with a deceptive air of slothfulness, drifted a weird phantasm of the sea. No living movement flexed its wave- washed surface, and yet it was indubitably in motion, splashing its ways forward with logy ponderousness. A sort of truncated oval tower rose from its back and ploughed rigidly through its own creaming wash.
Instinctively Simon spun the Meteor's wheel; but even before the swift craft could swing around the apparition was gone. A bow wave formed against the conning tower, climbed up it, and engulfed it in a miniature maelstrom. For a few seconds he stared in fascination at the single piece of evidence which told him he had not been dreaming: something like a short stubby pipe which went on driving through the water, trailing a thin white wake behind. While he looked, the top of the periscope moved, turned about, and fixed the Meteor with a malevolent mechanical eye. Then even that was gone, and the last trace of the submarine was erased by the smooth-flowing surface of the sea. Peter Quentin drew a deep breath, and rubbed his eyes. 'I suppose we all saw it,' he said.
'I seen it,' declared Mr. Uniatz. 'I could of bopped it, too, if ya hadn't told me to put my Betsy away.'
Simon grinned with his lips.
'The only thing that's any good for bopping those sea-serpents is a depth charge,' he said. 'And I'm afraid that's one thing we forgot to bring with us ... But did anyone see any markings on it?' None of them answered. The speedboat lifted her bow under his touch on the throttle and ate up the miles toward the shore. Simon said: 'Neither did I.'
He sat quietly, almost lazily, at the wheel; but there was a tension in him that they could feel under his repose. It reached out invisible filaments to grip Peter and Patricia with the Saint's own stillness of half-formed clairvoyance, while their minds struggled to get conscious hold of the chimeras that swam smokily out of the night's memories. The only mind which was quite untroubled by any of these things belonged to Hoppy Uniatz; but it is not yet known whether anything more psychic than a sledge-hammer would have been capable of penetrating the protective shield of armour plate surrounding that embryonic organ. Peter reopened his reserve bottle.
'We got rid of the name on the lifebelt,' he said hesitantly. 'If we all swore the submarine had swastikas on it, we might gum things up a bit.'
'I had thought of that,' said the Saint. 'But I'm afraid you might gum them the wrong way. Your passport would be against you. There may have been some other lifebelt or another stray clue that we didn't pick up. Then we should just make matters worse. They could say we were just part of a clumsy plot to try and hand it on Hitler. It's too much risk to take . . . Besides which, it wouldn't help us at all with this Gilbeck-March palaver.'
'You're still very sure that they're connected,' said Patricia.
Simon swung the wheel again, and a quartering comber sped them through the inlet into the comparative quiet of Biscayne Bay.
I'm not quite sure,' he said. 'But I'm going to try and make sure tonight.'
The plan had begun to shape itself almost subconsciously while they raced over the sea. The outlines of it were still loose and undefined, but the nucleus was more than enough. He knew now what he was going to do with the body of the youth that lay under Hoppy's elephantine brogues, and his forthright mind saw nothing ghoulish in the idea. The owner of the body could have no practical interest any longer in what happened to it: it was an article as impersonal as a leg of mutton, a piece of merchandise to be used in the most profitable way Simon could see. He knew that the idea that had come to him was crazy, but his best ideas had always been that way. There were immovable boundaries to the world of speculation and theory: beyond those frontiers there was no way to travel except by direct action. And the more straightforward and direct it was, the better he liked it He had never found any better place to meet trouble than halfway.
Close by the rocks of the County Causeway, bordering the ship channel, he slowed up the Meteor and began to edge her in to the treacherous bank.
'Pat, old darling,' he said, 'you and Peter are going ashore. Hoppy and I are going to pay a call on Comrade March.'
She looked at him with troubled blue eyes.
'Why can't we all go?'
'Because we're too big a party for an expedition like this. And because somebody ought to be back at Gilbeck's to hold the fort in case anything turns up there. And lastly because if anything goes wrong, Hoppy and I might need an alibi. Get going, kids.'
The Meteor delicately nosed the bank. Peter Quentin jumped out on to the rocks and helped Patricia to follow him. He looked back unwillingly.
'March's place is called Landmark Island,' he said. 'It's right next to where his yacht's anchored. The yacht is a big grey thing with one funnel, and it's called the March Hare. If you're not home in two hours we'll come look for you.'
Simon waved his hand as the Meteor drifted away in the current Scarcely waiting till they were clear, he stole a notch or two out of the throttle and turned the sleek speedster away in a wide arc. A big passenger ship was crawling up the channel behind him, looming doubly large beside the speeding cars on the Causeway. It's whistle howled piercingly as they crossed under its bow; and the Saint smiled.
'Bellow your head off, brother,' he said softly. 'Maybe you're lucky you didn't sail two hours ago.'
They headed down the bay at a moderate and inconspicuous pace that hardly raised the voice of the engine above a mutter; and Mr. Uniatz sat up on the narrow strip of deck behind the Saint and tried to bring the conversation back to fundamentals, 'Boss,' he said, 'do we bump dis guy March?'
'That remains to be seen,' Simon told him. 'Meanwhile you can take the sack off that sailor.'
Mr Uniatz clung with the pride of parenthood to his original idea.
'He's better in de sack, boss, when we t'row him in. I got it weighted down wit' some old iron I find in de garage.'
'Take him out of the sack,' Simon ordered. 'You can throw the sack and the old iron in, but make sure he doesn't go with them.'
He switched off the engine as Hoppy began moodily to obey. Ahead of them loomed the grey hull of the March Hare. Besides the riding lights, other subdued lights burned on her, illuminating her deck and superstructure with a friendly glow, and at the same time vouching for the fact that there were still people on board who might not be quite so friendly. But to Simon Templar that was merely an interesting detail.
The delight of his own audacity crept warmingly through his veins as the speedboat drifted silently towards the anchored yacht. The Meteor heeled slightly as Hoppy lowered the weighted sack into the bay.
'Now whadda we do?' asked Mr Uniatz hoarsely. 'He ain't got nut'n on but his unnerwear.'
Simon caught the anchor chain and made fast to it, steadying the Meteor with deft but heroic strength to ease her against the hull without a sound that might have attracted the attention of the crew. The moon was over the March Hare's stem, and it was dark at the bow. His job began to look almost easy.
''I'm going on board,' he said. 'You wait here. When I let down a rope to you, pass up the body.'
He stretched his muscles experimentally, and felt under the cuff of his left sleeve to make sure that the ivory-hilted throwing knife which had pulled him out of so many tight corners nested there snugly in the sheath strapped to his forearm. Over his head, the anchor chain slanted steeply up to the March Hare's flaring prow. He gripped the Meteor's foredeck with soft-shod feet and jumped for the chain, and hung there above the rippling tide as the speedboat floated under him to the length or the painter. Then he went swarming up the chain with the soundless agility of a monkey.
He reached the hawsehole, and swung both legs up to it Manoeuvering himself gingerly, he was able to get the fingers of one hand over the edge of the deck planking near the bow. With a quick muscular twist he sent the other hand up to join it, and chinned himself cautiously.
With his eyes on a level with his hands, he discerned a deck hand in white ducks leaning over the rail on the opposite side of the bow. Simon lowered himself again, and began to work his way aft with infinite patience, suspended from the edge of the deck by nothing but the grasp of his bent fingers.
When he was almost amidships he chinned himself again. This time the forward end of the deckhouse secured him from the danger of being caught at a disadvantage if the man in white had happened to rum round, and there was no one else to be seen from that angle. He freed one hand and reached up for the lowest bar of the rail. In a few seconds more he was standing on the deck and melting into the nearest pool of shadow.
From the stem of the yacht, soft voices and the tinkle of ice in glasses mingled with the faint music of a low- tuned radio. Motionless against the side of the deckhouse, Simon listened for an envious moment, and discovered
