Leslie Charteris - The Saint Meets the Tiger

He shrank away into the farthest corner, and his face had gone gray 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.

"Things have gone very badly," said the Tiger. "As Bittle said, Mr. Templar, you have beaten us. I bear you no malice. Perhaps it was ordained that it should end like this. You need not be afraid that I shall kill you, as that man would have done — that would be profitless. I might still have won, if I had had a fair chance, but the men I trusted double-crossed me. Now the ship is going down, and all my work is lost. I can fight no more. Fate has been against me from the beginning, and I am very tired.”

He passed a hand across his eyes. The fatuous pose which went with the character of Algy Lomas-Coper had fallen from his shoulders like a discarded cloak, and it was an ordinary man who spoke. More than that, it was a broken man. There was something which filled the Saint with a sneaking sense of tragedy about this sudden transition from the effervescent Algy to the grim, weary figure of the Tiger facing the end.

"But you — “

The Tiger's burning gaze raked over Bitfle and Bloem and Maggs like a searing iron. Once again the Tiger's voice took on that biting tang of steel, and the men cringed from the lash of it.

"But you — you treacherous dogs, you perfidious scum, you abject rats, you shabby, contemptible, paltry vermin — against you I do bear malice. I came down to meet you on the quay — do you remember? — and you shot me down without a word. It was only a graze, but it stunned me, and to make sure you shot me again in the body as I lay there. I found the bullet afterward, and there was the bruise on my chest under my heart to prove it, But I always wear a bullet-proof waistcoat — you couldn't know that. I lived, and swam out here with that girl to win back what was mine. I might have done it, but I am not such a good swimmer as I thought I was, and it took me a long time to recover after I got on board. So I only arrived in time to hear your speeches, Bittle, and hear Templar tell you how he had beaten you."

The Tiger looked out at the sea.

"We are sinking quite slowly," he said. "There will be plenty of time for all of you to put off in the boats. I mean you." He looked around at the guard. "You at least are not traitors — you have simply obeyed the orders of these three men, and it was not your place to question them. I have no grudge against you. You are >only the tools. You may go."

The men stared at each other and at the Tiger incredulously, as though they could not believe their ears. The Tiger stepped out of the doorway and waved them through, his lips curling contemptuously. One by one they crept furtively past him, and, as they gained the deck, made a rush for the companions to the boat level, casting fearful backward glances as though they expected him to repent of his decision and call them back. At last they had all gone.

The Saint stood up and stretched himself, and the ropes fell away from his wrists and ankles. He even had time to enjoy and appreciate the sensation which his escape act caused to everyone present. "Quite a good curtain," he remarked.

He looked at the Tiger, and smiled ruefully.

"I congratulate you, Algy — you had me guessing all the time. Well, it's been a good dust-up.... And now may I undo Orace?"

"Certainly."

Simon walked up to Bittle and took Anna and Belle from the man's pockets. In a few quick slashes Orace was free and chafing his hands and stamping up and down to restore the circulation.

Then the Saint replaced the knives in their sheaths and went over to Patricia. He took her in his arms and kissed her; and, the reaction coming at last, she clung to him like a child, and the Saint was murmuring soothing and meaningless things to stop her trembling.

"Now, Mr. Templar," said the Tiger, "you may take your friends and get away in one of the boats. I am staying behind to settle accounts with my friends.”

Simon passed the girl over to Orace.

"I'll follow in a moment."

Patricia went, with Orace's protecting arm around her, but the Tiger stopped them at the door||B and took the girl's hand.

"You will never be able to forgive me," he said, "and I am only thankful, now, that the power to do you any harm was taken away from me. I am a bad man, and I have blood on my hands, but you are the first woman who ever tempted me to forget my chivalry."

He kissed her hand, and then Orace led her away.

The Tiger looked at Simon.

"It is a queer whim," he said, “but I should like to shake hands with you."

"You make it difficult for me," answered the Saint. '"I'm rather sorry you've taken things so sportingly. But I'll shake hands for that very reason."

The Saint held out his hand and smiled....

Crack!

The bullet actually grazed Simon's arm, and he saw Algy's eyes glaze over suddenly. The Saint was still holding the Tiger's hand. A great silence followed the reverberation of the shot, and in that silence, without a word, the Tiger swayed and toppled to the floor. He lay there on his back, and above his heart, in the dark stuff of the bathing costume which he still wore, a darker stain was spreading....

The Saint bent over him, but the man was dead.

Simon took in the situation out of the corner ofhis eye. Maggs and Bloem were crouching back against the bulkhead, but Bittle stood up, still holding the smoking revolver which he had snatched from the floor while the Tiger's attention was distracted.

The Saint straightened up, and in the same movement Anna flashed from her sheath to his hand and whistled across the saloon like a humming flake of light. It drove into Bittle's exposed wrist, severing flesh and sinew and grating on the bone, for the Saint could throw knives with unerring accuracy. Bittle's hand relaxed limply. He dropped the revolver and flinched back, clawing at the knife which still hung from his arm.

The Saint was standing across the Tiger's body with both the Tiger's automatics trained on the little group.

"Treacherous to the last, Bittle," said the Saint. "But I saw you, and for that shot you will hang at Exeter in about three months' time."

And at that instant the ship was flooded with blinding light. Over the Saint's shoulder, the three men could see, far astern, the blinding eyes of two powerful searchlights which converged on the ship.

"That will be Carn," said Simon, without taking his gaze from his prisoners, and at that moment Orace and Patricia returned, sick with fear, for they had heard Bittle's shot,

"Only scratched me," the Saint reassured them. "But he got the Tiger.”

He passed the automatics over to Orace and went out on deck. The pursuers were still a long way behind, but they were creeping up fast, and the ship could not have hoped to escape them, with those great beams of light turning darkness into day.

“This is the end of the adventure,” said the Saint, with his arm round Patricia's shoulders. "But, by the grace of God, it is also a beginning."

It was some minutes later that he remembered an important detail — he was reminded of it by seeing the sea swelling up alarmingly close to the starboard scuppers, and in the next second he nearly lost his balance as the deck canted farther over,

The Saint sprinted astern, sliding and stumbling all over the place. The girl saw him disappear down a companion from the poop, and waited, clinging to a handrail, for balance was becoming more and more difficult. It was some time before he came back, and by then the pursuit was barely a quarter of a mile away.