The Saint in Miami

bottle. With a repetition of the same movement he brought over four glasses, wearing them on his fingers like outsized thimbles, and plunked them on the bar beside the bottle.

'Help yourselves,' he said, 'and let's hear more about this.'

It was the merest chance that Simon happened to be standing in a position which gave him a direct sight through the shutter peephole on to a lone black shape that was stalking across the waste outside. It was an additional accident of eyesight and observation which identified the figure to him with instant certainty, even at that distance, and even though the identification left him windmilling on the brink of the ultimate chaos whose possibility he had barely divined three minutes ago.

Very deliberately he uncorked the bottle and poured himself out a glass.

'Before we do that,' he said, 'maybe you'd better put the thunder iron away.'

'For why?' The Greek's voice had a delicate edge of invitation.

'Because, literally, we're all in the same boat,' Simon remarked conversationally. 'You've taken away my gun, but Hoppy still has a concealed arsenal. And you can't even conceal yours. It might make it awkward to explain things to the Sheriff-and I just happened to see him ambling over this way.'

Gallipolis turned back from a quick stare through the peephole, and Simon had an uneasy feeling that the crisis would have no amusing features at all if the Greek failed to grasp his cue.

Gallipolis said, in a low and rapid monotone: 'What sort of a plant is this? There's more men hidden in the trees. I saw them move. I've a notion to drill you, you dirty stool!'

Oddly, his surprise seemed as sincere as his anger. But there was no time to puzzle out nuances like that. The Saint said: 'Drilling me won't get you anywhere. And if you don't know how Haskins got here, I don't either.'

'Talk fast,' said Gallipolis, 'and don't lie. The Sheriff never spotted this barge. Who tipped him off?'

'On my word of honour,' said the Saint steadily, 'I wish I knew.'

Over the bar, Gallipolis gazed at him with relentless penetration. The slender fingers of his right hand twined with de­ceptive laxness about the pistol grip of his weapon. The liquid eyes roved through impenetrable fancies, as though he were working out lyrics for a ballad entitled 'Death Comes to the Houseboat', or something else equally delightful. But when he grinned again, he looked exactly the same as he had before.

'Look, master mind,' he said. 'The Sheriff is your problem. You brought Jennet here. Nobody can prove I ever saw him before. If this is a plant, it stinks. If it isn't, you find a way out of it'

'We can both find a way out of it, if you'll give me a chance. But get rid of the typewriter, or you're in deeper than anyone.'

Gallipolis digested the thought, and seemed to make his choice.

'This is a hell of a way to make a living,' he remarked, and gave a tired sigh. The hole in the floor under the bar was still exposed. He deposited the sub-machine-gun tenderly in it, and slid the bar back, and said: 'I may be a sucker, but I just wish I knew when you were levelling. There's something screwy going on, but I don't get it.'

'Neither do I,' said the Saint, and his manner was almost friendly.

Gallipolis looked hopeful.

'If you want to scram now, you've still got time.'

'I think I'll stay.'

'I was afraid so,' said Gallipolis sadly. It was at that moment that another sound made itself heard.

It was a raucous and rasping sound, a primitive ululation that seemed to bear little relation to any vocal effort that might have been wrung from the diaphragm of an articulate human being. An experienced African hunter might have associated it with some of the more hideous rumblings of the wild, such as the howl of an enraged rhinoceros, or the baffled bellow of a water-buffalo which has arrived at it's favourite wallow only to find it parched and dry. This doughty hunter would have been pardonably deceived. The sound did have a human origin, if Mr Uniatz can be broadly classified as human. It was his rendition of a groan.

Simon turned and looked at him.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Mr Uniatz stood gazing at a bottle without making any attempt to assimilate its contents, gripped in a kind of horripilant torpor like a rabbit fascinated by a snake.

'What's the matter?' Simon demanded with real alarm.

Mr Uniatz tried to speak, only to find himself impeded by the bulk of a painfully dust-caked tongue. Mutely he pointed with a trembling finger, which indicated the contents of the bottle better than words. In a shaft of afternoon sunlight through the gun port, the liquid gleamed with the translucent clarity of a draught from the backyard pump- refreshing, innocuous, unsullied, colourless, and clear. A shudder of abhorrence jarred his gargantuan frame. To one who in his opulent days had quaffed the finest and most potent liquors on the market, such an offering was an affront. To one who in less prosperous times had uncomplainingly got by with snacks of rubbing alcohol, lemon extract, Jamaica ginger, or bay rum, this disgusting fluid promised to titillate his palate about as much as a feather would tickle an armadillo.

'It's a bottle of dat stinkin' Florida water, boss,' Hoppy got out miserably. 'I smelled dat stuff before. Dis ain't no bar -it's a wash-room.'

Gallipolis turned insultedly from staring through the window.

'That's the hottest water you ever tasted, big boy. It comes fresh from a local spring. Why don't you try it?' He filled his own glass, grinned at Simon, and said: 'Here's to crime!'

The Saint sniffed his portion experimentally. It didn't seem at first as if Hoppy could be entirely wrong. The bad-egg bouquet brought back memories of sulphur springs flowing through fetid swamps. But Hoppy had to be given a lesson in good manners.

Simon closed his eyes and drank the liquor down.

He realized the gravity of his error before the saber-toothed distillation of pine knots and turpentine was half through making scar tissue of his tongue. But by that time it was far too late. He tried to gasp out 'Water!', but the de­scending decoction had temporarily cauterised his throat in one clean searing tonsillectomy. Smouldering vocal cavities excavated into strange shapes by the toxic stream sent out the request in an impotent whisper. Tear ducts dilated in salty sympathy. He propped himself feebly against the bar, believ­ing that the power of speech was lost to him for ever.

Through a watery haze he watched Hoppy Uniatz, reassured, lift up the bottle, tilt back his head to the position of a baying wolf, and lower the contents by three full inches be­fore he straightened his neck again.

'Chees.boss . . .'

Mr Uniatz momentarily released his lips from the bottle with the partly satiated air of a suckling baby. He stared at it with a slightly blank expression. Then, as if to batter his incredulous senses into conviction, he raised the bottle a second time. The level had dropped another four inches when he set it down again, and even Lafe Jennet's graven scowl softened in compulsive admiration.

'Chees, boss,' said Mr Uniatz, 'if dat's de local spring water I ain't drinkin' nut'n else from now on!'

The Saint wiped his scorched lips with his handkerchief, and looked at it as if he expected to find brown holes in the cloth. He was even incapable of paying much attention to the entrance of Sheriff Haskins into the bar. He breathed with his mouth open, ventilating his anguished mucous tissues, while Haskins draped himself against the door and said: 'Hullo, son.'

'Hullo, daddy.' The Saint valiantly tried to coax his voice back into operation. 'It's nice to see you again so soon. You know Mr Gallipolis?-Sheriff Haskins.'

'Shuah, I know him.' Haskins chewed ruminatively. 'He's a smart young feller. Runs a nice quiet juke we've knowed about for a yeah or more. I figgered to raid it one o' these days, but I gave up the idea.' He nodded tolerantly towards the reddening Greek. 'He ain't big enough to use that much gas on. I'd have no time for anythin' else if I started knockin' off every ten-cent joint around Miami that runs a poker game an' sells a bad brand o' shine.'

Gallipolis leaned his elbows on the' bar.

'Then what did you come for, Sheriff?'

'This.'

Haskins moved like a striking rattler, snatching off the dark glasses that Simon had bought for Jennet.

Jennet snarled like a dog, and snatched at the bottle on the bar. It must always be in doubt whether Hoppy Uniatz's even faster response was the automatic action of a co-operative cit­izen or the functioning of a no less reflex instinct to retain possession of his newly discovered elixir. But no matter what his motivation might have