Saint Errant

Lida

The moon was a paste-up job. True, it had come up dripping out of the sea two hours before, but now it hung in the Florida sky like a cut-out from golden paper, and looked down with a bland open countenance on the denizens of Miami Beach and all the visiting firemen therein.

Including wives whose husbands were busy in their offices from Chicago to Boston providing the wherewithal for their help-meets to fritter around; certain characters who went around with thousand-dollar bills in their pockets but never paid any income tax; touts, pimps, and prostitutes; hopeful gents and girls who felt that one more throw of the dice would get them even with the board again, and Simon Templar and Patricia Holm.

Simon, known as the Saint in varying degrees of love, hate, and envy, lounged behind the wheel of a long low convertible, and pushed that rented job up Collins Avenue at ten miles more than the law allowed. Patricia, her golden head making the moon look like a polished penny, sat easily beside him.

“Simon,” she said, “look at that moon. It can’t be real.”

“Strictly a prop, Pat,” the Saint said. “The president of the Chamber of Commerce hangs it up each night.”

“If you had any romance in what you call your soul,” Patricia complained, “you’d admit it was pretty lush.”

“And when we get to the Quarterdeck Club, the atmosphere will be even lusher.”

After a contemplative silence, the girl said, “There must be something beyond that, Simon — something that scared Lida Verity half out of her mind. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been so desperate on the phone.”

“You know her better than I do. Is she the hysterical type?”

“Not even in the Greek meaning of the word,” Pat said. “She’s a swell gal. Nice family, nice husband in the Navy, plenty of money, and she has her head screwed on tight. She’s in trouble, all right.”

“Then why didn’t she call Sheriff Haskins?... Ah, I see things.”

“Things” were a neon sign which read “The Quarterdeck” and a driveway which led through an avenue of royal palms, past a doorway labeled “Gangplank,” to a vista of macadam which could have served as the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, but appeared to be used as a parking lot. On this bit of real-estate development were parked Cadillacs, Chryslers, Chevrolets, and cars further along in the alphabet, all with gleaming paint jobs and, as far as could be seen in the advertisable moonlight, good tires.

In case any patron might be arriving without a perfectly clean conception of the atmospheric motif of the joint, the requisite keynote was struck immediately by the resplendent personage who advanced to greet them as they pulled up alongside the “gangplank.”

“Get a load of the Admiral,” Simon observed, as he set the hand brake.

The “Admiral” was one to arouse exclamations. He had more gold braid than an Arabian-nights tapestry, his epaulets raised his shoulder height three inches, his cocked hat probably had John Paul Jones spinning in his grave, and the boots were masterpieces of dully gleaming leather. His face was square, and hearty and red as fresh beefsteak.

He eyed the Saint and Patricia, resplendent in evening dress, with limited approbation.

“Ahoy there!” he hailed them, in a restrained bellow. “Have you arranged for your moorings?”

“If by that corny seagoing salutation you mean do we have reservations,” the Saint replied, “no. We do not.”

“Then I’m sorry, skipper,” the admiral boomed. “You can’t drop anchor.”

“But, Admiral,” Pat said, “we drove all the way from—”

“Very sorry, miss. But the harbor’s overcrowded already.”

“This is Patricia Holm,” the Saint said, “and I am Simon Templar.”

“Sorry, sir, but it doesn’t matter if—” The man gulped, and peered at them more closely. “Templar, did you say?”

“Yes, Simon Templar.”

The Admiral removed his hat, mopped at his pink forehead.

“Whew! That was a shot across the bow. I’ve heard about you, Mr... er... Sss...”

“Call him Saint,” said Patricia. “He likes it.”

“But I still can’t let you in the Quarterdeck, sir.”

“You aren’t letting us,” the Saint said gently. “But you aren’t stopping us, either.”

“I wouldn’t want to cause any unpleasantness, sir, but—”

“No,” the Saint agreed, not so gently. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. It might be more unpleasant for you than you’d bargained for. Now if you’ll just slip anchor and drift to the northwest a trifle—”

“For another thing,” Pat put in, “we were invited here.”

The Admiral removed his uneasy eyes from the Saint’s blue stare. His face broke into a mass of uplifting wrinkles.

“Invited?” he said genially. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“You didn’t ask,” the Saint said. “Mrs Verity asked us to join her.”

This name impressed the Admiral. His eyes widened.

“Mrs Verity? Then come aboard!”

“We intended to,” the Saint said. “Ready, Pat?”

“Aye, aye, sir. Boarding party, forward.”

The Admiral fawned on the Saint more than befitted his dignified dress.

“I hope you’ll pardon me, sir, for — Oh!” Somehow, his hand was convenient for the Saint to reach. His white glove closed around what the Saint put there. “Thank you, sir!”

Simon took the girl’s arm and steered her along a short companionway, brass-railed on either side, to a doorway which bore a small brass plate: “Lounge.”

The big room fanned out to impressive dimensions in three directions, but it was stocked with enough tables and patrons to avert any impression of bleakness.

On the tables were numbers in patterns, pertaining to dice, roulette, and faro. On the feminine patrons were the fewest glittering scraps permitted by current conventions. Bare backs and white ties made a milling chiaroscuro backgrounded by hushed murmurs and the plastic chink of chips.

The cash customers, in fact, were the only discrepancy in an otherwise desperately consistent decor. The roulette wheels were set in a frame intended to be a ship’s wheel. The crap table was a lifeboat, its deck the playing surface. Everywhere was the motif of the sea, polished and brazen. Waiters were dressed as stewards, with “Quarterdeck” embroidered on their gleaming jackets. The cigarette girl was dressed in white shorts, a sailor’s cap, and two narrow straps that crossed over her pneumatic bosom. The croupiers wore three-cornered hats emblazoned, aptly, with the Jolly Roger.

Patricia’s blue eyes took in the big room one customer at a time.

“I don’t see Lida,” she said presently. “She said she’d be waiting.”

“Probably she’s just late,” Simon answered. “It has happened to women before.” He ignored the daggered glance which his lady launched at him. “Shall we mingle with the elite, and lose a fortune in the well-bred fashion of wealthy suckers?”

“The next time I have to wait for you—” Patricia began, and then Simon stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“Don’t look now,” he said in a low voice, “but something tall, dark, and rancid is coming up on our starboard quarter.”

The newcomer wasn’t really tall. He stood several inches below the Saint’s seventy-four, but he gave the impression of height by his manner: suave, completely poised.

“Good evening,” he said, his dark eyes flickering up and down Pat in appreciation. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Esteban. Welcome to the Quarterdeck.”

“How do you do, Esteban?” said the Saint. “Quite well, I guess, from the looks of things.”

Esteban smiled, and made a comprehensive gesture at the crowd.

“Always there are many people at the Quarterdeck Club. We conduct honest games. But what will you play? Roulette, faro, blackjack?”

“None but the brave chemin de fer,” murmured the Saint. “It’s nice of you to give us a choice of weapons. But as a matter of fact, we’re looking for a friend. A Mrs Verity.”

The dark eyes went flat.

“Ah,” Esteban said without expression. “Mrs Verity.”

Pat said, “You know her?”

“Who does not, señorita? Of course.”

“She’s here, isn’t she?”

“I am afraid you are to be disappointed. I think Mrs Verity has gone.”

“You think?” Simon repeated pointedly. “Did you see her go?”

Esteban shrugged, his face still blank and brown.

“There are so many. It is hard to say.”

Simon’s stare could have been fashioned in bronze. “You wouldn’t be stalling, would you, Esteban?” he asked with gentle deadliness.

“She told us she’d wait for us,” Pat said. “When did she leave?”

Esteban smiled suddenly, the accommodating host.

“I try to find out for you. Mrs Verity like to play the big, big stake, take the big risk. Maybe she hit too many times wrong at the blackjack; perhaps she went for more money... Please, will you have a drink on the promenade deck while I make inquiries? Out here...”

He ushered them towards French doors that opened on one side of the gaming room, and bowed himself away. The patio was dappled with moonlight and the shadows of palm fronds, but it seemed to have no appeal for the other customers. Simon lighted a cigarette, while Patricia walked to a rail trimmed with unnecessary life belts, and gazed out at the vista of landscaped ground sloping gently to the moongladed sea.

She caught her breath at the scene, and then shivered slightly.

“It’s so beautiful it hurts,” she said. “And yet it seems every time we find a romantic spot like this, there’s something... I don’t know, but this place gives me the creeps.”

“Inside,” the Saint said, “the creeps are giving to Esteban. I don’t know if you’d call that a fair exchange.”

He looked up as a waiter arrived.

“Esteban’s compliments, sir. Would you and the lady care for anything?”

“Very handsome of Esteban,” the Saint said. “We’ll have double Manhattans made with a good bourbon, and—”

He broke off as a flat splat! broke the silence off in the direction of the sea, seeming to come from a clump of magnolia trees.

“What was that?” Patricia breathed.

“Probably a backfire, miss,” the waiter said. “Somebody having trouble with a car.”

“On account of driving it into the sea?” Simon said, and swung a leg over the rail.

“Could a motorboat do that?” Pat asked.

“No, darling. Come on.”

“About your drinks, sir—”

“Don’t put any cherries in them,” said the Saint.

He sped down a winding path to the deeply shadowed little grove of trees, white with blossoms that were like wax in the moonlight, and Patricia was only a stride behind him.

It took no searching at all to find the body. It lay sprawled under a tree, half in shadow, staring upward with glazed eyes that would never see again. It was — had been — Lida Verity. She held an automatic pistol in one hand, and under the swell of her left breast was a small dark hole and a spreading stain.

The Saint made a brief examination, and knew while he did it that he was only deferring to a conventional routine. There was no doubt now that Lida Verity had had reason to call him, and the line of his mouth was soured by the recollection of his earlier flippancy.

He knew that Patricia was only obeying the same inescapable conventions when she said, “Simon — is she—”

He nodded.

“Now she isn’t scared anymore.”

Lida Verity had lived — gaily, indifferently, passionately, thoughtfully, frantically. Her life had echoed with the tinkle of champagne glasses, Mendelssohn’s solemnity, the purr of sleek motors, the chatter of roulette frets, before the final sound of a gun in the night had changed the tense of the declarative sentence “I am.”

The Saint stood quietly summarizing the available data: the body, the wound, the gun, the time, the place. And as he stood, with Patricia wordless beside him, a whisper of footsteps announced the coming of Esteban.

Simon’s eyes hardened as they moved up the proprietor of that palace of chance in which only the guests took the chance.

“Welcome to the wake, comrade,” he said coldly.

Esteban looked over the situation. His expression was impassive, yet his dark eyes were sharp as he added the factors and came up with an answer.

“The waiter told me there was some trouble,” he said, exactly like one of his headwaiters dealing with some trivial complaint. “You found her — like this?”

“We did.”

“Is she—”

“You’ve lost your place in the script,” Simon said patiently. “We’ve already read that line.”

“I am sorry,” Esteban said bloodlessly. “She was a lovely lady.”

“Somebody didn’t share your opinion,” the Saint said.

The words hung in the quiet night, as if they were three-dimensional, to be touched, and turned, and examined. The pause lengthened while the Saint lighted a cigarette without taking his eyes off Esteban. His meaning seemed to materialize slowly during the silence.

“But—” Esteban gestured at the body, face upward, black hair glinting in the wash of moonlight. “The gun is in her hand. Surely you cannot mean—”

“She was murdered.”

“But that is impossible!” Esteban protested. “It is so obvious, Mr Templar. It is suicide.”

“Lida wouldn’t have killed herself!” Patricia said hotly. “She was so — so alive. She wouldn’t, I tell you!”

“Madame,” Esteban said sadly, “you do not know. She lose much money tonight at the gaming table. Perhaps more than she should.”

“How much?” Simon asked bluntly.

Esteban shrugged.

“We do not keep accounts. She buy many chips for the roulette table.”

“A few minutes ago you thought ‘perhaps’ she had been losing at blackjack. Now you seem to know different.”

Esteban’s shoulders rose another inch.

“You ask me to find out, I accommodate you. And now I go call the sheriff. I must ask you not to disturb anything.”

“I think,” the Saint said softly, “that before the evening is out we shall disturb many things, my friend.”

Esteban went back up the path, and the Saint took Patricia’s arm and led her off at a tangent to pass around the outside of the building. He had several more questions to ask, and he thought he knew where to start asking them.

In front of the club, the Admiral was admitting new customers on a froth of salt-water argot. He greeted the Saint and Pat with his largest smile.

“Ahoy, mates! Enjoying the trip?”

“That is hardly an accurate description of our emotions at the moment,” Simon said. “We’re after a little information about an incident that occurred a few moments ago.”

“I keep an accurate log, sir. Fire away.”

“Did you see Mrs Verity come out of the club?”

“Aye, that I did, not more than fifteen minutes ago. Fact is, I’d just sounded four bells when she went ashore.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?” Simon asked sharply. “You knew we were waiting for her.”

“Why, shiver my timbers, sir, I supposed she’d already seen you. It’s hardly my place to stop the passengers.”

“Hmm. I see.”

“Did you miss her, sir?”

“We did, but somebody else didn’t. They got her dead center.”

The Admiral blinked, and seemed to examine the remark for some time. A puzzled frown formed on his round face.

“Blow me down, sir, but your message isn’t clear.”

“She’s dead.”

The Admiral’s jaw dropped.

“No! Why, she was smiling pretty as pretty when she passed me, sir. Give me a dollar, too. If I’d known she was going to scuttle herself, I’d have made her heave to.”

Simon gave him a long speculative stare.

“That’s an interesting deduction, chum,” he murmured. “When did I say that she killed herself?”

The man blinked.

“Why, what else, sir? Surely nobody would harm a fine lady like Mrs Verity. Tell me, sir, what did happen?”

“She was shot.” The Saint pointed. “On the other side of the building, down towards the beach. Did you notice anyone wandering about outside?”

The Admiral thought, chin in gloved hand.

“No, sir. Only Mrs. Verity. She went off that way, and I supposed she was going to her car.”

“But you didn’t see her drive out.”

“I didn’t notice, sir. There were other passengers arriving and leaving at the same time, and I was pretty busy.”

“But you noticed that no one else was wandering around.”

“That’s just my impression, sir. Of course, there’s the back way out to the promenade deck too.”

The Saint’s cigarette glowed brightly again to a measured draw.

“I see. Well, thanks...”

He took Patricia back into the club and located the bar. They sat on high stools and ordered bourbon. Around them continued the formless undertones of the joint, the clink of chips, the rattle of dice, the whir of wheels, the discreet drone of croupiers, the tinkle of ice and glass, a low-key background broken from time to time by the crash of a cocktail mixer or a burst of high excited laughter. For the other guests of the Quarterdeck Club, life went on unaware of the visit of Death, and if the employees had heard anything of it, their faces were trained to inscrutability.

“Do you think I’m nuts?” Simon asked presently. “Do you think it was suicide?”

“It doesn’t seem possible,” Patricia said thoughtfully. “I keep thinking of the dress she was wearing.”

Simon regarded her.

“That,” he said, with some asperity, “would naturally be the key to the whole thing. Was she correctly dressed for a murder?”

“You idiot,” said his lady, in exasperation. “That was a Mainbocher, an original! No pretty girl in her right mind would ruin an expensive dress like that by putting a bullet through it. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

“But we didn’t see it, darling,” Simon reminded her gently. “Not with our own eyes.”

He put down his glass and found the silent-moving Esteban at his elbow again.

“The sheriff is here, Mr Templar. You will please come this way?”

It could have been suspected, from his appearance, that Sheriff Newt Haskins had spent all his life in black alpaca. One must admit that his first article of apparel was probably three-cornered, but he wore the tropical-weight black as if he had never changed his clothes since he got any. He sat with his well-worn but carefully shined black shoes on Esteban’s polished maple desk and welcomed Simon with a mere flick of his keen gray eyes, and Patricia Holm with the rather sad faint smile of a man long past the age when the sight of such beauty would inspire any kind of activity—

“Can’t say I’m exactly pleased to see you again, Saint, said Haskins. “How do, Miss Holm.” The amenities fulfilled, he turned to Esteban. “Well?”

Esteban shrugged.

“I tell you on the phone. You have seen the body?

“Yep, I saw it. And I’m sure curious” — he looked at the Saint — “Mr Templar.”

“So am I, Sheriff,” Simon said easily, “but possibly not about the same thing.”

“You admit you came here lookin’ for the dead woman, son?”

“Now, daddy,” the Saint remonstrated. “You know I’d be looking for a live woman.”

“Hum,” Newt Haskins said. “Reckon so. But the law’s found plenty o’ dead people around right after you been in the neighborhood. So when I see you here right next to a death that’s just happened, I kinda naturally start wonderin’ how much you know about it.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting that I murdered her?”

“You done the suggestin’, son. That she was murdered, that is. Everything else points to the lady’s takin’ the hard way out of a jam.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Will you excuse me?” Esteban said. “My guests...”

Sheriff Newt Haskins waved a negligent hand.

“Go ahead, Esteban. Call you if I want ya.” To the Saint, after Esteban had gone, he said, “He ain’t much help.”

“Are you sure he couldn’t be if he wanted to?”

“Wa’al—” Newt Haskins shrugged his thin shoulders noncommittally. “Let’s get back to your last question. Nope, I don’t think Mrs Verity shot herself. Seems how good-lookin’ dames like her hate to disfigure themselves. It’s generally gas, or sleepin’ tablets. Still, you can’t say it’s never happened.”

Pat said, “Think of that little evening bag. Lida wouldn’t have carried a gun in that.”

Haskins pulled his long upper lip.

“It ain’t exactly probable, ma’am,” he agreed. “But on the other hand, it ain’t impossible, either.”

“Permit me to call your attention,” Simon said, “to one thing that is impossible.”

“The white thread caught in the trigger guard?” Haskins anticipated blandly. “Yup, I saw that, son.”

“You’ve got good eyes for your age, daddy. It’s a white cotton thread. Lida Verity was wearing a green silk dress. She didn’t have anything white on her that I noticed. On the other hand, if someone had wiped the gun with a handkerchief to get rid of fingerprints—”

Haskins nodded, his eyes on Patricia.

“You’re wearin’ a white jacket thing, Miss Holm.”

“This bolero? You can’t suggest that I—”

“Don’t get excited darling,” said the Saint. “The sheriff is just stirring things up, to see what comes to the top.”

Haskins held the creases in his leathery face unchanged.

“Any reason, son, why you and Miss Holm shouldn’t lay your cards on the table?”

“We always like to know who’s staying in the game, daddy. Somebody around this place has a couple of bullets, back to back.”

The lanky officer sighed. He picked up a glass paperweight, turned it in bony fingers, gazed into it pensively.

“I guess I’ll have to put it to you straight, then.”

“A novelty,” the Saint said, “from the law. You’re going to say that Mrs Verity was loaded down with moola.”

“An’ might have been shaken down for some of it. Your crystal ball’s workin’ almost as good as mine, son...”

The Saint looked out into space, poising puppets with a brown hand.

“If you’ll just concentrate... concentrate... I may be able to do more — I have it!” He might have expected to get his palm crossed with a silver dollar. “My record leads you to suspect me of a slight tendency towards—”

“Bein’ interested in other folks’ money.”

“Your confidence touches me.”

“That ain’t all that may be touchin’ you soon, son.”

“Now you’ve broken the spell,” said the Saint reproachfully. “We are no longer in tune with the infinite. So — it seems as if we may have to leave you with your problem. Unless, of course, you propose to arrest me now and fight it out with my lawyers later.”

“Not right away, son. We don’t none of us want to be too hasty. But just don’t get too far away, or the old police dog might have to start bayin’ a trail.”

“We’ll be around,” said the Saint, and ushered Patricia out.

As the murmurous inanities of the public rooms lapped around them again, she glanced up and found his eyes as blue and debonair as if no cares had ever crossed his path. The smile he gave her was as light as gosling down.

“I hardly think,” he drawled, “that we have bothered Señor Esteban enough. Would’st you care to join me?”

“Try and lose me,” said the girl.

They found Esteban keeping a weather eye on the play of his guests, and followed his politely lifted brows to the patio.

“The moonlight, she is so beautiful,” Esteban said, with all the earnestness of a swing fan discussing Handel. “Did the sheriff let you go?”

“Like he let you — on probation,” Simon answered cheerfully. “He just told us to stick around.”

The man formed insolent question marks with the corners of his mouth.

“I did not think you would care to stay here after your friend kill herself.”

“I heard you the first time, Esteban. I’m sure if your customers have to die on the premises, you’d much rather have a Monte Carlo suicide than a murder. It wouldn’t scare half so many suckers away. But we happen to know that Mrs Verity wasn’t the sort to be worried about being blackjacked out of a few hundreds, or even thousands, in this kind of clip joint.”

There was no reaction in the dark lizard eyes.

“You hint at something, maybe?”

“I hint at nothing, maybe. I’m still asking questions. And one thing I’ve been wondering is, who did she come here with?”

Esteban repeated, without inflection, “Who she come here with?”

“She wouldn’t have come here alone,” said Patricia. “She didn’t come with her husband, because he’s still in Tokyo. So — who?”

“A little while ago, madame, you tell me she come here to meet you.”

“Tonight, perhaps,” Simon admitted patiently. “But this wasn’t her first visit. The Admiral of the watch seemed to know her quite well. So who did she usually come with?”

Esteban shrugged.

“I do not inquire about these things.”

The Saint’s voice became rather gentle.

“Comrade, you don’t seem to get the point. I’m a guy who might make a great deal of trouble for you. On the other hand, I might save you a lot.”

Esteban took note of the steady blue eyes, the deceptive smile that played across the Saint’s chiseled mouth. He forced a laugh.

“You frighten me terribly, Señor Templar.”

“But you don’t frighten me, Don Esteban. Because whatever Sheriff Haskins may think, I have the advantage of knowing that I had nothing to do with killing Mrs Verity. Which leaves me with a clear head to concentrate on finding out who did. So if you don’t co-operate, I can only draw one conclusion.”

There was silence, save for the rustle of palm fronds and the thud and hiss of the surf — and the muffled sounds of the Quarterdeck doing business as usual.

At last Esteban said craftily, “What will you do if I help you?”

“That depends on how much you know and how much you tell. I don’t mind admitting that Miss Holm and I are slightly allergic to people who kill our friends. Also, it wouldn’t bother me a bit if the sheriff closed your Parcheesi parlor. You ought to know how much you’ve really got to be scared of.”

Esteban seemed to give him the same poker-faced assessment that he would have performed on a new customer who wanted to cash a check. And with the same impenetrable decisiveness he said, “Mrs Verity come here with Mr Maurice Kerr. He is what you call a — ah, playboy. A leetle old, perhaps, but most charming. Perhaps you should ask him your questions. If you wait, I tell you where he lives.”

The address he came back with was only a half mile south, on a side street off Collins Avenue. There were still lights in the house when the Saint’s car pulled up outside a mere matter of minutes later, and a man who could only have been Kerr himself, in white tie and a smoking jacket, opened the door to the Saint’s casual knock. His somewhat florid face peered out under the porch light with strictly reasonable ineffusiveness.

He said, “What do you want? Who are you?” But his tone was still genial enough to be described as charming.

“A moment with you, Mr Maurice Kerr,” the Saint answered. “You may call me the Saint — temporarily. Before we’re through with you, you may think of some other names. And this is Miss Holm.”

Kerr’s eyebrows rose like levitating gray bushes.

“I don’t pretend to understand you.”

“May we come in? This is a matter of life and death.”

Kerr hesitated, frowned, then swung the door wide.

“Do. In here, in the library.”

The library was lighted for the benefit of those who liked to read comfortably at the least expense to their eyesight. The walls were lined with books, an artificial fire flickered in the fireplace, and chairs, lovingly fashioned to fit the human form, were spaced at tasty intervals.

“Sit down,” Kerr invited graciously. “What is this all about?”

Simon remained standing. He put his lighter to a cigarette and said, “Our spies tell us that you went to the Quarterdeck Club with Lida Verity tonight.”

He risked the exaggeration intentionally, and saw it pay off as Kerr paused to pick up the highball which he had obviously put down when they knocked.

Kerr sipped the drink, looked at the Saint. “Yes?”

“Why did you leave the club without her?”

“May I ask what that has to do with you?”

“Lida was a friend of mine,” Patricia said. “She asked us to help her.”

“Just before she died,” the Saint said.

Kerr’s soft manicured hand tightened around his glass. His dark eyes swung like pendulums between the Saint and his lady. He didn’t catch his breath — quite, and the Saint wondered why.

“But that’s ghastly!” Kerr’s voice expressed repugnance, shock, and semi-disbelief. “She — she lost too much?”

“Meaning?” the Saint asked.

“She killed herself, of course.”

“Lida,” Simon explained, “was shot through the heart in the grounds of the Quarterdeck Club.”

“You’re trying to frighten me,” Kerr said. “Lida couldn’t have been—”

“Who said so? Who told you she committed suicide?”

“Why, why — it was just a—” Kerr broke off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The Saint did not actually groan out loud, but the impulse was there.

“I can’t understand why this is always happening to me,” he complained. “I thought I spoke reasonably good English. The idea should be easy to grasp. All I told you was that Lida Verity was dead. You immediately assumed that she’d committed suicide. Statistics show that suicide is a helluva long way from being the most common way to die. Therefore the probability is that something or someone specifically gave you that idea. Either you knew that she might have had good reason to commit suicide, or somebody else has already talked to you. Whichever it is, I want to know about it.”

Kerr licked his lips.

“I fail to see what right you have to come here and cross-examine me,” he said, but his voice was not quite as positive as the words.

“Let’s not make it a matter of rights,” said the Saint easily. “Let’s put it down to my fatal bigness of heart. I’m giving you the chance to talk to me before you talk to the sheriff. And you’ll certainly have to talk to the sheriff if the gun that Lida was shot with happens to be registered in your name.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed to be worth taking, and Simon felt an inward leap of optimism as he saw that at least he had come close to his mark. Kerr’s hand jumped involuntarily so that the ice in his highball gave a sharp tinkle against the glass, and his face turned a couple of shades lighter in color.

“What sort of gun was she shot with?”

“A thirty-two Colt automatic.”

Kerr took it with his eyes. There was a long moment’s silence while he seemed to search either for something to say or for the voice to say it.

“It could have been my gun.” He formed the words at last. “I lent it to her this evening.”

“Oh?”

“She asked me if I had a gun I could lend her.”

“Why did you let her have it if you thought she was going to shoot herself?”

“I didn’t think so at the time. She told me she was going to meet someone that she was scared of, but she didn’t tell me who it was, and she wouldn’t let me stay with her. She was rather overwrought and very mysterious about it. I couldn’t get anything out of her. But I never thought about suicide — then.”

Simon’s blue eyes held him relentlessly through a cool drift of cigarette smoke.

“And that,” said the Saint, “answers just half my question. So you weren’t thinking about suicide. So somebody told you. Who?”

Muscles twitched sullenly over Kerr’s brows and around the sides of his mouth.

“I fail to see—”

“Let me help you,” said the Saint patiently. “Lida Verity didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered. It wasn’t even a planned job to look like suicide. This unanimous eagerness to brush it off as a suicide was just an afterthought, and not a very brilliant one either. The sheriff doesn’t believe it and I don’t believe it. But there’s one difference between the sheriff and me. I may be a red herring to him, but I’m not a red herring to myself. I know this is one killing I didn’t do. So I’ve got a perfectly clear head to concentrate on finding out who did it. If anyone seems to be stalling or holding out on me, the only conclusion I can come to is that they’re either guilty themselves or covering up for a guilty pal. In either case, I’m not going to feel very friendly about it. And that brings us to another difference between the sheriff and me. When I don’t feel friendly about people, I’m not tied down by a lot of red tape and pettifogging legal procedures. As you may have heard. If you are covering up for a pal he must mean a lot to you, if you’re willing to let me hang you for him.”

Kerr took another sip of his drink. It was a long sip, turning gradually into a gulp. When he set down his glass, the last pretense of dignified obstinacy had gone out of him.

“I did have a phone call from one of the men at the club,” he admitted.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know exactly. He said, ‘The Saint’s on his way to see you. Mrs Verity just shot herself here. Esteban says to tell you not to talk.’ ”

“Why should this character expect you to do what Esteban told you?”

Kerr fidgeted.

“I work for Esteban, in a sort of way.”

“As a shill?” Simon inquired.

The other flushed.

“I bring people to the club and I get a small commission on the business. It’s perfectly legitimate.”

“It would be in a legitimate business. So you shill for the joint. You latch on to visiting pigeons around town and steer them in to be plucked.” Simon studied him critically. “Times must be getting tough, Maurice. I seem to remember that you used to do much better marrying them occasionally and getting a nice settlement before they divorced you.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Kerr said redly. “I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve never been mixed up with murder, and I don’t want to be.”

The Saint’s cigarette rose to a last steady glow before he let it drop into an ashtray.

“Whether you want it or not, you are,” he said. “But we’ll take the best care we can of your tattered reputation.”

He held out his hand to Patricia and helped her up, and they went out and left Maurice Kerr on his own doorstep, looking like a rather sullen and perturbed penguin, with an empty glass still clutched in his hand.

“And that,” said Patricia, as the Saint nursed his car around a couple of quiet blocks and launched it into the southbound stream of Collins Avenue, “might be an object lesson to Dr Watson, but I left my dictionary at home.”

The Saint dipped two fingers into the open pack in his breast pocket for another Pall Mall, and his smile tightened over the cigarette as he reached forward to press the dashboard lighter.

“Aside from the fact that you’re much too beautiful to share an apartment safely with Mr Holmes,” he said, “what seems to bother you now?”

“Why did you leave Kerr like that? He was working for Esteban. He told you so himself. He was telling you the story that Esteban told him to tell you — you even made him admit that. And Lida seems to have been shot with his gun. It’s all too obvious.”

Simon nodded, his eyes on the road.

“That’s the whole trouble,” he said. “It’s all too obvious. But if she really was shot with Kerr’s gun — which seems to be as certain as any guess can be — why did the guy leave it behind to lay a trail straight to his doorstep? He may be a poop, but can you believe that he’s that half-witted? There’s nothing in his record to show that he had softening of the brain before. A guy who can work his way through four rich wives in ten years may not be the most desirable character on earth, but he has to have something on the ball. Most of these over-bank-balanced broads have been around too.”

Patricia fingered strands of golden hair out of her eyes.

“He doesn’t sound like the dream-boy of all time,” she said. “I can imagine how Dick Verity would like to hear that Lida and Maurice were a steady twosome.” Her eyes turned to him with a sudden widening. “Simon, do you think—”

“That there was blackmail in it?” The Saint’s face was dark and cold. “Yes, darling, I think we’re getting closer. But I don’t see the fine hand of Maurice in it. A man with his technique doesn’t suddenly have to resort to anything so crude as murder. But you meet all kinds of types at the Quarterdeck Club — and I think we belong there.”

The moon was the same, and the rustle of palm fronds along the tall dark margins of the road, but the night’s invitation to romance had turned into something colder that enclosed them in a bubble of silence which only broke on the eventually uprising neons of the Quarterdeck Club and the hurricane voice of the Admiral.

“Avast there!” he bellowed, as the car came to a stop. “My orders are to repel boarders.”

Simon opened the door and swung out a long leg.

“A noble duty, Horatio,” he murmured, “but we belong here — remember? The sheriff wouldn’t like it if he thought we’d jumped ship.”

The Admiral stood firmly planted in his path. His face was no longer ruddily friendly, and his eyes were half shuttered.

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know how you were able to disembark, but my orders—”

That was as far as he got, for at that moment the precise section of his anatomy known to box-fighting addicts as the button came into unexpected violent contact with an iron fist which happened at that moment, by some strange coincidence, to be traveling upwards at rocket speed. For one brief instant the Admiral enjoyed an entirely private fireworks display of astonishing brilliance, and thereupon lost interest in all mundane phenomena.

The Saint caught him as he crumpled and eased his descent to the gravel. There was no other movement in the parking lot, and the slow drumming of the distant surf blended with a faint filtration of music from inside the club to overlay the scene with the beguiling placidity of a nocturne. Simon took another grip and heaved the Admiral quite gently into the deeper shadows of some shrubbery, where he began to bind and gag him deftly with the Admiral’s own handkerchief, necktie, and suspenders.

“You, too, can be a fine figure of a man, bursting with vibrant health and super strength,” recited Patricia. “Send for our free booklet, They Laughed When I Talked Back to the Truck Driver.”

“If Mary Livingstone ever loses her voice, you can get a job with Jack Benny,” said the Saint. “Now while I finish this up, will you be a good girl and go in and engage Esteban in dulcet converse — with his back to the door. I’ll be with you in two seconds.”

To be drearily accurate, it was actually sixty-eight seconds later when the Saint entered the gaming room again. He found Esteban facing a vivacious Pat, and it was clear from his back that it would take something rather important to drag him away from her.

The Saint was able to provide this. It manifested itself as a pressure in the center of Esteban’s spine.

“This isn’t my pipe, Esteban,” he breathed in the entrepreneur’s ear. “Shall we adjourn to your private office, or would you like bits of your sacroiliac all over the joint?”

Esteban said nothing. He led the way, with the Saint walking apparently arm in arm with him, and Pat still chattering on the other side.

“—and I am going to write to my mother, Mr Esteban, and tell her what a romantic place you—”

“Now we can wash this up,” the Saint said.

He closed the door behind them. Esteban stood very still.

“What do you expect this to get you, Mr Templar?”

“A peek in your safe,” said the Saint softly.

“The safe is locked.”

“This is still the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sacroiliacs,” Simon reminded him. “The safe can be unlocked.”

“You wouldn’t dare to shoot!”

“Not until I count to three, I wouldn’t. It’s a superstition with me. One... two...”

“Very well,” Esteban said.

Little beads of sweat stood on his olive brow as he went to the wall safe and twirled the dial.

Simon handed his gun to Pat.

“Cover him. If he tries anything, shoot him in his posterity.” He added to Esteban, “She will, too.”

Esteban stood to one side as the Saint emptied the safe of bundles of currency, account books, and sheaves of business-like papers. He was pleased to find that Esteban was a neat and methodical man. It made the search so much quicker and easier. He had known before he started what kind of thing he was looking for, and there were not too many places to look for it. He was intent and efficient, implacable as an auditor, with none of the lazy flippancy that normally glossed his purposes.

Another voice spoke from the doorway behind him.

“So we’re havin’ a party. Put that gun down, Miss Holm. What would this all be about, son?”

“Come on in, daddy,” Simon said. “I was just deciding who you were going to arrest.”

Esteban’s sudden laugh was sharp with relief. “I think, my friend, the sheriff knows that already. Mr Haskins, I shall be glad to help you with my evidence. They stick me up in my own club, bring me in here, and force me to open the safe. Fortunately you catch them red-handed.”

“That’s the hell of a way to talk about a guy who’s just going to save your worthless neck,” said the Saint.

Newt Haskins pushed his black hat onto the back of his head.

“This had shuah better make a good story, son,” he observed. “But I’m listenin’.”

“It wasn’t too hard to work out,” Simon said seriously. “Lida Verity was being blackmailed, of course. That’s why she told us she was in trouble, instead of calling on you. Blackmail has been a side line in this joint for some time — and a good hunting ground this must be for it, too. This town is always full of wives vacationing from their husbands, and vice versa, and the climate is liable to make them careless. Somebody stooging around this joint could build up interesting dossiers on a lot of people. In fact, somebody did.”

He took a small notebook from his pocket.

“Here it is. Names, dates, details. Items that could be plenty embarrassing if they were used in the wrong way. I’m going to rely on your professional discretion to see that it’s destroyed when you’re through with it.”

“He’s trying to pull the fast one!” Esteban burst out. “He never found such a book in my safe—”

“I didn’t say I did,” Simon responded calmly. “I found it on somebody else. But since you were the most obvious person to be behind the operation, I wanted to nose around in your safe to see if there was anything in it that would confirm or deny. I’m afraid the results let you out. There doesn’t seem to be anything that even remotely connects you. On the other hand, I found this.”

He handed Haskins a slip of paper, and the sheriff squinted at it with his shrewd gray eyes.

“Seems to be a check made out to Esteban,” Haskins said. “It says on the voucher ‘January installment on car-park concession.’ What do you figger that means, son?”

“It means that if the Admiral was paying Esteban for the car-park concession, Esteban could hardly have been using him as part of a blackmail racket. Otherwise the pay-off would have gone the other way. And certainly it would if the Admiral had been doing Esteban’s dirty work when he killed Lida Verity.”

“The Admiral!” Patricia exclaimed.

Simon nodded.

“Of course. Our corny nautical character. He never missed anything that went on here — including Mrs Verity’s rather foolish affair with a superior gigolo and shill named Maurice Kerr. Only she didn’t sit still for blackmail. I guess she told the Admiral she was going to have me take care of him, and she may even have tried to scare him with the gun she’d borrowed. He got mad or lost his head and grabbed the gun and shot her.” The Saint dipped in his pocket again. “Here are the white gloves he always wore. You’ll notice that there’s a tear in one of them. I’m betting that the thread you found in that trigger guard can be proved to have pulled out of that glove.”

Haskins turned the gloves over in his bony hands, and brought his eyes slowly back to the Saint.

“Reckon you done another good job, Saint,” he conceded peacefully. “We’ll soon know... An’ this heah Esteban, he ought to stake you with blue chips all night for lettin’ him out.”

“Letting me out!” Esteban echoed indignantly. The enormity of the injustice done to him grew visibly in his mind, finding voice in a crescendo of righteous resentment. “I tell the world I am let out! That Admiral, he makes agreement with me to pay me half of everything he makes from the concession. And he never tells me — the peeg! — he never tells me anything about this blackmail at all!”