Meet the Tiger

by Leslie Charteris

It was a ticklish job he was embarking on. In broad daylight stealth was out of the question. It would mean walking boldly up to the enemy fortress and trying to get as far as he wanted in one dash, before the opposition could collect their wits. And then there would be ructions—but that would have to take care of itself.

The Saint did not remember the Old House very distinctly, and he paused at the edge of a spinney lower down the hill to survey the land. And then he gave thanks once again for the continuance of his phenomenal luck. There it was—the blessing out of the blue that he’d never dared to hope or pray for—a long low wall that sprang from one corner of the Old House and ran north towards the straggly outskirts of the village, losing itself behind a couple of sheds belonging to a small farm. Hardly believing his good fortune, the Saint hurried down the slope and passed through the village. He worked round the farm outbuildings, and found that he was not deceived. The wall started there, and it was just high enough to screen his advance if he bent almost double.

That was not a very difficult feat, and Simon plunged straight on into his adventure. Stooping down, he trotted rapidly along under cover of the wall till he had nearly reached the nearest corner of the Old House. At that point he slowed up and proceeded with more caution, travelling on his toes and finger-tips, in case there should be a watcher posted at an upper window. When he actually came to the Old House itself he flattened down on his stomach and lay prone for a moment while he planned his entrance.

He could see one wall of the Old House—a dead flat facade of chipped and mouldering brick, broken only by four symmetrically placed windows and a door. The door was a godsend. The windows themselves were roughly boarded up, and to prise off those boards, though it could be done in a brace of shakes, would be rather too audible for the Saint’s taste; whereas a mere door could probably be dealt with, by an expert, almost noiselessly.

The Saint wormed his way forwards, fitting himself as snugly as he could into the angle between the wall and the ground and taking infinite pains to make no sound that might betray his approach to a keen ear within. From the moment he left the shelter of the wall, however, he was in danger of discovery, for if any sentinel had elected to peer out of a window the Saint would be lucky to be overlooked. The watcher would probably scrutinise the nearest cover, in which case his gaze would pass right above the Saint; but on the other hand the enemy might be well aware of the possibilities of that too convenient wall, and in that case anyone who was taking a peek round would certainly cast an eye downwards, and then the Saint wouldn’t have an earthly. That salutary realisation made him wriggle along as fast as he could with safety, and it must be admitted that his spine was tingling and the short hairs on the scruff of his neck bristling throughout that dozen yards’ crawl. It is not pleasant to have visions of a man sticking a gun out of an upper window and plugging a chunk of lead down into your back.

But his head came on a level with the door at last, and nothing so disastrous had happened. The Saint crept up into a squatting position and, tentatively, began to breathe again, while he inspected the door at close quarters.

He found that the handle had snapped off short—in fact, he discovered the tarnished brass ball lying under a bush a few yards away. The lock was rusty, and the door sagged on its hinges. The Saint scratched his head. Either the Old House was not the goods at all, or the Tiger Cubs were banking a lot on its reputation of being haunted. He looked again and more closely at the broken end of the handle lever protruding from the door, and caught his breath. The jagged metal was shining—not a trace of the rust that flaked over the rest of the metal dulled its brilliance. That was a new break! Even in forty-eight hours the exposed steel would have lost some of that sheen. Therefore, someone had been there recently. And unless the village children were less superstitious than their elders, that meant that the Tiger Cubs had graced the premises.

Simon put his hand on the door and pushed gently. It gave back smoothly at his touch.

The Saint took his hand away as if the wood had burned it. The door yielded smoothly! It wasn’t locked, or bolted, or barred, and there wasn’t a creak anywhere. And the doors of houses that haven’t been inhabited since the year Dot don’t do things like that—for one thing, the hinges are so rusted up that it takes a thundering good push to shift them; but these hinges turned like brand-new ones freshly oiled. That meant that someone certainly was using the Old House. And, plus the fact that there was apparently nothing to stop anyone else using it as well, the complete scenery had a howling warning scrawled all over it. A tight little smile moved the Saint’s mouth.

“ ‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the spider to the fly,” murmured the Saint. “Surest thing you know, son—but not exactly like that sort of boob.”