"Bad luck, sonny," murmured the Saint mildly. "Only a couple of inches out...."
But he was on his feet before the sound of the shot had reached him.
He was on one of the arms of the bay, which was roughly semicircular. The village was in the centre of the arc. A quick calculation told him that the bullet had come from some point on the cliff between the Pill Box and the village, but he could see nothing on the skyline. A moment later a frantic silhouette appeared at the top of the tor, and the voice of Orace hailed down an anxious query. The Saint waved his towel in response and, making for the foot of the cliff, began to climb up again.
He accomplished the difficult ascent with no apparent effort, quite unperturbed by the thought that the unknown sniper might essay a second round. And presently the Saint stood on the grass above, hands on hips, gazing keenly down the slope toward the spot from where the bullet had seemed to come. A quarter of a mile away was a broad clump of low bushes; beyond the copse, he knew, was a cart track leading down to the village. The Saint shrugged and turned to Orace, who had been fuming and fidgeting around him.
"The Tiger knows his stuff," remarked Simon Templar with a kind of admiration.
"Like a greenorn!" spluttered Orace. "Like a namachoor! Wa did ja expect? An' just wotcha deserved an' I 'ope it learns ya! You ain't 'urt, sir, are ye?" added Orace, succumbing to human sympathy.
"No but near enough," said the Saint.
Orace flung out his arms.
"Pity he didn't plug ya one, just ter make ya more careful nex' time. I'd a bin grateful to 'im. An' if I ever lay my 'ands on the swine 'e's fore it," concluded Orace somewhat illogically, and strutted back to the Pill Box.
Orace, as a Sergeant of Marines, had received a German bullet in his right hip at Zeebrugge, and had walked with a lop-sided strut ever since.
"Brekfuss in narf a minnit," Orace flung over his shoulder.
The Saint strolled after him at a leisurely pace and returned to his bedroom whistling. Nevertheless, Orace, entering the sitting room with a tray precisely half a minute later, found the Saint stretched out in an armchair. The Saint's hair was impeccably brushed, and he was fully dressed according to the Saint's ideas of full dress in shoes, socks, a dilapidated pair of gray flannel trousers and a snowy silk tennis shirt. Orace snorted, and the Saint smiled.
"Orace," said the Saint conversationally, lifting the cover from a plate of bacon and eggs, "one gathers that things are just about to hum."
" 'Um," responded Orace.
"About to 'urn, if you prefer it," said the Saint equably. "The point is that the orchestra are in their places, the noises off have hitched up their hosiery, the conductor has unkemped his hair, the seconds are getting out of the ring, the guard is blowing his whistle, the skipper has rung down for full steam ahead, the the "
"The cawfy's getting cold," said Orace. The Saint buttered a triangle of toast. "How unsympathetic you are, Orace!" he complained. "Well, if my flights of metaphor fail to impress you, let us put it like this: we're off."
'"Um," agreed Orace, and returned to the improvised kitchen.
Simon finished his meal and returned to the armchair, from which he had a view of the cliff and the sea beyond. He skimmed through the previous day's paper (Baycombe was at least twenty-four hours behind the rest of England) and then smoked a meditative cigarette. At length he rose, fetched and pulled on a well-worn tweed coat, picked up an unwieldy walking stick, and went to the curtained breach in the fortifications which was used for a front door.
"Orace!"
"Sir!" answered Orace, appearing at the threshold of the kitchen.
"Im going to have a look round. Ill be back for lunch."
"Aye, aye, sir.... Sir!"
The Saint was turning away, and he stopped. Orace fumbled under his apron and produced a fearsome weapon a revolver of pre-war make and enormous calibre which he offered to his master.
"It ain't much ter look at," said Orace, stroking the barrel lovingly, "and I wouldn't use it fer fancy shooting; but it'll make a bigger 'ole in a man than any o' those pretty ortymatics."
"Thanks," grinned the Saint. "But it makes too much noise. I prefer Anna."
'"Um," said Orace.
Orace could put any shade of meaning into that simple monosyllable and on this occasion there was no doubt about the precise shade of meaning he intended to convey.
The Saint was studying a slim blade which he had taken from a sheath strapped to his forearm, hidden under his sleeve. The knife was about six inches long in the blade, which was leaf-shaped and slightly curved. The haft was scarcely three inches long, of beautifully carved ivory. The whole was so perfectly balanced that it seemed to take life from the hand that held it, and its edge was so keen that a man could have shaved with it. The Saint spun the sliver of steel high in the air and caught it adroitly by the hilt as it fell back; and in the same movement he returned it to its sheath with such speed that the knife seemed to vanish even as he touched it.
"Don't you be rude about Anna," said the Saint, wagging a reproving forefinger. "She'd take a man's thumb off before the gun was half out of his pocket."
And he went striding down the hill toward the village, leaving Orace to pessimistic disgust.
It was early summer, and pleasantly warm a fact which made the Saint's selection of the Pill Box for a home less absurd than it would have seemed in winter. (There was another reason for his choice, besides a desire for quantities of fresh air and the simple life, as will be seen.) The Saint whistled as he walked, swinging his heavy stick, but his eyes never relaxed their vigilant study of every scrap of cover that might hide another sniper. He walked boldly down to the bushes which he had suspected that morning and spent some time in a minute search for incriminating evidence; but there had been no rain for days, and even his practised eye could make little of the spoor he found. Near the edge of the cliff he caught a golden gleam under a tuft of grass, and found a cartridge case.
"Three-one-five Mauser," commented the Saint. "Naughty, naughty!"
He dropped the shell into his pocket and studied the ground closely, but the indistinct impressions gave him no clue to the size or shape of the unknown, and at last he resumed his thoughtful progress toward the village.
Baycombe, which is really no more than a fishing village, lies barely above sea level, but on either ; side the red cliffs rise away from the harbour, the hills rise behind, so that Baycombe lies in a hollow opening on the Bristol Channel. Facing seaward from the harbour, the Pill Box would have been seen crowning the tor on the right, the only 1 building to the east for some ten miles; the tor on the left was some fifty feet lower and was dotted with half-a-dozen red brick and gray stone houses belonging to the aristocracy. The Saint, via Orace, who had drunk beer in the public house by the quay to some advantage, already knew the names and habits of this oligarchy. The richest member was one Hans Bloem, a Boer of about fifty, who was also reputed to be the meanest man in Devonshire. Bloem frequently had a nephew staying with him who was as popular as his uncle was unpopular: the nephew was Algernon de Breton Lomas-Coper, wore a monocle, was one of the Lads, and, highly esteemed locally for a very pleasant ass. The Best People were represented by Sir Michael Lapping, a retired Judge; the Proletariat by Sir John Bittle, a retired Wholesale Grocer. There was a Manor, but it had no Lord, for it had passed to a gaunt, grim, masculine lady. Miss Agatha Girton, who lived there, unhonoured and unloved, with her ward, whom the village honoured and loved without exception. For the rest, there were two Indian Civil Servants who, under the prosaic names of Smith and Shaw, survived on their pensions in a tiny bungalow; and a Dr. Carn.