Meet the Tiger aka The Saint Meets the Tiger aka Crooked Gold!

The world met the Tiger in June 1928, in the third novel by Leslie Charteris. The story introduced an athletic 27-year old, Simon Templar, who lived in a converted Devon pill-box with his manservant Orace.
Partly because of his initials, he had acquired the nickname Saint some eight years earlier, although we have never known how.
Simon meets a local Ward of Court, Patricia Holm, and falls in love.
He later meets the eponymous Tiger and also Detective Inspector Carn, who is on the trail of a missing million dollars. Needless to say, the Saint beards the Tiger in his den and appropriates the loot.
Published by Ward, Lock, in green cloth (1st edn lists previous books as X Esquire & White Rider), a condensed version appeared in The Sunday Dispatch (London) titled Scoundrels Ltd. The first US publication was by The Crime Club (who were to become the first US publishers for most of his work) in 1929. The Sun Dial Press changed the title to Meet - The Tiger! The Saint is in Danger in 1940 but Bond-Charteris Enterprises gave it the final retitling in 1945 as The Saint Meets the Tiger. In July 1962 Digit Paperbacks in the UK kept to this. The Saint had become so well-known that most of the original books were later retitled to include his sobriquet. In 1929 the Amalgamated Press printed an anonymous story titled Crooked Gold as a fourpenny Boys’ Friend Library. It was actually an abridged rip-off of Meet the Tiger, but Leslie didn’t find out about it until many years later. This comic is now very sought-after (I’ve seen it advertised at £300), as indeed is Meet the Tiger generally. It’s not the scarcest book, but probably the most expensive.
After 1980 Leslie didn’t allow more reprints as he thought it was a poor story.
This book introduces an invention of his: the saying ‘as the actress said to the bishop...’. Another invention of his, however, surprisingly does not figure in this book.
When the story was written, Leslie had no idea of the institution that The Saint was to become. There is an anomaly here inasmuch as Detective Inspector Carn knows who he is, but in later books he was a mysterious unknown identity who left a calling card drawing of a stick- man - his invention which does not make an appearance here.