And then came a startling interruption, that made Bittle go white and sent the girl to her feet with her heart leaping madly, for from somewhere on the lower deck aft rang out a cheerful hail that could have shaped itself in only one mouth, and that the mouth of a man who had died that afternoon. “_Ahoy, there, Bittle!_” Bittle shrank back, temporarily possessed by a superstitious terror. Patricia sprang forward, but he caught her and flung her on to the bunk with the strength of a maniac. “Pat!” sang out that cheery voice. “Are you all right?” “Yes, Saint—— Oh, Saint, is that you?” “Sure!” Bittle wrenched the guns from his pocket. “Get him—don’t stand about staring like a lot of stuck pigs!” he screamed. “Go to the armoury—heel yourselves! . . . A hundred pounds to the man who kills him!” The Saint’s laugh pealed out as she had thought she would never hear it again. “Can’t you make it more than that, dearest cherub?” And then Patricia saw him. He was standing up on the rail at the poop, and there were two men beside him. She thought at first that the third member of the party was Algy, until she saw the limp figure which Orace was holding like a shield was fully dressed. She heard a rush of feet on the decks below, and four men emerged on the upper deck and ran towards the stern. They were carrying rifles—the quartermaster or someone must have had a duplicate key to the gun-room. Then the Saint stepped down, and there were three men clustered in a little group by the taffrail. “Tell ’em to be careful how they shoot, Bittle,” warned Simon. “This here sandbag we’re sheltering behind is the long-lost Bloem himself!” “Stop!” Bittle had collected himself. He seized the girl by the arm and dragged her out into the moonlight so that the Saint could see her distinctly, and he held the girl in front of him so that her body was between him and the Saint. “Be careful how you shoot, Templar!” shouted Bittle. “Be careful even of what you say and do—because, unless you and your friends surrender within three minutes, I am going to kill Miss Holm with my own hands!” Chapter XIX The Tiger Precisely three minutes later, Simon Templar and Orace were led into the saloon under an armed guard. “Good-evening, dear Bittlekins,” murmured the Saint affably. “Fancy meeting you!—as the vicar said when he saw one of the leading lights of the parish Mothers’ Union dancing at the Forty-Three. Sit down and tell me all the news.” Bittle smiled. “We all make slips,” he said, “but I scarcely imagined you would overlook such an obvious factor as Miss Holm.” “I was just hoping that you yourself might overlook it,” explained the Saint. “I honestly thought you were slow enough on the uptake for that. Still, we all make our mistakes, as the bishop said, even the very youngest and most inexperienced of us—and very few mistakes are irreparable.” Bittle nodded slowly.