The Saint in Miami

and the walls don't go into the ground. Eventually I got outside and prowled here and there.'

'Boss,' said Mr Uniatz, loosening his cramped limbs, 'dijja find anyt'ing to drink?'

'There should be something left on the March Hare,' said the Saint, 'but I didn't investigate.'

He went to the door and opened it, standing just outside and filling his lungs with relatively fresh air, while he tamped one of the last two cigarettes from his case. Patricia joined him and took the other one. They stood with their arms linked together, looking across the anchorage where the March Hare still rode in darkness under the moon, but a sheet of unrippled water lay where the submarine had been. There Peter Quentin joined them.

'I don't want to disrupt an idyll,' he observed diffidently, 'but personally I shouldn't mind being a bit further off when Friede gives his farewell broadcast.'

'You needn't worry,' said the Saint. 'I found it under the floor when I got down there-it was what I was looking for under the trapdoor anyhow. A very innocent packing case labelled 'Tomato Soup.' I hauled it out with me.'

'Where did you dump it?' Peter asked suspiciously.

'I parked it with a lot of other cases of canned food that the crew were ferrying out to the submarine. Or they may have been ammunition-I couldn't be sure. Anyway it was quite a difficult business, getting it out on the pier and making it look natural. But I made it, and managed to get back in time.'

Karen and Hoppy had completed the group while he talked.

And down to the south-west, where his eyes had been fixed, a pillar of jagged crimson climbed into the blue-grey sky, stamping sharp filgree out of the massed blackness of the jungle and flickering spectrally over the intent turning of their faces. Seconds later the concussion pounded upon their eardrums, mingling with a tornado rush of wind that bowed the trees and drew weird whisperings out of the scrub, seemed like a deafened age before the shuddering earth grew still again.

'And I think Heinrich has pressed the button,' said the Saint

Epilogue

Simon Templar was watching an errant fly that was trying to gorge itself into a drunken stupor on a drop of Ron Rey that had been spilled on the polished bar of the Dempsey-Vanderbilt. He seemed to have been watching it for a long time, and he was a little tired of making bets with himself on how much longer it would be before it keeled over -or, alternatively, whether it could keep up its ingurgitation until Karen Leith came. With a final movement of impatience he pushed his glass across to the bartender and pantomimed to refill; while the fly, which by virture of either heredity or environment must have been a kind of insect Uniatz, took off across wind and zoomed away with only the slightest detecta­ble wobble in its course.

Some silent-footed newcomer pulled out the adjoining stool; and the Saint turned, prepared either to bluff the seventh would-be intruder out of his right to the place, or to put on an expression of long-suffering reproach if it should actually be Karen herself. But he had no chance to do either.

At his side, the lengthy funebrial form of Sheriff Newton Haskins dripped black coat-tails down the back of his perch. He looked at Simon with a fair rendition of surprise, 'Well, dang my eyes! Wheah did you come from, son?'

'I was here first,' said the Saint. 'If you remember.'

The Sheriff's lean jaws champed once on nothing. As though the motion reminded him of an omission, Haskins drew one hand slowly out of a pocket and bit off a chew from a fresh length of plug.

'Waitin' for someone?' he queried conversationally.

'For youth, beauty, glamour, and red hair.' Simon's gaze was cool and impudent. 'Maybe you think you fill some of those qualifications, but to tell you the truth I hadn't noticed it.'

'Nope,' Haskins said. 'I guess that wouldn't be me. But they let all sorts o' people in heah. I happened to be out this way huntin' for a dangerous killer. I sorter worked up a thirst, like. 'Newt,' I says, 'what better place to kill a thirst than in the nearest bar?' So in I comes. I see you heah all alone, so I jest thought you might like some company.'

'What a mind-reader you must be,' murmured the Saint.

He directed the bartender's attention with his thumb as the fresh drink he had ordered was delivered.

'Bring me a water glass,' said Haskins, 'an' a bottle o' rye.'

He pulled a bowl of pretzels closer, and munched one absently on the port side of his mouth where the traffic didn't interfere with his other chewing.

'Who was this dangerous killer?' Simon asked. 'It sounds quite exciting. Did you catch him?'

'Son-' The Sheriff's mouth was slightly overloaded. He poured half a tumbler of rye into the water glass and tossed it down. 'This warn't exackly a killin'. Mo' like wholesale slaughter, you might call it. Then, it warn't exackly in my county, neither.'

'Really?' said the Saint politely. 'Then where was it?'

'Way down in the Everglades, in a place not even half the conchs down theah could find. But I heard tell it was shuah one helluva mess. Seems like there was almost a dozen plumb dead bodies left lyin' around. Even that feller Gallipolis we was talkin' to got himself shot down theah.'

'Did he? How extraordinary! Do you think he could have tried to play both ends against the middle just once too often?'

'Mebbe.' The Sheriff's wise old eyes held the Saint's tan­talising blue ones. 'You wouldn't know nuth'n about none o' them bodies now, would you, son?'

'Corpses?' Simon protested. 'Cadavers? Lying around?

. . . What a horrible thought. I always bury my dead bodies in a climate like this. It's so much more hygienic. . . Unless you leave them to drown; and then of course the barracuda take care of them.'

'Yep, that's what I thought,' Haskins said sagely. 'The Coastguard's been sorter pumpin' me, son. Gilbeck says you pulled him out of a hot spot over on Lostman's River. Seems like you was still waitin' theah when the Coastguard Cutter comes nosin' around. Had one helluvan explosion offa that coast night before last, too. The Navy seems to think somebody blew up a submarine.'

The Saint sipped his drink.

'It sounds fair enough,' he remarked. 'The first time we met was on account of an explosion. There were a few small bangs in between. And now we can finish on a last big blow-up. It rounds everything out so nicely ... Or have you got some extra professional reason for all these ques­tions?'

Haskins reloaded his glass and repeated his remarkable feat of finding a third separate passage through his mouth. He wiped his lips with his large spotted cotton handkerchief.

'No, son,' he admitted. 'Professionally speakin', I ain't got no business to ask questions. Seems a whole lot o' big fellers come down from Washington to take charge, an' they tell all us local officers not to meddle with any of it. Seems it ain't supposed to be any concern of ours even if our respected citizen Randolph March is one o' those dead bodies out at Lostman's River. We ain't even supposed to discuss it with nobody till they get ready to issue an official report from the State Department But you can't blame me for being curious.'

'Naturally I don't blame you,' Simon agreed gravely.

Haskins rubbed the side of his long nose, hopefully at first, then with increasing depression.

'Well,' he said at last, 'that shuah is plumb understandin' of you,'

I'm sorry,' said the Saint 'But those guys from Washington told me the same thing too. And since they were good enough not to keep me locked up, I think I ought to play ball with them. They'll break the whole story as soon as they're set for it.'

Haskins drank again, gloomily.

'O' course,' he said, 'I don't rightly know if that covers a feller in Ochopee who's swore out a warrant agin you for assaultin' him an stealin' his blasted car.'

'Are you going to serve it?'

'Nope,' Haskins said. 'I tore it up. I figured it warn't legal. Who the hell ever heard o' callin' a boat with ten- foot wheels on it a car?'

Simon lighted a cigarette with some care.

'Daddy,' he said softly, 'I was wondering whether you ever switched from rye whiskey if a friend of yours offered to buy a quart of champagne.'

'That, son,' said the Sheriff, 'is something that nobody of my acquaintance has ever offered to buy; but with the thirst I'm luggin' around today I might give anythin' a try.'