'I've met the most wonderful girl in the world,' said Simon impenitently. 'By all the laws of adventure, I'm bound to have to save her life two or three times during the next ten days. I shall kiss her very passionately in the last chapter. We shall be married — '
Orace snorted.
'Lunch 'narf a minnit,' he said, and disappeared.
The Saint washed his hands and ran a comb through his hair in the half-minute's grace allowed him; and the Saint was thoughtful. He had his full measure of human vanity, and it tickled his sense of humour to enter the lists with the air of a Mystery Man straight out of a detective story, but he had a solid reason for giving his caprice its head. It struck him that the Tiger knew all about him and that therefore no useful purpose would be served by trying to pretend innocence; whereas a shameless bravado might well bother the other side considerably. They would be racking their brains to find some reason for his brazen front, and crediting him with the most complicated subtleties: when all the time there was nothing behind it but the fact that one pose was as good as another, and the opportunity to play the swashbuckler was too good to be missed. !
The Saint was whistling blithely when Orace brought lunch. He knew that the Tiger was in Baycombe. He had come halfway across the world to rob the Tiger of a million dollars, and the duel promised to be exhilarating as anything in the Saint's hell-for-leather past.
Chapter II
THE NATURALIST
Algernon de Breton Lomas-Coper was one of the genial Algys made famous by Mr. P. G. Wode-house, and accordingly he often ejaculated 'What? What?' to show that he could hardly believe his own brilliance; but now he ejaculated 'What? What?' to show that he could hardly believe his own ears.
'It's perfectly true,' said Patricia. 'And he's coming to lunch.'
'Now!' gasped Algy feebly, and relapsed info open-mouthed amazement.
He was one of those men who are little changed by the passage of time: he might have been twenty-five or thirty-five. Studying him very closely — which few took the trouble to do — one gathered that the latter age was more probably right. He was fair, round-faced, pink-and-white.
'He was quite tame,' said Patricia. 'In fact, I thought he was awfully nice. But he would keep on talking about the terrifying things that he thought were going to happen. He said people were trying to murder him.”
'He was as sane as anyone I've ever met.'
'What on earth's that?' she asked.
'An irresistible desire to pull legs.'
Patricia frowned.
'You'll be thinking I'm crazy next,' she said. 'But somehow you can't help believing him. It's as if he were daring you to take him seriously.'
'Well, if he manages to wake up this backwater I'll be grateful to him,' said the man. 'Are you going to invite me to, stay and meet the ogre?'
He stayed.
Toward one o'clock Patricia sighted Templar coming up the road, and went out to meet him at the gate. He was dressed as he had been the day before, but he had fastened his collar and put on a tie.
He greeted her with a smile.
'Still alive, you see,' he remarked. 'The ungodly prowled around last night, but I poured a bucket of water over him, and he went home. It's astonishing how easy it is to damp the ardour of an assassin.'
'Isn't that getting a bit stale?' she protested, although she was annoyed to find that the reproof she forced into her tone lacked conviction.
'I'm surprised you should say that,' he returned gravely. 'Personally, I'm only just beginning to appredate the true succulence of the jest.'
'At least, I hope you won't upset everybody at lunch,' she said, and his eyes twinkled.
'I'll try to behave,' he promised. 'At any other time it would have been a fearful effort, but to-day I'm on my party manners.''
There were cocktails in the drawing room (Baycombe society prided itself on being up to date), and there Algy was brought forward and introduced.
'Delighted — delighted — long-expected pleasure — what?' he babbled.
'Is it really?' asked the Saint guilelessly.
Algy screwed a pane of glass into his eye and surveyed the visitor with awe.
'So you're the Mystery Man!' he prattled on. 'You don't mind being called that? I'm sure you won't. Everybody calls you the Mystery Man, and I honestly think it suits you most awfully well, don't you know. And fancy taking the Pill Box! Isn't it too frightfully draughty? But of course you're one of these strong, hearty he-men we see in the pictures.'
'Algy, you're being rude,' interrupted the girl.
'Am I really? Only meant for good-fellowship and all that sort of thing. What? What? No offence, old banana pip, you know, don't you know.'
'Do I? Don't I?' asked the Saint, blinking.
The girl rushed into the pause, for she already had a good estimate of the Saint's perverse sense of fun, and dreaded its irresponsibility. She felt that at any moment he would produce a revolver and ask if they knew anyone worth murdering.
'Algy, be an angel and go and tell Aunt Agatha to hurry up.''
'That is Mynheer Hans Bloom's nephew,' observed the Saint calmly as the door closed behind the talkative one. 'He is thirty-four. He lived for some years in America; in the City of London he is known as a man with mining property in the Transvaal.'
Patricia was astonished.
'You know more about him than I do,' she said.
'I make it my business to pry into my nieigh-bours' affairs,' he answered solemnly. 'It mayn't be courteous, but it's cautious.'
'Perhaps you know all about me?'' she was tempted to challenge him.
He turned on her a clear blue eye which held a mocking gleam.
'Only the unimportant things. That you were educated at Mayfietd. That Miss Girton isn't your aunt, but a very distant cousin. That you've led a very quiet life, and travelled very little. You're dependent on Miss Girton, because she has the administration of your property until you're twenty-five. That is for another five years.'
'Are you aware,' she demanded dangerously, 'that you're most impertinent?'
He nodded.
'Quite unpardonably,' he admitted. 'I can only plead in excuse that when there's a price on one's head one can't be too particular about one's ac-quaintances.
And he looked meditatively at the yellow-golden contents of his glass, which he had held untasted since it was given him.
'Your health,' he wished her; and, as he set down the empty glass, he smiled and added 'At ''least I've no fear of you.'
She had no time to find an adequate answer before Algy returnedwith Miss Girton and a tall, thin, leather- faced roan who was introduced as Mr. Bloem.
'Pleased to meet you,' murmured the Saint. 'So sorry T. T. Deeps are going badly in the market, but this is just the time to make your corner.' ' Bloem started, and his spectacles fell off and dangled at the length of their black watered ribbon as the Boer stared blankly at Simon Templar.
'You must be very much on the inside in the city, Mr. Templar,' said Bloem.
