sat up, and then pondered it silently for several seconds.
'Wouldn't it be more likely,' Peter said at last, 'that Karen's visit was timed to find out whether the note business had worked?'
'But she covered me up for Haskins.'
'She covered up your visit to March,' Patricia corrected. 'March wouldn't want that brought in, anyway.'
'And then, if the note had misfired somehow, she was there to put the finger on him for Jennet.' Peter was developing his theory with growing conviction. 'And when Jennet missed, she could report back that you were on your way out to this gambling barge-'
'And if you get out of that alive,' said Patricia, 'she'll have another chance on your date tonight-'
'And if he still accidentally happens to be alive in the morning,' Peter concluded, 'there's a fishing trip down to Wildcat Key on which anything can happen ... It all hangs together, Chief. They've got about half a dozen covering bets, and your luck can't hold for ever. They haven't missed a loophole.'
The Saint nodded.
'You may be absolutely right,' he said soberly. 'But there's still no way out of it for me. If we want to get anywhere, we can't barricade ourselves in the house and refuse to budge. I've got to follow the only trail there is. Because any place where there's a trap there may be a clue. You know that from boxing. You can't lead without opening up. I'm going with my eyes open-but I'm going.'
They argued with him through lunch, but it would have been more useful to argue with the moon. The Saint knew that he was right, in his own way; and that was the only way he had ever been able to handle an adventure. He had no use for conniving and tortuous stratagems: they were for the ungodly. For him, there was nothing like the direct approach- with the eyes open. So long as he was prepared for pitfalls, they merely formed the rungs of a ladder, leading through step after step of additional discovery to the main objective. They might be treacherous, but there could be no adventure without risk.
When it was ultimately plain that his determination was immovable, Peter demanded the right to take the risk with him. But the Saint shook his head just as firmly.
'Somebody has to stay here with Pat,' he pointed out. 'Certainly she can't come. And I'd rather leave you, because you're brighter than Hoppy. If there's so much cunning at work, the whole scheme might be to get me out of the way for a raid on this place.'
It was impossible to argue with that, either.
And yet, as the Saint sped by the waters of Indian Creek and crossed it at 41st Street, he had few doubts that for the present he himself was the main centre of attraction to the ungodly. Later it might be otherwise; but for the present he was satisfied that the ungodly would regard his entourage as small fry to be mopped up at leisure after he had been disposed of.
The open 16-cyIinder Cadillac which he had chosen from the selection in the well-stocked garage purred past the golf course and held a steady fifty to the Venetian Causeway. The islands of Rivo Alto, Di Lido, and San Marino, splashed with multihued homes of luxury, slid past them like a moving diorama. The Saint stole a glance at Lafe Jennet, who was packed like a blue sardine between himself and Hoppy on the front seat.
'When we hit Biscayne Boulevard, Sunshine,' he said, 'which way do we turn?'
'For all of me,' Jennet said viciously, 'you can run yourself into the bay-'
The last word expired in a painful involuntary exhalation caused by the pulverising entrance of Mr Uniatz's elbow into the speaker's ribs.
'De boss astcha a question,'' said Mr Uniatz magisterially. 'Or woujja like a crack on de nose?'
'Turn left, an' go west on Flagler,' said Jennet, and shut his mouth more tightly than before.
A phalanx of skyscrapers swept by, towering reminders of the perverted Florida boom. A magic city with no more than four or five million acres to spread out in had had to drive its fingers of commerce into the sky.
At Flagler Street they had to slow down. A traffic policeman, picturesque in pith helmet, white belt, and skyblue uniform, gazed at them without special interest while he held them up. But Hoppy Uniatz put one hand in his coat pocket and crowded the pocket inconspicuously into Jennet's waist, and Jennet crouched down and made no movement. The policeman released their line, and they drove on.
They had to crawl for some blocks-first through the better shops, whose windows reproachfully displayed their most stylish variety of clothing to a throng of sidewalk strollers whose ambition appeared to be to wear as few clothes as the law would let them; then further westward past barkers, photo shops, fortune tellers, and curio vendors with despondent-looking families of tame Seminole Indians squatting in their doors. A newsboy with his papers and racing forms hopped on the running-board, and Simon noticed a card of cheap sun-glasses pinned to his shirt. He bought a pair, and stuck them on Jennet's nose.
'We don't want some bright cop to recognise that sour puss of yours while you're with us,' he said.
Eventually the traffic thinned out, and Simon opened the big car up again. They whispered past the Kennel Club and golf course, and Jennet spoke again as they came in sight of the Tamiami Canal.
'You turn left here. Go right on Eighth Street. Then you turn off again just before you hit the Tamiami Trail. You'll have to leave the car there, whether you like it or not. There ain't no way but walkin' to reach that barge.'
The relics of abandoned subdivisions grew less frequent. Flatwoods crept close to the highway. Thrust back by the hand of man, curbed but impossible to tame, the wilderness of Florida inched inexorably back and waited with primeval patience to reclaim its own.
Jennet said: 'You'd better slow down. Tain't far, now.'
They had gone several blocks without passing another car when he indicated a dim trail leading to the right Simon pulled the wheel over and nursed the big car skilfully over the rutted track carpeted with brownish pine needles. When the track petered out he eased the Cadillac into a thicket of pines which formed a natural screen against the outside world, and stopped the engine. He climbed out, and Hoppy Uniatz yanked Jennet out on the other side.
'I never said Rogers would be here now,' Jennet growled sulkily. 'What happens after this ain't nuth'n to do with me.'
'I'll take a chance on it,' said the Saint. 'All you have to do is to lead me on.'
He was ready for the chance by then, ready with every trained and seasoned sense of muscle and nerve and eye. This was the first point at which ambushes might begin, and even though all his movements seemed easy and careless he was overlooking no possibilities. Under lazily drooping lids, his hawk-sharp blue eyes never for an instant ceased their restless scanning of the terrain. This was the kind of hunting at which he was most adept, in which he had mastered all the tricks of both woodsman and wild animal before he learned simple algebraic equations. And something that lay dormant in his blood through all city excitements awoke here to unfathomable exhilaration . . .
The flatwoods ended suddenly, cut off in a sharp edge by encroaching grass and palmettos. Still in the shelter of the trees, he redoubled his caution and halted Hoppy and Jennet with a word.
He stared out over a far-flung panorama of flatness baked to a crusty brown by years of relentless sun. A covey of quail zoomed up out of the bushes ahead with a loud whirr of wings, and were specks along the edge of the trees before the startled Hoppy could reach for his gun.
A narrow footpath wound away through the palmettos. The Saint's eyes traced its crooked course to where the unpainted square bulk of a two-storied houseboat broke the emptiness of the barren plain. Boards covered the windows on the side towards him, but a flash of reflected light from the upper deck showed that at least one window remained unboarded at the stern. The palmettos hid any sign of water, giving an illusion that the houseboat rested on land.
Lafe Jennet said: 'Come on.'
The Saint's arm barred his way.
'Will Gallipolis be there now?'
'He's always there. Most time durin' the afternoon he runs a game.'
Simon tramped out his cigarette, conscious of the revealing smoke.
'Keep him here,' he instructed Hoppy. 'Don't come any closer unless I call for you, or you hear too many guns going off. Keep well hidden. And if I don't get back by dark, give him the works, will you?'
He moved off like a shadow through the trees to a point where the flatwoods bellied out closest to the barge. The rest of it was not going to be so easy, for even that shortened stretch was at least a quarter of a mile without
