There is this about the thrill of action, the electric omnipresence of danger, and the necessity for keeping yourself keyed up taut and ready to make lightning decisions: it takes up all the time of all your faculties and holds your brain buzzing round and round that one sole pin-point of motive. Patricia was not callous. It wasn’t that she had forgotten the Saint and gone gaily cavorting off on this new spree in a manner that would make you think that piracy amused her just as much as petting. It was simply that, having resolved to call the Tiger down to an audit of the ledger, the concentration which that task demanded would, until it was accomplished, leave no room in her mind for any of the thoughts which had inspired it. And so, as she crept nearer to the end of the alleyway, Patricia’s nerve was neither dulled nor unbalanced by any irrelevant considerations. She was just one hundred and thirty pounds of smoothly functioning Tophet, actuated by one grim purpose, waiting to detonate all over anyone who got in her way. And that road ran straight as an arrow flight to a point directly over the Tiger’s shoe-leather. . . . Men of the trade known to Orace as “pertaterstoors” may not be quite as other men are, but one specimen at least can be certified as possessing the gumption of ordinary men, for he heard the metallic note in Patricia’s rapped command from the galley door, and, wisely, decided not to shout for help. “Up with ’em!” crisped the girl. “Don’t even open your mouth to gasp—I might think you were going to yell, and then your children would all be orphans!” The man turned slowly, saucepan in hand. He saw a slim, straight slip of a girl in a tight-fitting Jantzen that emphasised the calmly efficient poise of her body. Beads of salt water glistened on her brown skin in the lamplight, and her wet hair was swept back from her forehead in an unruly mop. At any other time, the cook, who was a connoisseur, would have been able to admire the perfection of her figure and the miracle of a complexion which could survive a two-mile swim and lose no jot of its beauty—in his somewhat coarse and practical fashion. But now his eyes were riveted on the blue-black gleam of the automatic which her small brown hand pointed so steadily at his middle; and, raising those dilated eyes from the gun to her face, he was able to appreciate only the firm set of her lips and the bleak purposefulness of her gaze. “I’m getting tired of waiting.” The words bit through the steamy air with the chilly menace of bright steel. “Stick ’em up. And jump to it!” He started to raise his arms, and then the heavy saucepan catapulted from his hand. The girl saw it flying at her head, and ducked instinctively. The pan thudded against the bulkhead behind her and clattered to the floor. She saw the man leaping towards her, and pulled the trigger twice.