The Saint in Miami

accordingly received with tumultuous applause. It was plain that he was a popular performer. As the ovation subsided, there were sporadic shouts of 'Octavius!' Rogers smiled with cherubic salaciousness, and said: 'By request-Octavius, the Octogenarian Octopus.'

The difficulties, vices, and devices of Octavius were un­folded in the same strain. They were biologically improbable, but full of ingenious concepts; and they went on for a long time.

A waiter came by the table, picked up the Peter Dawson bottle, and tilted it over the glasses. It was an unproductive service, for Mr. Uniatz had not taken his revised standards of alcoholic quality seriously enough to leave anything unpoured. The waiter leaned over with respectful discretion and said: 'Shall I bring another bottle, sir?'

'I suppose you'd better,' said the Saint, with the fatalism of long experience. 'Or do you make special rates by the case?'

The waiter smiled politely and went away. The song went on, with the diversions of Octavius becoming more recherche in every stanza. Currently, they seemed to be concerned with some whimsical prank involving bathing girls in Bali. Karen said curiously: 'What are you making of him?'

'He knows his onions, for what they're worth,' said the Saint judicially. 'I've been trying to estimate what else he's worth. At first I thought something was haywire again, but now I'm not nearly sure.'

'Does he look tough to you?'

'He does-now. He's tougher than Jennet. It's a funny twist, but you're always surprised when a villain you've built up in your imagination doesn't turn out to look like a profes­sional wrestler, and yet some of these baby-faced guys are more dangerous than any plug-ugly knows how to be.'

He felt no incongruity in discussing Rogers so dispassion­ately with her. The mere fact that she should be sitting there with him at that time achieved a culmination of unreality be­side which all minor paradoxes were insignificant. And yet even that apical absurdity had become so much a part of the fantastic picture that he no longer questioned it.

The saga of Octavius ended at last, and Rogers was shaking his head, smiling, in answer to the disappointed yells for more as the piano was whisked away. The MC tripped on again like a pixie and said: 'Jesse Rogers will be back before long, ladies and gentlemen, with some more of those sizzling songs. We can't give you the whole show at once. Let's dance again, and then we'll have another treat for you.' The orches­tra took its cue, and the ball kept rolling. It could never be disputed that the Palmleaf Fan worked tirelessly in its dubi­ous cause.

Simon still looked between the gathering dancers, and saw that Rogers had been stopped on his way out through the curtained doorway by a waiter. Something about the back of the waiter's close-cropped head seemed oddly familiar . . . Simon was trying to identify the familiarity when Rogers looked directly at him across the room. In that instant the Saint grasped the fleeting shadow of recognition.

It was the waiter who had just taken his order for another bottle of Scotch.

Nothing to make any difference. The waiter had other duties. But Rogers had looked straight across the room. And in the circumstances . . .

Karen Leith's face was a lovely mask. She might not have seen anything.

'So you've seen him,' she said. 'Now what are you going to do?'

'I was just wondering?' Simon replied slowly. 'We might wait till he comes on again and shoot him from here. But the management might resent that. Besides, I want to know where he gets his orders from . . . Do you think you're get­ting enough inside information to please Randy?'

He was deliberately trying to hurt her again, to strike some spark that would end his groping. But instead of hatred, her eyes brightened with something else that he would much rather not have seen.

'Dear idiot,' she said: and she was smiling. 'Don't ever stop being hard. Don't ever let anyone fool you-not even me.'

He had to smile back at her. Had to.

'No nonsense?' he said emptily.

'Not for anything.'

'Boss,' began Mr Uniatz, diffidently.

The Saint sat back. And he started to laugh. It was a quiet and necessary laughter. It brought the earth back again.

'I remember,' he said. 'You wanted to go.'

'I was just t'inkin', boss, it don't have to make much dif­ference. I can be quick.'

For Heaven's sake, don't go into all the details,' said the Saint hastily. 'Take all the time you want. We know all about the calls of Nature. We can wait.'

'Chees, boss,' said Mr Uniatz, with almost childishly ador­ing gratitude. 'Tanks!'

He got up from the table and paddled hurriedly away.

Karen made a slightly strangled sound, and quickly picked up her glass. The Saint looked at her and chuckled.

'I should have warned you about him,' he murmured. 'He doesn't mean any harm. He's just uninhibited.'

'I - I was b-beginning to discover that' Her lips trembled. 'If he ever has any puppies, will you send me one?'

'I'll remember,' said the Saint; but his voice faded as he said it The waiter was back again, transferring a fresh bottle and clean glasses from a tray to the table.

Simon studied him again through lazily trailing wisps of smoke, and became doubly sure of his identification. The lines of the tightly trimmed fair hair, as the man leaned over the table, were quite distinctive. He had a square unexpressive face on which the skin seemed to be stretched so snugly over the bony structure that there was hardly any play left for movement. He said, leaning over: 'Are you Mr Templar, sir?'

Like a wind-ruffled pool on to which oil has been floated, everything in the Saint settled into an immeasurable inward stillness; yet there was no change in him that any eye could have seen.

'That's right,' he said calmly.

'Mr Rogers would very much like to see you, sir, as soon as it's convenient' The enunciation was stiff and without per­sonality, a formal reproduction which conveyed nothing but the bare words it was phrased in. 'I can show you to his dressing-room whenever you're ready.'

The Saint drew his cigarette to a long even glow. And in that time his mind raced over everything, without stirring one fibre of that deep physical repose.

So this was it ... It seemed simple enough, now, so sim­ple that he had to deride the energy he had squandered on all his preliminary alertness. Rogers had seen him, recognised him, and beaten him to the draw. He didn't remember ever having seen Rogers before, but that was no reason to think that Rogers didn't know him-he had to be more than a name to at least some of the units in the chain of conspiracy. Lafe Jennet might be back on the road at Olustee by that time, but there were plenty of other ways for Jesse Rogers to have learned that the cat was out and the Saint was on his trail. So Rogers-or the men behind Rogers-had merely taken the dilemma by the horns . . .

'Of course,' said the Saint easily. 'I'll be right along.'

The waiter bowed disinterestedly, and moved a little way off. And the Saint found Karen's eyes fixed on him.

'Will you excuse me?' he said.

'We could have another dance first. And then Hoppy'll be back to keep me company.'

It seemed as if that was all she could think of to say, to delay him, without making a confession or a betrayal that they both knew was impossible. He smiled.

'Why not now?' he said quietly. 'Hoppy'll be back, but I wouldn't have taken him anyway. Rogers and I have a little personal business. I came here to see him, so I might as well do it. I don't know what's in his mind, but I'll find out. And if he knows that I work that way, and he's ready for it-I'll find that out too.'

She didn't speak or move for a moment.

Then her hand touched his hand, lightly; and the touch was a kiss, or an embrace, or more than that, or nothing.

'Good luck, Saint.'

'I've always been much too lucky,' he said, and turned away at once, and_went after the waiter.