The Saint in Miami

1

It could not be denied that such a transparently expressive face was no handicap at all to anyone so exquisitely modelled as the red-haired girl. From the topmost waves of her softly flaming hair, down through the unbelievable fineness of her features, down through the unworldly perfect proportions of her curving shape, down to the manicured tips of her sandalled toes, there was nothing about her which any connoisseur of human architecture could criticise. The clarity of expression which in any less flawless creature might have been disillusioning, in her was only the last illuminating touch which crowned a masterpiece of orchidic evolution. And it seemed to Simon Templar that the admiration in her eyes, after they rested on him, lasted just a little longer than a hangover from Randolph March's practised charm should have justified.

Perhaps he flattered himself… But there was no doubt that Randolph March was conscious of a break in the spell of his own fascination. March was notorious for his appreciation of expensive beauty, and he was acutely cognisant of anything that interrupted beauty's appreciation of himself. There was the petulance of a spoiled brat in his face as he shot a glance at the brimming mint julep in his hand and found the frosty glass still full.

He scowled venomously at the Saint in his steward's jacket The captain must have hired new help without consulting him: for the life of him he couldn't remember having seen the man before. Neither could he remember having ordered any champagne. The March Hare had a wine list that could be boasted about; but the hazards of war were making good vintages increasingly difficult to obtain, and Randolph March held good vintages in the fanatical reverence which can only be acquired by a man who has developed epicurean tastes with a studious eye for their snob value rather than out of the sheer gusto of superlative living.

Then, other details percolated through the disintegrating aura of his romantic mood as he incredulously counted the forest of bottles bristling on the tray in front of him. The new steward was blithely swinging a couple of silver ice-buckets in one hand like a juggler waiting to go into an act, while a cigarette slanted impudently up between his lips. And while Randolph March stared at the sight, the steward banged the buckets down on the deck and used the hand thus freed to remove Mr March's feet from the extension rest of his deck chair and make room there for the tray.

Randolph March fought down an imminent apoplectic stroke for which his eccentric life would still not normally have qualified him for at least another ten years, and snapped: "Take that stuff away!"

The steward blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke and plunked bottles into the ice-buckets, giving them a professional twirl which no Parisian sommelier could have bettered.

"Don't call it 'that stuff,'" he said reprovingly. "A '28 Bollinger deserves a little more respect."

The girl laughed like a chime of silver bells, and said: "Oh, do let's have some! I just feel like some champagne."

"There you are, Randy, old boy," said the Saint, giving the bottles another twirl. "The lady wants some. So what have you got to say?"

"You're fired!" March exploded.

The Saint smiled at him tolerantly, as one who humours a fractious child.

"That" s all right with me, Randy, old fruit," he said amiably. "Now let's all have a drink and talk about something else. I've got a few questions to ask you."

He selected a bottle, approved its temperature, and popped the cork. Sparkling amber flowed into a row of glasses while March watched in a paralysis of fuming stupefaction. Once March started to rise, but sank back slowly when Simon turned a cool blue eye on him. The Saint's complete and unperturbed effrontery was almost enough to hold anyone immobilised by itself; but there was also an easy air of athletic readiness in the Saint's bantering poise which was an even more subtle discouragement to March's immediate ideas of personal violence.

Simon passed the tray. The red-headed girl took her glass, looking up at him curiously under her long lashes. March hesitated, and Simon pushed the tray closer to him.

"You might as well, Randy," he said. "Perhaps you'll need it before I've finished."

March took the glass, not quite knowing why he did it. Simon looked around for Hoppy, but Mr Uniatz had already taken the precaution of providing for his own simple tastes. A bottle of Scotch was tilted up to his mouth, and his Adam's apple throbbed in a clockwork ecstasy of ingurgitation. The Saint grinned, put down the tray, and took a glass for himself.

"You'd better talk fast," said March. "I'll give you just five minutes before I turn you over to the police."

"Five minutes ought to be enough, said the Saint "I want to talk to you about a shipwreck."

"This is frightfully exciting," said the girl. Simon smiled at her and raised his glass. "I think so too, Ginger," he drawled. "You and I ought to get together. Anyway, here's to us."

"Whatever you want to talk about," said March, "doesn't make any difference to me."

The Saint chose a vacant chair and settled himself luxuriously. He blew a smoke-ring into the still warm air.

"That ought to make everything quite easy," he remarked. "Because what you think about it doesn't make any difference to me… So about this shipwreck. Not very long ago, a tanker loaded with gasoline blew up just a little. way off the Beach. I saw it happen. It certainly made a very impressive splash. But after the fireworks were over, I saw something else. It looked like the light of a ship sailing away from the wreck. And it kept on sailing away."

March patted a yawn and said: "I like your infernal gall, trespassing on my yacht to tell me a story like that."

"I only did it," said the Saint mildly, "because I wondered if by any chance the ship that sailed away might have been yours."

A glibly modulated voice broke into the softly playing music of the radio and said: "Here is the latest bulletin on the Selina, the tanker which blew up off Miami Beach two hours ago. No survivors have yet been picked up, and it is feared that all hands may have perished in the disaster. The cause of the disaster is not yet known, but the explosion appears to have taken place so suddenly that there would have been no time to launch the boats. Coast guard vessels are still on the scene… We now take vou back—"

That's the first I've heard of it," March said flatly. "We were out taking an evening cruise, but I didn't see any explosion. I did hear something like a distant clap of thunder, but I didn't think anything of it."

Simon jumped up suddenly and snatched a napkin from the tray.

"That's too bad, Ginger," he murmured. "I hope it won't stain your dress. Let me get you another glass." He worked over her busily, and went on without looking up: "Naturally, if you'd had any idea what had happened, you wouldn't have sailed away. You'd have turned round and gone rushing to the rescue."

"What do you think?" retorted March scornfully.

"I think you're a goddam liar," said the Saint.

March spluttered: "Why you—"

"I think," Simon proceeded, in the same impersonal and unruffled voice, "that you were out cruising to see if the tanker really would blow up, and when you were satisfied about that you turned round and came home."

He was watching March like a hawk then. He knew that his time was measured in seconds, but he hoped there would be enough of them for March's reaction to tell him whether his unformed and fantastic ideas were moving in anything like the right direction. But March's stare had a blankness that might have been rooted in any one of half a dozen totally different responses.

And then March glanced up with a quick change of expression, and Simon heard Hoppy Uniatz's disgusted voice behind him.

"Chees, boss, I couldn't help it He got de drop on me." The Saint sighed.

"I know, Hoppy," he said. "I heard him coming."

He turned unflurriedly and inspected the new arrival on the scene. This was not another steward or a deck hand. It was a man of medium height but square and powerful build, who wore a captain's stripes on the sleeve of his white uniform. The square and slightly prognathous cut of his jaw matched the cubist lines of his shoulders. On either side of a flat-lipped mouth, deep creases like twin brackets ran down from the nostrils of an insignificant nose. Under the shadow of the peak of his cap his heavy-lidded eyes were like dry pebbles. He held a .38 Luger like a man who knew how to use it.

"Ah, Captain," said March. "It's lucky you came along."

The captain stayed far enough away and kept his Luger aimed midway between Simon and Hoppy, so that he could transfer the full aim to either one of them with a minimum of waste movement.

"I heard some of the things he said, so I thought something must be wrong." His voice was deep pitched and yet sibilant, an incongruous combination which jarred the ear to an antagonism as deep as instinct "What does he want?"

"I think he's crazy," said March. "I don't even know how he got on board."

" Shall I send for the police and have him removed?"

The Saint selected a fresh cigarette from a jar on the table, and lighted it from the stump of its predecessor. He looked out at the lights of Miami.

"They tell me that the local jail is up in that tower." He pointed languidly. "It seems to be a very nice location. You take an elevator up to the twentyfourth floor. It's a beautiful modern hoosegow with a terrace where the prisoners take their constitutionals every day. I suppose Hoppy and I might get as much as thirty days up there for boarding your yacht without permission. I just wonder how much of that time you'd really feel like gloating over us."

There was nothing very menacing in his voice, certainly nothing frightening about his smile, but Randolph March fingered a wispy blond growth on his upper lip and shot a glance at the girl.

"Karen, my dear, we may have some trouble with these men," he said. "Perhaps you'd better go inside."

"Oh, please!" she pouted. "This is much too much fun to miss."

"That's the spirit, Karen, darling," murmured the Saint approvingly. "Don't ever miss any run. I promise I won't hurt you, and you may have some laughs."

"Damn your impudence!" March sprang up. He was bolder now that the tough-featured captain had arrived. "Don't talk to her like that!"

Simon ignored him, and went on: "In fact, darling, if you like tonight's sample you might call me up tomorrow and well see if we can organise something else."

March took a step forward.

"Damn your impudence," he began again.

"You repeat yourself, Randy." Simon cocked a reproachful eyebrow at him. "Perhaps you're not feeling very well. Do you have a sour stomach, burning pains, nervous irritability, spots before the eyes, a flannel tongue? Take a dose of March's Duodenal Balm, and in a few minutes you'll be mooing like a contented cow… Or do you really want to start something now?"

It was curious what a subtle spell his lazy confidence could weave. Even with the added odds of the captain's muscular presence, and the Luger which was really the dominant factor in the scene, there was something about the Saint's soft-voiced recklessness which made Randolph March's natural caution reassert itself. His clenched fists relaxed slowly.

"I don't have to dirty my hands on anyone like you," he stated loftily, and half turned. "Captain, call some of the crew and have these men taken away."

"You'll find a couple of your pirates tied up in the store locker," the Saint told him helpfully. "I had to park them there to keep them out of the way, but you can let them out. You can probably wake up a few others. Bring as many as you can, so it'll be interesting… And when you call the police, maybe you'd better tell them who they're sending for. You forgot to be inquisitive about that."

"Why should we be?" The captain's voice had a sudden sharpness.

Simon smiled at him.

"The name is Simon Templar — usually known as the Saint."

2

So far as Randolph March was concerned, the announcement was a damp squib. A quick pucker passed across his brows, as if the name struck a faintly familiar note and he was wondering for a moment whether it should have meant more.

Simon wasn't sure about the girl Karen. Her glamorous wide-eyed attitude towards March, he felt certain, was nothing but a very polished pose; but whether the pose sprang from stupidity or cunning he had yet to learn. Since events had begun to occur, she had exhibited an unusual degree of detachment and self-control. She had only moved once, in the last few minutes, and that was to refill her champagne glass. Now she sipped it tranquilly, watching the proceedings like a spectator at a play…

Oddly enough, the captain was the only one who gave a satisfactory response. In pure dimension, it was very slight: it only meant that his Luger moved to definitely favour the arc of fire in which the Saint stood. But to Simon Templar, that in itself was almost enough, even without the stony hardening of the pebbly eyes under the shading peak of the cap. It gave Simon a strange creeping sensation in his spine, as if he had come close to the threshold of discovery that was not yet definite enough to seize…

"What about it?" said March. "I don't care what your name is."

The captain said: "But I know him, Mr March. The Saint is a well-known international criminal. The newspapers call him 'the Robin Hood of modern crime'. He is a very dangerous man. Dangerous to you and to me and to everyone else."

"So wouldn't it be very much simpler and safer," said the Saint, "not to call the police. Why not go for another evening cruise — take us out to sea and quietly destroy us and sink our boat and let the underwriters write us off as spurlos versenkt — like you did with Lawrence Gilbeck and his daughter?"

"The man's a maniac," said March in a colourless tone.

"I am," Simon confessed affably, "completely nuts. I'm loony enough to think that after you've moved us into that elegant penal penthouse, Hoppy and I will just stroll around the roof garden wondering how long it'll be before you join us. I'm daft enough to think that I can send you to the chair for a very fine and fancy collection of murders. Like the murder of Lawrence Gilbeck and his daughter Justine. And some poor kid who was washed up on the beach tonight, with one wrist conveniently tangled into a lifebelt with the name of a British submarine on it. Not to mention a much larger collection of guys who went down with a tanker that got itself torpedoed tonight by a mysterious submarine which I think you could tell us plenty about. Of course, that's just another of my screwy ideas."

He knew that it was screwy, but he had to say it He had to find out what sort of response the outrageous accusation would bring.

March sat up and his eyes narrowed. After a moment he said slowly: "What's this about a submarine? The radio said the tanker blew up."

"It did," said the Saint. "With assistance. As it happens, I saw the submarine myself. So did three other people who were with me."

March and the captain exchanged glances.

The captain said: "That's very interesting. If it's true, you certainly ought to tell the police about it."

"But why do you think I should know anything about it?" demanded March.

"Maybe on account of the Foreign Investment Pool," said the Saint

He was firing all his salvos at once, in the blind hope of hitting something. And it was dawning on him, with a warm glow of deep and radiant joy, that none of them were going altogether wide. Not that there was anything crude and blatant about the way they rang the bell. It was far from making a sonorous and reverberating clang. It was, in fact, no more than an evanescent tinkle so faint that an ear that was the least bit off guard might have doubted whether anything had really happened at all. But the Saint knew. He knew that his far-fetched and delirious hunch was coming true. He knew that all the things he had linked together in his mind were linked together in fact somehow, in some profound and intricate way which he had yet to unravel, and that both Randolph March and the captain were vital strands in the skein. He knew also that by talking so much he was putting a price on his own head; but he didn't care. This was adventure again, the wine of life. He knew.

He knew it even when March relaxed and took a cigarette from the jar and lounged back again with a short laugh.

"Very amusing," said March. "But it's getting quite late. Captain, you'd better get rid of him while he's still funny."

"He's a dangerous man," said the captain again, and this time he said it with only the most delicate shade of added emphasis. "If I thought he was making a threatening movement, I might have to shoot him."

"Go ahead," said March in a bored voice.

He put the cigarette in his mouth and looked for a match. Simon stepped over to him, flicked his lighter, and offered it with an obsequious efficiency which could not possibly have been rivalled by the steward for whom he was deputising. The muscles of his back crawled with anticipation of a bullet, but he had to do it. March stared at him, but he took the light.

"Thank you," he said, and turned his slight puzzled stare to the captain.

Simon surveyed them both.

"You had a chance then," he remarked. "I wonder why you didn't take it? Was it because you didn't want to shock Karen?" He put the lighter back in his pocket with the same studied deliberation. "Or did it occur to you that if the police had to investigate a shooting on board they might dig out more than you'd want them to?"

"As a matter of fact, Mr March," said the captain placidly, "I was wondering how many other people he might have told his ridiculous story to. You wouldn't want to be annoyed with any malicious gossip, no matter how silly it was."

"Perhaps you'd better find out," March suggested.

"I'll take him ashore to the house and do that while we're waiting for the police."

Probably that was the precise mathematical point at which the Saint's last lingering fragments of doubt dissolved, creeping over his scalp with a special tingle on their way out before they melted finally into nothingness.

The dialogue was beautifully done. It was exquisitely and economically smooth. There wasn't a ragged tone in it anywhere that should have betrayed anything to any listener who wasn't meant to understand too much — and Simon wondered whether the girl Karen was in that category. But in those few innocuous-sounding words a vital problem had been considered, a plan of solution suggested and discussed, a decision made and agreed on. And Simon knew quite clearly that the scheme which had been approved was not one which promised great benefits to his health. What would happen if they got him safely away into a secluded room in the house, and what that huskily soft-spoken captain's notions might be on the subject of likely methods of finding out things from a reluctant informant, were not the most pleasant prospects in the world to brood about. But he had staged the scene for his own benefit, and now he had to get himself out of it.

Simon knew that not only the fate of that adventure but the fate of all other possible adventures after it hung by a thread; but his eyes were as cool and untroubled as if he had had a platoon of infantry behind him.

"You don't have to worry about me," he said. "But Gilbeck left a letter which might be much more of a nuisance to you."

"Gilbeck?" March repeated. "What are you talking about?"

'I'm talking about a letter which he thoughtfully left in his house before you kidnapped him."

"How do you know?'

"Because I happen to be living in his house at the moment."

The furrow returned between March's brows.

"Are you a friend of Gilbeck's?"

"Bosom to bosom." Simon refilled his champagne glass. "I thought he'd have mentioned me."

March's mouth opened a little, and then an expression of hesitant relief came over his face.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed. He laughed, with what was obviously meant to be a disarming heartiness. "Why ever didn't you say so before? Then what is all this business — a joke?"

"That depends on your point of view," said the Saint. "I don't suppose Lawrence Gilbeck and Justine found it particularly funny."

March plucked at his upper lip.

"If you really are a friend of theirs," he said, "you must have got hold of the wrong end of something. Nothing's happened to them. I talked to the house today."

"Twice," said the Saint. "I took one of the calls."

"Mr Templar," said the captain carefully, "you haven't behaved tonight like one of Mr Gilbeck's friends would behave. May we ask what you're doing in his house while he is away?"

"A fair question, comrade." Simon raised his glass and barely wetted his lips with the wine. "Justine asked me to come and be a sort of general nursemaid to the family. I answer the phone and read everybody's personal papers. A great writer of notes and jottings, was Brother Gilbeck." He turned back to March. "I haven't ferreted the whole business out yet, Randy, but it certainly does look as if he didn't really trust you."

"For what reason?" March inquired coldly.

"Well," said the Saint, "he left this letter I was telling you about. In a sealed envelope. And there was a note with it which gave instructions that if anything happened to him it was to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

March sat quite still.

The girl lighted a cigarette for herself, watching the Saint with intent and luminous eyes.

March said, in an uneven voice: "Better put your gun away, Captain. It's nice of Mr Templar to come and tell us this. We ought to know more about it. Perhaps we can clear up some misunderstandings."

"Pardon me, sir." The captain was perfectly deferrential, but he kept his gun exactly where it was. "We should be more certain of Mr Templar first." He turned his dry stony eyes on the Saint. "Mr Templar, since you seem to be so sure that something has happened to Mr Gilbeck, did you carry out his instructions and mail that letter?"

Simon allowed his glance to shift with a subtle hint of nervousness.

"Not yet. But—"

"Ah, then where is the letter?"

"I've still got it"

"Where?"

"At the house."

"It would be so much better if you could produce it to Mr March and prove that you're telling the truth." The captain's eyes were as hard and flickerless as agates. "Perhaps you didn't really leave it at home. Perhaps you still have it with you."

He took one step closer.

The Saint's left hand stirred involuntarily towards his breast pocket. At least, the movement looked involuntary — a defensive gesture that was checked almost as soon as it began. But the captain saw it, and interpreted it as he was meant to interpret it. He took two more steps, and reached towards the pocket. Which was exactly what Simon had been arranging for him to do.

A lot of things happened all at once, with the speed and efficiency of a highly specialised juggling routine. They can only be catalogued laboriously here, but their actual sequence was so swift that it defeated the eye.

The Saint made a half turn and a neat flick of his right wrist which jarred the bubbling contents of his champagne glass squarely into the captain's eyes. Simultaneously the fingers of the Saint's left hand closed like spring-steel clamps on the wrist behind the captain's Luger. Meanwhile, all the unexpected physical agility which justified Hoppy Uniatz's professional name, and compensated with such liberality for the primeval sluggishness of his intellect, surged into volcanic activity. One of his massive feet swung up from the rear in a dropkick arc which terminated explosively on the base of the captain's spine; and almost immediately, as if the kick had only been timed to elevate the captain to meet it, the top of the captain's skull served as a landing field for the whisky bottle for which by this time Mr Uniatz had no further practical use. The captain lay down on the deck in a disinterested manner, and Simon Templar turned his Luger in the direction of Randolph March's slackly drooping jaw.

"I'm sorry we can't stay now," he murmured. "But I'm afraid your skipper had some unsociable ideas. Also it's getting to be time for Hoppy's beauty sleep. But we'll be seeing you again — especially if Lawrence Gilbeck and Justine don't show up very soon. Try not to forget that, Randy…"

His voice was very gentle, but his eyes were no softer than frozen sapphires. And then, as quickly and elusively as it had come, the chill fell away from him as he turned to smile at the girl, who had not moved at all in those last hectic seconds.

"You'll remember, won't you?" he said. "Any time you feel like some more fun, you know where to find me."

She didn't answer, any more than March, but the recollection of her raptly contemplative gaze stayed in his mind all the way home and until he fell asleep.

3

He was breakfasting heartily on fried chicken and waffles served under the shade of a gaudily striped umbrella when Peter Quentin and Patricia joined him on the patio.

"You must have been tired." Patricia slipped her bath robe back from her brown shoulders, and draped slender tanned legs and sandalled feet along the length of a cane chair. "Peter and I have been swimming for two hours. We thought you were going to sleep all day.

"If we hadn't heard you snoring," said Peter, "we could have hoped you were dead."

The Saint's white teeth denuded a chicken bone.

"Early rising is the burden of the proletariat and the affectation of millionaires," he said. "Being neither, I try to achieve a very happy mean." Holding the bone in one hand, he used it as a pointer to indicate the retreating form of a billowy Negress who was waddling away into the background with a tray. "Where did the Black Narcissus come from? She wasn't here yesterday. She says her name's Desdemona, and I find it hard to believe."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Patricia told him. "She showed up this morning with a coloured chauffeur named Even. It was their day off yesterday."

"That's interesting." Simon stirred his coffee. "And the Fillipino houseboy was downtown on some errand. So nobody actually saw how Gilbeck and Justine left."

"They phoned," she said; and he nodded.

"I've helped people to make phone calls myself, in my day."

Peter Quentin hoisted his powerful trunk-clad form on to a sunwarmed coping, and swung his sandy feet.

"If the Gilbecks don't show up today, skipper, so we just stick around?"

Simon leaned back and glanced around contentedly at the semi-tropical scene. The house sprawled out around him, cool and spacious under the roof of Cuban tile. A riot of poinsettias, hibiscus, and azaleas bordered the inner wall of the estate and overflowed into the patio. On the other side of the house, a palm-lined driveway swept in a horseshoe towards Collins Avenue. The heightened colours drawn in flashing sunwashed lines made a picture-book setting for the ocean's incredible blue.

"I like the place," said the Saint "Gilbeck or no Gilbeck, I think I'll stay. Even without the succulent Justine. Desdemona cooks with the thistledown touch of a fairy queen. It's true that she sometimes looks at me with what a more sensitive man might think was black disapproval, but I feel I can win her. I'm sure that shell learn to love me before we part."

"It'll be one of your biggest and blackest failures if she doesn't," said Patricia.

Simon ignored her scathingly, and lighted a cigarette.

"Here in the midst of this epicurean if somewhat decadent Paradise," he said, "we can exist in sumptuous and sybaritic splendour at Comrade Gilbeck's expense, even though we may have to deny ourselves such British luxuries as bubble-and-squeak and toad-in-the-hole. It's a beautiful place to live. Also it's full of fascinating people."

"You haven't tried the restaurant where I had dinner last night, when I was out sleuthing for you," said Peter Quentin. "They served me a very fat pork chop fried in peanut oil, and coffee with canned milk which turned it a disappointed grey. There was also a plate of grass and other vegetable matter, garnished with a mayonnaise compounded of machine oil and soap flakes."

"The fascinating people are the principal attraction," Patricia explained. "Particularly the one with red hair."

The Saint half closed his eyes.

"Darling, I'm afraid our one and only Hoppy must have been embroidering the story. I told you last night exactly what happened. The whole thing was most casual. Somehow she has fallen under the baleful spell of March's Gastric Ambrosia, but naturally my superior beauty impressed her. I judged her to be a demure little thing, unversed in the ways of the world and unskilled in duplicity."

"And shy," said Patricia.

"Perhaps. But certainly not lacking — at least in several major points which a crude man might find attractive in that particular type of girl."

"I suppose that's why you offered to find some more fun for her."

"So long as she has her fun," Peter observed, "it can't really matter if you get us all bumped off."

Simon created a perfect smoke-ring.

"We don't have to worry about that for the present. I think our murders will be temporarily postponed on account of the hitch which I contrived last night."

"You mean that letter you invented?"

Simon refrained from answering while Desdemona hove alongside to collect the dishes. When the last of them was on the tray supported by her ample arm, she asked stoically:

"When is you-all goin' away?"

The Saint flipped a half dollar in the air, caught it, and placed it on the edge of the laden tray.

"That was one of the best breakfasts I ever ate, Desdemona," he told her. "I think we'll wait until Mr Gilbeck gets back." He added deliberately: "Are you sure they didn't give you any idea how long they'd be away?"

" 'Deed they didn't." Desdemona's eyes grew round as they moved from Simon to the shiny coin. "Sometimes they's gone a week acruisin'. Sometimes 'tain't moh than foh a day."

She departed stolidly on that enlightening note, and Peter grinned.

"You'd better try some folding money next time," he suggested. "She doesn't seem to thaw for silver."

"All artists are temperamental." Simon stretched his legs and took up from where he had been interrupted. "Yes, I was talking about that letter which I was clever enough to invent." "What makes you think they believe in it any more?" "Perhaps they don't. But on the other hand, they don't know for certain. That's the catch. And even if they've decided that I really didn't have a letter last night, the idea's been put into their head. There might be a letter. I might even write one myself, having seen how they reacted to the idea. It's a discouraging risk. So they won't bump us off until they're quite sure about it"

"How nice," Peter said glumly. "So instead of being bumped off without any mess, we can look forward to being tortured until they find out just where they do stand."

Patricia straightened suddenly.

Simon looked at her, and saw that her cheeks had gone pale under the golden tan.

"Then," she said slowly, "if Gilbeck and Justine haven't been murdered — if they've only been kidnapped—"

"Go on," said the Saint steadily.

She stared at him from a masklike face that mirrored unthinkable things.

"If you're right about all these things you've guessed — if March really is up to the neck in dirty business, and he's afraid of Gilbeck giving him away—" One distraught hand rumpled her corn-gold hair. "If Gilbeck and, Justine are prisoners somewhere, this gang will do anything to make them talk."

"They wouldn't need to do much," said the Saint. "Gilbeck would have to talk, to save Justine."

"After which jolly interlude," Peter said woodenly, "he can allow himself to be slaughtered in ineffable peace, secure in the knowledge that March and Company have nothing but affection for his fatherless little girl."

"But they'd never believe him now," Patricia said, shakily. "When he says he doesn't know anything about any such letter, they'll think that that's just what he would say. They'll torture him horribly, perhaps Justine too. They'll go on and on, trying to find out something he can't possibly tell them!" The Saint shook his head. He stood up restlessly, but his face was quite calm.

"I think you're both wrong," he said quietly. "If Lawrence Gilbeck and Justine are still alive, I think that letter will be their insurance policy. While he believes in it March won't dare have them killed. And he won't need to torture them. Directly he asks about it… well, Gilbeck didn't make all his money by being slow on the trigger. He'll catch on to the possibilities at once. He'll say, sure, he left a letter, and what are they going to do about it? Isn't that what you'd do? And what are they going to do about it? There's no use torturing anyone who's ready to tell you anything you want to hear. Gilbeck hasn't got any secret information that they want."

"How do you know?" asked Peter.

"I don't," Simon admitted. "But it isn't probable. My theory is perfectly straightforward. Gilbeck just went into March's Foreign Investment Pool. He was ready to overlook a few minor irregularities, as a lot of big business men would be. You don't make millions by splitting ethical hairs. Then Gilbeck got in deeper, and found that some of the irregularities weren't so minor. He got cold feet, and wanted to back out. But he was in too deep by that time — they couldn't let him go. Now, our strategy is that he knew there'd be trouble, so he left a protective letter. All right. So there's a letter, and I've got it."

Patricia kept looking down, moving one hand mechanically over the contour of her knee.

"If only you had got it," she said.

"It might help us a lot. But as It is, the myth is a pretty useful substitute. Unwittingly, we've put Gilbeck in balk. March has got to believe in the letter. I was firing a lot of shots in the dark, but they hit things. He won't be able to figure where I got all my information, unless it was out of this imaginary letter. Which means that he's got to take care of me before he can touch Gilbeck. And he's got to be awfully cautious about that, unless he's quite sure what angles I'm playing."

"I'll have to order some wool," said Peter. "It sounds like a winter of sitting around and knitting while March's outfit are sinking ships and wondering about you in their spare time."

Simon crushed out his cigarette and took another one from the packet on the table. He sat down again and put his feet up.

"I read the morning papers in bed," he said. "They've picked up a few bodies from that tanker, but no live ones. The way it happened, it wasn't likely that there'd be any. The cause of the explosion is still an official mystery. There was no mention of a submarine, or any other clues. So perhaps we gummed up the plot when we caught that lifebelt."

"It's not so easy now to believe that we really saw a submarine," said Patricia. "If we told anyone else, they'd probably say we'd been drinking."

"We had," answered the Saint imperturbably. "But I don't know that we want to tell anyone else — yet. I'd rather find the submarine first."

Peter leaned against a pillar and massaged his toes.

"I see," he soliloquised moodily. "Now I take up diving. I tramp all over the sea's bottom with my head in a tin goldfish bowl, looking for a stray submarine. Probably I find Gilbeck and Justine as well, tucked into the torpedo tubes."

"There are less unlikely things," said the Saint. "The sub must have a base on shore, which has got to be well hidden. And if it's so well hidden, that's where we'd be likely to find prisoners."

"Which makes everything childishly easy," Peter remarked. "There are approximately nine thousand, two hundred, and forty-seven unmapped islands in the Florida Keys, according to the guide-book, and they only stretch for about a hundred miles."

"They wouldn't be any good. A good base wouldn't be too easy to hide from the air, and the regular plane service to Havana flies over the Keys several times a day."

"Maybe it has a mother ship feeding it at sea," Patricia ventured.

Simon nodded.

"Maybe. We'll find out eventually."

"Maybe you'd better call in the Navy," said Peter. "That's what they're for."

The Saint grinned irreverently,

"But it would make things so dull for us. I thought of a much more exciting way of invoking the Law. I called the Sheriff's office in the middle of the night and told them that they could find a dead body on the March Hare. I hope it gave Randy a lot of fast explaining to do."

"I hope you've got plenty of fast explanations yourself," Peter said dampeningly, and pointed with one finger.

Simon looked round towards the driveway.

White dust swirled around the wheels of an approaching car. It disappeared behind the corner of the house. A minute later, Desdemona plodded heavily towards them across the patio. She came to anchor in front of the Saint, her brawny arms akimbo, and glared down at him with a face which intimated that she had found all her darkest forebodings justified.

De she'iff man's hyah at de doah," she announced indig-nantly. "He wants to see you!"

4

"I think," said Patricia, getting to her feet, "that Peter and I will let you amuse him while we have another swim." Simon waved them away.

"If you see me being taken off in the wagon," he said, "don't bother to wait lunch."

A couple of moments after they had gone, the official presence of Sheriff Newton Haskins cast its long shadow into the cheery courtyard.

Seen in the bright light of day, the officer who had hailed them from the police boat appeared even thinner and more lugubrious than he had the night before. He was dressed in funereal black, defying the thermometer. His broadcloth coat was pushed open behind pocketed hands, disclosing a strip of spotless white shirt topped by a narrow and unfashionable black bow tie. He might very easily have been mistaken for an undertaker paying a business call on the bereaved — except for the width or the cartridge belt at his waist, which sagged to the right under the weight of a holstered gun.

His approach was leisurely. Hands in pockets, he watched Patricia's and Peter's retreat to the beach, studied the flowers, and cast an appraising glance up at the cloudless sky. Only after he had apparently satisfied himself that the heavens were still in place did he condescend to notice the Saint.

Extended backwards in his chair, with his ankles crossed on the table, Simon greeted him with a smile of carefree cordiality.

"Well, well, well, — if it isn't our old friend Sheriff Haskins! Sit down, laddie. All my life I've heard of this southern hospitality, but I didn't think a busy officer like you" would have time to come and welcome a mere tourist like me."

Hands still in his pockets, Newt Haskins seated himself slowly in a metal garden chair with an exhibition of perfect muscular control. He began a survey at the Saint's bare feet, enumerated his legs, reviewed his blue gabardine shorts and the rainbow pattern of his beach robe, and ended up gazing dispassionately into the Saint's mocking eyes.

"You'd be surprised, son, how many crooks I've welcome to Miami in the past ten years."

"Crooks, Sheriff?" Simon's brows lifted in faint inquiry. "Do I misunderstand you, or is that meant to refer to me?"

Haskins' left hand crawled out of its pocket like a turtle, bearing with it a plug of black tobacco. His deep-set sharp grey eyes sank farther into his Indian brown face as he bit off a chew. Holding the remainder of the plug, his hand crawled back into its hole again. Watching the methodical working of the muscles along his lean jaws, Simon had an irresistible nostalgic memory of another officer of the Law with whose habits he was much more familiar — the gum-chewing Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard.

"You, son? Now, there shuah ain't no use leapin' to conclusions thataway." Haskins' speech, when he was not shouting through a megaphone, lagged naturally into the native Floridian s drawl. "Actually, I come on a jaunt out heah to have a few words with Mr Gilbeck. Seein' he warn't around, I thought I might make myself sociable-like an' pass the time o' day."

"A very noble impulse," said the Saint reservedly. "But you have an ambiguous line of conversational gambits."

The Sheriffs otter-trap lips pursed themselves, and for one tense moment Simon feared that a stream of tobacco juice was destined to desecrate the virgin whiteness of the stucco wall. The crisis passed when Haskins swallowed, moving his larynx pensively up and down.

'Listen, son," he said. "Every tout, grifter, dip, gambler, yegg, land shark, and mobster, from Al Capone down to any lush-rolling prostitute, hits this city sooner or later, and we find 'em sunnin' their bottoms along our shore."

The Saint fluttered his eyelids and said: "But how poetical you are, daddy. Please tell sonny more."

Haskins' face remained glum, except for a passing glint in the depths of his lethargic grey eyes which might equally well have come either from anger or amusement

"Big and little, man and woman, killers an' punks," he said, "I've met 'em all. They don't none of 'em scare me."

"That takes a great load off my mind," said the Saint, with the same dulcet challenge.

"I thought it might do you good to know."

"Well," drawled the Saint, with dangerous camaraderie. "Neighbour, that shuah is white of you. Ah ain't met sech a speerit o' kindheartedness sense mah ole gramppaw had his whiskers et plumb off by General Beauregard's horse in the Civil Wah."

Haskins rounded out a cavernous cheek with his cud of tobacco.

"Simon Templar," he said, without heat, "you may think that's a southern accent, but it stinks of Oxford to me." He leaned back in his chair and stared skyward. "Modern police methods are makin' it awful tough for the boys, son. I sent a cable to Scotland Yard last night, an' I got an answer just before I come out heah."

"Give me one guess and I'll tell you who answered you." A joyful smile began to dawn on the Saint's face. "Is it possible — No, this is too good!… But is it possible that it could have been signed with the name of Teal?"

The Sheriff crossed his legs and fanned the air with a number eleven toe.

"I wonder if you'll be so infernally happy when you know what he had to say."

"But I know what he had to say. That's what makes me so happy. If you'd only come to me in the first place, I could have saved you the cost of your wire. Let's see — it would have been something like this… He told you that I'd run the gamut of crime from burglarly to murder — he thinks. That I dine on blackmail and arson seasoned with assault and battery — he suspects. That every time a body is found under the Chief Commissioner's breakfast table, or somebody puts a home-made shilling into a cigarette machine, the whole CID spews itself into prowl cars and dashes off to arrest me — they hope. Was that it?"

"It didn't have all those fancy touches," Haskins allowed, "but that's about how it read."

Simon trickled blue smoke through insolent and delighted lips.

"There's only one thing wrong with your reading," he murmured. "You must have got so excited over the first part that you didn't stop to read through to the end."

"An" what might that have done for me?"

"You might have found out that all the first part was really nothing but the foam on poor old Teal's fevered brain. You might have discovered that none of those things have ever been proved, that I've never been convicted of any of them or even brought to trial, that there isn't the single ghost of a charge he could bring against me today, and that I'm known to be getting pretty damn tired of having every dumb cop in creation ringing my doorbell and making me listen to a lot of addlepated blather that he can't prove."

Haskins' left hand sought daylight again without the plug of tobacco, and its blunt thumbnail made a test for stubble around the deep cleft of his chin.

"Son," he said, "I've been compared to everything from the disappearin' view of a racehorse at Tropical Park, to havin' my maw never find out what my paw's last name was. It ain't never got a rise out of me. I don't aim to change my tactics now. You and your friends are guests in a prominent citizen's home, an' I'm treatin' you as such. But as Sheriff of this county I've got a few questions to ask you, and I expect you to answer 'em."

It was a rare event for Simon Templar to feel admiration for any professional enforcer of the Law. But admiration for any cool unflustered opponent who could meet him in his own field and exchange parry and riposte without vindictiveness but with a blade sharp enough to match his own, was a tribute which none of his instincts could refuse. He drew at his cigarette again, and over his fingers his eyes twinkled calculatingly blue but with all malice wiped out of them.

"I suppose that anything I say can be used as evidence against me," he remarked cheerfully.

"If you're fool enough to tell me anything incriminatm'," said Haskins, "that's true. Don't blame me for it."

"Shoot," said the Saint.

Haskins considered him.

"I saw you scootin' around in Gilbeck's speedboat last night, and I sort of wondered at the time why he wasn't along with you."

"I sort of wondered myself. You see, we came here on a special invitation to visit him. And as you've already found out, he isn't here."

Haskins took the rather long end of his nose between thumb and forefinger and wiggled it around.

"You mean they wam't here to welcome you, so you just thought you'd move in an' wait for 'em."

Simon nodded.

"Sort of noblesse oblige not to leave without seeing your hosts."

The Sheriff took off his black hat and fanned himself thoughtfully.

"Where did you go last night after I chased you away?"

"We took a little spin. The moonlight kind of got me."

"It used to do that to me when I was your age. So you took a little spin an' came back ashore."

"That's right."

"Here?"

"But of course."

"There was a lot of funny goin's-on around Miami last night," said Haskins, with an air of perplexity. "They don't make sense to me. Some time in the small hours of the mawnin', my office got a call that Randolph March was carryin' an unreported body around on his yacht. Silly sort of thing, warn't it?"

"Was it?" Simon asked innocently.

"Well, it turned out to be not so silly, at that." Haskins uncrossed his long legs languorously. "I took a jaunt out there, and it seems there was a body. The Captain said they'd been out that evening, an' the lad fell overboard an' drowned before they could find him again."

"Who was he?"

"One o' the crew. Some kid they picked up in Newport News. They didn't even know where his home was or if he had any family. Don't suppose nobody ever will There's lots of kids like that on the waterfronts… But the funny thing was, nobody on the March Hare had called me. They were just wonderin' whether they ought to when I got there."

"It all sounds most mysterious," Simon agreed sympathetically.

Haskins stood up and mopped his brow.

"It shuah does. Heah's all hell apoppin' just a few hours after you land in town. You're known from heah to Shanghai as a.trouble maker, although I ain't sayin' you deserve it. But if you're as clever as they say you are you naturally wouldn't have any convictions — yet. But you can't blame me for wonderin' about you."

"Brother," said the Saint, with the silkiest possible undertone of warning, "you're beginning to sound just a little too much like Chief Inspector Teal. You remember what I told you? Just because a few queer things happen here, and I'm in Miami at the time, you come charging after me—"

"When I charge you, son, I'll have something." Haskins scuffed along the floor of the patio with a phlegmatic toe. "You look at: what's been bustin' loose. A tanker blows up, for no reason. I get a mysterious phone call that nobody can account for, about a body. An' then it seems Gilbeck an his daughter ain't heah, but you are, an' nobody knows where they've gone."

"So," said the Saint, "I must be mixed up with sinking ships and kidnapping millionaires as well."

Haskins' eyes were flinty mist.

"Son," he said, "I don't know what you're mixed up with."

His right hand snaked suddenly out of his pocket and flattened out in front of Simon Templar. The Saint gazed down at the oblong slip of paper held in its palm. Written on it in plain capitals were the words:

The thin linear figure drawn as a signature at the lower right-hand corner wore a halo slighdy askew.

Simon stared at it for just three seconds.

And then, progressively, he began to laugh.

It started as a tentative chuckle, grew up into a louder richness that became tinged with the overtones of hysteria, and ended in a culmination of wild hilarity that mere words could scarcely choke their way through. The whole rounded gorgeousness of the business was almost too shattering to endure.

The full magnificence of it had to work itself into his system by degrees. The March Combine had taken the hurdle of the planted body neatly enough — he had realised that. But in their impromptu comeback they had unsuspectingly sown the seeds of a supernal fizzle of which history might never see the like again.

"Of course," sobbed the Saint weakly. "Of course. I wrote ft. What about it?"

The Sheriff scratched his long stringy neck.

"That sort of note only means one sort of thing to me."

"But you don't know the background." The Saint wiped his streaming eyes. "Justine Gilbeck wrote us weeks ago that Papa was behaving like a moulting rooster: he seemed to be in trouble of some sort, but he wouldn't tell her about it. She was worried stiff. She asked us to come here and try to find out what it was and help him. I can show you her letter. Let me get it for you."