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ahead of the mortal for whom mere manna falls from heaven: to the .Saint, for
no reason that he could cudgel out of his brains, Heaven seemed to spend all
its spare time dispatching perfectly cooked eight-course dinners with a
selection of appropriate wines complete, what time he did nothing more than
providing the silver and cutlery. His gods had landed him up in pretty good
order at exactly the place where he wanted to be, at exactly the hour he
wanted to arrive, and had thoughtfully thrown in the fact that by then the
Tiger would be working his gang overtime patting himself on the back for
having so slickly annihilated the thorn which for so long had been playing the
devil with their ugly hides!
That was certainly an unhoped-for blessing. The Tiger thought Mr. Templar was
dead. Well, Mr. Templar decided to let the Tiger cherish that harmless little
delusion for a space. Being theoretically dead, the Saint was going to stay
dead till it suited his book to stage a resurrection.
There were, of course, contrary considerations. By that time Orace and Pat
and Carn would have turned Baycombe inside out, and they would have found only
that gaping hole in the floor of the inn. Wherefore at least two of that
party, and one of them especially, would be But that had got to stand aside.
They'd have presumed him dead for some hours now, and it would only mean
delaying the homecoming a few more hours. Against that he could set the help
it gave him to know that Patricia would be safely out of the fireworks, though
he would feel the absence of Orace. All the same, taking it by and large, he
reckoned that debit and credit weren't so far off balancing. With a
continuance of his miraculous luck, the curtain could be rung down a lot
sooner, now that everything was arranged for him to catch the Tiger on the
hop....
"The Saint versus the Tiger," murmured Simon. "This is where all the early
Christian martyrs will look down from heaven and see the old game played under
rules they'd never heard of in Rome  and, we hope, with a surprise ending that
Nero never saw."
It was the Saint himself who spoke. All his bubbling optimism was sparkling
up through his system again. He was tired, naturally, but he still felt fit
enough to tackle anything the Tiger Cubs were prepared to hand out to him, and
he had never reviewed an impending struggle more eagerly, for by all the omens
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it was going to be the last of his exploits, and his sense of theatre demanded
that he should finish up in a blaze of glory.
He searched for his weapons, and found them securely in their places. The
cigarettes in his case, which might have been useful, had been ruined by the
wet; but the case itself, with the fine steel blade running along one edge of
it, was a tried asset in emergencies, and this went into the hip pocket of his
trousers. His coat he left in the cave.
Looking down, he saw that there were only a dozen yards to climb down to the
beach. With the moon to help him, this was no difficult task. He swung over
the edge at once, and in a few minutes he stood on the crunching shingle with
the water lapping round his ankles. There was a longish swim yet to get
through, but by now he felt capable of all that and more. He waded out up to
his waist and then slithered forward into the ripples without a splash, like
an otter, and struck out for the Tiger's ship with clean, powerful strokes.
His arms rose and fell rhythmically, making not the least sound as they
cleared the water and then dived back at full stretch. The Saint could keep up
that graceful overarm for hours, but on this occasion he had no need for such
a display of stamina. His trained muscles drove him forward tirelessly at a
pace that ate up distance. He steered a wide circling course to keep well out
of the danger zone between the Old House and the ship, where he might have
been spotted by a pair of keen eyes in one of the rowboats or by anyone who
happened to be looking across that reach of water from either side, for the
moonlight was strengthening with every minute an act of cussedness on the part
of Nature which made the job in hand a more ticklish proposition for both
Saint and Tiger alike. Even so, it was not very long before he came up under
the motor ship's cruiser stern, after covering the last hundred yards under
water with only three cautious floatings-up for breath.
He clung there for a moment's rest, and then worked his way along the seaward
side, where it would be safest, forward to the bows, hugging close in to the
hull. It then occurred to him that the climb up the anchor chain, in full view
of the island and the ship's bridge, would be a very chancy method. Yet the
vessel's sides rose sheer and unbroken for six feet before they were cut by
the lowest row of portholes.
But once more his luck held. As he swam slowly along, pondering this problem,
he ran right into a rope ladder which hung .down from the deck. It couldn't
have been more conveniently provided if he had asked for it to be lowered
against his arrival, but a little thought gave him the reason for its
presence. It must have been dropped for the Tiger and his principals to come
aboard, and since then the tide must have swung the ship right round on her
moorings. And there it was, temporarily forgotten, and just the very thing he
wanted.
The noise of the donkey engine, throttled down though it was, and the
creaking of the derricks which were taking the gold on board, was louder now,
and he could hear the sound of sea boots grating on the deck, and the subdued
voices of men. As far as he could gather on his way up they were working on
the after hold, for he heard nothing from directly above him.
The Saint came level with the deck and peeped over. All was clear at that
point and forward of it, but he could see a few figures clustered round the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]