me that somebody was takin' an awful lot of trouble to see that you an' Jesse was both got rid of together with no questions asked.'
Simon Templar put his cigarette to his lips and filled his lungs with warm soothing vapour and forgot to let it out again. His whole being seemed to stand still in the same cumulative and timeless stasis that affected the expansion of his ribs.
But through those fleeting seconds, his brain absorbed fact and association and deduction as completely and meticulously as his lung tissues ingested the smoke. Every molecule of factual knowledge was seeping into its predestined pore. The pattern was all falling into place. Every piece had its revealed significance, even to the most trivial fragments. He didn't know whether to feel stupid or triumphant. Certainly he had expended an astronomical amount of time and energy and cerebration on the trail of a wild goose; but had it been really wasted? The wild goose-to cross metaphors with a lavishness that only a pedant could criticise in the circumstances-had come home to roost There were only a few vacant spaces left . . .
'It makes sense, Sheriff.' Even the naturalness of his own voice surprised him. 'I've spent about twelve hours letting myself be nursed into the most beautifully elaborate set-up I ever heard of. But how about Jesse? Did he really tell Jennet to shoot at me?'
Rogers spoke for the first time, without any expression.
'I did. I didn't have to tell him to hit you, so I thought I'd pass on the order and see what happened.'
'You see, son,' Haskins explained, 'you got yourself mixed up in some powerful big organisin'. I found out tonight that Jesse was workin' heah as what you'd call an undercover man for the Department of Justice. It didn't surprise me so much, neither. I've knowed for a long time that this place was the local headquarters of Mr Hitler's Nazi-American Bund.'
4 'Of course,' said the Saint, with an ecstatic lilt in his voice that was too zephyrous for anyone else there to hear. 'Of course . . .'
And he felt as if a fresh wind from out of doors had blown through his head, leaving it clean and light, with all the dark tangles swept away. Everything else was set in its niche now, to be seen clearly from every angle. The only thing that amazed him was that he had failed to find the connecting link long ago. Those last words of Raskins' had supplied it.
The Bund. And those fearfully earnest merrymakers outside. Karen had practically told him when she put the words 'Kraft durch Freude' into his mouth-and he'd been too preoccupied to grasp it. And the whole atmosphere of the trap into which he had so nearly fallen. Its grim, far-ranging, tortuous Teutonic thoroughness. One could almost see the imprint of the fine hand of Himmler. But between the master hand of Himmler and its victims, in this as in every other corner of that incredible worldwide web of intrigue and sabotage, a more fantastic secret society than any blood-dnd-thunder writer of fiction would ever have dared to try and make convincing, there had to be major intermediaries, graduates summa cum laude of the Himmler school of technique. And who was the intermediary here, the local lieutenant of this greater gangsterism than the petty caesars of civil crime had ever dreamed of? Well, not a lieutenant. A captain. Captain Friede. The man who Simon had always sensed was the real commander even when March seemed to give the orders. It could be no one else. The finger pointed to him beyond any mortal doubt. Sometimes there could be uncertainties; but sometimes there was a clarity of vision that amounted to inspiration, that logic might justify but could not assail. It had to be Friede. And through him, the other threads linked with March, with Gilbeck, with the Foreign Investment Pool, with a torpedoed tanker, even with a drowned sailor with a life belt bearing the name of a British submarine tangled to his wrist. Everything, everything hooked up. ... There were still a few minor questions, but their solution would be direct and unequivocal. The groping was over, and all that was ahead lay straight as an arrow's flight . . .
'Of course,' said the Saint, after a million years, 'Jesse can't have been quite so much under cover as he thought. Somebody had suspected him. and this was the neatest way to get rid of both of us together.'
'That's what I think.' Rogers sat up, at last, and Simon discovered that the old-young eyes behind his glasses could be unexpectedly penetrating. 'I've been watching you all this time, and I know you've been telling the truth. But Haskins didn't ask why they should want to get rid of you.'
Simon chain-lighted another cigarette. Because of divers accidents, he had been able to reconstruct far more than either Rogers or Haskins. And that was where his incurable madness came back, that gay and crazy quirk of his very own that had led him into so many hairbreadth perils and so much more fun. They had provided the one vital clue, but they still couldn't have his adventure.
The only thing I can think of,' he said, 'is that this disappearance of the Gilbecks has something to do with it. They knew my reputation, and they knew I'd be bound to take an active interest in that, and they may have thought I was too dangerous to leave at large. That is, if I was ever important at all. They may have just wanted any scapegoat at all, and heard that I was in town, and thought I'd be good enough if I could be manoeuvred into a sufficiently compromising background. But the disappearance of the Gilbecks does seem to have some connection, since Haskins was first put on to me when A Friend sent him to find my note on the Mirage.'
His air of baffled candour could not have been more convincing.
'And you still haven't any idea what connection Gilbeck could have with this?' Rogers asked, watching him.
'Not the slightest,' Simon lied tremorlessly. 'If I had, I could catch up on a lot of sleep.'
Rogers sat for a moment longer, and then stood up. He went to the window and whistled softly. Two deputies loomed up in the dark outside. Rogers turned away, and Haskins said: 'Boys, the two lads in the corner have gotten themselves a queer idea that Miami Beach is the Siegfried Line. I want you to take 'em into town an' tuck 'em away so their patriotic passions can get a chance to cool.' He gathered up the two revolvers by the barrels with his left hand, and held them out 'You better take these along, too, so you can book 'em for concealed firearms.'
'You'll hear more of this,' rasped Tweedledum, as the Sheriff's revolver waved him towards the window. 'We've got our legal rights-'
Haskins screwed up one eye and said: 'Our county Gestapo knows all about 'em, an' I'm afraid they'll give you more breaks than you'd get at home. In the meantime I'm goin' to send you some writin' paper an' let you write your boss an' tell him to keep his goddam Weltanschauung at home!'
When the two men had gone out through the window, Simon said boldly: 'If you knew all this before, why didn't you do something about the place?'
'Sometimes a place like this is useful,' said Rogers. 'If we know where the small fry are meeting, it gives us a chance to keep track of some of the big fish.'
'Then who is the big fish here?'
'That's what I was sent here to find out.' Rogers shrugged. 'It seems as if he spotted me before I could spot him. I hope it doesn't make much difference. Somebody else will pick up where I left off, and in the end we'll know him. Even if their plot had worked, it wouldn't have really mattered.'
'It must be very comforting to have that philosophic outlook,' commented the Saint.
Haskins put his big gun stoically away.
'Son,' he remarked, 'it's always been a policy of the law in this country to let bad little boys alone when they want to play. We let these bunches o' tin soldiers march an' drill around in our peaceful country, an' wave their swastikas, an' heil Hitler, an' make the goddamdest dirty cracks about democracy, on account of it's the policy of democracy to let everybody shout his own opinions, even when it's his opinion that nobody who don't agree with him ought to be allowed even to whisper what he thinks. We let 'em tear hell out o' the Constitootion on account of the Constitootion says anybody can tear anything out of it he wants to. We let em use all the freedom that the founders of this country gave their lives to give us, to try an' take that freedom away. We're so plumb scared of gettin' accused o' bein' the same as they are that we even let 'em train an' arm a private army to put over their ideas, rather 'n give 'em the chance to say we denied 'em the liberty they want to take away from us. That's why we're the greatest country in the world, an' everybody else laughs 'emselves sick lookin' at us.'
There was a moment's silence before Simon could say, evenly enough: 'I hope nobody can ever lick your screwy country . . . But do you need me here any more?'
'By this time,' Rogers said, 'they know that the plot's misfired. You can slip out the back way with us.'
'I left Haskins' red-headed flame in the main room,' said the Saint. 'And another friend of mine in the gents' relief station. I can't just ditch them. If the gang knows that the plot has misfired, they can guess you and Haskins are here with some deputies. They'll be too scared to make trouble without plenty more planning. You go the way
