The Saint in Miami

'Okay,' he said. 'Now what?'

Simon holstered the gun.

'Why didn't you tell the Sheriff what you told me about Rogers?'

'Hell,' said Gallipolis, 'I should help him? I hope you find Rogers. He might have made trouble for me here.'

'What else do you know?'

'Not a thing, friend.' Gallipolis replaced the bar, with a movement of gentle finality. 'I guess I better see what's left of Frank. You wouldn't want to take a job dealing stud for me?' Before Simon could think of any fitting way of declining the compliment, he answered his own question with a mourn­ful 'No,' and disappeared down the hall.

The Saint straightened himself with an infinitesimally preoccupied shrug.

'I guess we might as well blow, too, Hoppy,' he said. 'But it all looks too damned easy.'

'Dat's what I t'ought,' agreed Mr Uniatz complacently.

For once it was Simon Templar who did the delayed take. He had reached the foot of the gangplank, busy with other thoughts, when it dawned abashingly on him that his low esteem for Hoppy's mental alertness might after all have been unjust He half stopped.

'How did you work it out?'

Mr Uniatz removed the bottle neck from his lips with a noise like a dying drain.

'It's easy, boss.' Mr Uniatz expanded with pleasure at being accepted, if only temporarily, into the usually closed councils of the Saint's gigantic brain. 'All we gotta do is find de Pool.'

A faint frown began to mar the Saint's heartening atten­tion.

'What pool?'

'De Pool you talk to March about on de boat,' Hoppy ex­plained darkly. 'I got it all figgered out. De Greek says it comes from a spring, but dat's a stall. It comes from dis Foreign Pool we're lookin' for. Dat's de racket I got it all figgered out,' said Mr Uniatz, clinching his point with rhetor­ical simplicity.

3

Simon Templar had enjoyed a long drink which did not peel the last remaining membranes from his throat; he had told his inconclusive story to Peter and Patricia; he had showered re­freshingly; and he had changed at leisure into dress trousers, soft shirt, and cummerbund. He was perfecting the set of a maroon bow tie when Desdemona knocked on his door and proclaimed disapprovingly: 'Dey's a lady to see you.'

'Who is it?' he asked, from habit, but his circulation changed tempo like a schoolboy's.

'Same one who was here dis mawnin'.'

He heard the Negress flat-footing disdainfully away as he slipped into a fresh white mess jacket.

Karen Leith was in the patio, and her loveliness almost stopped him. She was wearing some unelaborately costly trifle of white, gathered close about breast and waist and billowing into extravagant fullness below. The tinted patio lights touched the folds with some of the sunset colours of her hair. Otherwise it was all white, except for a thin green chiffon handkerchief tucked into a narrow gold belt at her waist.

'So you made it,' said the Saint 'You asked me.'

Her lips were so fresh and cool, smiling at him, that it was an effort not to repeat his performance of the morning, even though there could be no excuse for it now.

'I couldn't believe I was so irresistible,' he said.

'I thought it over all day, and decided to come . . . Be­sides, it made Randy so mad.'

'Doesn't that matter?'

'He hasn't bought me-yet.'

'But you told him.'

'Why not? I'm free, white, and-twentyfive. I had to tell him, anyway. I asked Haskins not to tell, but I realised I couldn't trust him. Suppose he'd gone ambling off in his quiet crafty way and told Randy, just to see what he could stir up. It'd 've looked quite bad if I hadn't said it first.'

They were still holding hands, and Simon became con­scious of it rather foolishly. Even though she hadn't tried to draw away. There was either too little reason for it, or too much. He released her fingers, and went to the portable bar which he had thoughtfully ordered out before he went to dress.

'Are you sure that was all?' he asked, as he brewed cock­tails with a practised hand.

'Of course, I did wonder how you made out on your trip this afternoon.'

'As you see, I came back alive.'

'Did you find the barge, and the mysterious Mr Rogers?'

'The barge, but not Mr Rogers. He wasn't there. I'm going to meet him tonight.' Simon handed her a glass. 'But it's nice of you to be interested. It's a pity, though, because I shall have to take you home early.'

'What for?' she objected. 'I'm a long time out of the vicarage. I could even enjoy going to a place like the Palmleaf Fan.'

The Saint was a man whose nerves of steel and impregnable imperturbability are by this time as familiar as the contour of their own bottoms to all patrons of circulating libraries and movie theatres, not to mention the purchasers of popular magazines and newspapers. It cannot therefore be plausibly stated that he staggered on his feet. But it must also be revealed that he came as close to it as he was ever likely to come. So ft can only be recorded that he picked up his own drink and subsided circumspectly into the nearest chair.

'Let me get this straight,' he said. 'I forced a fugitive from a chain gang, under threats of hideous torture, to guide me to a gambling barge that looked like a prop from a Grand Guignol show. I crawled for miles on my stomach like a serpent, ruining an excellent pair of pants and getting myself stuck in all kinds of intimate places with an assortment of needle points which no good housewife would leave on a pot­ted palm. I had a contest in hypnotism with a singularly evil-looking cottonmouth moccasin on the bank of a very stagnant canal. I exposed a crooked stud dealer, and was offered his job by a curly-haired Greek with a machine gun. Some thoughtful soul even took the trouble to send the Sheriff after me again, and I had to distract his attention by giving him our friend Jennet as a scapegoat And do you know where that got me?'

'I think so.' She could even look demure. 'You found out that Rogers worked at the Palmleaf Fan.'

Simon swallowed a mouthful of blended alcohols with a voracity that would have done credit to Mr Uniatz.

'When did you find it out?'

'Oh, several days ago.'

'Of course, you couldn't have told me right away, instead of letting me wriggle all over Florida like a boy scout trying for an Eagle badge. I mean, we could have spent the after­noon playing backgammon or visiting an alligator farm, or something else harmless and diverting.'

She was sitting on the arm of his chair now, and her slim fingers rested on his shoulder.

'My dear,' she said 'I hated to let you do it. But I wasn't sure what else there was. And would you have missed it?'

'You were just doing it for my own good?'

'I didn't know there was nothing else in it than tracking Rogers down. You had to find out. If you were going to follow a trail, you had to follow it exactly as it was laid out. I might have switched you into a short cut that led nowhere.'

The Saint sat up.

'Karen,' he said quietly, 'how much more do you know?'

She sipped her drink.

This is nice,' she said. 'What is it?'

'Something I made up. I call it a Wedding Night.'

'That sounds more like a perfume.'

He took hold of her wrist with a grip that was more crush­ing than he realised.

'Why not answer the question?'

She lifted her glass again, and then looked at him levelly.

'Haven't I got just as much right to ask you the same question?'

'That's fair enough. I'll answer it. You know just about everything I know. You heard it on the March Hare last night. I shot the works-and half of them were guessworks. You also know what I found out today. I haven't