Meet the Tiger
by
Leslie Charteris
The First ‘Saint’ Novel
Contents
Chapter I.
The Pill Box
Baycombe is a village on the North Devon coast that is so isolated from civilisation that even at the height of the summer holiday season it is neglected by the rush of lean and plump, tall and short, papas, mammas, and infants. Consequently, there was some sort of excuse for a man who had taken up his dwelling there falling into the monotony of regular habits—even for a man who had only lived there for three days—even (let the worst be known) for a man so unconventional as Simon Templar.
It was not so very long after Simon Templar had settled down in Baycombe that that peacefully sedate village became most unsettled, and things began to happen there that shocked and flabbergasted its peacefully sedate inhabitants, as will be related; but at first Simon Templar found Baycombe as dull as it had been for the last six hundred years.
Simon Templar—in some parts of the world he was quite well known, from his initials, as the Saint—was a man of twenty-seven, tall, dark, keen-faced, deeply tanned, blue-eyed. That is a rough description. It was not long before Baycombe had observed him more closely, and woven mysterious legends about him. Baycombe did that within the first two days of his arrival, and it must be admitted that he had given some grounds for speculation.