Patricia had to fight down her second panic that afternoon before she could open the front door and enter the house. It struck her as being unpleasantly like walking into the Tiger’s jaws as well as walking into his den—or her den. If Miss Girton were the Tiger, she would already be suspicious of Patricia’s sudden friendship with Simon Templar; and that suspicion would have been fortified by the girl’s adventure of the previous night and her secretiveness about it. Then, if Lapping was suspect also, it would not be long before the Tiger’s fears would be confirmed, and she would be confronted with the alternatives of making away with Patricia or chancing the girl’s power to endanger her security. And, from all Simon’s accounts of the Tiger, there seemed little doubt on which course the choice would fall. The Tiger must be either Lapping or Miss Girton. The odds about both stared Patricia in the face—and it looked as if Aunt Agatha won hands down. At that moment the girl was very near to flying precipitately back to the Pill Box and surrendering all the initiative to Simon: the thought of his trust in her checked that instinct. She had been so stubbornly insistent on being allowed to play her full part, so arrogantly certain of her ability to do it justice, so impatient of his desire to keep her out of danger—what would he think of her if she ran squealing to his arms as soon as the fun looked like becoming too fast and furious? To have accepted his offer of sanctuary would not necessarily have lowered her in his eyes; but to have refused it so haughtily and then to change her mind as soon as she winded the first sniff of battle would be a confession of faint-heartedness which he could not overlook. “No, Patricia Holm,” she said to herself, “that’s not in the book of the rules, and never has been. You would have a taste of the soup, and now you’ve fallen in you’ve jolly well got to swim. He wouldn’t say anything, I know, and he’d be as pleased as Punch—for a day or two. But after a bit he’d begin to think a heap. And then it’d all be over—smithereened! And that being so we’ll take our medicine without blubbering, even if the jam has worn a trifle thin. . . . Therefore, Patricia Holm, as our Saint would say, where do we go from here?” Well, she’d done all she could about Lapping, and she must wait to see what he thought of the evidence. There remained Agatha Girton, and the Saint’s orders must be obeyed under that heading the same as under the other. Patricia braced herself for the ordeal, and just then her hand touched something hard in her pocket. She brought it out and took a peep at it—the automatic which Simon had given her. It was marvellously encouraging to remember that that little toy could at a touch of her finger splutter a hail of sudden death into anyone who tried to put over any funny business. She put it back in her pocket and patted it affectionately.