"I'm flattered," said the Saint. "Accordingly, after seeing you home, I shall return to the Pill Box and sit down to consider whether Baycombe society is possible or impossible."
She laughed.
"You're a most refreshing relief," she told him. "Baycombe is full of inferiority complexes."
"Fortunately," remarked Simon gently, "I don't wear hats."
Presently she said:
"What brings you to this benighted spot?"
"A craving for excitement and adventure," answered the Saint promptly — "reenforced by an ambition to be horribly wealthy."
She looked at him with a quick frown, but his face confirmed the innocence of sarcasm which had given a surprising twist to his words.
"I shouldn't have thought anyone would have come here for that," she said.
"On the contrary," said the Saint genially, "I should have no hesitation in recommending this particular spot to any qualified adventurer as one of the few places left in England where battle, murder, and sudden death may be quite commonplace events."
"I've lived here, on and off, since I was twelve, and the most exciting thing I can remember is a house on fire," she argued, still possessed of an uneasy feeling that he was making fun of her.
"Then you'll really appreciate the rough stuff when it does begin," murmured Simon cheerfully, and swung his stick, whistling.
They reached the Manor (it was not an imposing building, but it had a homely air) and the girl held out her hand.
"Won't you come in?"
The Saint was no laggard.
I'd love to."
She took him into a sombre but airy drawing room, finely furnished; but the Saint was never self-conscious. The contrast of his rough, serviceable clothes With the delicate brocaded upholstery did not impress him, and he accepted a seat without any appearance of doubting its ability to support his weight.
"May I fetch my aunt?" asked, Miss/Holm. “I know she'd like to meet you."
"But of course," assented the Saint, smiling, and she was left with a sneaking suspicion that he was agreeing with her second sentence as much as with her first.
Miss Girton arrived in a few moments, and Simon knew at once that Baycombe had not exaggerated her grimness. "A norrer," Orace had reported, and the Saint felt inclined to agree. Miss Girton was stocky and as broad as a man: he was surprised at the strength of her grip when she shook hands with him. Her face was weather-beaten. She wore a shirt and tie and a coarse tweed skirt, woollen stockings, and heavy flatheeled shoes. Her hair was cropped.
"I was wondering when I should meet you," she said immediately. "You must come to dinner and meet some people. I'm afraid the company's very limited here."
"I'm afraid I'm prepared for very little company," said Templar. "I'd decided to forget dress clothes for a while."
"Lunch, then. Would you like to stay to-day?"
"May I be excused? Don't think me uncivil, but I promised my man I'd be back for lunch. If I don't turn up," explained the Saint ingenuously, "Orace would think something had happened to me, and he'd go cruising round with his revolver, and somebody might get hurt."
There was an awkward hiatus in the conversation at that point, but it was confined to two of the party, for Templar was admiring a fine specimen of Venetian glass and did not seem to realize that he had said anything unusual. "The girl hastened into the breach.
"Mr. Templar has come here for adventure,” she said, and Miss Girton stared.
"Well, I wish him luck," she said shortly. "On Friday, then, Mr. Templar? I'll ask some people...."
"Delighted," murmured the Saint, bowing, arid now there was something faintly mocking about his smile. "On the whole, I don't see why the social amenities shouldn't be observed, even in a vendetta."
Miss Girton excused herself soon after, and the Saint smoked a cigarette and chatted lightly and easily with Patricia Holm. He was an entertaining talker, and he did not introduce any more dark and horrific allusions into his remarks. Nevertheless, he caught the girl looking at him from time to time with a kind of mixture of perplexity, apprehension, and interest, and was hugely delighted.
At last he rose to go, and she accompanied him to the gate.
"You seem quite sane," she said bluntly as they went down the path. "What was the idea of talking all that rot?"
He looked down at her, his eyes dancing. "All my life," he replied, "I have told the truth. It is a great advantage, because if you do that nobody ever takes you seriously."
"But talking about murders and revolvers — "
"Perhaps," said the Saint, with that mocking smile, "it will increase the prominence of the part which I hope to play in your thoughts from now onward if I tell you that from this morning the most strenuous efforts will be made to kill me. On the other hand, of course, I shall not be killed, so you mustn't worry too much about me. I mean, don't go off your feed or lie awake all night or anything like that."
"I'll try not to," she said lightly.
"You don't believe me," accused Templar sternly.
She hesitated.
"Well — "
"One day," said the Saint severely, "you will apologize for your unbelief.”
He gave her a stiff bow and marched away so abruptly that she gasped.
It was exactly one o'clock when he arrived home at the Pill Box, and Orace was flustered and disapproving.
"If ya' 'adn't bin 'ome punctual," said Orace, "I'd 'a' bin out looking fer yer corpse. It ain't fair ter give a man such a lotta worry. Yer so careless I wonder the Tiger 'asn't putcha out 'arf a dozen times."
"I've met the most wonderful girl in the world," said Simon impenitently. "By all the laws of adventure, I'm bound to have to save her life two or three times during the next ten days. I shall kiss her very passionately in the last chapter. We shall be married — "
Orace snorted.
"Lunch 'narf a minnit," he said, and disappeared.
The Saint washed his hands and ran a comb through his hair in the half-minute's grace allowed him; and the Saint was thoughtful. He had his full measure of human vanity, and it tickled his sense of humour to enter the lists with the air of a Mystery Man straight out of a detective story, but he had a solid reason for giving his caprice its head. It struck him that the Tiger knew all about him and that therefore no useful purpose would be served by trying to pretend innocence; whereas a shameless bravado might well bother the other side considerably. They would be racking their brains to find some reason for his brazen front, and crediting him with the most complicated subtleties: when all the time there was nothing behind it but the fact that one pose was as good as another, and the opportunity to play the swashbuckler was too good to be missed. !
The Saint was whistling blithely when Orace brought lunch. He knew that the Tiger was in Baycombe. He had come halfway across the world to rob the Tiger of a million dollars, and the duel promised to be exhilarating as anything in the Saint's hell-for-leather past.
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 s
hook 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.
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