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. When it was all over and settled one way or the other, the tension would snap and she would hurtle down into black abysses of terror and despair; but while the war was still to be waged she knew that hers was a strength greater than herself — knew that she could stand on the brink of the chasm in the blinding light and fight tirelessly on to the death.

She said, in that new, cotd, dispassionate voice:

"We shall want help — the odds are too great against two of us. I'll get Mr. Lomas-Coper. He's the only man here I could trust."

" ‘Im?"spat the disgusted Orace. "That thunderin' jelly bag?"

"I know he's not such an ass as he pretends to be," said Patricia. "He'll weigh in all right."

They were nearing Bloem's house at that moment, and a lean dark figure loomed startlingly out of the shadow of the hedge. A pencil of luminance leaped from Orace's torch and picked up the pleasantly vacuous face of Algy himself.

"Is that you, Pat?" he said. "I thought I recognized your voice."

He was surprised at the firmness with which she grasped the limp paw he extended.

"I was just looking for you," she said crisply. "Come over to the Pill Box. We're going to have some dinner and hold a council of war."

"W-w-what?" stammered Algy.

"Don't waste time. I'll tell you when we get there."

There was so much crisp command in her tone that he fell in beside them obediently.

"But, dear old peach," he protested weakly. "There's no comic old war on, don't you know! Is it a joke? I'll buy it. Never say Algy isn't a sportsman, old darling."

"There's nothing very funny about it," she said, and something deadly about her obvious seriousness made him hold his peace for the rest of the journey.

In the Pill Box, she sat down at once to the food Orace provided, though Algy excused himself. He had already dined, and as a matter of fact, he explained, he had been on his way to visit her at the Manor.

While she ate she talked — in curt, cold sentences which held even the fatuous Algy intent. She told him the whole story from beginning to end, and his jaw sagged lower and lower as the recital proceeded. And when it was finished she looked anxiously at him, wondering whether he would say something foolish and soothing about the heat of the day and the probability that she would feel better in the morning — or, if he believed her, whether he would show up yellow.

She was satisfied to find that her estimate had been correct. While she looked, he closed his mouth with a snap, and the tightening of his mouth lent a new strength to his face. His eyes were gazing steadily back at her, and there was a steady soberness in them which transformed him.

"Just like a shilling shocker — what?" Said Algy quietly, but there was not much flippancy in his voice.

She outlined their plan, and he was staggered.

"You've a nerve!" he remarked. "But isn't that old Carn's job?" ^

"It was the Saint's idea," she told him; "and it's such a desperate gamble that it might as easily succeed as not. As for Carn — we daren't bank on him. He mightn't know as much as we think, and he mayn't have gone into Ilfracombe for the reason we suppose — we can only hope for the best. But we've got to be prepared to take the field without him. And, besides, as you'll understand, I've rather a special desire to meet the Tiger and talk to him alone…”

For an amazing moment Algy saw death in her eyes; then, with the clenching of a small fist, the ferocity passed, and she was once again the cold, calculating general planning an attack.

"I know you swim pretty well," she said, "Can you do the distance?"

He nodded.

"I think so."

"Will you?"

No more than two seconds ticked away into eternity before he held out his hand.

Chapter XV

SPURS FOR ALGY

It was then ten o’clock.

"The boat should be coming in now," said Patricia, and she and Algy went outside to look round.

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 gray; the island called the Old House sheered up from the calm flatness like some fabulous swarthy beast rising from the depths of the ocean.

"I can see the jolly old tub," breathed Algy excitedly.

The girl's hand closed over his arm like a vise.

"The Saint was right," she said.

But it was not so much seeing the ship as detecting a shadowy mast silhouetted against the sleek darkness of the waters. The hull could be picked out in a profile of blurred outline, where there showed no flicker of reflected luminosity from the facets of the wrinkled sea. The Tiger's bark must still have been six miles out from the coast, if not more.

Patricia watched it till her eyes ached.

"They must be coming in very slowly," she said. "They hardly seem to have moved in the last five minutes. Right under the Saint's bedroom window, they'd have to be careful."

"Smugglers and pirates all up to date — what?" remarked Algy. "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Bass...."

He was as eager as a schoolboy.

They returned to the Pill Box, and Patricia consulted her watch and made a rough calculation.

"They should be in about eleven, at this rate," she reckoned. "You'd better go home and slip on a bathing costume. And do you happen to have any firearms about the place?"

"I believe Uncle Hans stocks one."

She smiled, and took the automatic from her pocket.

"He doesn't now — Simon relieved him of it last night."

"Perhaps he's got another. I've an idea there used to be quite an armoury. I'll do my best."

"How long will it take you?"

He thought.

"I'll be back at eleven."

"Don't be later," she ordered. "It'd make it a longer swim if we went from the quay, but the tide's only just turned, so we can't get along the beach. We'll have to go over the cliff here — could you find enough strong rope?"

"I'll knock up a bloke in the village. He's got miles and miles of it — sells it to the stout mariners, y'know."

She nodded.

"Go ahead, then, Algy. I'll expect you back sharp at eleven."

"Oh, most frightfully rather!" promised Mr. Lomas-Coper. "Cheer-screamingly-ho, wuff, wuff!"

He pranced off in a realistically Wodehousian manner, and the girl smiled. Algy was the goods, under his superficial fatuousness, and even if he were not noticeably blessed with superfluous quantities of gray matter he was at least a very willing horse. In the miasma of dark suspicion which lay over most of the population of Baycombe, it was a relief to find a man who was too foolish to be dangerous and simple enough to be loyal. She had always suspected that Algy cherished a fluffy and sentimental affection for her — he would call at the Manor on romantically moonlit nights and try to make her stroll in the garden with him, and, on these occasions, unless she exerted herself to keep up an uninterrupted flow of idle impersonal chatter, he was wont to become inarticulate and calf-eyed. Now, if never before, she felt grateful for his incoherent adoration,