The Saint Meets the Tiger Read Online Free PDF Page A

exceptionally zealous burrowing exploration among some gorse bushes. While Simon watched, the naturalist made a sudden pounce, accompanied by a gasp of triumph, and wriggled back into the open with a small beetle held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The haversack was hitched round, a matchbox secured, the insect ‘imprisoned therein, and the box carefully stowed away. Then the entomologist rose to his feet, perspiring and very red in the face.
    “Good-afternoon, sir,” he remarked genially, mopping his brow with aa appallingly green silk handkerchief.
    “So it is,” agreed the Saint.
    Mr. Templar had a disconcerting trick of taking the most conventional speech quite literally—a device which he had adopted because it threw the onus of continuing the conservation upon the other party.
    “An innocuous and healthy pastime,” explained the stranger, with a friendly and all-embracing sweep of his hand. “Fresh air—exercise—and all in the most glorious scenery in England.”
    He was half a head shorter than the Saint, but a good two stone heavier. His eyes were large and childlike behind a pair of enormous horn-rimmed glasses, and he wore a straggly pale walrus moustache. The sight of this big middle-aged man in the shocking clothes, with his ridiculous little butterfly net, was as diverting as anything the Saint could remember.
    “Of course—you’re Dr. Carn,” said the Saint, and the other started.
    “How did you know?”
    “I always seem to be giving people surprises,” complained Simon, completely at his ease. “It’s so simple. You look less like a doctor than anyone but a doctor could look, and there’s only one doctor in Baycombe. How’s trade?
    Suddenly Carn was no longer genial.
    “My profession?” he said stiffly, “I don’t quite understand.”
    “You are one of many,” signed the Saint, “Nobody ever quite understands me. And I wasn’t talking about your new profession, but about your old trade.”
    Carn looked very closely at the younger matt, but Simon was gazing at the sea, and his face was inscrutable except for a faintly mocking twist at the corners of his mouth—a twist, that might have meant anything.
    “You’re clever, Templar—”
    “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.”
    “You’re clever, Templar, but this time you’re mistaken, and persisting in your delusion is making you forget your manners.”
    The Saint favoured Carn with a lazy smile.
    “Well, well,” he murmured, “to err is human, is it not? But tell me, Dr. Carn, why you allow an automatic pistol to spoil the set of that beautiful coat? Are you afraid of a scarabaeus turning at bay? Or is it that you’re scared of a Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga jumping out of a bush?”
    And the Saint swung his heavy staff as though weighing its efficiency as a bludgeon, and the clear blue eyes with that lively devil of mischief glimmering in their depths never left Carn’s red face. Carn glared back chokingly.
    “Sir,” he exploded at length, “let me tell you—”
    “I, too, was once an Inspector of Horse Marines to the Swiss Navy,” the Saint encouraged him gently; and, when Carn’s indignation proved to have become speechless, he added: “But why am I so unsociable? Come along to the Pill Box and have a spot of supper. I’m afraid it’ll only be tinned stuff —we stopped having fresh meat since a seagull died after tasting the Sunday joint—but our brandy, is Napoleon …. and Orace grills sardines marvelously….”
    He linked his arm in Carn’s and urged the naturalist along, chattering irrepressibly. It is an almost incredible tribute to the charm which the Saint could exert, to record that he coaxed Carn into acceptance in three minutes and had him chuckling at a grossly improper limerick by the time they reached the Pill