Read Online The Saint Meets the Tiger by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B

was no amateur affair. … It was some consolation to reflect that the Saint’s little solo, which .had opened the concert, itself showed a truly professional touch; nevertheless, she was cursing herself right back to the Manor for deserting him, although she knew that if she had stayed she would only have hampered him.
    She had hoped to be able to steal into the house unnoticed, but as she approached she saw a dark figure leaning on the front gate, and in a moment the figure hailed her with the voice of Miss Girton.
    “Yes, it’s me,” said Patricia, and followed the woman to the door
    “I heard a lot of noise, and wondered what it was all about,” Miss Girton explained. “Do you know?”
    “There’s been some excitement….”
    It was all Patricia could think of on the spur of the moment.
    She had forgotten the damage inflicted on her clothes and her person by the game of hide-and-seek in the shrubbery, and was at first surprised at the way Miss Girton stared at her in the light of the hall. Then she looked at her torn skirt and the scratches on her arms.
    “You don’t seem to have missed much,” remarked the older woman grimly
    “I can’t explain just now,” said a weary Patricia. “I’ve got to think.”
    She went into the drawing room and sank into a chair. Her guardian took up a position before her, legs astraddle, manlike, hands deep in the pockets of her coat, waiting for the account that she was determined to have.
    “If Bittle’s been getting fresh—”’
    “It wasn’t exactly that,” said the girl. “I’m quite all right. Please leave me alone for a minute.”
    The darkening alarm which had showed on Miss Girton’s face gave way to a look of perplexity when she heard that her instinctive suspicion was ungrounded. She could be reasonably patient—it was one other unfeminine characteristics. With a shrug of her heavy shoulders she took a gasper from a glaring yellow packet and lighted it. She smoked like a man, inhaling deeply, and her fingers were stained orange with nicotine.
    Patricia puzzled over what excuse she was going to invent. She knew that Miss Girton could be as acute and ruthless in cross-examination as a lawyer. But the Saint’s orders had been to say nothing before the hour had expired, and Patricia thought only of carrying out his orders. Doubtless the reason for them would be given later, together with some sort of elucidation of the mystery, but at present the sole considerations that weighed with her were those of keeping faith with the man whom she had left in such a tight corner and of finding some way to help him out of it if necessary.
    “It was like this,” Patricia began at last. “This afternoon I had a note from Bittle asking me to call after dinner without saying anything to anybody. It was most important. I went. After a lot of beating about the bush he told me that he’d had a mortgage on the Manor for years, and that you owed him a lot of money and were asking for more, and that he’d have to foreclose and demand payment of your debts. Was that true?”
    “It was,” replied Agatha Girton stonily.
    “But why did you have to— Oh, surely, there can’t have been any need to borrow money? I always understood that Dad left a small fortune.”
    Miss Girton shrugged.
    “My dear child, I had to draw on that.”
    Patricia stared incredulously. Miss Girton, with a face of wood and in a coldly dispassionate voice, added, like an afterthought:
    “I’ve been blackmailed for six years.”
    “Who by?”
    “Does that matter to you? Go on with your story.” Patricia jumped her.
    “I think, in the circumstances, I’ll please myself what I tell you,” she said with a dangerous quietness. “It might be more to the point if you told me what you’ve done with the money entrusted to you. Six years, Aunt Agatha? That was three years after 1 came here. … You were always making trips abroad, and kept me on at school as long as you could…. Weren’t you in