The Saint in Miami

the empty bottle far out over the side.

'You still haven't told us why you were interested in March,' said Patricia.

'Because he phoned Gilbeck twice today,' said the Saint simply.

Peter clutched his brow.

'Naturally,' he said, 'that hangs him. Anyone who phones anybody else is always mixed up in some dirty business.

'Twice,' said the Saint calmly. The houseboy took the first call, and told March that Gilbeck was away. March left word to have Gilbeck call him when he got back. Two hours later he phoned again. I took the call. He was very careful to make sure I got his name.'

'A sinister symptom,' Peter agreed, wagging his head gravely. 'Only the most double-dyed villains worry about having their names spelt right'

'You ass,' said the Saint disapassionately, 'he'd already left his name once. He'd already been told that Gilbeck was away. So why should he go through the routine again?'

'You tell us,' said Peter. 'This is making me seasick.'

Simon drew at his cigarette again.

'Maybe he knew Gilbeck wasn't there, all the time. Maybe he just wanted to impress on that dumb Filipino that Randolph March was trying to get hold of Gilbeck and hadn't seen him.'

'But why?' asked Patricia desperately.

'Look at it this way,' said the Saint. 'Lawrence Gilbeck and Justine left unexpectedly this morning, without saying where they were going or when they'd be back. Now suppose Gilbeck was mixed up with Comrade March in some fruity skulduggery, and Comrade March found it necessary to the welfare of several million dollars to get him out of the way. Comrade March would naturally have an alibi to prove he hadn't been anywhere near Gilbeck on the day Gilbeck disappeared, and a little artistic touch like that telephone routine wouldn't do the alibi any harm.'

Peter searched weakly for the second bottle which he had thoughtfully provided.

'I give it up,' he said, 'You ought to write mystery stories and earn an honest living.'

'And still,' said Patricia, 'we're waiting to know why all this should have anything to do with that ship being sunk.'

The Saint gazed ahead, and the clean-cut buccaneering lines of his face were carved out of the dark in a mask of bronze by the dim glow of the instrument panel. He knew as well as they did that there were many other possible explana­tions; that he was building a complete edifice of speculation on a mere pin point of foundation. But much better than they ever could, he knew that that ghostly tingle in his scalp was more to be trusted than any formal logic. And there was one other thing which had come out of Peter's report, which seemed to tie all the loose fragments of fact together like a nebulous cord.

He pointed.

'That ship,' he said, 'was some sort of Foreign Investment -to somebody.'

Red and green dots that marked a floating village of motley craft rushed up to meet them. A trim white fifty- footer, coldly ornate with shining brass, detached itself from the welter or boats, made a tight foaming turn, and cut across their bow. Simon reversed the propellers and topped the Meteor with the smoothness of hydraulic brakes.

The fifty-footer was earmarked with the official dignity of the Law. A spotlight snapped on, washed the Meteor in its glare, and revealed a lanky man in a cardigan jacket and a black slouch hat standing in the bow.

The man put a megaphone to his lips and shouted: 'You better get the hell on in-there's too many boats out here now.'

'Why don't you go on in yourself and make room for us?' asked the Saint pleasantly.

'On account of my name's Sheriff Haskin,' came the answer. 'Better do what I tell you, son.'

The simple statement held its own implications for Hoppy Uniatz. It conflicted with all his conditioned reflexes to be using a sacked-up cadaver for a footrest, and to have a policeman, even a policeman as incongruously uniformed as the man on the cruiser, dallying with him at such short range. The only natural method of handling such a situation presented itself to him automatically.

'Boss,' he volunteered raucously, leaning forward on the Saint's ear, 'I brung my Betsy. I can give him de woiks, an' we can get away easy.'

'Put it away,' snarled the Saint. He was troubled by a feeling that the spotlight on the police boat was holding them just a little too long. To face it out, he looked straight into the light and shouted amiably: 'What happened?'

'A tanker blew up.'

Sheriff Haskins yelled the answer back through his megaphone, and waved his free hand. Water boiled at the cruiser's stem, and she began to edge nearer. Thirty feet from the Meteor she reversed again. Haskins stood silent for a time, leaning across the rail and steadying himself against the po­lice boat's roll. Simon had a physical sensation of the sheriff's scrutiny behind the shield of the adhesive spotlight He was prepared for the question when the sheriff asked: 'Haven't I seen you before?'

'You might have,' he said cheerfully. 'I drove around town for awhile this afternoon. We're staying with Lawrence Gilbeck at Miami Beach, but we only got here today.'

'Okay,' said Haskins. 'But don't hang around here. There's nothing you can do.'

The spotlight went out, a muffled bell clanged aboard the police launch, and she moved away. Simon eased in the Meteor's clutch, let her pick up speed, and headed round in a wide circle.

'I wonder how long it's going to take that lanky sheriff to figure out that you're you,' Peter said meditatively. 'Of course you couldn't help talking back to him so that he'd pay particular attention to you.'

'I didn't know he was the sheriff then,' said the Saint without worry. 'Anyway, there'd be something wrong with our destiny if we didn't get in an argument with the Law. And don't get soft-hearted and pass that bottle back to Hoppy. He's had his share.'

He settled down more comfortably behind the wheel, and worked the Meteor's bow to port until they were running southwards, parallel with the coast It was the direction in which that single light had moved which he had seen immediately after the explosion, but he didn't know why he should remember it now. On the surface, he was only heading that way because he had enjoyed the outward run, and it seemed too soon to go home.

The ocean was a vast peaceful rolling plain in which they floated halfway to the stars. Along the shore moved a life of ease and play and exquisite frippery, marked by a million fixed and crawling and flickering lights. Among those lights, invisible at the distance, cavorted the ephemerae of civilisation, a strange conglomeration of men and women arbitrarily divided into two incommiscible species. There was the class which might have sober interests and responsibilities else­where, but in Miami had no time for anything but diversion; and there was the class which might play elsewhere, if it had the chance, but in Miami existed only to minister to the visiting players. There went the politicians and the pimps, the show girls and society matrons, the millionaires and the tycoons and the literati, the prostitutes and the gamblers and the punks. Simon listened to the lulling drone of the Meteor and felt as if he had been suddenly taken infinitely far away from that world. It was such a tenuous thing, that culture on which such playgrounds grew like exotic flowers. It was so fragile and easily destroyed, balanced on nothing more tangi­ble than a state of mind. In a twinkling that coastline could be darkened, smudged into an efficient modern blackout more deadly than anything in those days which had once been called the Dark Ages. The best brains in the world had worked for a century to diminish Space; had worked so well that no haven was safe from the roaring wings of impersonal death . . .

Even a few seconds ago, the ocean on either side of them had been coloured with the flat soft hues of a deadened rain­bow. It was the same caressing water of the Gulf Stream which day by day lapped the smooth tingling bodies of bath­ers near the shore. But out there it had been covered with sluggish oil, keeping down the blood of shattered men who would never play any more. It was so much easier to tear down than to build . . .

'Look, boy,' said Patricia suddenly.

The Saint stiffened and came out of his trance as she caught his arm. She was pointing to starboard, and he looked out in the direction where her finger led his eyes with an uncanny crawling sensation creeping up the joints of his spine as if it had been negotiating the rungs of a ladder.

'Chees, boss,' said Mr Uniatz, in a voice of awe, 'it's a sea-soipent!'

For once in a lifetime, Simon was inclined to agree with one of Hoppy Uniatz's spontaneous impressions.

Just above the surface of the water, reflecting the moon-glow with metallic dullness, moving sluggishly and