She spoke in quiet, even tones, and the certainty that she wasn't bluffing hit Bittle between the eyes like the kick of a mule.
He bent and stared closely into her face, but she looked back at him without faltering. Incredulously, he searched for the least hint of wavering in her gaze, but found only a mocking amusement. Conviction forced itself upon him against his will.
"D'you mean to say Carn's a detective?" he said thickly.
"I do." Every syllable was a taunt. "And d'you mean to say the Tiger that old fool has had Carn living next door for months and never suspected him? ... Really, you seem to be a very stupid lot!
His face darkened, and for a moment she thought he would strike her. There was murder in his eyes.
Then he controlled himself, but he stepped back as though he had received a blow.
"Thank you for warning me I'll be ready for them," he rasped, "But you you'll never share the laugh. While I've got you for a hostage they don't dare to touch me. You'll save us all, my beauty!"
"My good man," retorted Patricia, with that glacial scorn which treated him as an offending flunkey "I wouldn't lift a finger to help you if you were roasting in hell."
He bared his teeth.
"You'll change your mind when I set out t make you," he said.
He flung open the door.
"Bloem!"
He waited, fuming, and then bellowed again:
"Bloem! ... Bloemyou blasted Dutchman! ... Here, you, go and find Mr. Bloem and tell him I want to see him at once. Run!"
He slammed the door again and glowered down at her.
"My girl," he said venomously, "you're going to be sorry you didn't accept my offer the night I made it!"
"My man," she answered, "your humiliation will always be one of the pleasantest memories of my life."
"It'll be one of the last," he vowed.
He leaned on the door with tightly folded arms, glaring at her evilly, but after one glance of superb disdain she went on smoking and ignored him.
The interval was a long one, and his cursing impatience raged higher with every minute of it.
At last a man came across the deck and knocked on the door. Bittle jerked it open, and let out an exclamation.
"What the blazes "
"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't find Mr. Bloem."
"Can't find him? You lazy swine you haven't looked! The ship's small enough, isn't it? What in hell d'you mean? can't find him!"
"Gawd's truth, sir. I looked everywhere, and Lopez and Abbot 've bin 'elping me. Mr. Bloem don't seem to be on board."
"Mr. Bloem ison board," snarled Bittle. "Go and look again and don't come to me with any more excuses like that."
And then came a startling interruption that made Bittle go white and sent the girl to her feet with her heart leaping madly, for from somewhere on the lower deck aft rang out a cheerful hail that could have shaped itself in only one mouth, and that the mouth of a man who had died that afternoon
"Ahoy, there, Bittle!"
Bittle shrank back, temporarily possessed by a superstitious terror. Patricia sprang forward, but he caught her and flung her on to the bunk with the strength of a maniac,
"Pat!" sang out that cheery voice. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, Saint Ah, Saint, is that you?"
"Sure!"
Bittle wrenched the guns from his pocket.
"Get him don't stand about staring like a lot of stuck pigs!" he screamed. "Go to the armoury heel yourselves!... A hundred pounds to the man who kills him!"
The Saint's laugh pealed out as she had thought she would never hear it again.
"Can't you make it more than that dearest cherub?"
And then Patricia saw him. He was standing up on the rail at the poop, and there were two men beside him. She thought at first that the third member of the party was Algy, until she saw that the limp figure which Orace was holding like a shield was fully dressed. She heard a rush of feet on the decks below, and four men emerged on the upper deck and ran toward the stern. They were carrying rifles the quartermaster or someone must have had a duplicate key to the gun room.
Then the Saint stepped down, and there were three men clustered in a little group by the taffrail.
"Tell 'em to be careful how they shoot, Bittle," warned Simon. "This here sandbag we're sheltering behind is the long-lost Bloem himself!"
"Stop!"
Bittle had collected himself.
He seized the girl by the arm and dragged her out into the moonlight so that the Saint could see her distinctly, and he held the girl in front of him see that her body was between him and the Saint.
"Be careful how you shoot. Templar!" shouted Bittle. "Be careful even of what you say and do because, unless you and your friends surrender within three minutes, I am going to kill Miss Holm with my own hands!"
Chapter XIX
THE TIGER
Precisely three minutes later, Simon Templar and Orace were led into the saloon under an armed guard.
"Good-evening, dear Bittlekins," murmured the Saint affably. "Fancy meeting you! as the vicar said when he saw one of the leading lights of the parish Mothers' Union dancing at the Forty-Three. Sit down and tell me all the news."
Bittle smiled.
"We all make slips," he said, "but I scarcely imagined you would overlook such an obvious factor as Miss Holm."
"I was just hoping that you yourself might overlook it," explained the Saint. "I honestly thought you were slow enough on the uptake for that. Still, we all make our mistakes, as the bishop said, even the very youngest and most inexperienced of us and very few mistakes are irreparable."
Bittle nodded slowly.
"Very few," he agreed. "I made a bad one when I presumed your death but, as you see, that error has been rectified. Even now, Templar, you are a dead man."
The Saint let his gaze travel round the saloon.
"Quite comfortable," he admitted, "but I really thought heaven would be a bit more luxurious. Besides " he surveyed the six tough customers who had ranged themselves round him in a semicircle that fairly bristled with knives and revolvers "these don't look like angels; and you don't, either, my pet, if it comes to that. Do you think I could have missed the bus and arrived in hell by mistake?"
His sodden trousers were shapeless, and the white of his torn shirt was marked with grease, but still, by the exercise of his inimitable gift, he was able to look debonair and immaculate. And, for all the apparently overwhelming odds against him, he retained his air of unshakable confidence. But this time Bittle could see no loophole in the trap in which he had the Saint, and he refused to be awed by anything so intangible as the Saint's assured bearing.
"Have they been searched?" he asked one of the guard, but it was Simon who answered.
"I gave up my gun when I surrendered."
"And kept your knife I remember that trick," said Bittle.
He himself removed Anna, and by making a thorough examination he found also her twin sister strapped to the Saint's leg. The discovery pleased him.
"I'm not making any more mistakes. Templar."
"So glad!" drawled Simon. "May I have my cigarette case back, please? Anna and Belle aren't any use to anyone but myself, but the cigarette case is really silver I won it in the Open Ludo Tournament at Bournemouth in '13."
Bittle examined the case, and, failing to find anything suspicious about it, returned it to the Saint, who replaced it in his hip pocket.
The Saint turned suddenly on his heel, and the guard sprang back a pace and put up their weapons, and Simon laughed.
"Your men aren't very brave, are they?" he remarked. "I'm unarmed, and each of them looks like a travelling arsenal but watch!"
He feinted at one of the tough-looking customers, and the man flinched away. The Saint tweaked his nose ungently, and, wheeling round, tripped up another man and sent him crashing to the floor. Bittle sprang up with an oath, reaching for his revolver, but the Saint turned back with a light chuckle and put up his hands.