"If it wasn't," he said, "I don't know what it was. But I'm beginning to think you're right, and that I don't know the country. I certainly thought tigers were extinct. If they're not, I don't think it's fair to ask an unfortunate Londoner out into the wilds and arm him with nothing better than a picnic basket."
He rattled on to give the girl time to recover herself. He was a little afraid of hysterics, which would have been pardonable but unavailing. She seemed to suspect his fear, for she mustered a smile and said:—
"I don't think I'm going to be foolish. Tell me, please, what do you think we ought to do?"
That was exactly what Nare did not know. Looking down through the trap, he was conscious of a pair of fierce yellow eyes glaring up at him.
"A good deal depends on the tiger," he said. "As this is one from a menagerie it may know how to behave itself in company, but—isn't there a top floor to this Mill?"
There was, and another ladder leading to it. And Miss Corcoran, followed by Nare, reached it in less time than it takes to tell. The tiger had reared its paws on to the lower ladder and delivered itself, of another terrific growl.
"I—I didn't know they could climb," said Miss Corcoran, faintly. "Oh!"
A scuffling noise accompanied by a groaning of wood was what they heard, and then a soft padding of feet in the room they had just deserted. Apparently this tiger could climb.
"The deuce!" said Nare, beneath his breath. He had never in his life been in a more unpleasant situation—never, indeed, in anything like it. At first the thing had seemed like some burlesque nightmare, but now the burlesque was going out of it. What could one do to a tiger?
He sat cross-legged over the trap, reflecting and listening to the pad, pad below. If only there were a cover to the trap, but there was none. His companion was looking out of a sort of small slit in the side of the Mill that had been made to serve the purpose of a window once, hiding her tears, Nare fancied. It was too narrow to get through, and in any case there would be a drop of twenty or thirty feet. Half unconsciously Nare began to unpack the picnic basket which he had carried along from room to room. He had some vague idea of throwing the tiger sandwiches as a sop. "Buns, cucumber sandwiches, a packet of salt. Do you see anything, Sister Anne?" He broke off enumerating the contents of the basket, seeing that Miss Corcoran had started.