The Saint in Miami

half the shocked insects had tentatively begun to resume their choir practice since the last burst of firing had stunned them to an abnormal silence.

Then there was a muffled grating of wood, and a splash far fainter than a leaping fish would have made; and Simon suddenly was aware that a vague shape that had been drifting shorewards on the murkily moonlit water was neither the product of an overstrained retina nor the floating stump of a tree. At the same instant Hoppy fired twice, and the crack of Karen's gun jumped in on the heels of those explosions. Simon took a fraction longer to bring up the Tommy gun, but the thundering stammer of death that poured from it made up in quantity for its tardiness. The response came in shouts and screams, and a single thin piercing wail that seemed as if it would never stop before it was smothered in a choking gur­gle. The boat ceased to drift cross-stream and swung lazily round with the current, and something human plunged away from it with a loud splash and floundered wildly back towards the submarine. Karen's gun spoke once more, and the splashing stopped as if it had been cut off with a knife.

The Saint's teeth showed in the dark mask of his face.

'I wonder how the bastards like our blitzkrieg,' he drawled.

'I like it, anyway,' she said, and the cool tension of excitement was in her voice, with no land of fear. 'Now I know what it must feel like to fight Hitler's invaders. You're only scared until the first shot is fired. And then you hate their guts so much that it doesn't matter what they can do, if you can only get some of them before they get you.'

' 'They shall not pass',' he said crookedly. 'I only wish we could make it stick. But there'll be more landing parties, and we haven't many more shots between us.'

'I'm only glad,' she said, 'that we could be together like this-just once.'

Their hands held, in an understanding that more words could only have made trivial.

Hoppy Uniatz fired three times more, at spaced intervals, but without any audible repercussion.

The new sound penetrated the Saint's ears-a faint pervasive hum that almost blended with the continuous buzzing of mosquitoes. He had barely time to recognise it as the carrier hum of a loud speaker before Heinrich Friede's magnified voice blared clearly across from the yacht 'If Mr Templar is there, will he please fire one shot?' Simon hesitated a moment. Then- 'What the hell?' he said grimly to Karen. 'They must know it's my outfit. The police or the Coastguard wouldn't have opened fire without some sort of parley . . . But stand by to duck.'

He fired one shot, trying to aim it at the voice, and then flung the girl aside and dropped fiat beside her behind the flimsy cover of the nearest storehouse. But the hail of machine-gun fire which he had half expected to cut loose in reply did not come.

'Thank you,' said the voice. 'Now I think you have done enough damage. Another party has already landed higher up the river, and you will certainly be captured in a short time, but I should prefer not to lose any more men. Therefore unless you surrender at once we shall start working on Miss Holm and Mr Quentin, quite slowly and scientifically, so that their cries can be broadcast to you. If you wish to avoid this, you can signify your surrender by firing two shots close together.'

Then Patricia Holm's voice came clearly through, without a faltering syllable, so that he could almost see the brave set of her chin and the undaunted steadiness of her eyes.

'Hullo, Simon, boy . . . Don't listen to the big ape. He's only saying that because he knows he can't catch you.'

'Tell him to go to hell,' Peter put in.

But a single sharp cry overtook the last word, and was instantly stifled.

'I shall give you ten seconds to decide, Mr Templar,' said Captain Friede.

Simon bowed his head over the sub-machine-gun, and his hands were clenched on the grips as if he could have torn the weapon apart like a stick of putty.

Karen Leith gazed at his face of frozen granite.

Then she pointed her gun to the stars and pulled the trigger twice, quickly.

As if in answer, far to the west, a motorboat engine awoke to spluttering life.

The square bulk of Mr Uniatz lumbered uncertainly out of murk.

'Boss,' he said blankly, 'was dat you? Dijja mean we say Uncle to dem Heinies?'

'No, Hoppy,' said the girl. 'I did it.'

The Saint looked at her strangely.

'At least,' he said, 'I shouldn't have expected you to help me break down.'

Her hands slipped over his, and her lovely face held the ghost of a smile of great understanding.

She said: 'My dear, they could have taken us. In the end. You know it as well as I do. Why should anyone suffer for nothing? Probably we shall still all be killed, but it may be quick. And we've done all that we hoped to do. Our messen­gers got away. Listen.'

He listened, steeping his spirit in the methodical chugging of the motorboat far off in the dark, before it was drowned out by the more steady thrum of a speed tender putting out from the March Hare-knowing that she had only spoken the truth, and glad of it, but still trying to reconcile himself to the paradox of defeat in victory. And he wondered if that might only be because his own personal pride had not yet been subdued, so that his insignificant individual fate must still obtrude on a cataclysmic background in which millions of individuals no less important to themselves would yet be consumed like ants in a furnace.

And through that, after seconds that might have run into centuries, he came back to a sanity as immeasurable and enduring as the stars.

Everything else went on. But there was a difference. A difference beyond which nothing could be changed. And yet the only way he could show it was in the recapture of the old careless mockery which had always gone ahead of him like a banner. Because other rebels and outlaws like him would still come after him, and the great game would still go on, as long as the spark of freedom was born into the souls of men.

'Of course,' he said. 'And they still haven't killed us yet They could have their hands full even after they've got us.

The speedboat was creaming in towards the dock.

'Ya mean, boss,' said Mr Uniatz dumbly. 'I can't do no more practice on dese mugs?'

'Not just now, Hoppy. We've got to get Patricia and Peter back with us first. After that we may be able to do something.'

And if he thought that the chance was very slight, the doubt could never have been heard in his voice.

He threw the Tommy gun on the ground away from him, and with a similar gesture the girl tossed her automatic after it. More slowly, perplexed but still reluctantly obedient, Hoppy Uniatz followed suit. They stood in a silent group, watching the tender slacken in towards the pier landing.

Simon took out his cigarette-case and offered it to Karen, as easily as if they had been standing in the foyer of a New York night club waiting for a table, while men leaped out of the speedboat, ran down the pier, and fanned out at the double into a wide semicircle with the efficient precision of trained storm troops-which, he reflected ironically, was what they probably were. But without giving them a glance he struck a match and held it for Karen. Their eyes met over the flame in complete understanding.

'We did have fun, anyway,' he remarked.

'We did.' Her voice was as steady as his; and he never wanted to forget the unchanged loveliness of her proud pale face, and the cool violet of her eyes, and the tousled flame of her hair. 'And thanks for everything- Saint.'

He touched the match to his own cigarette and flipped it away; but the light still dwelt on them. It came from the con­verging beams of three flashlights in the ring that was closing in on them.

Simon looked round the circle. Some of the men were in German naval uniforms, others, in ordinary seaman's dungarees, but they all had the square dry-featured brutalised faces which Nazi ethnology had set up as the ideal of Nordic superiority. They were armed with revolvers and carbines.

Another man ran around the outside of the group, beyond range of the lights, and said: 'Verzeihen Sie, Herr Kapitan. Die Gefangene sind verschwunden.'

'Danke.'

The second voice was Friede's. He strode through into the light. His heavy-jawed face was hard and arrogant, the flat-lipped mouth clamped in an implacable line that turned down slightly at the corners. His stony eyes swept quickly and unfeelingly over his three captives, ending with the Saint.

'Mr Templar, this is not all your party.'