Suddenly she saw the solution. The Tiger was in Baycombe, but with the removal of his gold the reason for his stay was also taken away. That boat must have been sent over to fetch him. The Tiger was even then being rowed out to his ship the ship they were to capture.
Patricia drew a deep breath. Things were clearing up. All the widespread threads of the tangled web of mystery and terror that had cast its shadow so unexpectedly over her life and her home had been obligingly gathered up and dumped down in the few hundred square yards of shining water below. The gold was there; the Tiger was there; the Tiger Cubs were there. The gold was of secondary importance, and the Tiger Cubs, being nothing without their leader, were of no importance whatever except as a dangerous obstacle to be overcome. But the Tiger was the big prize in the Lucky Dip, and that was a gamble she was relentlessly determined to win. There would be no more mystery about his identity, once she was on board: he could only be one of two people. And then. ..
Orace loomed silently out of the dimness.
"Carn't see 'im," he said shortly, and with that he would have dismissed the subject of Mr. Lomas-Coper. "Owda we get dahn this plurry precipyse, Miss Patricia? I'd fergot we ain't got no rope ter speak of'ere."
"He was going to bring some," said the girl. I wonder if anything's happened to him?"
She was at a loss to explain the defection of Algy. He had been so thrilled with the adventure that she could not believe that he would deliberately let her down, and she did not number cowardice among his failings. Had Bloem found out that she had enlisted Algy? The possibility of a spy listening outside the embrasure while she talked had not occurred to her, and the thought sent her cold. If they had been overheard, the Tiger Cubs would be waiting for them, and their plan was foredoomed to failure unless by some brilliant revision it could be brought to bear from another angle.
Then she had an inspiration. If Algy had been returning punctually, he would have passed by the quay about the time the boat she had seen was picking up the Tiger himself. Algy knew all the facts, and if he had noticed anything suspicious he would probably have stopped to investigate. Then, like the impetuous ass he was, he'd have managed to drop several large bricks...
"They may have got him already," she said. "I've got a hunch what must have happened. We'll go down and see."
Already she was heading down the hill, and Orace followed protestingly.
" 'E ain't werf it, miss, onestter Gawd, 'e ain't"
"He's two more men than we can afford to lose," Patricia retorted crisply. "In any case, we've got to go this way. We must get some rope and see if Carn's back I'd like to know that the police were going to chip in later, in case we don't bring it off."
The quay, so called by courtesy, was no more than fifty yards by ten of rough stone, littered with coils of rope, drying nets, lobster pots, and spars. Behind it were tarred wooden huts used by the fishermen to repair their things; and from one end of it a stone jetty ran out for no more than twenty yards.
They stopped and looked round.
From a very little distance came a slithering sound and a low groan. Then a weak whisper:
"Pat!''
Orace had thoughtfully brought his torch, but the girl stopped him using it, aware that they could be seen from the ship if anyone happened to be looking that way. She traced the voice, and almost at once came upon the man lying against the wall. of one of the huts.
"Is that you, Algy?"
"Right first go," he got out. "I'm a washout to get pipped bang off like this!"
She was supporting his head with her arm, and Orace was hovering ineffectually around.
"How did they get you?" she asked. "Is it bad?"
"Think I'll pull round in a sec.," he muttered with an effort. "I'm not going to die by a fluke."
At this news Orace, finding that he had not to play odd man out at a deathbed scene, moved the girl aside and picked Algy up. He carried him round behind the hut and then switched the torch on him. Blood was running down the side of Algy's face from an ugly furrow which was scored from the outside end of his eyebrow to the top of his ear, and there was a black cordite burn on his temple.
"Point-blank," he said. "It stunned me. But I'll soon be as fit as a fiddle."
Orace had found a bucket, and in this he fetched water from the sea. Algy heaved himself and plunged his head in the pail for three or four long douches, coming up for breath in between. The salt water stung his wound painfully, but his head was rapidly clearing.
While they tied a handkerchief round his head he told the story, and it was much as the girl had surmised,
"So, like a little hero," he concluded ruefully, "I walked up and said 'Hands up!' in the approved manner. And then I got this."
"Did you recognize anybody?"
"It was too dark to see their faces I didn't even see the jolly old pea-shooter they used on me. But one of them was short and fat, which must have been the Sausage-meat Sultan, and I'm blowed if another hadn't got something doocid like the height and shape of Uncle Hans!"
"How many were there?"
"Three or four they stood in a group, so I can't be quite certain."
He was struggling to his feet, and he stood leaning against the wall of the hut. The shock must have been worse than he admitted, for his face was white and drawn.
"How do you feel now?" she asked.
"Fine," he said. "I feel as if the top of my head's breaking off, but otherwise I'm absolutely O. K. Let's get along the string's where I dropped it, round in front. Lead on!"
Orace had faded away to fetch the rope, and in a moment he returned with a heavy coil of it slung over his shoulder.
"Don't chew fink ya better go 'ome?" he asked. "Yer carn't be yupter much after this."
The honourable wound which Mr. Lomas-Coper had received in the Cause had immediately destroyed Grace's animosity toward him. In another second Orace would call him "sir."
"No, I don't," said Algy strongly, and roughly he shook off their hands. "I'm going through with this now. Blast it, those unmitigated blighters shot me up! I've jolly well gotto meet them again, and I shall be fearfully vindictive about it. The cold water'll do me no end of good, and by the time we're aboard the lugger I'll be ready for anything."
"Well, I'm glad jer not worse 'urt, sir," said Orace in a tone of encouragement. "But if I might jus' take yerrarm while yer gettin'yer bref, so ter speak
The girt also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way: in the grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as she was of sparing herself.
"But we ought to get Carn," she said.
"I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back," Algy answered. "He hasn't returned. We'll have to do without him."
The hope of legal reenforcements seemed to be receding, thought Patricia, as they set off toward the Pill Box. It appeared that she had been mistaken about Carn's knowledge, for if he had been planning to make his coup that night he must have been on the spot by that time. And, since he was not, the management of the bunfight was left entirely to the three of them.
In the Pill Box it was Algy who decided that the safest way to fix their rope was to pass it round a section of the wall, by way of two embrasures, tying it on the outside; though the actual work was left to Orace, as a man with some nautical experience. A change had come over Algy, sobering down his bubbling vapidness and turning him into a sensible man. It had been done by the bullet which had so nearly smashed him out of the adventure altogether the fool had been stung by a hard fact, and it had brought out into the open the character which for years he had taken such pains to conceal. Automatically he rose from the ranks to a commission, with Pat as his only superior: Orace accepted the transformation philosophically.