you're barkin' up the wrong tree, son.'
'Maybe I'm not, after all,' said the Saint softly, and cradled the instrument before Haskins could make any more reply.
In a matter of seconds he was back in the car, scattering gravel and sand from the driveway as he ripped out of it. It all seemed so plain now that he wondered how any doubt could have detained him for a moment. And the idea that had been part formed in his mind on the way down from the Palmleaf Fan was now a consuming objective which blotted out everything else on his horizon. To face the last cards, and fight out a showdown on Landmark Island or the March Hare . . .
The Cadillac screamed on to the County Causeway with supreme disregard for the risk of speed cops. And just beyond the turn-off to Star Island it stopped, oblivious to the exasperated honking of horns behind.
There was no chance to mistake the trim grey shape feeling its way along the steamship channel towards the Government Cut and the open sea. The March Hare had already sailed. One couldn't reach it in a car. One couldn't swim after it. One might overtake it with a speedboat, but there would still be no way to get on board. And on board, beyond a question, were Patricia Holm and Peter Quentin. He couldn't see them; but he could see Karen Leith. She stood leaning on the after rail beside Randolph March, watching the traffic on the Causeway and laughing with him.
VI How Hoppy Uniatz Rode on His Brain Wave, and Gallipolis Introduced Another Vehicle
What in the absence of a better phrase we must loosely refer to as the thinking processes of Hoppy Uniatz were blissfully uncluttered by teleological complications such as any worry about consequences. His mind, if we must use the word, was a one-way street through which infrequent ideas rolled with the remorseless grandeur of cold molasses towards an unalterable destination. Once it was started, any idea that got caught in this treacly rolling stream was stuck there until it had been through everything that the works had to offer, like a fly in a drop of glue on a Ford production belt What Simon Templar sometimes remembered too late, as he had done in this instance, was that the traffic in Mr Uniatz's constricted mental thoroughfares moved at such a different rate from that of everybody else that one was apt to overlook the fact that it really did keep moving. In which error one did Mr Uniatz a grave injustice. It was true that an all-foreseeing Providence, designing his skull principally to resist the impact of blackjacks and beer bottles, had been left with little space to spare for grey matter; but nevertheless some room had been found for a substance in which a planted thought could take root and grow with the ageless inevitability of a forming stalagmite. The only trouble with this adagio germination was that the planting of the seed was liable to have been forgotten by the time the resultant blossom coyly showed its head.
It had been like that in this case; and to Hoppy Uniatz it was all so straightforward that he would have been dumbfounded to learn that the Saint had lost touch with the scenario even for a moment.
Hoppy had only a minor difficulty over transportation. He guessed that the Saint might not like to be left without a car, and so he passed up the Cadillac and selected instead a flaming red Lincoln which caught his eye further down the line. There were no keys in it, but that was an elementary problem, which was quickly solved by tearing the wires loose from the ignition lock and making some experimental connections. A beam of pleasure that would have made a baby scream for its mother spread over his homely face as the engine fired, and in a glow of happy innocence he swung the Lincoln out in a spurt of sand and headed off like Parsifal on the spoor of his Grail.
He had few doubts of his ability to finally find his way to the barge-having been there once, that was another relatively minor problem to a man who in his day had safely shepherded trucks of beer and such other valuable cargo over back roads to other equally well-hidden harbours. He turned unerringly on 63rd Street, sped south on Pinetree Drive, and took Dade Boulevard to the Venetian Way. And before he reached the Tamiami Trial he was warmed with another heart-swelling realisation which he had worked out white he drove. This trip need not be regarded as a purely selfish expedition for the gratification of his own thirst. Hoppy remembered that that afternoon he had produced, out of his own head, a theory which the Saint had perhaps been too busy to appreciate. Now, while the Saint was disporting himself with the red-haired wren, he, Uniatz, would be tirelessly following up his Clue . . .
The road looked a little different by night Hoppy made two false turn-offs, and wasted fifteen minutes getting out of a patch of soft sand, before he found the place where Simon had parked the car that afternoon. When he reached the flat open country beyond the trees he still wasn't sure of his direction. He struck off in what he hoped was the way, letting the growing parchedness of his throat guide him in much the same manner that a camel's instinct leads it to an oasis. Even with this intuitive pilotage, his wide-striped flannels were bedraggled from clutching palmettos when the barge at last showed black against the sky.
As Hoppy put his weight on the gangplank a streak of light fanned across the deck, and Gallipolis stepped out of the door. His flashlight streamed over Hoppy and clicked off.
'By the beard of Xerxes!' said Gallipolis. 'Hullo, bad news. What brings you?'
'Uniatz is de name.' Hoppy plodded on up and went inside. The heat of the closed and oil-lighted bar struck at him in a wave. 'I come out to get some more of dat Florida water, see? I gotta toist.'
Gallipolis stopped at the end of the bar. Over his invariable white-toothed grin, his fawn-like eyes stared at Mr Uniatz suspiciously.
'What's the matter-all the joints in town closed up?'
'Dey ain't woit wastin' time in,' Mr Uniatz told him feelingly. 'A lot of fairies wit' goils' clothes on ... Dey ain't got none of dis stuff dat I want, neider. De water you say comes outa de springs.'
'Oh.'
Gallipolis secured a bottle and glass and slid them along the bar. Hoppy ignored the glass and picked up the bottle. A long draught of the corrosive nectar, to be savoured with the inenarrable contentment which the divine fruit of such a pilgrimage deserved, washed gratifyingly around Mr Uniatz's atrophied taste buds, flowed past his tonsils like Elysian vitriol, and swilled into his stomach with the comforting tang of boiling acid. He liked it. He felt as if angels had picked him up and breathed into him. His memory of the first taste that afternoon had not deceived him. In fact, it had barely done justice to the beverage.
The Greek watched his performance with a certain awe.
'Bud,' he said, 'if I hadn't seen you hose yourself out with this shine before, and if your story about hauling all the way out here to get some more of it wasn't so lousy, I'd think this was a stall.'
Hoppy either did not grasp or did not choose to take up the aspersion on his motives. He waved the bottle at the empty room, breathing deeply while he felt his potion soaking in.
'Sorta quiet in dis jemt tonight, ain't it, pal?' he remarked with comradely interest.
'After you and the Sheriff were here I had to tell the gang to stay home for a bit.' The Greek's eyes were softly watchful. 'What's the Saint doing now?'
'He's still out wit' a skoit. I gotta go back after a bit, but he says I can take my time.'
Mr Uniatz picked up the bottle again and made another experiment. The result was conclusive. There had been no mistake. This was the stuff. At long last, after so many arid years of search and endeavour, Mr Uniatz knew that he had discovered a fluid which was sufficiently potent to penetrate the calloused linings of his intestines and imbue his being with a very faint but fundamentally satisfying glow. It was the goods.
He put down the bottle only because, not having been half full when it was handed to him, it was now quite empty, and reverently exhaled a quantity of pent-up air tainted with dynamite fumes. One spatulate finger stabbed at the bottle as it would touch a holy relic.
'Dey's a fortune in it, pal,' he informed Gallipolis in a whisper which vibrated the houseboat like the lowing of a Miura bull.
'If there is,' said the Greek, 'I'd like to know how.'
'Because it don't cost nut'n,' Hoppy said witheringly.
'What do you mean, it doesn't cost anything?'
'Because it comes outa de Pool.'
Gallipolis lowered one eyelid and studied Hoppy out of the other eye.
'I wonder who's ribbing who now?' he said. 'That stuff just comes from a still, bud. It used to be a good racket, but now the Revenuers go about in airplanes and spot them from the sky.'
'Well, where is dis still?' Hoppy persisted challengingly. 'I know a lotta lugs who'd pay big dough for de distribution.'
The Greek reached down and brought up another bottle. His smile veiled the undecided alertness of his
