The Saint in Miami

1

The orchestra uncorked a fanfare, and the room lighting seemed to become even dingier by contrast as a spotlight splashed across to illuminate a slim-waisted creature who had taken possession of the microphone on the dais. His blond hair was beautifully waved, and he had a smudge under one eye that looked like mascara.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, with an ingratiating lisp, "we are now going to begin our continuous entertainment, which will go on between dances to give you a breathing spell — if you can still breathe. And to start the ball rolling, here is that beautiful baby, Toots Travis."

He stepped back, leading the applause with frightful enthusiasm, and Toots minced forward from a curtained arch on the right of the orchestra. She really was pretty, with a dutch-doll bob and a face to go with it and a figure with rather noticeable curves. She looked about sixteen, and might not have been much more. The orchestra blared into a popular number, and she began to saunter around the floor, waving a palmleaf fan and singing the refrain in a voice which could have been more musical. Much more.

March semaphored boldly across the floor to Karen, and she responded more restrainedly with one hand. He gave no sign of having noticed the Saint's existence. The captain nodded perfunctorily in their direction, and paid no further attention. Simon could hardly see any other course for him. When in a public place one encounters two persons who twentyfour hours ago were kicking one four feet into the air and beating one over the head with an empty bottle as one came down, one can hardly be expected to greet them with effusive geniality. One could, of course, call for the police and make charges; but there had been plenty of time already to do that, and the idea had obviously been discarded. Or one could come over and offer to start again where one left off, but there were social problems to conflict with that, not to mention the discouraging record of past experience.

Toots continued to stroll about after the refrain ended. It began to appear that the needlework in her dress was not of the most enduring kind. Subtly, and it seemed of their own volition, the seams were coming undone. Either because she was unaware of this, or because as a good trouper she bravely refused to interrupt the show, Toots went on circulating over the floor, revealing larger and larger expanses of white skin through the spreading gaps with every pirouette. Mr Uniatz goggled at the performance with breathless admiration.

Simon leaned a little towards Karen.

"Incidentally," he said, without moving his lips, "what is that captain's name?"

"Friede," she told him.

"One of those inappropriate names, I think," murmured the Saint.

He was recalling his first curious impressions about the captain. It had seemed on the March Hare that Friede was far more in command of the situation than March. There had been an aura of cold deadliness about him that the average observer might have overlooked, but that stood out in garish colours to anyone as familiar with dangerous men as the Saint Throughout the episode of the previous night, Friede had never stepped out of line, had never attempted to dominate, had given March every respect and deference. And yet, when Simon looked back on it analytically, Friede had done everything that mattered. All the constructive and dangerous suggestions had come from him, although he had never obtruded himself for a moment. He had simply put words and ideas into March's mouth, but so cleverly that March's echo had taken the authority of an original command. It had been so brilliantly done that Simon had to think back again over the actual literal phrasing of the dialogue, wondering if he was trying to put bones into a wild hallucination. Yet if that irking recollection was right, what other strange factors might there be inside that rather square-shaped cranium, which now that the captain appeared without his cap was revealed as bald as an ostrich egg?

By this time, Toots's disintegrating seams had left nothing but four wide streamers of black lace hanging from her shoulder-straps. With a last revolution of her curvilinear body which spread them like the blades of a propeller, she reached the curtained doorway. The lights dimmed. There was a round of applause, to which Hoppy Uniatz lent his cooperation by thumping his flat hand on the table until it shuddered under the punishment

The music and the spotlight struck up again together. Apparently intoxicated by her success, but at the same time handicapped by the shredding of her gown, Toots compromised by coming back without it. She had nothing now but the palmleaf fan, which being only about twelve inches in diameter was not nearly large enough to cover all the vital scenery. Her valiant attempts to alternate concealments and exposures held the audience properly spellbound.

"Stay where you are," Simon ordered sternly, as Hoppy's chair began to slide away from the table. "Haven't you ever been out before?"

"Chees, boss," said Mr Uniatz bashfully, "I never see nut'n like dis. In New York dey always got sump'n on."

Simon had to acknowledge that the comparison was justified, but he still kept Mr Uniatz in his seat. He was trying to anticipate what the arrival of March and Friede portended. By saying nothing to Haskins about the Saint's felonious activities of the night before they had positively established themselves as asking no favours from the Law, but it was impossible to believe that they had decided to forget the whole thing. Their arrival at the Palmleaf Fan, after Simon had been led there by such a devious trail, had to be more than mere coincidence. And a kind of contented relaxation slid through the Saint's muscles as he realised that by the same portents their personal presence guaranteed that whatever was in the wind was not going to be a waste of anybody's time…

The peregrinations of Toots returned to the curtained doorway as the music drew to a conclusion. She stood weaving the fan with slower provocation through the last bars, scanning the audience as though making a choice. The applause grew wild. Mr Uniatz put two fingers in his mouth and emitted a whistle that pierced the room like a stiletto. The strident sound seemed to settle her selection. With a smile she tossed the fan away in his direction, blew him a kiss, stood posed for an instant in nothing whatsoever, and vanished through the curtain as the spotlight blacked out

The nimble MC tripped back to the microphone.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, just one more sample of what we are offering you tonight. That lovely personality — Vivian Dare!"

Vivian wore a beautifully cut dress of blue tulle, and had a considerably better soprano than Toots.

"You're very quiet," said Karen. "Is the show so absorbing, or are you shocked?"

Simon grinned.

"You may not believe it, but I've been watching Randy most of the time. He seems to like the place."

"It's the sort of place he does like. He could have bought it for the money he spends here."

The Saint nodded. He had already observed the extra attentiveness of waiters around March's table, and deduced that this was by no means a first visit. The attraction seemed to radiate to other quarters as well, for two blondes and a brunette were at that moment happily attaching themselves to the party.

"Did he bring you here much?" Simon asked.

"Often."

"Do you think he's trying to show you that he doesn't need to bring a girl here?"

She laughed.

"That isn't for my benefit. He always had girls to the table even when I was with him. It's his kind of fun."

She spoke without rancour, without any personal emotion that he could detect, as if she had been mentioning that March had a stamp collection. But once again Simon was brought up against the enigma of her, wondering about so many things that were unsaid.

And he was still watching March's table for the first warning of where danger would come from. Their complete detachment was beginning to make him tense again. Neither March nor the captain had given a sign of greeting or recognition to anyone in the room except the waiters, and Karen, and the ladies of pleasure who had just joined them; and yet he knew that their arrival must have been a signal for wheels to begin turning. He wondered if that was really the only signal there would be…

Vivian had begun to carry her song among the tables, and now she was at their booth, addressing the words intimately to Mr Uniatz, who gaped up at her as if in hopes that the blue tulle would begin to come off her before she moved away.

Hoppy's chest expanded like a balloon, and he shifted his weight to the detriment of the chair. It had always been one of the tragedies of his life that so many women were blind to his hidden loveliness of soul.

The singer reached out and stroked his cheek.

Simon choked over his drink.

It was too much for Mr Uniatz. He tried to wrap one arm around the svelte enticing figure that was bending over him; but Vivian was ready for that. A swift kiss was planted on Hoppy's forehead, and his clutching hand caught nothing but a mass of curly hair, which came off in the form of a wig, revealing a strictly masculine haircut underneath.

"You nasty rough beast!" squeaked Vivian, and snatched the wig back from him and fled towards the floor.

Like lightning, before Simon could move, Mr Uniatz let go with the carafe of water. It crossed the room like a damp comet, caromed off the clarinet player, boomed off a drum, and came to a cataclysmic end among the cymbals. Then Simon had Hoppy's wrist and was holding him down with a grip of iron.

"Cut it out," he gritted, "or I'll break your arm."

"We oughta take dis jernt apart, boss," said Mr Uniatz redly.

"You damn fool!" snarled the Saint. "They were just waiting for us to start something."

And then he realised that the room was rocking with laughter. Everyone seemed to be laughing. March's table was in an uproar, with March himself leading it. Even Captain Friede's tight mouth was flattened broadly across his teeth. The clarinetist was helped out by a grinning waiter, apparently being a person of no consequence. The chortling orchestra leader waved his baton, and a new dance number blared out. Giggling couples were filtering on to the floor. The head waiter appeared at the booth and smiled only a little more restrainedly.

"Your first time here?" he said, more as a statement than a question.

"My friend isn't drunk," said the Saint "But he's a little hasty."

The head waiter nodded tolerantly.

"Well, there was no harm done. Shall I bring you some more water?"

"Thank you."

The Saint felt incredibly and incredulously foolish. And yet it had seemed so obvious. Start something, bring on the bouncers, and anything could happen in the resultant brawl.

But the opportunity had been ignored. It had been taken as a good joke.

He lighted another cigarette and tried to say unconcernedly to Karen: "It's a good thing they've got a sense of humour here."

"Something happens here almost every night," she said casually. "But nobody gets excited."

Not that, then… And yet she also seemed expectant, in a way that he could not pin down on to any outward sign. There was no nervousness in the handling of her cigarette or the leisured sipping of her liqueur. Perhaps it was because of that very tranquillity that he felt on edge, as if he sensed that she was playing a part to which he was not admitted.

Then where was it coming from? A shot from somewhere during a blackout? Too conventional — and too risky. He still couldn't get out of his head the conviction that March Friede must still be bothered by the protective letter that he had spoken about. And they were here now, much too prominently present to have any expectation of being named as suspects. A poison in the Scotch, or the new carafe of water? Impossible, for the same reason. Then what? Could he have been altogether wrong in every single calculation, and could he be a helpless particle in a ferment that he knew nothing about and for whose chemical combinations he was utterly unprepared?

Hobgoblin centipedes inched up his back into the roots of his hair…

And then the dance had ended, and the exquisite MC was skipping up to the microphone again, as the floor cleared and a miniature piano was trundled in.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you another of those unique entertainments which have made the Palmleaf Fan famous: that great and goofy singer, the maestro of murky music, lewd lyrics, and dirty ditties — the one and only Jesse Rogers!"

The was a concerted blast from saxophones, trombones, clarinets, and cornucopias; and the man Simon Templar had been looking for walked on.

2

Hoppy Uniatz, still crushed beneath his recent humiliation, swilled whisky around his glass and put it down. He leaned across the table.

"Boss," he divulged in a despondent whisper that reached every corner of the room, "I gotta go."

"Shut up," snapped the Saint. "You can go afterwards. This is the guy we came out here to see."

Mr Uniatz reviewed the performer with sour disillusion.

"It don't mean a t'ing in dis jernt, boss. I betcha he's just a wren wit' pants on."

Simon could appreciate the justification for Hoppy's prejudice, but he also realised that Jesse Rogers was definitely not the right subject for it.

Rogers was a normal type if there ever was one, even though it was not a type which entirely harmonised with the atmosphere of the Palmleaf Fan. He had more of an air of filling in there while paying his way through college. He had a round and rather juvenile face made studious by rimless glasses, and his shoulders and complexion both looked as if they were indebted to a much more healthy background.

His repertoire, however, certainly did not. His first song ran a gamut of transparent double entendre and monothematic suggestion that would have brought blushes to the cheeks of the blowsiest barmaid, and was accordingly received with tumultuous applause. It was plain that he was a popular performer. As the ovation subsided, there were sporadic shouts of "Octavius!" Rogers smiled with cherubic salaciousness, and said: "By request — Octavius, the Octogenarian Octopus."

The difficulties, vices, and devices of Octavius were unfolded in the same strain. They were biologically improbable, but full of ingenious concepts; and they went on for a long time.

A waiter came by the table, picked up the Peter Dawson bottle, and tilted it over the glasses. It was an unproductive service, for Mr. Uniatz had not taken his revised standards of alcoholic quality seriously enough to leave anything unpoured. The waiter leaned over with respectful discretion and said: "Shall I bring another bottle, sir?"

"I suppose you'd better," said the Saint, with the fatalism of long experience. "Or do you make special rates by the case?"

The waiter smiled politely and went away. The song went on, with the diversions of Octavius becoming more recherche in every stanza. Currently, they seemed to be concerned with some whimsical prank involving bathing girls in Bali. Karen said curiously: "What are you making of him?"

"He knows his onions, for what they're worth," said the Saint judicially. "I've been trying to estimate what else he's worth. At first I thought something was haywire again, but now I'm not nearly sure."

"Does he look tough to you?"

"He does — now. He's tougher than Jennet. It's a funny twist, but you're always surprised when a villain you've built up in your imagination doesn't turn out to look like a professional wrestler, and yet some of these baby-faced guys are more dangerous than any plug-ugly knows how to be."

He felt no incongruity in discussing Rogers so dispassionately with her. The mere fact that she should be sitting there with him at that time achieved a culmination of unreality beside which all minor paradoxes were insignificant. And yet even that apical absurdity had become so much a part of the fantastic picture that he no longer questioned it.

The saga of Octavius ended at last, and Rogers was shaking his head, smiling, in answer to the disappointed yells for more as the piano was whisked away. The MC tripped on again like a pixie and said: "Jesse Rogers will be back before long, ladies and gentlemen, with some more of those sizzling songs. We can't give you the whole show at once. Let's dance again, and then we'll have another treat for you." The orchestra took its cue, and the ball kept rolling. It could never be disputed that the Palmleaf Fan worked tirelessly in its dubious cause.

Simon still looked between the gathering dancers, and saw that Rogers had been stopped on his way out through the curtained doorway by a waiter. Something about the back of the waiter's close-cropped head seemed oddly familiar… Simon was trying to identify the familiarity when Rogers looked directly at him across the room. In that instant the Saint grasped the fleeting shadow of recognition.

It was the waiter who had just taken his order for another bottle of Scotch.

Nothing to make any difference. The waiter had other duties. But Rogers had looked straight across the room. And in the circumstances…

Karen Leith's face was a lovely mask. She might not have seen anything.

"So you've seen him," she said. "Now what are you going to do?"

"I was just wondering?" Simon replied slowly. "We might wait till he comes on again and shoot him from here. But the management might resent that. Besides, I want to know where he gets his orders from… Do you think you're getting enough inside information to please Randy?"

He was deliberately trying to hurt her again, to strike some spark that would end his groping. But instead of hatred, her eyes brightened with something else that he would much rather not have seen.

"Dear idiot," she said: and she was smiling. "Don't ever stop being hard. Don't ever let anyone fool you — not even me."

He had to smile back at her. Had to.

"No nonsense?" he said emptily.

"Not for anything."

"Boss," began Mr Uniatz, diffidently.

The Saint sat back. And he started to laugh. It was a quiet and necessary laughter. It brought the earth back again.

"I remember," he said. "You wanted to go."

"I was just t'inkin', boss, it don't have to make much difference. I can be quick."

For Heaven's sake, don't go into all the details," said the Saint hastily. "Take all the time you want. We know all about the calls of Nature. We can wait."

"Chees, boss," said Mr Uniatz, with almost childishly adoring gratitude. "Tanks!"

He got up from the table and paddled hurriedly away.

Karen made a slightly strangled sound, and quickly picked up her glass. The Saint looked at her and chuckled.

"I should have warned you about him," he murmured. "He doesn't mean any harm. He's just uninhibited."

"I–I was b-beginning to discover that" Her lips trembled. "If he ever has any puppies, will you send me one?"

"I'll remember," said the Saint; but his voice faded as he said it

The waiter was back again, transferring a fresh bottle and clean glasses from a tray to the table.

Simon studied him again through lazily trailing wisps of smoke, and became doubly sure of his identification. The lines of the tightly trimmed fair hair, as the man leaned over the table, were quite distinctive. He had a square unexpressive face on which the skin seemed to be stretched so snugly over the bony structure that there was hardly any play left for movement. He said, leaning over: "Are you Mr Templar, sir?"

Like a wind-ruffled pool on to which oil has been floated, everything in the Saint settled into an immeasurable inward stillness; yet there was no change in him that any eye could have seen.

"That's right," he said calmly.

"Mr Rogers would very much like to see you, sir, as soon as it's convenient" The enunciation was stiff and without personality, a formal reproduction which conveyed nothing but the bare words it was phrased in. "I can show you to his dressing-room whenever you're ready."

The Saint drew his cigarette to a long even glow. And in that time his mind raced over everything, without stirring one fibre of that deep physical repose.

So this was it… It seemed simple enough, now, so simple that he had to deride the energy he had squandered on all his preliminary alertness. Rogers had seen him, recognised him, and beaten him to the draw. He didn't remember ever having seen Rogers before, but that was no reason to think that Rogers didn't know him — he had to be more than a name to at least some of the units in the chain of conspiracy. Lafe Jennet might be back on the road at Olustee by that time, but there were plenty of other ways for Jesse Rogers to have learned that the cat was out and the Saint was on his trail. So Rogers — or the men behind Rogers — had merely taken the dilemma by the horns…

"Of course," said the Saint easily. "I'll be right along."

The waiter bowed disinterestedly, and moved a little way off. And the Saint found Karen's eyes fixed on him.

"Will you excuse me?" he said.

"We could have another dance first. And then Hoppy'll be back to keep me company."

It seemed as if that was all she could think of to say, to delay him, without making a confession or a betrayal that they both knew was impossible. He smiled.

"Why not now?" he said quietly. "Hoppy'll be back, but I wouldn't have taken him anyway. Rogers and I have a little personal business. I came here to see him, so I might as well do it. I don't know what's in his mind, but I'll find out. And if he knows that I work that way, and he's ready for it — I'll find that out too."

She didn't speak or move for a moment.

Then her hand touched his hand, lightly; and the touch was a kiss, or an embrace, or more than that, or nothing.

"Good luck, Saint."

"I've always been much too lucky," he said, and turned away at once, and_went after the waiter.

He wanted it to be that way, to go into swift movement and the exalting leap of danger that left no time for profitless introspection and static gentleness; he was tired of thinking. There was no bravado in it. He wanted whatever they had waiting — wanted it with an insolent and desperate desire.

"Lead on, Adolphus," he said, and the waiter's eyes barely flickered.

"Yes, sir. This way."

They went around the perimeter of the room, past the front of the orchestra, and through the curtained doorway that served the floor show artistes for an entrance. A passage turned to the left, parallelling the wall for a couple of yards, and then turned straight back at right angles.

Simon stopped at the corner of the L and adjusted a shoelace that was perfectly well tied. March and Friede had both been dancing when he crossed the floor, but if it was part of their plan to follow him closely into the back of the building he could do no harm by confusing the timetable. He spent rather a long time over the shoelace, long enough for them to have blundered into him, but no one followed.

He straightened up at last and went on.

The passage was about eighty feet long, ending in a door which from the iron bars over its pebble glass panel he guessed to be an exit from the building. The wall on the left gave out warmth for a few yards as he passed it, and a muted rattle and clink of metal and china that came through it suggested a kitchen. Aside from that blank space, there were plain doors on both sides. A pretty blackhaired girl in a gaudy print brassiere and sarong came out of one door, passed them with hardly a glance, and went on to wait for her announcement. Further down, on the other side, a twittering of high-pitched male voices came through another door. It opened, and something in a strapless sequin gown and a silver wig came out, leered at them, said "Wooo!", and vanished through the door opposite like a leprechaun.

The waiter stopped just beyond that point, and Simon came up alongside him.

"The last door, sir, on the left"

"Thank you."

The Saint passed him and strolled on. The steadiness of his movement was a triumph of cold nerve over instinct, but he felt as if there was a bullseye stencilled between his shoulder-blades. His ears strained for the click of a cocked gun or the premonitory swish of a blackjack, or even a breath too close behind. ,

Then he was at the last door, and as he turned towards it he was able to glance sideways down the length of corridor through which he had come. The waiter had turned his back and was walking slowly away. There was no one else visible.

Simon laughed, silently and without humour. Perhaps he really was getting old and jumpy, letting his imagination blind his judgment.

And yet there was nothing fanciful about the bullet that had been sent him by the man he was going to see.

He paused for a moment at the door. Without intention, but simply from force of habit, he knew that his feet had made no sound through the approach. But during that pause he could hear nothing within the room — not the least rustle of human speech or movement. There were only the distant undertones which had become unnoticeable through acceptance — the waiter's retreating steps, the chatter from other dressing-rooms, the dissonances of the kitchen, and the distant drift of music. But in spite of that, or because of it, he lowered the hand which he had raised to knock.

Instead, his fingers closed on the door knob. He took one long breath; and then in one feline ripple of co-ordination he threw the door open and slid diagonally into the room.

Two men with round stolid faces like Tweedledum and Tweedledee stood in one comer with their hands held high. Jesse Rogers reclined on a shabby divan with his hands behind his head, a lighted cigarette drooping from one corner of his mouth. There was no weapon anywhere near him to account for the attitudes of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The single reason for that was a cumbersome .45 Colt which swung around in the hand of a fourth member of the congregation whose lanky legs stretched forward from a chair tilted back against the dressing table.

Sheriff Newt Haskins spat accurately at the feet of one of his captives, squinted his keen grey eyes at the Saint, and said: "Well, ain't this nice? Come right in, son. We were sort of expectin' you."

3

Simon Templar carefully closed the door.

There was rather a lot to assimilate all at once, and he wanted time. The entire tableau gave him the impression of some sort of a mad tea-party from Alice in Wonderland. Of course, he had already seen the March Hare, he reflected hysterically. And now there was Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Doubtless Sheriff Haskins would turn out to be the Mad Hatter. Jesse Rogers, from his position, looked like a promising candidate for the Dormouse. Presently they would all start singing and dancing, with Toots and Vivian doing a hot rumba in the middle.

That was the way it felt at first. The Saint could have taken a whole army of hoodlums in his stride, and turned up his nose at a forest of machine-guns, by comparison with the cataclysmic shock of what he actually saw. It left him wondering, for perhaps the first time in his life, whether he had any right to be patronising about the pedestrian intellectual reflexes of Hoppy Uniatz…

"Hullo, Sheriff," he drawled. "You do get around, don't you?"

The sheer electronic energy that it cost him to maintain that air-conditioned nonchalance would have twisted the needle of any recording instrument known to science off its bearings; but he achieved it. And with a simultaneous equal effort he was forcing himself to try and wring a coherent interpretation out of the scene.

The only entirely unplumbed factors were Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Aside from their generic facial resemblance, they shared the hollow-stomached muscular emphasis of professional bullies — and something more. It was something strange and out of place even in that plethora of improbabilities, something that was bound up by devious psychological links with the strangeness that had struck him about some of the revellers outside.

In another split second he realised what it was. Even in surrender, their carriage had the ingrained rigidity of soldiers on a parade-ground. They only needed the addition of field boots and Sam Browne belts to complete the picture.

Two guns lay on the dressing table beside Haskins' left shoulder. The Sheriff caught Simon's glance at them, and moved his chair a little to offer a better view. He puckered his lips, weasening his face with furrows, and underlined the weapons with a backward jerk of his left thumb.

"Now that you're heah, son, mebbe you can help us. A feller like you should have a right smart knowledge of firearms. What do you make of these shootin' irons?"

The Saint made no attempt to get closer — he knew better than to make an incautious move against a man who seemed to have the situation so comfortably lined up. Newt Haskins might look like a piece of antique furniture if he were set down in the streamlined atmosphere of New York's Centre Street, but Simon was not deceived. Haskins wasn't even nervous. He was utterly relaxed — a natural deadly machine buttressed with the simple knowledge that if he shot six times, six men would die.

"One of them is a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum," said the Saint.

"An' the other?"

Simon screwed up his eyes.

"It looks like a Webley Mark VI .455 Service revolver."

"Service, hey?" The Sheriffs free hand caressed his neck. "What service would that mean?"

"It was the official British Army revolver in the last war," Simon replied slowly. "I don't know whether they're still using it"

Haskins peered sidelong at Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

"Do either o' these lads look to you like they mighta been in the British Army?"

Simon shook his head.

"They look more as if they'd belong on the other side."

"That's how it seemed to me. But I took those irons away from Hans and Fritz less 'n fifteen minutes ago." Another stream of tobacco juice hit the floor. "Now, why would you figure one o' these Krauts would be totin' a gun that looks more like it ought to belong to you?"

"I don't suppose I can prove it," said the Saint, "but I never owned one of those guns in my life."

Haskins pushed back his black hat and scratched his head.

"I can't prove you ever did, either, if it comes to that," he said. "But it seems to me you still got plenty of explainin' to do. There's a whole lot o' things goin on that don't make sense, an' you're in the middle of all of "em." He motioned towards a chair with the barrel of his .45. "Now suppose you just sit down, son, an' tell your daddy what goes on."

The Saint sat down.

"If you don't mind my mentioning it again," he remarked, "you seem to bob up pretty frequently yourself."

"I git paid for that by the country. But I shuah never worked so much overtime before until you hit the town." The grey eyes were placid but bright as flints in their creased sockets. "I been mighty tolerant with you, son, on account of you bein' a guest of the city, so to speak. But you don't want to forget that we ain't like Scotland Yard. They tell me they ask all their questions with powder puffs, over there, but out here we get kinda rough an hasty, sometimes, when our patience is plumb wore out."

It seemed as if there were only the two of them in the room. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, fixed in their arm-lifted pose with the petrifaction of rigor mortis, made no more difference than a pair of statues. But the most perplexing nonentity was Jesse Rogers. He had never moved or spoken, but his half-closed eyes behind the rimless glasses had not shifted once from the Saint's face.

"You can smoke, if you like," Haskins went on. "But be almighty shuah it's tobacco you're reachin' for." He watched the Saint kindle a cigarette and put his lighter away. "You didn't by any chance come in heah lookin' for a lad named Jesse Rogers, did you?"

"You knew that."

"Shuah. You told me this afternoon. Now, I heard tell you was a smart boy, son, an' comin' to a feller's dressin' room to bump him off after the whole countryside knows you been chasin' him all day strikes me as a right foolish way of committin' murder. So I just can't see that you was aimin' to do that."

Simon stretched out his long legs and blew smoke towards the ceiling.

"That's very kind of you, Sheriff."

"Way down in my heart," Haskins declared dryly, "I'm a soft, lovin' sort of man." His gaze brushed over the Saint's dinner clothes. "So you hadn't no idea of killin' Jesse. At least, not right now. You dolled yourself all up an' just come out here on a party, like. You wouldn't by any chance have brought along that red-headed girl?"

"As a matter of fact," said the Saint blandly, "I did."

"You've got the ball now, son," Haskins said. "Keep goin'."

Simon's mind raced warily ahead, trying to cover all the conceivable ramifications of possibility. And yet he couldn't find a single one which seemed to take a dangerous direction. That was the fantastic part of it. For once in his life, he could face any inquisition without a shadow on his conscience. And in that fact alone there was something more disconcerting than there would have been in any need for lies. Subterfuge and evasion were things that one expected in such adventures with the regularity of treads on a tractor. But Haskins was interested in nothing that the Saint had to conceal. The Saint's only secrets were the lifebelt twisted on to the wrist of the drowned boy, the planting of the body on the March Hare, the interview that had followed, and a brief glimpse of a submerging submarine. And Haskins knew nothing about any of those things — even the opposition had co-operated in concealing some of them. The only things that Haskins was concerned with could be dissected under arc lights without any fear that Simon could anticipate. There was no problem of inventing a convincing lie. There was only the much more devastating problem of making the truth believable. "I haven't one single thing to hide," said the Saint, who was obsessed with the hollowness of his own candour even while he said it. "You know just as much as I do — unless you know any more."

"Don't stop, son."

The Saint pulled at his cigarette, marshalling the simple facts. When there was no obvious direction for a lie, what could be safer than the naked truth?

"You know why I'm in Miami. Gilbeck sent for me. I showed you his daughter's letter. I don't know one single thing more than what was in it, about what the trouble was. Now the Gilbecks have disappeared, and naturally I'm afraid there's dirty work in it. Naturally, too, I want to find them. But I didn't know where to begin."

"You made a good start, anyhow."

"Somebody else made the start — somebody who knew I was looking for them. Jennet shot at me. We caught him and grilled him — maybe that was overstepping the technicalities a bit, but I told you we'd done it. He told us he'd been coerced by Rogers, whom he didn't know anything about except that he'd met him on that barge of Gallipolis's. So I went out there, and that's where you met us again. I told you the story then. But Gallipolis had already told me that Rogers worked here, which he didn't tell you. So I came here."

"So you an' Gallipolis was holdin' out on me." The Sheriffs voice was gentle and chiding. "Well…"

"Gallipolis is a bit prejudiced against the Law," said the Saint, with a slight smile. "Personally, I didn't give it a thought. I like taking care of myself. Besides, I've found that my motives are sometimes misunderstood when I try to interest the Law in my troubles."

"Mebbe that's so."

"Look," Simon insisted, "how hard did you try to give me the benefit of the doubt when you found that note of mine on the Mirage? Not any longer than it took you to get out to Gilbeck's and start calling me names—"

"Just a minute, son." Haskins elongated his neck a couple of inches. "Who told you that was where I found that note?"

The Saint sighed out a steady feather of smoke.

"Probably," he said, without batting an eyelid, "the same mysterious person who tipped you off that the Mirage was at Wildcat Key."

It was not such a wild shot in the dark, after all. The Sheriff blinked a little, and then found dogged consolation in his chew.

"Son," he remarked, "I don't mind tellin' you I've been get-tin' a mite tired of bein' called to the phone to receive messages from a voice belongin' to A Friend. First thing it was a drowned sailor on the March Hare. Then it was to look for the Mirage at Wildcat Key. Then it was to see what you were doin' with Gallipolis on his barge, takin' an escaped convict there. Tonight it was Jesse Rogers."

"You mean he called you?' Simon took another puzzled glance at the recumbent figure on the divan.

"That's right, son," Haskins replied unexpectedly. "But A Friend called him first. A Friend told him the jig was up an' there was a long box waitin' for him tonight. So he called me. That warn't much more 'n an hour ago. So I come out. I tramp across country an' let myself in the back, rememberin' about you an' not wantin' to spoil anythin'. Jesse an' me kind of got together. So when he went on, I hid me in the closet."

The Saint's brows were beginning to draw imperceptibly together.

"What for?"

"For Hans an' Fritz heah." Haskins shifted his cud from one side of his mouth to the other and gave the first side a rest "It seems like your smartness sort of slipped a cog, son. If I hadn't 'a' done that, an' taken those fancy shootin' irons away from 'em when they come in — the way we figgered it, you an' Jesse, or what was left o' you, would be lyin' on the floor waitin' for the coroner."

Simon looked at the two guns on the dressing table again, and at Tweedledum and Tweedledee again, and at Jesse Rogers again, and felt as if he was balanced on a pinnacle of crumbling ice above an interplanetary maelstrom of emptiness.

"You've taken the ball again," he said. "It's all yours. Now you keep going."

"It was a mighty clever idea, accordin' to Jesse's tip from A Friend an' the way we worked it out," Haskins proceeded luxuriously. "After Jesse had done his act, he got a message that you wanted to see him—"

"Wait," Simon interrupted. "I hadn't got as far as that. He beat me to it. I got a message that he wanted to see me."

Haskins barely twitched one shaggy eyebrow.

"That's what the waiter told him, anyhow. I don't misbelieve you, son. Mebbe the waiter was just doin' his part. It don't make no difference. One way or another, you get here. An' when you walk in the door, like you did just now, Hans an' Fritz are already holdin' Rogers up. Hans will shoot you with the Magnum, while Fritz shoots Jesse with that British gun. Then they leave the right guns beside each o' you, an' duck out the window. When everybody comes rushin' in, it looks just like you'd killed each other in a gun fight — particularly since about four people know that you've been trailin' Jesse all day with a grudge agin him on account of he hired Lafe Jennet to take a shot at you. Havin' come in on some o' that myself this afternoon, I'd 'a' been most liable to figger that was the way of it myself." The Sheriff scratched one leg with the toe of the opposite boot. "Thinkin' it all over, son, it shuah seems to me that somebody was takin' an awful lot of trouble to see that you an' Jesse was both got rid of together with no questions asked."

Simon Templar put his cigarette to his lips and filled his lungs with warm soothing vapour and forgot to let it out again. His whole being seemed to stand still in the same cumulative and timeless stasis that affected the expansion of his ribs.

But through those fleeting seconds, his brain absorbed fact and association and deduction as completely and meticulously as his lung tissues ingested the smoke. Every molecule of factual knowledge was seeping into its predestined pore. The pattern was all falling into place. Every piece had its revealed significance, even to the most trivial fragments. He didn't know whether to feel stupid or triumphant. Certainly he had expended an astronomical amount of time and energy and cerebration on the trail of a wild goose; but had it been really wasted? The wild goose — to cross metaphors with a lavishness that only a pedant could criticise in the circumstances — had come home to roost There were only a few vacant spaces left…

"It makes sense, Sheriff." Even the naturalness of his own voice surprised him. "I've spent about twelve hours letting myself be nursed into the most beautifully elaborate set-up I ever heard of. But how about Jesse? Did he really tell Jennet to shoot at me?"

Rogers spoke for the first time, without any expression.

"I did. I didn't have to tell him to hit you, so I thought I'd pass on the order and see what happened."

"You see, son," Haskins explained, "you got yourself mixed up in some powerful big organisin'. I found out tonight that Jesse was workin' heah as what you'd call an undercover man for the Department of Justice. It didn't surprise me so much, neither. I've knowed for a long time that this place was the local headquarters of Mr Hitler's Nazi-American Bund."

4

"Of course," said the Saint, with an ecstatic lilt in his voice that was too zephyrous for anyone else there to hear. "Of course…"

And he felt as if a fresh wind from out of doors had blown through his head, leaving it clean and light, with all the dark tangles swept away. Everything else was set in its niche now, to be seen clearly from every angle. The only thing that amazed him was that he had failed to find the connecting link long ago. Those last words of Raskins' had supplied it.

The Bund. And those fearfully earnest merrymakers outside. Karen had practically told him when she put the words "Kraft durch Freude" into his mouth — and he'd been too preoccupied to grasp it. And the whole atmosphere of the trap into which he had so nearly fallen. Its grim, far-ranging, tortuous Teutonic thoroughness. One could almost see the imprint of the fine hand of Himmler. But between the master hand of Himmler and its victims, in this as in every other corner of that incredible worldwide web of intrigue and sabotage, a more fantastic secret society than any blood-and-thunder writer of fiction would ever have dared to try and make convincing, there had to be major intermediaries, graduates summa cum laude of the Himmler school of technique. And who was the intermediary here, the local lieutenant of this greater gangsterism than the petty caesars of civil crime had ever dreamed of? Well, not a lieutenant. A captain. Captain Friede. The man who Simon had always sensed was the real commander even when March seemed to give the orders. It could be no one else. The finger pointed to him beyond any mortal doubt. Sometimes there could be uncertainties; but sometimes there was a clarity of vision that amounted to inspiration, that logic might justify but could not assail. It had to be Friede. And through him, the other threads linked with March, with Gilbeck, with the Foreign Investment Pool, with a torpedoed tanker, even with a drowned sailor with a life belt bearing the name of a British submarine tangled to his wrist. Everything, everything hooked up… There were still a few minor questions, but their solution would be direct and unequivocal. The groping was over, and all that was ahead lay straight as an arrow's flight…

"Of course," said the Saint, after a million years, "Jesse can't have been quite so much under cover as he thought. Somebody had suspected him. and this was the neatest way to get rid of both of us together."

"That's what I think." Rogers sat up, at last, and Simon discovered that the old-young eyes behind his glasses could be unexpectedly penetrating. "I've been watching you all this time, and I know you've been telling the truth. But Haskins didn't ask why they should want to get rid of you."

Simon chain-lighted another cigarette. Because of divers accidents, he had been able to reconstruct far more than either Rogers or Haskins. And that was where his incurable madness came back, that gay and crazy quirk of his very own that had led him into so many hairbreadth perils and so much more fun. They had provided the one vital clue, but they still couldn't have his adventure.

The only thing I can think of," he said, "is that this disappearance of the Gilbecks has something to do with it. They knew my reputation, and they knew I'd be bound to take an active interest in that, and they may have thought I was too dangerous to leave at large. That is, if I was ever important at all. They may have just wanted any scapegoat at all, and heard that I was in town, and thought I'd be good enough if I could be manoeuvred into a sufficiently compromising background. But the disappearance of the Gilbecks does seem to have some connection, since Haskins was first put on to me when A Friend sent him to find my note on the Mirage."

His air of baffled candour could not have been more convincing.

"And you still haven't any idea what connection Gilbeck could have with this?" Rogers asked, watching him.

"Not the slightest," Simon lied tremorlessly. "If I had, I could catch up on a lot of sleep."

Rogers sat for a moment longer, and then stood up. He went to the window and whistled softly. Two deputies loomed up in the dark outside. Rogers turned away, and Haskins said: "Boys, the two lads in the corner have gotten themselves a queer idea that Miami Beach is the Siegfried Line. I want you to take 'em into town an' tuck 'em away so their patriotic passions can get a chance to cool." He gathered up the two revolvers by the barrels with his left hand, and held them out "You better take these along, too, so you can book 'em for concealed firearms."

"You'll hear more of this," rasped Tweedledum, as the Sheriff's revolver waved him towards the window. "We've got our legal rights—"

Haskins screwed up one eye and said: "Our county Gestapo knows all about 'em, an' I'm afraid they'll give you more breaks than you'd get at home. In the meantime I'm goin' to send you some writin' paper an' let you write your boss an' tell him to keep his goddam Weltanschauung at home!"

When the two men had gone out through the window, Simon said boldly: "If you knew all this before, why didn't you do something about the place?"

"Sometimes a place like this is useful," said Rogers. "If we know where the small fry are meeting, it gives us a chance to keep track of some of the big fish."

"Then who is the big fish here?"

"That's what I was sent here to find out." Rogers shrugged. "It seems as if he spotted me before I could spot him. I hope it doesn't make much difference. Somebody else will pick up where I left off, and in the end we'll know him. Even if their plot had worked, it wouldn't have really mattered."

"It must be very comforting to have that philosophic outlook," commented the Saint.

Haskins put his big gun stoically away.

"Son," he remarked, "it's always been a policy of the law in this country to let bad little boys alone when they want to play. We let these bunches o' tin soldiers march an' drill around in our peaceful country, an' wave their swastikas, an' heil Hitler, an' make the goddamdest dirty cracks about democracy, on account of it's the policy of democracy to let everybody shout his own opinions, even when it's his opinion that nobody who don't agree with him ought to be allowed even to whisper what he thinks. We let 'em tear hell out o' the Constitootion on account of the Constitootion says anybody can tear anything out of it he wants to. We let em use all the freedom that the founders of this country gave their lives to give us, to try an' take that freedom away. We're so plumb scared of gettin' accused o' bein' the same as they are that we even let 'em train an' arm a private army to put over their ideas, rather 'n give 'em the chance to say we denied 'em the liberty they want to take away from us. That's why we're the greatest country in the world, an' everybody else laughs 'emselves sick lookin' at us."

There was a moment's silence before Simon could say, evenly enough: "I hope nobody can ever lick your screwy country… But do you need me here any more?"

"By this time," Rogers said, "they know that the plot's misfired. You can slip out the back way with us."

"I left Haskins' red-headed flame in the main room," said the Saint. "And another friend of mine in the gents' relief station. I can't just ditch them. If the gang knows that the plot has misfired, they can guess you and Haskins are here with some deputies. They'll be too scared to make trouble without plenty more planning. You go the way Haskins came, and I'll get out the way I came in. I can take care of myself."

"Check with me at the local FBI office in the morning?" Rogers said.

There was no need for picayune hair-splitting. Their eyes met in the understanding of men among men — an unspoken bond of strength greeting strength. Death had brushed by them lightly, and left them alive to carry on. Both of them knew it.

"If I can," said the Saint, and was gone.

He went quickly back down the long corridor. He had his own plan of campaign, clear now that its objectives were no longer eddying reflections in a distorting mirror, to iron out; and he knew that time was more vital now than it had ever been… The vacuous twittering went on in the men's dressing room. The pretty black-haired girl, who had apparently completed her act with the usual disasters to her costume, met him at the turn of the passage with what was left of it in her hand and nothing else to obscure the artistic tailoring of her birthday suit. Once again, they passed each other with hardly a glance. He would have passed the Queen of Sheba with the same disinterest. He wanted to see Karen Leith…

And she was not there.

Neither was Hoppy Uniatz.

It was more than a temporary absence, a prolonged nose-powdering or hand-washing expedition. The table where they had been was cleared and freshly laid, ready to receive new tenants. There was not a personal relic left on it to let anyone anticipate a return.

Simon's glance swept over the room, and discovered other changes. Quite a fair number of new customers had arrived while he was away, but the place was not much more crowded. He hit on the reason in a moment It was because space had been made by the departure of other patrons. The Strength through Joy boys and girls were no longer to be seen. And incidentally, he was unable to catch sight of the waiter who had taken him backstage, either. It was perhaps not very surprising. The whole of one certain element in the place had been neatly and unfussily evacuated, and nothing but the regular honky-tonk front was left.

The most conspicuous disappearance was that of March and Friede. Their ringside table had already been taken over by another party, and Simon noticed that their girl companions were once more on offer in the wallflower line.

The Saint located the head waiter. He crossed the room very coolly and recklessly, and his eyes were everywhere, like shifting pools of blue ice. He backed the head waiter against the wall and held him there by the simple process of standing tall and square-shouldered in front of him.

"Where are the people who were with me?" he asked.

"I don't know, monsieur."

The man looked helpless and tried to edge sideways out of the trap. The Saint stopped that by treading hard on his toe.

"Drop the Brooklyn French, Alphonse," he advised bleakly. "And don't make any mistakes. It'd take me just thirty seconds to do things to your face that a plastic surgeon 'll take six months to put right. And if I see any of your bouncers coming this way I'll start shooting. Now do we talk or do we wreck the joint?"

"Oh," said the head waiter, recovering his memory, "you mean the big fellow and the red-haired lady?"

"That's better," said the Saint. "What happened to the big fellow?"

"He left."

"When?"

"But that was when you were still at the table, sir. He got up and went right out. The doorman didn't stop him because you were still here to take care of the check."

Simon began to have a weird and awful understanding, but he bottled it down within himself.

He said: "All right. Now what about the lady?"

"She went as soon as you left the table, sir."

"Alone?"

The man's mouth compressed.

"Did she by any chance leave with Mr March?" Simon suggested.

The man swallowed. There were guests close by, and waiters hovering within earshot, but the Saint didn't give a damn. Not for anything that might start. He kicked the head waiter thoughtfully on the shin.

"Yes, sir. She went over and spoke to him, and they left almost at once."

"Including Captain Friede?"

"Yes, sir."

The Saint nodded.

"You're a good boy, Alphonse," he said mildly. "And just because you told me the truth I'll pay my check."

"There is no check, sir," said the head waiter. "Mr March took care of it."

Simon went out of the Palmleaf Fan with his hands at his sides, balanced like the triggers that his fingers itched to be on, walking a little stiffly with the cold anger that was in him. Nobody tried to interfere with him; and he didn't know, or care much, whether it was because they had had no instructions or because he looked too plainly hopeful that someone would make a move. But he walked past the two door guards with the contempt of reckless defiance, and was disappointed that it was so easy. That last patronising gesture of March's was something that he would have liked to wipe out before he left.

But as the Cadillac streaked down the oceanside road he realised that it could hardly have been any other way. March and Friede must have been informed within a few seconds of the misfiring of their plot. There was still nothing that could have officially linked them with it, so they might well have stayed and brazened it out; but that would have been purely negative. Their quick departure had not so much the air of a getaway as of a rapid reorganisation.

And again he had to remember Karen. It had seemed once that she was the most likely person to have warned Rogers. But she had had ample chance to warn Simon himself direct, and had not. And immediately he left, she had gone back to March. She was one of the remaining riddles to which he still had no clue. Unless her part was so simple and sordid that he did not want to see it…

He tried to shrug her out of his mind.

Everything now seemed to hang on time. It was certain that Friede and March would feel forced to move fast. He wanted to move faster. There was no longer any motive for caution, and wildness would be given full rein once more. All he needed was the supporting troops who had been waiting for his call.

The car swung into the horseshoe drive and stopped in front of the Gilbeck home. And Simon sat still behind the wheel for the time it took him to light a cigarette.

Peter and Patricia would never have gone to bed until they heard from him. And they wouldn't have gone out, because he had told them to stand by. But except for a single light burning in the servants' quarters the house was in blackness. He went into the hall, and through it to the patio. The lights were out there also, and his ears could pick up no sound but the rustle of palm fronds and the ceaseless muted roaring of the surf.

He turned from the patio into the kitchen. "Where are Miss Holm and Mr Quentin?" he rapped, and Desdemona looked up from a love pulp and marked her place with a black thumb.

"Dey's in de jailhouse," she said placidly. The Saint's eyes froze into chips of steel. "What jail?"

"Lawdy, man, how should I know? De she'iff man come an' took 'em away, not fifteen minutes ago. I 'spect dey's lookin' for you, too," said the Negress, with the morbid satisfaction of watching her direst foreboding fulfilled.

Simon went back to the hall and picked up the telephone. There was a chance that Newt Haskins might have gone through into the public quarters of the Palmleaf Fan, prowling around to see what he could see and trying to quietly annoy the management. And as a matter of fact, he had.

"I should have known better than to let you kid me," said the Saint scorchingly. "But why couldn't you tell me that all the time I was talking to you your deputies were picking up my friends? And what are the charges, and what are you trying to do?"

There was a longish silence.

Haskins said: "There ain't no charges, son, an' I didn't send any deputies to pick up any friends o' yours."

"What about the Miami police?"

"Unless your friends have been robbin' a house, they'd hardly make a move without talkin' to me. It looks like you're barkin' up the wrong tree, son."

"Maybe I'm not, after all," said the Saint softly, and cradled the instrument before Haskins could make any more reply.

In a matter of seconds he was back in the car, scattering gravel and sand from the driveway as he ripped out of it. It all seemed so plain now that he wondered how any doubt could have detained him for a moment. And the idea that had been part formed in his mind on the way down from the Palmleaf Fan was now a consuming objective which blotted out everything else on his horizon. To face the last cards, and fight out a showdown on Landmark Island or the March Hare…

The Cadillac screamed on to the County Causeway with supreme disregard for the risk of speed cops. And just beyond the turn-off to Star Island it stopped, oblivious to the exasperated honking of horns behind.

There was no chance to mistake the trim grey shape feeling its way along the steamship channel towards the Government Cut and the open sea. The March Hare had already sailed. One couldn't reach it in a car. One couldn't swim after it. One might overtake it with a speedboat, but there would still be no way to get on board. And on board, beyond a question, were Patricia Holm and Peter Quentin. He couldn't see them; but he could see Karen Leith. She stood leaning on the after rail beside Randolph March, watching the traffic on the Causeway and laughing with him.