The Saint in Miami

been, the result was adequate. One of his iron paws grabbed Jennet's wrist, and the other wrenched the bottle away. There was a click of metal as Haskins deftly handcuffed the struggling convict.

'Thanks,' said the Sheriff dryly, giving Hoppy the benefit of the doubt, and at the same time giving Mr Uniatz his first and only accolade from the Law. 'You re wanted up near Olustee, Lafe, to do some road work you ain't never finished. Might think you were a tourist, the way you were ridin' around town.'

'I was kidnapped,' Jennet whined. 'Why don't you arrest them, too?' His manacled hands indicated the Saint and Hoppy. 'They drug me out here at the point of a gun.'

'Now, that's right interestin',' said Haskins.

He turned his back on Jennet and walked to a place beside Simon at the bar. He moved his left thumb, and Gallipolis produced another bottle of shine, Hoppy having cautiously taken the first bottle out of range of further accidents. Haskins refilled the Saint's glass, and poured himself a liberal drink.

Simon Templar contemplated the repeat order of nectar unenthusiastically. The stuff had an inexhaustible range of effects. At the moment, the first dose was still with him: his throat was cooling a little, but his stomach now felt as if he had swallowed an ingot of molten lead. Besides which, he wanted to think quickly. If there were going to be a lot of questions to answer, he had to decide on his answering line. And disintegrating as the idea might seem, he simply couldn't perceive any line more straightforward, more obvious, more foolproof, more unchallengeable, more secure against future complications, and more utterly disarming, than the strict and irrefutable truth-so far as it went. It was a strange conclu­sion to come to, but he knew that subterfuge was a burden that was only worth sustaining when its objective was clearly seen, and for the life of him he couldn't see any objective now. So he watched in silent awe while the Sheriff filtered his four ounces of sulphuretted hydrochloric acid past his uvula without disturbing his chew.

'Gawd A'mighty,' Haskins exclaimed huskily, eyeing his glass in mild astonishment 'Must have squeezed that out of a panther. Did you come all the way out here to get a drink of that scorpion's milk? Give me an answer, son.'

'I'm glad somebody else thinks it's powerful,' said the Saint relievedly. 'Actually, Sheriff, I came out here looking for a man.'

Haskins found a place between vest and pants, and scratched himself over the belt of his gun.

'I'll feel a sight better, son, if you tell me more.'

'There's nothing much to hide.' Simon felt even more cer­tain of the rightness of his decision. 'A few minutes after you left this morning, Jennet took a shot at me from the bushes. If you want to, we can drive back in and you can dig his mush­room bullet out of the Gilbecks' wall.'

The Sheriff pushed back his hat, found a wisp of hair, twisted it into a point, and said: 'Well, now!'

'My friend Hoppy Uniatz-that's him over there, under the bottle-caught Jennet. We also got a rifle with his finger­prints on it-it must have 'em, because he wasn't wearing gloves. You can have that, too, if you want to come back for it, and prove that it fired the bullet in the wall.'

Haskins' shrewd grey eyes stayed on the Saint's face.

'Guess you wouldn't be so keen for me to prove it, son, if it warn't true,' he conceded. 'So I'll save myself the trouble. But it still don't say what you're doin' with Lafe out here.'

'After we caught him,' said the Saint, 'we worked on him a little. Nothing really rough, of course-he didn't make us go that far. But we persuaded him to talk. I didn't have the least idea why he or anybody else should be shooting at me. He told me he was forced to do it by a guy named Jesse Rog­ers who knew he was a lamster; and he said he met this Rog­ers out here. So we just naturally came out for a look-see.'

'That's a lie,' said Gallipolis. 'Jennet was just playing for time. He hasn't been here since he was sent up, and you can't prove anything else.'

'That was only what he told me,' Simon confessed.

Haskins replaced his corkscrewed forelock.

'I shuah am bein' offered a lot of easy provin' to do,' he observed morosely. 'What I want is the things you- all ain't so ready to show me. How about this guy Rogers?'

'He comes here,' said Gallipolis. 'But he's been coming on and off for two years.'

'Know anythin' about him?'

'No more than anybody else who comes here. I know what he looks like and how much he spends.'

The Greek's limpid-eyed sincerity was as transparent as it had been when he told Simon quite a different story.

Haskins ambled over to a comer and ejected his chew with off-hand accuracy into a convenient cuspidor.

'This business is gettin' so danged tangled up,' he an­nounced as he came back, 'it's like watchin' a snake eatin' its own tail. If it keeps on long enough there won't be nuth'n left at all.'

'Perhaps,' Simon advanced mildly, 'you'd save yourself a lot of headaches if you took Lafe back to your office and saw what you could get out of him there.'

The Sheriff was troubled. He searched beyond the Saint's serious tone for some justification of his feeling of being taken for a ride. It was difficult to define the glint in the Saint's scapegrace blue eyes as one of open mockery; and yet . . .

'An' where will you be,' he asked, 'while that's goin' on?'

'I might see if I can get a line on this Rogers bird,' said the Saint. 'But you know where to get in touch with me if you need me again.'

'Look, son.' Haskins' long nose moved closer, backed by a narrowing stare. 'Whether or not you know it, you've done me a right smart good turn today. Lafe's meaner 'n gar broth, an' wanted bad. I'll be plenty happy to see him tucked away. But I don't want no more trouble on account o' you. Suppose now we all go back to town peaceable like, an' you leave the findin' of this Rogers to me.'

Simon took out a pack of cigarettes and meditatively se­lected one.

He felt even more uncannily as if he were a puppet that was being taken through some conspicuous but meaningless part of a complex choreography, while the real motif was still running in incomprehensible counterpoint Too many people seemed to be too completely genuine to too little purpose.

There was, of course, the girl Karen, who might be classed as an unknown quantity. But it was impossible to visualise the pickle-pussed Lafe Jennet, no matter what his status as a marksman might be, as an embryo Machiavelli. Gallipolis had displayed several paradoxical characteristics, but the Saint felt ridiculously and unreasonably certain that among all of them there was a perplexity which contradicted the part of a conspirator. And there could be no doubt at all about the Sheriff. Newt Haskins might speak with a drawl and chew to­bacco and move slothfully under the southern sun, but his slothfulness was that of a lizard which could wake into light­ning swiftness. He had quite unmistakably the rare gem-like clarity of character of a man whom no fear or fortune could ever swerve from his arid conception of duty. And yet his ar­rival that afternoon had a timeliness which seemed to be an integral part of an elusive pattern.

No abstract extrapolation could ever make order out of it, Simon concluded. And so the only thing still was to find out -to let his own natural impulses take their course, and see where they led him.

'I just hate being shot at,' he said amicably, 'especially by proxy. And I don't think I'd be violating any law by looking for a guy named Rogers if I wanted to. Or would I?'

Haskins stared at him for the briefest part of a minute. His lean weatherbeaten face was as unemotional as a piece of old leather.

'No. son,' he said at last. 'Just lookin' for a guy named Rogers won't be violatin' no laws . . .' He turned abruptly, grasped Jennet by the collar, and propelled him towards the door. 'Git goin', Lafe.' He glanced back at the Saint once more, from the doorway. 'I'll be around,' he said, and went out.

Simon lounged languidly against the bar, and tried to put a smoke-ring over the neck of a bottle.

Gallipolis used the peephole to assure himself that Haskins and Jennet had really gone. He turned his face back from the aperture with a discouraged air.

'The hell with it.' He waggled his curly head from side to side, and looked at the Saint 'Are you going too, or have you got any more trouble?'

'You've still got my gun,' Simon reminded him.

The Greek seemed to brood about it. Then he slid back the bar and picked out the Luger from his cache. He handed it to Simon butt foremost.