awfully horribly priceless! What? What?"

"Quite," the Saint concurred modestly.

"I fear," said Lapping, "that you will hardly find your million dollars in Bayeombe."

The Saint put his hands on the tablecloth and studied his fingernails with a gentle smile.

; "You depress me, Sir Michael," he remarked. "And I was feeling very optimistic. I was told that there was a million dollars to be picked up here, and one can hardly disbelieve the word of a dying man, especially when one has tried to save his life. It was at a place called Ayer Pahit, in the Malary States. He'd taken to the jungle — they'd hunted him through every town in the Peninsula, ever since they located him settling down in Singapore to enjoy an unjust share of the loot — and one of their Malay trackers had caught him and stuck a kris in him. I found him just before he passed but, and he told me most of the story..... But I'm boring you."

"Not a bit, dear old sprout, not a bit!" rejoined Algy eagerly, and he was supported by a chorus of curiosity.

The Saint shook his head.

"But I'm quite certain I shall bore you if I go on," he stated obstinately. "Now suppose I'd been talking about Brazil — did you know there was a village behind an almost impassable range of hills covered with thick poisonous jungle where some descendants of Cortes' crowd still live? They're gradually being absorbed into native stock — Mayas — by intermarriage, but they still wear swords and talk good Castilian. They could hardly believe my rifle. I remember ..."

And it was impossible to wheedle him back to any further discussion of his million dollars.

He made his excuses as soon after coffee as was decently possible, and spoke last to Patricia.

"When you get to know me better — as you must — you'll learn to forgive my weakness."

"I suppose it's nothing but a silly desire to cause a sensation," she said coldly,

"Nothing but that," said the Saint with disarming frankness, and went home with a comfortable feeling that he had had the better of the exchange.

In spite of the protestations of Orace, he took a walk during the afternoon. He wanted to be familiar with the territory for some distance around, and thus his route took him inland toward the uplands which sheltered the village on the south. It was the first time he had surveyed the ground, but his hunting experience had given him a good eye for country, and at the end of three hours' hard tramping he had every detail of the district mapped in his brain.

It was on the homeward hike that he met the stranger. His walk had been as solitary as a walk in North Devon can be: he had not even encountered any farm labourers, for the land for miles around was unclaimed moor. But this man was so obviously harmless, even at a distance of half a mile, that the Saint frowned thoughtfully.

The man was in plus-fours of a dazzling purple hue. He had a kind of haversack slung over his shoulder, and he carried a butterfly net. He moved aimlessly about — sometimes in short violent rushes, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling and rooting about on his hands and knees. He did not seem to notice Templar at all, and the Saint, moving very silently, came right up and stood over him during an exceptionally zealous burrowing exploration among some gorse bushes. While Simon watched, the naturalist made a sudden pounce, accompanied by a gasp of triumph, and wriggled back into the open with a small beetle held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The haversack was hitched round, a matchbox secured, the insect 'imprisoned therein, and the box carefully stowed away. Then the entomologist rose to his feet, perspiring and very red in the face.

"Good-afternoon, sir," he remarked genially, mopping his brow with aa appallingly green silk handkerchief.

"So it is," agreed the Saint.

Mr. Templar had a disconcerting trick of taking the most conventional speech quite literally — a device which he had adopted because it threw the onus of continuing the conservation upon the other party.

"An innocuous and healthy pastime," explained the stranger, with a friendly and all-embracing sweep of his hand. "Fresh air — exercise — and all in the most glorious scenery in England."

He was half a head shorter than the Saint, but a good two stone heavier. His eyes were large and childlike behind a pair of enormous horn-rimmed glasses, and he wore a straggly pale walrus moustache. The sight of this big middle-aged man in the shocking clothes, with his ridiculous little butterfly net, was as diverting as anything the Saint could remember.

"Of course — you're Dr. Carn," said the Saint, and the other started.

"How did you know?"

"I always seem to be giving people surprises," complained Simon, completely at his ease. "It's so simple. You look less like a doctor than anyone but a doctor could look, and there's only one doctor in Baycombe. How's trade?

Suddenly Carn was no longer genial.

"My profession?" he said stiffly, "I don't quite understand."

"You are one of many," signed the Saint, "Nobody ever quite understands me. And I wasn't talking about your new profession, but about your old trade."

Carn looked very closely at the younger matt, but Simon was gazing at the sea, and his face was inscrutable except for a faintly mocking twist at the corners of his mouth — a twist, that might have meant anything.

"You're clever, Templar — "

"Mr. Templar to the aristocracy, but Saint to you," Simon corrected him benevolently. "Naturally I'm clever. If I wasn't, I'd be dead. And my especial brilliance is an infallible memory for faces."

"You're clever, Templar, but this time you're mistaken, and persisting in your delusion is making you forget your manners."

The Saint favoured Carn with a lazy smile.

"Well, well," he murmured, "to err is human, is it not? But tell me, Dr. Carn, why you allow an automatic pistol to spoil the set of that beautiful coat? Are you afraid of a scarabaeus turning at bay? Or is it that you're scared of a Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga jumping out of a bush?"

And the Saint swung his heavy staff as though weighing its efficiency as a bludgeon, and the clear blue eyes with that lively devil of mischief glimmering in their depths never left Carn's red face. Carn glared back chokingly.

"Sir," he exploded at length, "let me tell you — "

"I, too, was once an Inspector of Horse Marines to the Swiss Navy," the Saint encouraged him gently; and, when Carn's indignation proved to have become speechless, he added: "But why am I so unsociable? Come along to the Pill Box and have a spot of supper. I'm afraid it'll only be tinned stuff — we stopped having fresh meat since a seagull died after tasting the Sunday joint — but our brandy, is Napoleon …. and Orace grills sardines marvelously….”

He linked his arm in Carn's and urged the naturalist along, chattering irrepressibly. It is an almost incredible tribute to the charm which the Saint could exert, to record that he coaxed Carn into acceptance in three minutes and had him chuckling at a grossly improper limerick by the time they reached the Pill Box.

"You're a card, Templar," said Carn as they sat over Martinis in the sitting room, and the Saint„ raised indulgent eyebrows.

"Because I called your bluff?"

"Because you didn't hesitate.”

"He who hesitates," said the Saint sententiously, "is bossed. No mughopper will ever spiel this baby.

They talked politics arid literature through supper (the Saint had original and heretical views on both Subjects) as dispassionately as the most ordinary men, met together in the most ordinary circumstances, might have done.

After Orace had served coffee and withdrawn, Carn produced a cigar case and offered it to the Saint. Templar looked, and shook his head with a smile.

"Not even with you, dear heart," he said, and Carn was aggrieved.

"There's nothing wrong with them."

"I'm so glad you haven't wasted a cigar, then."

"If I give you my word — "

"I'll take it. But I won't take your cigars,"

Carn shrugged, took one himself and lighted it. The Saint settled himself more comfortably in his armchair.

"I'm glad to see you don't pack a gun yourself," observed the Doctor presently.

"It makes one so unpopular, letting off artillery and things all over Devonshire," said Simon. "You can only do that in shockers: in real life, the police make all sorts of awkward inquiries if you go slaughtering people here and there because they look cock-eyed at you. But I don't advise anyone to bank on my consideration for the nerves of the neighbourhood when I'm in my own home."

Carn sat forward abruptly.

"We've bluffed for an hour and a half by the clock," he said. "Suppose we get down to brass tacks?

"I'll suppose anything you like," assented Simon. "I know you've got some funny game on; and I know you aren't one of those dude detectives, because I've made inquiries. You aren't even Secret Service. I know something about your record, and I gather you haven't come to Baycombe because you got an idea you'd like to vegetate in rural England and grow string beans. You aren't the sort that goes anywhere unless they can see easy money ^0r big trouble waiting for collection."

"I might have decided to quit before I stopped something.”

“You might — but your sort doesn't quit while there's a kick left in 'em. Besides, what do you think I've been doing all the time I've been down here?”

"Huntin’ the elusive Wugga-Wugga, presumably," drawled the Saint,

Carm made a gesture of impatience.

"I've told you you're clever," he said, "and I meant every letter of it — in capital italics. But you don't have to pretend you think I'm a fool, because I know you know better. You're here for what you can get, and I've a good idea what that is. If I'm right, it's my job to get in your way all I can, unless you work in with me. Templar, I'm paying you the compliment of putting the cards on the table, because from what I hear I'd rather work with you than against you. Now, why can't you come across?”

The Saint had sunk deeper into his armchair. The room was lighted only by the smoky oil lamp that Grace had brought in with the coffee, for the sky had clouded over in the late afternoon and night had come on early.

"There are just one million reasons why I shouldn't come across," said the Saint tranquilly. "They were lost to the Confederated Bank of Chicago quite a time ago, and I want them all to myself, my good Carn.”

"You don't imagine you could get away with it?"

"I can think of no limits to my ingenuity in getting away with things," said the Saint calmly.

He moved in the shadows, and a moment later he said quietly:

"There is a million-and-first argument which prevents me coming across just now, Carn — and that is that I never allow Tiger Cubs to listen-in on my confessions."

"What do you mean?" asked Carn.

"I mean," said the Saint in a clear strong voice, "that at this moment there's some son-of-a-gurf peeking through that embrasure. I've got him covered, and if he so much as blinks I'm going to shoot his eyelids off!"