Meet the Tiger quotes

“Nice morning, sir,” said Orace, and retired.

Orace had remarked on the niceness of the morning for the last eight years, and he had never allowed the weather to change his pleasant custom.

The Saint yawned, stretched himself like a cat, and saw with half-closed eyes that a stream of sunlight was pouring in through the embrasure which did duty for a window.

“Bad luck, sonny,” murmured the Saint mildly. “Only a couple of inches out. . . .”

But he was on his feet before the sound of the shot had reached him.

He was on one of the arms of the bay, which was roughly semi-circular. The village was in the centre of the arc.

“Not really—am I that already?” said the Saint with interest, and she saw at once that the desire to hide his light under a bushel was not one of his failings.

It is always a question whether the man inspires the nickname or the nickname inspires the man.

When a man is known to his familiars as “Beau” or “Rabbit” there is little difficulty in supplying the answer; but a man who is called “Saint” may be either a lion or a lamb.

“What brings you to this benighted spot?”

“A craving for excitement and adventure,” answered the Saint promptly—“reinforced by an ambition to be horribly wealthy.”

She looked at him with a quick frown, but his face confirmed the innocence of sarcasm which had given a surprising twist to his words.

“I shouldn’t have thought anyone would have come here for that,” she said.

“On the contrary,” said the Saint genially, “I should have no hesitation in recommending this particular spot to any qualified adventurer as one of the few places left in England where battle, murder, and sudden death may be quite commonplace events.”

“I’ve lived here, on and off, since I was twelve, and the most exciting thing I can remember is a house on fire,” she argued, still possessed of an uneasy feeling that he was making fun of her.

He looked down at her, his eyes dancing.

“All my life,” he replied, “I have told the truth. It is a great advantage, because if you do that nobody ever takes you seriously.”

“But talking about murders and revolvers——”

“Still alive, you see,” he remarked. “The ungodly prowled around last night, but I poured a bucket of water over him, and he went home.

It’s astonishing how easy it is to damp the ardour of an assassin.

”

“You know more about him than I do,” she said.

“I make it my business to pry into my neighbour’s affairs,” he answered solemnly. “It mayn’t be courteous, but it’s cautious.”

“Perhaps you know all about me?” she was tempted to challenge him.

Then he was being introduced to a new arrival, Sir Michael Lapping. The ex-judge shook hands heartily, peering short-sightedly into the Saint’s face.

“You remind me of a man I once met in the Old Bailey—and I’m hanged if I can remember whether it was a professional encounter or not.”

“I was just going to,” said the Saint blandly, if a trifle cryptically. “His name was Harry the Duke, and you gave him seven years. He escaped abroad six years ago, but I hear he’s been back in England some months.

“Mr. Templar to the aristocracy, but Saint to you,” Simon corrected him benevolently. “

Naturally I’m clever. If I wasn’t, I’d be dead.

And my especial brilliance is an infallible memory for faces.”

“Because I called your bluff?”

“He who hesitates,” said the Saint sententiously, “is bossed. No mughopper will ever spiel this baby.”

They talked politics and literature through supper (the Saint had original and heretical views on both subjects) as dispassionately as the most ordinary men, met together in the most ordinary circumstances, might have done.

“You don’t imagine you could get away with it?”

“I can think of no limits to my ingenuity in getting away with things,” said the Saint calmly.

He moved in the shadows, and a moment later he said quietly:

At that rate, Bittle was equally above suspicion—but Bittle’s apparent harmlessness was of the bluff kind that might cover a multitude of sins, whereas the Saint’s chief charm was his unreserved boyishness and his air of exaggerated masquerading.

She felt that no sane wolf in sheep’s clothing would have taken such elaborate pains to look like a pantomime wolf.

Whoever and whatever the Saint was, he had done her no injury. He had been her friend—and she had left him behind to face whatever music Bittle’s myrmidons had the desire and brains to provide. . . .

“You always did argue soundly, Bittle darling,” said the Saint appreciatively.

He seated himself on the table, swinging his legs, and the proverbial cucumber would have looked smoking hot beside him.

“It must be arranged so as to look like an accident,” said Bittle. “That damned girl will have the police buzzing about our ears unless the circumstances are above suspicion.”

“Don’t gamble on it,” advised the Saint. “

I’ve lived pretty dangerously for eight years, and nobody’s ever killed me yet. Even the Tiger mightn’t break the record.

”

“It won’t wash, Angel Face,” he said. “It won’t wash. Really it won’t. And you know it.

They may have christened me Simon, but I’ve got a lot less simple since then.

”

“It is not,” answered Simon promptly. “

I object to firearms on principle. They make such a noise.

”

Nevertheless, in his blindness he was very near to blundering straight into the heart of the affair. His scowl relaxed, and he took her hand from his shoulder and held it.

“I’ve known some fool women,” said the Saint, “but I never met one whose foolishness appealed to me more than yours.”

“Then—it’s a bet?” she asked.

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.”

“Rivals—more or less friendly—yes,” he said. “But I’m not a detective, and never was. I’m playing for my own hand, with an enormous quantity of ha’pence coming to me if I win, and everybody’s kicks if I lose.

Profession, gentleman adventurer: i.e., available for any job involving plenty of money and plenty of trouble, suitable for a man who doesn’t bother much about the letter of the law and who’s prepared to take his licking without a yelp if he gets landed.

That’s me. Like this. I happened to find Fernando, and as soon as I’d got the thing taped out I took a trip to Chicago and saw the boss of the Confederate.

Bloem’s the first to break that rule; but the Tiger isn’t a sportsman—he’s just a pot-hunter. Still, I doubt if your friends would appreciate my success in that career. D’you still want to be a partner in the firm?”

“Saint, you’re an ass,” she said. “And if you exhibit any symptoms of virulent imbecility I shall fire you and become managing director myself.”

“Hell’s bells,” ejaculated Simon, unwontedly moved, and swung away.

And then there had to be a further delay, which need not be reported.

For those who have lost their hearts know all about these things, and those who haven’t don’t deserve to be told. . . .

But at last he had to let her go, so he kissed her again and then took her hand and kissed that. And afterwards he took her shoulders and squared them up, and drew himself up in front of her.

There were also footprints outside the swing door nearest to him, but they were less encouraging, for at that point there was only a double set, whereas the other seemed to have been fairly popular.

And the Saint’s philosophy laid down the law that if you must stroll into the home-sweet-home of a bunch of cut-throats you might as well do the thing in style.

Wherefore the Saint went down the passage and halted by the most dangerous-looking door.

His manner invited it. He was one of those rare and lovable neuters, of kindly wisdom and broad human sympathies, who are invariably adopted as honorary uncles by such sweet young things as Patricia.

He had never married—perhaps because he was too essentially safe and comfortable and tolerant for any woman to choose him as a partner in such a wild adventure as matrimony.

“And when do we congratulate you?” he asked, pursuing the rôle of his privilege. “There could hardly be a better match—young Templar’s exciting enough to make any maiden heart beat faster.”

“You must know a lot about detectives, and if you say they don’t . . . then I suppose he’s a crook. But I can’t believe that!”

“If a crook couldn’t convince people that he was honest,” Lapping pointed out, “he’d have to give up the game and go into the workhouse.”

“They always are,” said Lapping cynically.

“I’ve promised to see my aunt before dinner,” she said. “There’s some business to talk over—something about my investments. It’s an awful bore, but the letter’s got to be written to-night so that it can go off first thing in the morning.”

It was amazing what a fluent and convincing liar she had become of a sudden.

“Needless to say, I’m heartbroken,” he vowed, pressing her hand. “But perhaps I can hope that you’ll come again?

. . The girl drew a long breath and felt again for the reassuring heavy sleekness of her weapon. She had told the Saint that she could be more help than hindrance to him, and now was the time to prove it.

The risk attached to the enterprise would have to be faced in the Saintly manner—with a devil-may-care smile and a shrug and a pious hope that the Lord would provide.

“Carry on, brave heart,” said Patricia, and opened the door.

… have made the attempt, but the issue was too great to take such a chance when a man far more competent to deal with the matter was waiting to do his stuff if she could learn enough to show him where to make the raid.

And the one certain thing in a labyrinth of mystery was that a man who visits somebody else’s house generally leaves it again sooner or later.

She looked around for a hiding place, and saw at once the summer-house in a corner of the garden. From there she could watch both the drawing-room windows and the front door—no observation post could have been better placed. She sprinted across to it.

it was the sort of reckless daredevil thing that people did in books and films, the forlorn hope that always materialised in time to provide a happy ending.

She could think of no precedent for it in real life, and therefore the only thing to go by was the standard of fiction—according to which it was bound to succeed.

But she wondered if any man living except the Saint—her Saint—would have had the imagination to think of it, the courage to work out the idea in all seriousness, the heroic foolhardiness to try and bring it off, and the personality to captain the adventure.

He waited without stirring for a long time.

He could easily have grabbed her wrist and taken the gun from her, but it was the sob in her voice that stopped him.

“Orlright,” he said at last. “If it’ll myke it easier for yer. . . .”

A sense of the unreality of the whole affair possessed her, drying up tears and crushing out sentiment.

Her world was reeling and racing about her—the landmarks were hopelessly lost—but she felt herself poised above the chaos, remote and stable.

The sword in her hand wielded her. She was going on with the job. The fight was going to be battled out to the last second, with the last ounce of vital energy in her body;

A sense of the unreality of the whole affair possessed her, drying up tears and crushing out sentiment. Her world was reeling and racing about her—the landmarks were hopelessly lost—but she felt herself poised above the chaos, remote and stable.

The sword in her hand wielded her.

She was going on with the job. The fight was going to be battled out to the last second, with the last ounce of vital energy in her body; for the time, she seemed to be beyond human limitations.

They lay on the grass at the edge of the cliff, gazing out to sea. It was a cloudless night, and although there was as yet no moon, the stars shone brightly and covered the world with a dim silvery radiance.

Starlight is the most deceptive and baffling of lights, but water is the easiest thing on earth to see over in the dark.

The starlight etched in the tiny ripples over the sea, making it a wide, smooth expanse of glistening black and luminous grey;

To fall one hundred and sixty feet takes just a shade over three seconds, but it seems a lot longer.

Simon Templar knew this very vividly, for he seemed to live through three æons between the instant of sickening breathlessness when he felt the cut-away flooring give way under his weight, through the four odd pulse-beats of hurtling down and down into darkness, till he …

He crawled a little way in, and felt again the helplessness of being without the flashlight which he ought to have had with him in any case.

Still, it wasn’t any use crying about it—you couldn’t weep luminous tears—so the only thing to do was to carry on and hope for the best.

A distinct draught chilled his face as he wriggled along in the pitchy blackness, and his hopes began to rise again, tentatively.

… helpless fists against the rock—to rush madly into the blackness till he crashed against another wall and was flung broken and screaming to the ground—to give up the attempt altogether and stand raving and cursing this false blindness, praying recklessly for the relief of death.

For all the darkness that cloaks the world under the sky is as dazzling sunshine to the awful numbing terror of the darkness in the places under the earth where there had never been light since the beginning.

But the Saint slogged on, though towards the end he scarcely knew what he was doing, and his pace grew slower and slower, jerky and automatic, till it stopped altogether. Then he would drive himself forward again.

Somehow he reached the opening and saw all the glory of the radiant night, the jewelled heavens above and the quiet sea below.

He stood and gazed, supremely happy, marvelling at all these things as a man might do who had seen none of them before and would see none of them again.

“Oh, God!” said the Saint in a breathless whisper.

There she was, on the Tiger’s ship, with only two assistants, one of whom was temporarily hors de combat, and the odds against them were five to one, at a conservative estimate.

The very forlornness of the adventure took away half its terrors, for with everything to lose—and as good as lost at the first slip—there was nothing to gain by footling and fiddling over the job.

The only earthly chance of success was to blind recklessly ahead and chance the consequences. To funk the bold game would be fatal.

And so, as she crept nearer to the end of the alleyway, Patricia’s nerve was neither dulled nor unbalanced by any irrelevant considerations.

She was just one hundred and thirty pounds of smoothly functioning Tophet, actuated by one grim purpose, waiting to detonate all over anyone who got in her way.

And that road ran straight as an arrow flight to a point directly over the Tiger’s shoe-leather. . . .

And that, too, she recognised for a false comfort, and lashed herself out of it. That way also defeat lay—to sink into a torpid reverie and wait for awakening to put an end to the horror. No—this was no ordinary nightmare.

She’d entered the regatta in earnest, and the tide was running all against her.

But she must—must—must keep on hoping against hope, whipping all her wits into service, refusing to surrender. That was the only alternative to accepting her fate as Bittle or the Tiger dictated it. . . .

“But I shall call you Maggie,” insisted the Saint. “It’s more matey, and it suits you better. And really I didn’t mean to be rude about your face.

You’ve got a nice kind face, like a cow.

”

It seemed to me that this adventure ought to finish off in a worthily dramatic manner, and if all goes well you’ll have to bear the agony of watching enough melodrama concentrated into the next few minutes to fill a book.

Things, from approximately now onwards, will go with a kick strong enough to set the Lyceum gasping.

How does that appeal to you, beloved?”