She shrugged.
“I suppose so. But it’s too ridiculous. . . .”
“Of course it is,” agreed Simon blandly. “It’s all too shriekingly ridiculous for words. It’s ridiculous that our Tiger should have broken the Confederate Bank of Chicago and lugged the moidores over to Baycombe to await disposal. It’s ridiculous to think that there are some hundredweights of twenty-two carat gold hidden somewhere not two miles from here. But there are. What we’ve got to assume is that on this joy ride nothing is too ridiculous to be real. Which reminds me—what do you know about the old houses in Baycombe? There must be something conspicuously old enough for Fernando to have thought The Old House was sufficient address.”
He was surprised at her immediate answer.
“There are two that’d fit,” she said. “One is just out of the village, inland. It used to be an inn, and the name of it was The Old House. It’s falling to bits now—the proprietor lost his licence in the year Dot, and nobody took it over. It’s supposed to be haunted. The windows are all boarded up, and a dozen men could live there without being seen if they went in and out at night.”
The Saint smashed fist into palm, his eyes lighting up.
“Moonshine and Moses!” he whooped. “Pat, you’re worth a fortune to this partnership! And I was just thinking we’d come to a standstill. Why, we haven’t moved yet! . . . What’s the other one?”
“The island just round the point.” She waved her arm to the east. “The fishermen call it the Old House, but you wouldn’t have noticed it because it only looks like that from the sea. The sides are very steep, and on one side it juts right out over the water, like those old houses where the first floor is bigger than the ground floor.”
Simon jumped up and walked to the edge of the cliff, so that he could see the island. It was about a mile from the shore—nothing but an outcrop of rock thickly overgrown with bushes and stunted trees. He came back jubilant.
“It might be either,” he said exultantly, “or it might be both—the Tiger may have a home from home in your defunct pub, and he may have parked the doubloons on the island. Anyway, we’ll draw both covers and see. Thinking it over, I guess I’ve hit it. The Tiger’d want to have the gold in some place he could ship it from easily—remember it’s got to go to Africa. And by the same token . . . Here, hold on half a sec.”