The Saint Meets the Tiger by Leslie Charteris

playing about with it, and it flew out of my hand and took off your ear? Or suppose it sliced off the end of your nose? It’s rotten to have only half a nose or only one ear. People stop and stare at you in the street, and so forth.”
    “And think of my servants,”’ said Brttle. “They’re all very attached to me, and they might be quite unreasonably vindictive.”
    “That’s an argument,” conceded the Saint seriously. “And now suppose you suggest a game?”
    Bittle moved to a more comfortable position and thought carefully before replying. The time ticked over, but the Saint was too old a hand to be rattled by any such primitive device, and he leaned nonchalantly against the wall and waited patiently for Bittle to realize that the cat-and-mouse gag was getting no laughs that journey. At length Bittle said:
    “I should be quite satisfied, Mr. Templar, if you would spend a day or two with me, and during that time we could decide on some adequate expression of your regret for your behaviour this evening. As for Miss Holm, she and I can finish our little chat uninterrupted, and then I will see her home myself.”
    ” ‘Um,” murmured the Saint, lounging. “Bit of an optimist, aren’t you?”
    “I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, Mr. Templar,” said Bittle cordially. “In fact, I expect your room is already being prepared.”
    The Saint smiled.
    “You almost tempt me to accept,” he said. “But it cannot be. If Miss Holm were not with us—well, I should be very boorish to refuse. But as a matter of fact I promised Miss Girton to join them in a sandwich and a glass of ale toward midnight, and I can’t let them down.”
    “Miss Holm will make your excuses,” urged Bit-lie, but the Saint shook his head regretfully.
    “Another time.”
    Bittle moved again in the chair, and went on with his cigar. And it began to dawn upon the Saint that, much as he was enjoying the sociable round of parlour sports, the game was becoming a trifle too one-sided. There was also the matter of Patricia, who was rather a handicap. He found that he was still holding her hand, and was reluctant to make any drastic change in the circumstances, but business was business.
    With a sigh the Saint hitched himself off the wall which he had found such a convenient prop, released the hand with a final squeeze, and began to saunter round the room, humming light-heartedly under his breath and inspecting the general fixtures and fittings with a politely admiring eye.
    “This room is under observation from two points,” Bittle informed him as a tactful precaution.
    “Pity we haven’t got a camera—the scene’d shoot fine for a shocker,” was the Saint’s only criticism.
    And Simon went on with his tour of the room. He had taken Bittle’s warning with the utmost nonchalance, but its reactions on the problem in hand and his own tentative solution were even then being balanced up in his mind. Bittle, meanwhile, smoked away with a large languidness which indicated his complete satisfaction with the entertainment provided and a sublime disregard for the time spent on digesting it. Which was all that the Saint could have asked.
    In its way, it was a classical performance. Anyone with any experience of such things, entering the room, would have sensed at once that both men were past masters. Nothing could have been calmer than their appearance, nothing more polished than their dispassionate exchange of backchat.
    The Saint worked his unhurried way round the room. Now he stopped to examine a Benares bowl, now an etching, now a fine old piece of furniture. The patina on a Greek vase held him enthralled for half a minute: then he was absorbed in the workmanship of a Sheraton whatnot. In fact, an impartial observer would have gathered that the Saint had ao other interest in life than the study of various antiques, and that he was thoroughly enjoying a free invitation to take his time over a minute scrutiny of his host’s treasures. And