“Yes—forewarned and forearmed to the teeth. If I happen to have been a bit slow on the uptake, well and good. If I haven’t, and think I’ll butt in, they’ll be ready for me. Maybe the Tiger’s patting himself on the back right now, bucked to death with his dandy little scheme for getting away with the oof and me too. Well, it’s up to me to hand him the jar of his life. Sit tight a shake while I think.”
He dropped into a chair and lighted a cigarette, his brain reeling and humming to encompass this new twist to the problem. Undoubtedly he had sized it up right—the Tiger was giving himself a double chance. And that move had got to be baulked somehow. But how? The Saint had only to breathe a word to Carn, and the Tiger was dished. But then so was the Saint. That put that out of bounds.
He was fully prepared to swim out to the Old House that night, with Anna strapped to his arm, and trust to the inspiration of the moment to show him a way of beating the gang, even if they were watching and waiting for him. That was an honest toss-up with sudden death, and Simon took risks of that stamp without turning a hair. But on the other hand he liked to have at least a shadowy loop-hole for emergencies—there was no point in chucking the game away for lack of a little forethought. And how to provide that loop-hole? The Tiger’s forces were large: the Saint could reckon on only Orace and the girl, besides himself. And he didn’t want to push a slip of a girl into the front line, however keen she might be to go. How to make three people—or nearer two and a half—do the work of a platoon was a poser worthy of the undivided attention of a great general. Manifestly, it could not be done by any ordinary means. Therefore, there must be subtlety.
And the Tiger had the added advantage of being the attacker. Simon’s cigarette began to smoulder down in his fingers unnoticed. That was a point! The Tiger was sitting high and dry in his den, hatching plots and making raids and forays when the spirit moved him; while the Saint had to sit on the fence with his eyes skinned, just parrying the Tiger’s thrusts. And it became clear to the Saint that there was something unfair about that arrangement. True, the Saint had made one attack—but why let the offensive stop there? The enemy had an idea that he would come lunging in again that night: well, so he might, if it looked like a good tussle and he felt in the mood. But that didn’t imply an armistice until zero hour, by any manner of means. Quite a lot of skirmishing could take place before the big battle—and every blow of it would bother the Tiger and help harrass his organisation for the last rounds. There really was no earthly reason why the Tiger should have it all his own way.
Where to launch the attack? The other Old House sprang to his mind at once. They might be expecting him to turn up there, but they would hardly anticipate his arrival in broad daylight. Which was just the way he might catch them on the hop. Or the dilapidated inn might be a false scent—in which case there was nothing but the state of his own nerves to stop him paying a call on Bloem. The prospects began to look brighter, and suddenly the Saint sat up with a broad grin illuminating his face.
“I’ve very nearly got it,” he announced.
“Do let’s hear!”
She was flushed and eager, eyes sparkling, lips slightly parted, like a splendid young Diana. She made a picture that in the abstract would have delighted the pagan Saint, but in the concrete it brought him up with a jerk. Next thing he knew, she’d be demanding to be allowed to accompany him on the whole tour.
“Simply the germ of an idea to wallop the Tiger Cubs when they come in for the spondulicks,” he lied, thinking furiously. “You see, gold’s shocking weighty stuff, so they’ll have to ferry it to the ship in small doses. That’ll mean they’ll have about three of the ship’s boats running in relays—if they tried to take too big a load at once it’d simply drop through the bottom. And the crew’ll be pretty small. A motor ship doesn’t take much running, and they’d want to keep the numbers down in any case, because the seaman who can be relied on not to gossip in port is a rare bird. If we’re lucky, the skipper’ll be ashore getting his orders from the Tiger, and that’ll make one less to tackle. Otherwise, the Tiger’ll go aboard himself, and that’ll be one more to pip—though the fish’ll be worth the extra trouble of landing. In any event, the general idea is this: we’re going to have a stab at pinching that hooker!”
The Saint was capable of surprising himself. That plan of campaign, rigged out on the spur of the moment to put the girl off the main trail, caught hold of his imagination even as he improvised it. He ended on a note of genuine enthusiasm, and found that she was wringing his hands joyfully.