He came up the rope ladder, and the Saint met him on the deck.
“You look as if you’d been wrecked,” were his first words. “We can talk later—better hurry up and get everybody off before she goes down.”
The Saint surprised Patricia as much as Carn.
“Wrecked nothing! I told Bittle and Co. we were going down, but we aren’t. Orace and I just fixed the pumps and left ’em running so as to run all the water out of the port ballast tank and fill up the starboard one! I’ve just reversed the arrangement—see? She’s evening up already.”
Simon showed Carn all the exhibits, and the detective was staggered.
“That Tiger had us all skinned,” he said.
They sat in the saloon and exchanged notes. Carn had been lucky enough to find a couple of new submarine-chasing motor-boats lying at Ilfracombe at the end of a trial run, and he was able to catch them with his posse when they were on the point of returning to Bristol.
“All the same,” he remarked, “I should have been too late to be any use to you. I take my hat off to you, Saint.”
“What was Lapping in this?” asked Patricia.
She told him about her interview that afternoon, and the detective smiled.