The Saint in Miami

Their order had been delivered, and Hoppy Uniatz was plaintively con­templating eight ounces of Scotch whisky which he had un­precedently poured into a glass.

'Boss,' complained Mr Uniatz, 'dis is a clip jernt.'

'Very likely,' Simon assented. 'What have they done to your Hoppy flourished his glass.

'De liquor,' he said. 'It's no good.'

Simon poured some into his own glass, sniffed it, and sipped. Then he filled it up with water and ice and tried again.

'It seems all right to me,' he said.

'Aw, sure, it's de McCoy. Only I just don't like it no more.'

The Saint inspected him with a certain anxiety.

'What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?'

'Hell, no, boss. I feel fine. Only I don't like it no more. It ain't got no kick after dat Florida pool water. I ast de waiter if he's got any, an' he gives me dat stuff.' Hoppy pointed dis­gustedly at the carafe. 'It just tastes like what ya wash in. I told him we ain't gonna pay for no fish-bath, an' he says he won't charge for it. I scared de pants off him. But dey try it on, just de same. Dat's what I mean, boss, it's a clip jemt,' said Mr Uniatz, proving his contention.

The Saint sighed.

'What you'll have to do,' he said consolingly, 'is go back to Comrade Gallipolis and 'ask him for some more.'

He lighted a cigarette and returned to his faintly puzzled analysis of the room.

Karen Leith seemed to sense his vaguely irritated concentration without being surprised by it. She turned a cigarette between her own finger and thumb, and said: 'What are you making of it?'

'It bothers me,' he replied, frowning. 'I've been in other joints with some of these fancy trimmings-I mean the boys and girls. I think I know just what sort of floor show they're going to put on. But I can't quite place some of the customers. They aren't very spontaneous about their fun. I've seen exactly the same thing before, somewhere.' He was merely thinking aloud. 'They look more as if they'd come out here because the doctor had told them to have a good time, by God, if it killed them. There's a phrase on the tip of my tongue that just hits it, if I could only get it out-'

'A sort of Kraft durch Freude?' she prompted him.

He snapped his fingers.

'Damn it, of course! It's Strength through Joy-or the other way round. Like in Berlin. With that awful Teutonic seriousness. 'All citizens will have a good time on Thursday night. By order.' The night life of this town must have got to a pretty grisly state . . .'

His voice trailed off, and his gaze settled across the room with an intentness that temporarily wiped every other thought out of his mind.

The head waiter was obsequiously ushering Randolph March and his captain to a table on the other side of the floor.

V How Simon Templar Saw Sundry Girls, and Sheriff Haskins Spoke of Democracy

The orchestra uncorked a fanfare, and the room lighting seemed to become even dingier by contrast as a spotlight splashed across to illuminate a slim-waisted creature who had taken possession of the microphone on the dais. His blond hair was beautifully waved, and he had a smudge under one eye that looked like mascara.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, with an ingratiating lisp, 'we are now going to begin our continuous entertainment, which will go on between dances to give you a breathing spell-if you can still breathe. And to start the ball rolling, here is that beautiful baby, Toots Travis.'

He stepped back, leading the applause with frightful enthusiasm, and Toots minced forward from a curtained arch on the right of the orchestra. She really was pretty, with a dutch-doll bob and a face to go with it and a figure with rather noticeable curves. She looked about sixteen, and might not have been much more. The orchestra blared into a popular number, and she began to saunter around the floor, waving a palmleaf fan and singing the refrain in a voice which could have been more musical. Much more.

March semaphored boldly across the floor to Karen, and she responded more restrainedly with one hand. He gave no sign of having noticed the Saint's existence. The captain nodded perfunctorily in their direction, and paid no further attention. Simon could hardly see any other course for him. When in a public place one encounters two persons who twentyfour hours ago were kicking one four feet into the air and beating one over the head with an empty bottle as one came down, one can hardly be expected to greet them with effusive geniality. One could, of course, call for the police and make charges; but there had been plenty of time already to do that, and the idea had obviously been discarded. Or one could come over and offer to start again where one left off, but there were social problems to conflict with that, not to mention the discouraging record of past experience.

Toots continued to stroll about after the refrain ended. It began to appear that the needlework in her dress was not of the most enduring kind. Subtly, and it seemed of their own volition, the seams were coming undone. Either because she was unaware of this, or because as a good trouper she bravely refused to interrupt the show, Toots went on circulating over the floor, revealing larger and larger expanses of white skin through the spreading gaps with every pirouette. Mr Uniatz goggled at the performance with breathless admiration.

Simon leaned a little towards Karen.

'Incidentally,' he said, without moving his lips, 'what is that captain's name?'

'Friede,' she told him.

'One of those inappropriate names, I think,' murmured the Saint.

He was recalling his first curious impressions about the captain. It had seemed on the March Hare that Friede was far more in command of the situation than March. There had been an aura of cold deadliness about him that the average observer might have overlooked, but that stood out in garish colours to anyone as familiar with dangerous men as the Saint Throughout the episode of the previous night, Friede had never stepped out of line, had never attempted to domi­nate, had given March every respect and deference. And yet, when Simon looked back on it analytically, Friede had done everything that mattered. All the constructive and dangerous suggestions had come from him, although he had never ob­truded himself for a moment. He had simply put words and ideas into March's mouth, but so cleverly that March's echo had taken the authority of an original command. It had been so brilliantly done that Simon had to think back again over the actual literal phrasing of the dialogue, wondering if he was trying to put bones into a wild hallucination. Yet if that irking recollection was right, what other strange factors might there be inside that rather square-shaped cranium, which now that the captain appeared without his cap was revealed as bald as an ostrich egg?

By this time, Toots's disintegrating seams had left nothing but four wide streamers of black lace hanging from her shoulder-straps. With a last revolution of her curvilinear body which spread them like the blades of a propeller, she reached the curtained doorway. The lights dimmed. There was a round of applause, to which Hoppy Uniatz lent his cooperation by thumping his flat hand on the table until it shuddered under the punishment The music and the spotlight struck up again together. Apparently intoxicated by her success, but at the same time handicapped by the shredding of her gown, Toots compromised by coming back without it. She had nothing now but the palmleaf fan, which being only about twelve inches in diame­ter was not nearly large enough to cover all the vital scenery. Her valiant attempts to alternate concealments and exposures held the audience properly spellbound.

'Stay where you are,' Simon ordered sternly, as Hoppy's chair began to slide away from the table. 'Haven't you ever been out before?'

'Chees, boss,' said Mr Uniatz bashfully, 'I never see nut'n like dis. In New York dey always got sump'n on.'

Simon had to acknowledge that the comparison was just­ified, but he still kept Mr Uniatz in his seat. He was trying to anticipate what the arrival of March and Friede portended. By saying nothing to Haskins about the Saint's felonious ac­tivities of the night before they had positively established themselves as asking no favours from the Law, but it was im­possible to believe that they had decided to forget the whole thing. Their arrival at the Palmleaf Fan, after Simon had been led there by such a devious trail, had to be more than mere coincidence. And a kind of contented relaxation slid through the Saint's muscles as he realised that by the same portents their personal presence guaranteed that whatever was in the wind was not going to be a waste of anybody's time . . .

The peregrinations of Toots returned to the curtained doorway as the music drew to a conclusion. She stood weaving the fan with slower provocation through the last bars, scanning the audience as though making a choice.