He shrank away into the farthest corner, and his face had gone grey and horrible.
Algy took a step into the room, a heavy automatic in each hand, and the men retreated before him. He swept them with hard, merciless eyes.
“I think you all know me,” said Mr. Lomas-Coper, in the same metallic voice.
He looked at the girl, and read bewilderment in her face.
“I am the Tiger,” said Algy.
Chapter XX.
The Last Laugh
“Things have gone very badly,” said the Tiger. “As Bittle said, Mr. Templar, you have beaten us. I bear you no malice. Perhaps it was ordained that it should end like this. You need not be afraid that I shall kill you, as that man would have done—that would be profitless. I might still have won, if I had had a fair chance, but the men I trusted double-crossed me. Now the ship is going down, and all my work is lost. I can fight no more. Fate has been against me from the beginning, and I am very tired.”
He passed a hand across his eyes. The fatuous pose which went with the character of Algy Lomas-Coper had fallen from his shoulders like a discarded cloak, and it was an ordinary man who spoke. More than that, it was a broken man. There was something which filled the Saint with a sneaking sense of tragedy about this sudden transition from the effervescent Algy to the grim, weary figure of the Tiger facing the end.
“But you——”
The Tiger’s burning gaze raked over Bittle and Bloem and Maggs like a searing iron. Once again the Tiger’s voice took on that biting tang of steel, and the men cringed from the lash of it.