Orace got well round to the stern and put a large ventilating cowl between himself and the men at the hatch before he ventured to return to the deck. Then he made a quick dash for the engine-room companion, and reached it unnoticed.
It is difficult to move silently over iron gratings, but Orace's bare feet enabled him to go down unobserved until there was only a short ladder to descend before he reached the level of the motors. There was only one man below, and he was bending over, tinkering with a bearing. Orace had got that far before the man straightened up to look for a spanner, and in so doing discovered his peril. The engineer let out a shout which reverberated deafeningly in the confined space, but which would have been hardly audible outside, and rushed.
As he came on he wrestled with his pocket, where his gun must have got stuck. That fluke gave Orace all the respite he needed, and saved him having to shoot. He jumped, and his feet struck the engineer full in the chest. The two went down together, but the engineer's body broke Grace's fall, and the head which in a few seconds was pounded into insensibility against a cylinder block was not Orace's....
Orace was about to leave was, in fact, already climbing when he had an inspiration, and returned. The stunned mechanic was of Orace's own build. Orace commandeered the man's cap and blue jeans, and, finding a convenient locker, pushed the engineer into it and turned the key. Thus equipped. Orace felt that he had a decided advantage he would be able to move more freely about the ship, and, if he encountered any Tiger Cubs, he would be safe from challenge in the darkness until he had got close enough to make his distaste for their society effectively evident. Once more he began to make his way to the deck.
He was halfway there when he heard the tramp of heavy feet coming toward him. Grace turned and scuttled back. He kept his head averted and bent low over the nearest motor. The feet grated on the companion above him, and halted.
"All right down there, Joseph?"
"Aye, aye, sir," replied Orace in a muffled voice, without looking up.
"We'll be off in less than an hour. You needn't bother about running on the electric motors going out we want to get off as quickly as we can."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"I'll ring down as soon as the last load's being taken in, and you can start up then and keep running till we go."
The footsteps retired along the deck overhead, and Orace breathed again.
He had noticed the iron door behind him, but had assumed that it led only to the fuel tanks. As a matter of fact, it did, but there was also a narrow alley running between the tanks and continuing forward till it reached the foot of an emergency companion. He heard the slight click of the door opening, and quickly bowed his head over the engines again.
This man did not speak; but Orace, apparently intent on inspecting a spark plug, could hear the stealthy slither of feet over the greasy metal, and the hairs in the scruff of his neck prickled. There was something sinister about that wary approach the man behind him moved so silently that Orace would never have noticed the sound if he had not been expecting it. The door itself had been unlatched so cautiously that that noise also would probably have escaped him if he had not been listening for the retreat of the man who had spoken to him.
The stealthy feet drew nearer, step by step, while Orace kept his back turned and went on poring over the plug terminals. They were nearer now only a couple of yards behind him, as far as he could judge. Another yard, and Orace gathered himself for a sudden movement. He had ceased to wonder whether the intruder regarded him as an innocent party. For some reason which he could not immediately divine Orace was suspect.
Some premonition, the prompting of a sixth sense, made him swing aside in the nick of time, and the smashing blow that had been aimed at his head whizzed past his ear and clanged on the engine casing. Orace whirled and leaped, but his feet slipped on the oily grating, and he sprawled headlong. His blunderbuss was underneath the borrowed overalls, and he had no time to fumble for it before his opponent had pounced on him and caught his throat in a deadly grip.
Except the thrill of a sporting burglary such as a raid upon the home of a famous detective with the said detective in residence and, for preference, entertaining a select party of his fellow sleuths there is no thrill to be compared to the thrill of a refined form of piracy.
So Patricia realized as she stole down the dimly lighted alleyway aft in search of the galley. There she was, on the Tiger's ship, with only two assistants, one of whom was temporarily hors de combat, and the odds against them were five to one, at a conservative estimate. The very forlornness of the adventure took away half its terrors, for with everything to lose and as good as lost at the first slip there was nothing to gain by footling and fiddling over the job. The only earthly chance of success was to blind recklessly ahead and chance the consequences. To funk the bold game would be fatal. The bold game was the only one which offered .the vaguest possibility of success a plan such as they had set themselves to carry out could only hope to succeed if it were executed in the same spirit of consummate cheek and hell-for-leather daring as that in which it had been conceived. And that was what Patricia Holm intended to do, starting in at that very instant.
Even so, sir and madam that was the determination which was glowing like hot steel in Patricia's brain. Orace had gone off to deal with an engineer, and Orace could look after himself as well as anybody. Having laid out the engineer, he would repair to the rendezvous, and when the girl failed to put in an appearance, after a reasonable time, he would set out in search other incidentally disposing of any Tiger Cubs whom he encountered on the way. And, therefore, in a little while, there would be two vengeful people creeping about the ship and striking shrewd, secret blows at the enemy here one moment, there the next, coming and going like wraiths, and leaving no more evidence of their passage than a Tiger Cub sleeping peacefully in the scuppers here and there. The girl guessed that Orace was still troubled with fears for her safety and doubts of her ability to pull her weight in the undertaking, and so, to save bothersome argument, she was going to take the bit between her teeth and leave him to fall into line behind and, once she was started, he would have no option but to do exactly that, for the pace would be too hectic to allow any intervals for discussion.
There is this about the thrill of action, the electric omnipresence of danger, and the necessity for keeping yourself keyed up taut and ready to make lightning decisions: it takes up all the time of all your faculties and holds your brain buzzing round and round that one sole pin-point of motive. Patricia was not callous. It wasn't that she had forgotten the Saint and gone gaily cavorting off on this new spree in a manner that would make you think that piracy amused her just as much as petting. It was simply that, having resolved to call the Tiger down to an audit of the ledger, the concentration which that task demanded would, until it was accomplished, leave no room in her mind for any of the thoughts which had inspired it.
And so, as she crept nearer to the end of the alleyway, Patricia's nerve was neither dulled nor unbalanced by any irrelevant considerations. She was just one hundred and thirty pounds of smoothly functioning Tophet, actuated by one grim purpose, waiting to detonate all over anyone who got in her way. And that road ran straight as an arrow's flight to a point directly over the Tiger's shoe leather... .
Men of the trade known to Orace as "per-taterstoors" may not be quite as other men are, but one specimen at least can be certified as possessing the gumption of ordinary men, for he heard the metallic note in Patricia's rapped command from the galley door, and, wisely, decided not to shout for help.