Meet the Tiger

by Leslie Charteris

He drew back to think it over, and cast a thoughtful glance at the boarded windows. But the same difficulty presented itself: to break away a plank makes a noise at the best of times, and he could now see that the planks in question were not simply nailed to the frame but solidly riveted in place. That seemed to rule out the windows, which left only the door—with someone waiting for him inside, as like as not. Well, Simon decided, that had got to be faced, and it was better to tackle something you had a line on than something you hadn’t. It wasn’t a time for humming and hawing and eventually leaving your card and promising to look them up next walk you took that way. He was more than ever determined to get inside the Old House that afternoon, and the door was the only way in that presented itself. Therefore, it must be the door.

The Saint pushed the door a little further. Nothing happened. Then he slowly edged one eye round at a point where no one within would expect a man to appear—only a few inches off the ground. But inside was darkness, and he could distinguish nothing. The Saint swung the door again, until it was over a foot ajar.

Plop!

Just the noise that a big stone makes falling into a well; and something nicked the door, breaking a burst of splinters out of the rotten wood. The Saint looked up at the wound, and saw that it would have been on a level with his chest if he had been standing up.

That was enough—ultimatum, declaration of war, and attack, all together. And it meant also that, whatever was waiting for him inside, it would probably be healthier to charge right in and take it on than to stick around in the open where half a dozen Tiger Cubs could take pot-shots at him from the windows. The Saint gathered himself for the rush and slid Anna out of her sheath. He tested his muscles, drew a deep breath, and jumped.

One leap took him well inside the door, and in a flash he had banged it shut again behind him. That evened things up a bit, for it stopped him being a target against the light outside for any sniper hidden in the darkness. Then, almost in the same movement, he had flung back again against the door, in a corner.

He had half expected to find someone waiting just behind the door to put him down as he passed, but his groping fingers touched nothing but dust. First mistake. Well, that meant that anything that was coming to him would arrive out of the blackness in front.

The Saint stood motionless, listening intently and straining his eyes to try and locate the gentleman who had fired that single shot—and had been too surprised at the suddenness of the Saint’s reaction to loose off another round at the critical instant when the Saint was silhouetted in the doorway on his way in. It was at least a comfort to have your back to a wall, and to know that the other man was literally as much in the dark as you were; but there were such things as electric torches, and the Saint was tensely prepared for a beam of light to shoot from the obscurity and pick him out for the benefit of the man with the gun. Simon had Anna held in his deft fingers ready to send her whistling through the hand of any man who turned a spotlight on him, and equally ready to hamstring anyone who might creep up and jump on him.

Minutes passed without the other side making a move, and Simon shifted one hand to scratch his head mechanically. Not even his preternaturally acute hearing could catch the least sound—and in that silence he would have bet half his worldly goods on being able to detect the faint rustle of cloth if a man so much as lifted his arm. He made out the steady beating of his own heart, and even heard the whisper of his wrist watch ticking, but there was nothing else.

His eyes were gradually becoming accustomed to the gloom, and at last he began to scowl very thoughtfully, for the passage in front of him was empty. One by one the details became visible. First, two doors, opposite each other and about two yards away, both of them closed. He looked down. The dust lay thick on the floor of the passage, and there were marks of many feet, both entering and leaving. Some of the footprints branched off to the door on his right, but it seemed that nobody had used the room on the left, unless there was another entrance to it. At the far end of the passage was a small window, boarded up like the rest, and it was through this that enough light filtered in for him to be able to see.