"Very ingenious, my Tiger," was the Saint's unspoken comment. "When I open the door, I get pipped. And I didn't, after all. Sosorry!"
However, just in case the arrangement had any more shots left, and in case he should have to leave hurriedly by the door, he slewed the box round so that the gun barrel pointed into the wall, and disconnected the wires. Then he took stock of the position again.
The discovery and circumnavigation of that little booby trap didn't dispose of the possibility of encountering others in fact, his estimate of the Tiger forced him to realize that the next step he took might set some other equally neat little contrivance working. And if not that, there might still be Tiger Cubs in the building, already warned of his arrival by Booby Trap Number One going off, and knowing that it hadn't functioned quite according to plan. The amusing thought that they might be in some fear of his fighting record struck the Saint, and he chuckled quietly. Perhaps they felt confident of having him safely trapped, and were just biding their time to strike him down when the operation could be performed without risk to themselves. Well, it wouldn't hurt them to keep on hoping.
But the job looked just as prickly now that he was inside the Old House as it had been when he was outside. However gingerly he opened the next door, there might be men inside the room waiting to open fire as soon as he showed up in the doorway. Yet the Saint was no piker; and, having got so far, he intended to go the rest of the journey. And the only course he could see was to repeat the tactics he had used when entering the building in the first place. So, without further hesitation, he got on with it.
There was the door with footprints leading to and from it, and that seemed the most promising. There were also footprints outside the swing door nearest to him, but they were less encouraging, for at that point there was only a double set, whereas the other seemed to have been fairly popular. And the Saint's philosophy laid down the law that if you must stroll into the home-sweet-home of a bunch of cut-throats you might as well do the thing in style. Wherefore the Saint went down lire passage and halted by the most dangerous looking door.
There was a handle on that door. He turned it and opened the door a couple of inches. Then, keeping well away, he set his toe against the wood, braced himself, and kicked. The door opened wide, but there was no muffled report. That short history at least wasn't going to repeat itself. And, accordingly, the only thing to do was to march straight in.
Simon went in a catlike spring that carried him round the corner and set his back against the wall again in a flash. But once more there was no response. Simon had jerked the door shut behind him as before, and one foot was against it so that nobody could open it and sneak out without his knowing it. But only stillness answered his listening, and the room was so dark that he could see nothing. He cursed himself for not having an electric torch. But it was far too late to remedy that, and therefore his only hope was to strike a match and hope that his concerted speed of eye and brain and hand would be great enough to overcome the handicap he would have to create for himself. If there was anyone in the room, he would be able to see the Saint before the Saint saw him. But the Saint had taken longer chances than that, and his nerves were getting just a shade raw. Simon Templar was afraid of nothing that he could see and hit back at, but this creeping around, seeing no sign of the enemy and yet continually threatened by him, was turning into a joke that the Saint didn't feel inclined to laugh at.
Still gripping Anna, he fished a box of matches out of his pocket and struck one quickly, holding it behind his head so that the flare of it would not dazzle him.
And the room was perfectly empty.
The match burned down between his fingers and went out. He struck another, but even that could not cause a human being to materialize. Yet there had been men there their footprints were all over the floor, and there were three comparatively new-looking beer bottles in one corner, and scraps of greasy paper were littered about.
"This is getting annoying," said the Saint.
He struck a third match, and took a couple of steps into the room.
Then he tried to hurl himself back, but he was a fraction of a second late. The ground dropped away beneath his feet and he felt himself falling down and down into utter darkness.
Chapter XI
CARN LISTENS IN
Detective Inspector Carn of Scotland Yard, temporary medico, was not far from being typical of the modern C.I.D. man the difference, in fact, being little more than an extra gramme or two of brain which lifted him a finger's breadth above the common competent herd and which had led to his being detailed for the special work of tracking the Tiger.
In other words, Carn was not obtrusively brilliant. He knew his job from A to Z, plus one or two other letters. He was a plodder, but an efficient plodder, having been taught in a school which prefers perseverance to genius and which trains men to rely on methodical painstaking investigation rather than on flashes of inspiration. Carn would never send an adoring gallery into rhapsodies with some dazzling feat of Holmesian deduction; he never whirled through a case in a kind of triumphant procession, with bouquets and confetti flying through the air, streamers blazing, and a brass band urging the awestricken populace to see the conquering hero come but his superiors (a hard-headed and unromantic crowd) knew that he had a record of generally getting there, even if his progress and arrival were monotonous and unspectacular.
This brief biographical note is made for the disillusionment of anyone who has imagined that Carn was a genial cipher in the affair of the Tiger. He was not. But his tactics were different from those of the Saint, who had a weakness for the limelight and no reason to deny himself the gratification of his vanity. The Saint was one man, nearly as far outside the law as the Tiger, and therefore the Tiger would not hesitate to accept the challenge. But Carn represented Authority, a vast and inexorable machinery backed up by arms and men, and if Carn showed up in his true colours they were the colours of Authority and before that the Tiger would hesitate for a long time. Carn had no chance of accomplishing his mission unless he worked underground and in the dark, and that, in a way, was a handicap, though it suited his temperament. But Carn, the stolid man hunter, took one look at the handicap, shrugged, and went on with the job in his own laborious fashion.
The arrival of Mr. Templar, heralded by the Saint himself with the moral equivalent of a fanfare of terrific trumpets, illuminated with Kleig arcs, and fully equipped with one-man orchestra, noises off, self-starter, alarms, excursions, and all modern conveniences, lacking nothing but the camera men and press agent, had eclipsed Carn's modest efficiency, and perhaps had even put him off his plodding stroke for a while. But it would have taken more than a legion of Saints to derange our Mr, Carn permanently.
Carn was slow and Simon was sensational; but in the end they cancelled out, for Carn had had a start of several months. He knew from certain happenings one evening that Templar was hot on the Tiger's heels; he was not unduly perturbed, for he could have said the same for himself. In his quiet way, he had already given some attention to Sir John Bittle, and he knew quite a lot about that unpopular man and his strongly fortified house with its garrison of toughs. He had also put some work into Bloem, among others; but Bloem was the more slippery customer, and Carn had made very little headway, so that the Boer's sudden prominence in the field came as a surprise. Carn, recuperating from the shock with his well-tried resilience, had nevertheless not yet had time to follow up the clue which the Saint had provided. Carn had also an eye to the possibilities of Agatha Girton; he knew of her strange and secretive association with Bittle, but so far he had been unable to account for it better than by assuming her to be in with the gang though in what capacity, and with what rank, he hadn't an inkling. There was Algy, for another; and Inspector Carn was prepared to believe startling things of Algy. The other three Shaw, Smith, and Lapping Carn had decided to rule out. Lapping in particular, with the policeman's ingrained reverence for the Law and its higher officers, he barred completely. In fact, except the Saint, Sir Michael Lapping was the only man in Baycombe who knew Carn's true designation and sole interest in life Lapping was a Justice of the Peace, and Carn, hopeful of success, realized that the ex-judge was an indispensable ally, for Carn carried a warrant ready for Lapping's signature as soon as the name of the Tiger could be filled in with reasonable certainty. Taking things all round, therefore. Carn reckoned that he was as well posted as the Saint and in this he was very nearly right. It was Carn's misfortune that he had never been privileged to make the acquaintance of Fernando, and that because of this loss he had been unaware of the significance of the Old House.