“If I could see the boy now, he could be getting on his way while we down a quick one,” Carn mooted gently.
The publican sighed. The fidgetiness of city-bred people offended his placid spirit. Nevertheless, he shouted “Boy!” and after a decent interval, during which he embarked on a voluminous discussion of the weather and its influence on fish, a diminutive urchin answered his summons.
The urchin was instructed in the vernacular, but Carn was moved to add an exhortation in another language.
“Tell him it’s urgent,” he said, slipping a half-crown into the infant’s paw, “and hurry yourself. You can ride over in the trap, and I’ll stand you another of these if you’re back quickly.”
The boy nodded and disappeared at the double.
The innkeeper was working the beer engine, and Carn, outwardly impassive, gnawed mouthfuls out of the stem of his pipe in the effort of appearing calm. The absence of the Ford, however antique and rickety, was a disaster. It meant that unless he was remarkably lucky he would have to be content with the assistance of a mob of mutton-headed locals for the big job. They would be panting with excitement at the magnitude of it, twice as jumpy as so many cats on hot bricks, and good-naturedly clod-hopperily dense. The prospect of seeing the Tiger get away through their bungling almost broke Carn’s heart. He would have taken a chance and tackled the whole brigade of Tiger Cubs single-handed if he had seen the faintest hope of success, but he had been turned out of a different mould from Simon Templar’s, and his kind of brain did not run to schemes for capturing a boatload of bandits all by himself. As it was, he had more than half a mind to enlist the Saint. Templar was straight, he knew. And it would be better to pinch the Tiger with the Saint’s help than to see the Tiger get clean away.
That, however, would have to be resolved on the spur of the moment, for there was still a chance—the rapidly fading ghost of a chance, but a chance all the same—that that final humiliation would not be thrust upon him.
Carn gulped down his beer, thankful that the innkeeper was perfectly happy to conduct a monologue.
“Have another?”
“I don’t mind if I do, thank you, sir.”