The boy nodded and disappeared at the double.
The innkeeper was working the beer engine, and Carn, outwardly impassive, gnawed mouthfuls out of the stem of his pipe in the effort of appearing calm. The absence of the Ford, however antique and rickety, was a disaster. It meant that unless he was remarkably lucky he would have to be content with the assistance of a mob of mutton-headed locals for the big job. They would be panting with excitement at the magnitude of it, twice as jumpy as so many cats on hot bricks, and good-naturedly clod-hopperly dense. The prospect of seeing the Tiger get away through their bungling almost broke Carn's heart. He would have taken a chance and tackled the whole brigade of Tiger Cubs single-handed if he had seen the faintest hope of success, but he had been turned out of a different mould from Simon Templar's, and his kind of brain did not run to schemes for capturing a boatload of bandits all by himself. As it was, he had more than half a mind to enlist the Saint. Templar was straight, he knew. And it would be better to pinch the Tiger with the Saint's help than to see the Tiger get clean away.
That, however, would have to be resolved on the spur of the moment, for there was still a chance the rapidly fading ghost of a chance, but a chance all the same that the final humiliation would not be thrust upon him.
Carn gulped down his beer, thankful that the innkeeper was perfectly happy to conduct a monologue. "
Have another?"
"I don't mind if I do, thank you, sir."
The detective cursed and fumed inwardly, but it had to be borne. If he had rushed out without standing his whack, every subsequent customer would hear the innkeeper's comments on the doctor's extraordinary behaviour. And that would get to the Tiger's ears, and the Tiger, as Simon Templar had observed, owned a nasty, suspicious mind.
But the ordeal ended at last, and Carn was able to excuse himself. He went through the village and set out up the hill to the Pill Box. It was a sultry day, and Carn had accumulated a lot of spare avoirdupois since his London-to-Southend days. He climbed doggedly, with the perspiration streaming down into his collar, and gasped his relief when the slope commenced to flatten out.
He was still a dozen yards from the Pill Box when Orace appeared at the door. Orace made it elaborately obvious that he had simply come out for a breather. He surveyed the scenery with the concentrated interest of an artist, and honoured the detective with nothing but a nonchalant glance, but he kept his right hand behind his back.
"Mr. Templar in?" demanded Carn from a distance.
"Ain't," replied Orace laconically,
"D'you know where he is?"
Orace focussed the detective with unfriendly eyes.
"Dunno. Gorn fra walk, mos' likely. 'E might be chasin' 'ippopotamoscerosses acrorst Epping Forest," enlarged Orace, become humorous, "or 'e might be 'oppin' up'n dahn the 'Ome Secrety's chimbley looking fer Santiclaws. Or 'e mightn't. 'Oo knows, as the actriss said to the bishup?"
"Now, look here, Little Tich," rasped Carn with pardonable heat, "I haven't sweated up this blasted mountain in a temperature like hell warmed up just to hear a lot of funny backchat from you. The Tiger's going to push you over the cliff to-night, but you don't matter much. Ifs Mr. Templar I came to warn."
Orace looked meditatively at the detective.
"Ho?" he remarked. "Ho! Well in that case "
His right hand came out of cover, revealing the blunderbuss which Carn had seen before. It levelled on the detective's waistcoat, and Carn needed all his experienced agility to knock it up and wrench it out of Orace's hand before any damage could be done. Then he chucked it round the corner of the Pill Box.
"Don't be such a blazing lunatic!" he snapped. "As far as I can see, the only use for that lump of ivory above your ears is that it makes a place to hang your hat on. Don't you see that I'm trying to save your worthless skin? I tell you, the Tiger's laying for you both this evening. Got it? Tiger T-I-G-E-R Tiger! You know who he is, don't you? Well, look out, that's all. He's aiming to have the pair of you ready for the morgue by morning, and if you wake up and find yourselves dead after this nobody can blame me."
"Nobody's gonna worry 'bout you, cocky," Orace assured him. "Thankin' ya kindly fer the tip, an' will ya go back to the Tiger an' tell 'im Mr. Templar an' me are layin' fer 'im to-night, an' so if 'e wants ta pick up a packet o' trouble this is our 'ome address?"
"Well, you go off and find your boss, Orace, and pass the tip along to him," said Carn shortly, and, turning his back on the man, lumbered off down the hill again.
He found the trap waiting for him outside the inn, with a farm hand on the box and an expectant urchin in tow. Largesse was forthcoming, and then Carn clambered up beside the driver.
"Ilfracombe," he ordered, "and make all the speed you can. I'm on an urgent case."
They rattled away, and Carn fished out his pipe and fumbled for matches. There they were, on their way, and fretting wouldn't put an inch an hour on the pace. Everything depended on the stamina of the animal between the shafts. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past three. Still, he thought that if the horse was willing and they were afflicted with no such Act of God as a cast shoe or a wheel going adrift there might yet be a glimmer of hope, for the Tiger's ship, then riding over the rim of the horizon and with orders not to start coming in until nightfall, would take some time to reach the Old House. The loading of the gold would be an all-night job, but he knew that the Tiger intended to prefer his own safety to the safety of his ill-gotten gains, and the arrest of the Tiger was the accomplishment which Carn most desired to add to his record.
The next minute Carn remembered that he had omitted to warn Patricia Holm. He swore in-audibly at that for a while; but presently he was able to console himself with the thought that if the Tiger was rightly informed, and Simon and she had fixed it up, the Saint would not be far away. And probably the Saint had as good an idea of the girl's danger as anyone. That, at any rate, was the only optimistic way to look at it.
They were just topping the hill which in a moment would shut out the village from their sight when Carn heard the shots. There were two reports, so close together that their echoes merged into one rattle. Instinctively the detective made a mental note of the exact time; then he looked at the man beside him. That worthy, however, was quite unperturbed, but he read Carn's astonishment at this display of sangfroid.
"We'm used to ut, zur," he explained. "That be Maister Lomas-Coper. 'E do zometimes be out zhooting rabbuts."
"I see," said Carn, and made no further comment.
But the detective knew a lot about firearms. The distance and the echoes prevented an exact diagnosis, but as far as he could judge the gun had been fired somewhere among the houses on the west tor, and it sounded to him like" much heavier artillery than is employed for shooting rabbits.
Chapter XII
TEA WITH LAPPING
Agatha Girton had not appeared at breakfast that morning, and when Patricia returned home to buckle into the task that the Saint had intrusted to her the. housekeeper told her that the lady had gone out for a walk directly after lunch without saying when she might be expected back. Miss Girton often went for long tramps over the surrounding country, swinging a heavy stick and stepping out with the long, tireless stride of a veteran. In the light of her recently acquired knowledge, Patricia now realized that Miss Girton had been growing more and more grim and taciturn of late, and that concurrently with the beginning of this moodiness those walks had been growing more protracted and more frequent. The girl saw in this the evidence of Agatha Girton's increasing anxiety the woman was so masculine in all things that she might be expected, in the circumstances, to fall back on the typically masculine relief of strenuous physical effort to aid mental work and at the same time to gain some peace of mind through sheer fatigue.