The Saint in Miami

1

What in the absence of a better phrase we must loosely refer to as the thinking processes of Hoppy Uniatz were blissfully uncluttered by teleological complications such as any worry about consequences. His mind, if we must use the word, was a one-way street through which infrequent ideas rolled with the remorseless grandeur of cold molasses towards an unalterable destination. Once it was started, any idea that got caught in this treacly rolling stream was stuck there until it had been through everything that the works had to offer, like a fly in a drop of glue on a Ford production belt

What Simon Templar sometimes remembered too late, as he had done in this instance, was that the traffic in Mr Uniatz's constricted mental thoroughfares moved at such a different rate from that of everybody else that one was apt to overlook the fact that it really did keep moving. In which error one did Mr Uniatz a grave injustice. It was true that an all-foreseeing Providence, designing his skull principally to resist the impact of blackjacks and beer bottles, had been left with little space to spare for grey matter; but nevertheless some room had been found for a substance in which a planted thought could take root and grow with the ageless inevitability of a forming stalagmite. The only trouble with this adagio germination was that the planting of the seed was liable to have been forgotten by the time the resultant blossom coyly showed its head.

It had been like that in this case; and to Hoppy Uniatz it was all so straightforward that he would have been dumbfounded to learn that the Saint had lost touch with the scenario even for a moment.

Hoppy had only a minor difficulty over transportation. He guessed that the Saint might not like to be left without a car, and so he passed up the Cadillac and selected instead a flaming red Lincoln which caught his eye further down the line. There were no keys in it, but that was an elementary problem, which was quickly solved by tearing the wires loose from the ignition lock and making some experimental connections. A beam of pleasure that would have made a baby scream for its mother spread over his homely face as the engine fired, and in a glow of happy innocence he swung the Lincoln out in a spurt of sand and headed off like Parsifal on the spoor of his Grail.

He had few doubts of his ability to finally find his way to the barge — having been there once, that was another relatively minor problem to a man who in his day had safely shepherded trucks of beer and such other valuable cargo over back roads to other equally well-hidden harbours. He turned unerringly on 63rd Street, sped south on Pinetree Drive, and took Dade Boulevard to the Venetian Way. And before he reached the Tamiami Trial he was warmed with another heart-swelling realisation which he had worked out white he drove. This trip need not be regarded as a purely selfish expedition for the gratification of his own thirst. Hoppy remembered that that afternoon he had produced, out of his own head, a theory which the Saint had perhaps been too busy to appreciate. Now, while the Saint was disporting himself with the red-haired wren, he, Uniatz, would be tirelessly following up his Clue…

The road looked a little different by night Hoppy made two false turn-offs, and wasted fifteen minutes getting out of a patch of soft sand, before he found the place where Simon had parked the car that afternoon. When he reached the flat open country beyond the trees he still wasn't sure of his direction. He struck off in what he hoped was the way, letting the growing parchedness of his throat guide him in much the same manner that a camel's instinct leads it to an oasis. Even with this intuitive pilotage, his wide-striped flannels were bedraggled from clutching palmettos when the barge at last showed black against the sky.

As Hoppy put his weight on the gangplank a streak of light fanned across the deck, and Gallipolis stepped out of the door. His flashlight streamed over Hoppy and clicked off.

"By the beard of Xerxes!" said Gallipolis. "Hullo, bad news. What brings you?"

"Uniatz is de name." Hoppy plodded on up and went inside. The heat of the closed and oil-lighted bar struck at him in a wave. "I come out to get some more of dat Florida water, see? I gotta toist."

Gallipolis stopped at the end of the bar. Over his invariable white-toothed grin, his fawn-like eyes stared at Mr Uniatz suspiciously.

"What's the matter — all the joints in town closed up?"

"Dey ain't woit wastin' time in," Mr Uniatz told him feelingly. "A lot of fairies wit' goils' clothes on… Dey ain't got none of dis stuff dat I want, neider. De water you say comes outa de springs."

"Oh."

Gallipolis secured a bottle and glass and slid them along the bar. Hoppy ignored the glass and picked up the bottle. A long draught of the corrosive nectar, to be savoured with the inenarrable contentment which the divine fruit of such a pilgrimage deserved, washed gratifyingly around Mr Uniatz's atrophied taste buds, flowed past his tonsils like Elysian vitriol, and swilled into his stomach with the comforting tang of boiling acid. He liked it. He felt as if angels had picked him up and breathed into him. His memory of the first taste that afternoon had not deceived him. In fact, it had barely done justice to the beverage.

The Greek watched his performance with a certain awe.

"Bud," he said, "if I hadn't seen you hose yourself out with this shine before, and if your story about hauling all the way out here to get some more of it wasn't so lousy, I'd think this was a stall."

Hoppy either did not grasp or did not choose to take up the aspersion on his motives. He waved the bottle at the empty room, breathing deeply while he felt his potion soaking in.

"Sorta quiet in dis jemt tonight, ain't it, pal?" he remarked with comradely interest.

"After you and the Sheriff were here I had to tell the gang to stay home for a bit." The Greek's eyes were softly watchful. "What's the Saint doing now?"

"He's still out wit' a skoit. I gotta go back after a bit, but he says I can take my time."

Mr Uniatz picked up the bottle again and made another experiment. The result was conclusive. There had been no mistake. This was the stuff. At long last, after so many arid years of search and endeavour, Mr Uniatz knew that he had discovered a fluid which was sufficiently potent to penetrate the calloused linings of his intestines and imbue his being with a very faint but fundamentally satisfying glow. It was the goods.

He put down the bottle only because, not having been half full when it was handed to him, it was now quite empty, and reverently exhaled a quantity of pent-up air tainted with dynamite fumes. One spatulate finger stabbed at the bottle as it would touch a holy relic.

"Dey's a fortune in it, pal," he informed Gallipolis in a whisper which vibrated the houseboat like the lowing of a Miura bull.

"If there is," said the Greek, "I'd like to know how."

"Because it don't cost nut'n," Hoppy said witheringly.

"What do you mean, it doesn't cost anything?"

"Because it comes outa de Pool."

Gallipolis lowered one eyelid and studied Hoppy out of the other eye.

"I wonder who's ribbing who now?" he said. "That stuff just comes from a still, bud. It used to be a good racket, but now the Revenuers go about in airplanes and spot them from the sky."

"Well, where is dis still?" Hoppy persisted challengingly. "I know a lotta lugs who'd pay big dough for de distribution."

The Greek reached down and brought up another bottle. His smile veiled the undecided alertness of his gentle eyes.

"Tell me the gag, friend," he invited. "There's something screwy when the Saint wants to start selling shine."

Mr Uniatz laved his throat again. He was face to face with a situation, but the various steps by which he had reached it were not entirely clear. He was, however, acutely conscious of the secondary motive for his visit which he had worked out on the way. The essential rightness of his idea appealed to him more than ever at this stage. He needed some pertinent information to put bones into his Theory. The problem was how to get it, All Greeks were dumb and unresponsive, in Hoppy's racial perspective, and this one appeared to be a typical specimen. Mr Uniatz felt some of the identical delirious frustration which, had he only known it, was one of his own principal contributions to Simon Templar's intellectual overhead.

Confronted with the need for greater extremes of initiative, Hoppy decided that the only tiling was to put more cards on the table.

"Listen, youse. De boss don't wanna sell dis stuff. He wants to bust up de Pool."

"What pool?" asked Gallipolis, and opened his weary eye.

"De Foreign Pool," said Mr Uniatz, suffering. "De pool where March gets it from."

The Greek walked over to where the hanging lamp was smoking in the centre of the room and turned it low.

"What March?" he asked as he returned to the bar.

"Randolph March," groaned Mr Uniatz. "De guy what has de Pool where—"

"You mean the medicine millionaire?"

Mr Uniatz cocked his ears, but decided to give nothing away. He had heard nothing about medicines before, but it might be a lead.

" Maybe," he said sapiently. "Anyhow, dis March has de Pool, an' nobody knows where it's at, an' dat's what we wanna know. Now all you gotta do is tell me where dis stuff comes from."

"You're making me a little dizzy, big boy," said Gallipolis with a smile. "Are you trying to tell me that March is selling this stuff?"

"Soitenly," said Hoppy. "It don't cost him nut'n, so it pays for all his dames. So if we get de Pool, maybe de boss won't mind cuttin' you in."

The Greek dug out another bottle and poured himself a drink.

"I feel a little tired, mister. Suppose we sit down." He led the way to one of the tables and kicked out the opposite chair. When Hoppy was seated across from him, Gallipolis drank and shuddered. "I've been peddling this stuff for a good many years," he said, "but this is the first time I've heard that March was making it."

"De Saint is always de foist to hear anyt'ing," Hoppy assured him proudly.

The Greek's eyes might have been starting to glaze with pardonable vagueness, but he kept on with his heroic effort.

"You think March is making shine at the Pool."

"So he has got a Pool!" Hoppy caught him triumphantly.

Gallipolis wiped a hand back over his curly hair.

"I suppose you could call it that," he answered exhaustedly. "He calls it a hunting lodge. But he did have a coupla dredgers and a gang of men working all summer to cut out a channel and a yacht basin so he could take his boat in, I guess that's the Pool you mean."

Mr Uniatz tilted his bottle again, and gave his oesophagus another sluicing of caustic lotion. His hand did not tremble, because such manifestations of excitement were not possible to a man whose nervous system was assembled out of a few casually connected ganglions of scrap iron and old rope; but the internal incandescence of his accomplishment came as close to causing some such synaptic earthquake as anything else ever had. The swell of vindication in his chest made him look a little bit like an inflated bullfrog.

"Dat's gotta be it," he said earnestly. "Dey dig it out so dey can get more water outa de spring. Dey haul it out in de yacht an' pretend it's medicine. Now me an' de boss go down an' take over this racket You know where to find dis Pool?"

Gallipolis tilted his chair on the rear legs and rocked it back and forth.

"Sure, mister, I know where it is." Being a comparative stranger, he could be forgiven for not following all the involutions of Hoppy's thought, and it seemed harmless to humour him. "An old moonshiner that I buy stuff from told me. He used to have a still near there, but he got chased out when they started working."

Mr Uniatz leaned forward grimly.

"Coujja take us to it?"

The Greek's eyes narrowed.

"You say there's something in it for me?"

"Can ya take us dere?"

"Well," said Gallipolis slowly, "maybe I could. Or I could find a guy who could take you. But how much would there be in it for me?"

"Plenty," said the Saint.

He stood in the open doorway, debonair and immaculate, smiling, with a cigarette between his lips and a glint in his eyes like summer lightning in a blue sky. He knew that he had come to the last lap of his chase, by the grace of God and the thirst of Hoppy Uniatz.

2

"Old home week," said Gallipolis. His voice was as mild as a summer breeze on the olive-clad slopes of Macedonia. "Get yourself a glass and sit down, Mr Saint. I suppose you're also dry."

"I'll pass up the liquid fire." Simon sat down and fixed Mr Uniatz with a sardonic eye. "It's a good job I figured out that I'd find you here, Hoppy."

Something in his tone that sounded like a reproof, even to Hoppy's pachydermatous sensitivity, made Mr Uniatz sit up with a pained look of reproach on his battered countenance.

"Lookit, boss," he objected aggrievedly. "Ya tell me to come here, don'tcha, when we are in de clip jernt? So after we hear Rogers I say can I go now, anja say to take all de time I want—"

"I know," said the Saint patiently. "That's the way I worked it out, in the end. It took me quite a long time, though… Never mind. You've done a swell night's work."

"Dat's what I t'ink, boss," said Mr Uniatz cheering. "I woiked out everyt'ing on my own. Gallipolis is okay. We cut him in, an' he takes us to de Pool."

The Saint settled back and smiled. He had a feeling of dumb gratitude that made him conscious of the inadequacy of words. It was a coincidence that made him giddy to contemplate, of course; and yet it was not the first time that the glutinous rivers of Mr Uniatz's lucubration had wound their way to results that swifter brains sought in vain. But the recurrence of the miracle took nothing away from the Saint's pristine homage to its perfection. He had boarded the barge, silently as he always moved, just in time to hear Gallipolis make the speech which had tumbled with the clear brilliance of a diamond through the obscurity of a dead end which had brought him within inches of cold despair; and he had not even had time to adjust his eyes to the light that had destroyed the dark.

His strong fingers drummed on the table edge.

"This afternoon you offered me a job, Gallipolis. I'd like to change it around tonight and offer you one."

"For plenty?" The white teeth flashed

"For plenty."

"I may be running a stud juke, but I have a conscience." Gallipolis filled his glass again. "If I have to step on it too badly, the price comes high."

"I want to know one thing first," said the Saint. "Were you just stringing Hoppy along when you told him about this hunting anchorage or whatever it's called that March has got?"

"No, sir."

Simon drew the glowing end of his cigarette an eighth of an inch nearer his mouth, and exhaled smoke like the timed drift of sand spilling through an hour-glass.

It was so beautiful, so perfect, so complete… And yet, twentyfour hours ago, it had seemed impossible that among the million coves of the Florida coastline he could ever find the base of the mysterious submarine which had first given him a hint of the magnitude of what he might be up against. Twentyfour minutes ago, it had seemed even more impossible that he could discover the destination of the March Hare in time for the knowledge to offer any hope… And now, with a word, both questions were answered at once. And once again the answer was so simple that he should have seen it at once — if he had only known enough… But no one who was not looking for what he was looking for would have thought anything of it. A man like March could have a hunting lodge in the Everglades without causing any comment; and if he wanted to dredge out a channel and an anchorage big enough to accommodate a vessel the size of the March Hare — well, that was the sort of eccentric luxury a millionaire could afford to indulge. Haskins might have known about it all the time and never seen any reason to mention it. And now the Saint couldn't go back to Haskins…

Again the Saint brightened the tip of his cigarette.

"In that case," he said, "you could do your little job of guide work."

"Uh-huh." Gallipolis drained his glass. "You could hire bloodhounds cheaper. How many people do I have to kill?"

"That all depends," said the Saint benignly.

"I thought there was a gimmick in it,' said the Greek. "Let's quit beating around the bush. You've got something on Randolph March, and I don't mean that boloney about him making shine. He'd be pretty big game, Mr Saint. I wonder if he mightn't be too big for the likes of you and me."

Simon's eyes wandered estimatively over the room.

"You aren't doing much business, are you?" he said.

"I can thank you for some of that. When the Sheriff starts calling at a place like this, you ease up and like it. The goodwill doesn't last when they start loading your customers into a wagon and carting them off to the bastille."

"If you had a grand," said the Saint abstractedly, "you could open up somewhere else and have quite a nice joint."

"Yes," said Gallipolis. "If I left that much money, every sponge diver in Tarpon Springs would be pickled in red wine for three days after I die." He rubbed slender fingers through his hair and looked at his palm. "If there really is that much dough in the world, mister, I can take you out to the middle of the Everglades and find you snowballs in a peat fire."

Simon took a roll out of his pocket and peeled off a bill.

"What does this look like?"

"Read it to me," said the Greek. "My eyes are bad, and I can't get by that first O."

"It's a century. Just for an advance. To earn the other nine, you take me to this place of March's. And I want to get there the quickest way there is."

"The quickest way is overland through the swamps," said Gallipolis tersely. "But the only guy who could walk on that stuff died nineteen hundred and forty years ago."

He got up from the table and moved towards the back of the bar.

The Saint said, deprecatingly: "It's true I'm carrying a lot of money, but Hoppy and I are carrying other things too. They go bang when they see machine guns."

"You're damn near as suspicious as I am," Gallipolis said petulantly. "I'm looking for a map. I thought we might study it a while."

He pulled out a folded sheet from behind the counter, while Hoppy's gun hand tentatively relaxed from its hair-trigger hovering.

Gallipolis spread out the map on the counter and said: "Turn up the lamp and come here."

Simon complied, and bent over the sheet beside him. The Greek pointed to a spot on the lower west coast of the state.

"March's lodge is somewhere in here on Lostman's River, near Cannon Bay. The nearest town is Ochopee, and that's about seventy miles from here on the Tamiami Trail."

The Saint gazed down at the vast green wilderness on the map marked "Everglades National Park". Only the thin red line of the Tamiami Trail broke its featureless expanse of two thousand square miles or more. In all the rest of that area from the coastal creeks inland there was nothing else shown — nothing but the close-packed little spidery bird-tracks that cartographers use to indicate a swamp. It was as if exploration had glanced at the outlines and then decided to go and look somewhere else. Only a finger's length from Miami on the large-scale map, they offered less informative detail than a map of the moon.

And that was where he had to go — quickly.

It had to be him; he knew that He couldn't run back crying for Haskins or Rogers. It was outside Haskins' county, anyhow, and he could put decimal points in front of the probability of getting a strange sheriff interested. Rogers would not be much easier. Rogers would probably have to get authorisation from Washington, or an Act of Congress, or something. And what was the jurisdiction, anyway? What charges could he bring and substantiate? Any authorities would want at least some good evidence before going into violent action against a man like March. And there was not one shred of proof to give them — nothing but the Saint's own suspicions and deductions and a little personal knowledge for which there was no other backing than his word. It would take hours to convince any hard-headed official that he wasn't raving, even if he could ever do it at all; it might take days to get the machinery moving. The State Department would brood cautiously over the international issues… And he had to be quick.

Quick, because of Patricia and Peter. Who were also the last and most important reason why he had to hesitate to call for official help. They were hostages for the Saint's good behaviour — he didn't need to receive any message from the ungodly to tell him that. The counter-attack had been made with the breath-taking speed of blitzkrieg generalship. The pincers movement against himself had been balked, and without a pause one of the flanking columns had swung off and trapped Peter and Patricia. Yet even if Simon could enlist the forces of the Law and send them into the fight, Captain Friede would only have to drop the hostages overboard somewhere with a few lengths of anchor chain tied round them, and blandly protest his complete puzzlement about all the fuss. And the Saint had no doubt that that was exactly what he would do…

"Ochopee." The Saint's voice was quiet and steely cool "What is there there?"

"Tomato farms," said Gallipolis, "and nothing much more except a lot of water in the rainy season. But I know an Indian there. If there's any guy living who can take you through the Glades to where you want to go, he's it."

Simon laid a paper of matches along the scale of miles and began to measure distances.

Gallipolis stopped him.

"You're on the wrong track. We pick up the Indian at Ochopee, but you couldn't get down from there. You'll have to come back thirty miles to where you see this elbow marked 27 in the Tamiami Trail. March's place can only be about ten miles from there. Of course, it might be nearer twentyfive or thirty the way you'd have to go. If we started early tomorrow morning, we might be able to get in there by the following day."

The Saint figured quickly. It was a hundred miles to Ochopee and back to the bend of the elbow where they would enter the swamp. If that left March's harbour only about ten miles away—

"We aren't going on bicycles," he said. "We can drive to Ochopee in an hour and a half. We should be able to pick up your Indian and get back to the elbow in another hour easily. That ought to get us to Lostman's River early in the morning.

The Greek cupped one hand and supported his chin with one arm on the bar.

"Mister," he said dreamily, "you're talking about something you just don't know. You're talking about covering ten miles of Everglades. That's oak and willow hammocks, and cypress and thorns and mud and quicksand and creek and diamond-back rattlesnakes and moccasins — and at night I'll throw in a panther or two. This ain't walking around Miami. That web-footed Indian might get you there alive if I can talk him into it, but even he'd have to do it by day."

Simon made rapid calculations on the course of the March Hare. The yacht could probably tick off twenty knots, and might do more with pushing. It was two hundred and fifty miles if she went around Key West to Cannon Bay on the Gulf, which would take her twelve hours or more. But if the submarine operated out of Lostman's River too, the chances were that the astute Captain Friede knew other channels through the Keys which might save as much as a hundred miles.

The Saint folded the hundred-dollar bill and flicked it towards Gallipolis, and said: "Let's just pretend that Randolph March and I are having a private war. I want to pull a surprise attack, and I haven't got time to mess around. Do we start right now, or do we play charades while the price goes down a hundred dollars an hour?"

"What do you think?" asked Gallipolis.

"I think," said the Saint, "that we start now."

Gallipolis picked up the bill and tucked it away. He tilted back his head, pinched his lower lip, and studied Simon's flawless Savile Row tailoring.

"My Indian's named Charlie Halwuk, and the last time I saw him he told me he was a hundred and two years old, which may be stretching it a bit — it's a Seminole trick. What I'm trying to tell you is this. If he sees you in that rig-up, instead of starting out on any heap big hunting party, he'll want to take you down to an Indian village and marry you to a squaw."

Simon looked down at his night club costume,

"Have you got anything else?"

"I've got some things a guy left here on account and never came back. He was about your size. Come along with me."

The Greek strode off down the hallway of the houseboat, past the darkened poker room, and turned into a stateroom on the left. He lighted a match and touched the wick of an oil lamp. A locker disgorged high leather boots, heavy woollen socks, khaki pants and shirt. Gallipolis tossed them on a bunk.

"They look like hell, but I had 'em washed. Suppose you try 'em on. They'll be more comfortable where you're going, anyhow."

The Saint changed, while Gallipolis went back to the bar. The fit was not at all bad. Perhaps the boots were a trifle large, but that was better than having them too small. Simon strapped on his shoulder holster again, and found a shabby hunting coat to put on over the gun.

There was a newspaper among the other litter on the bunk, and Simon picked it up and found that it was dated that evening. He had to turn to the second page to find a follow-up story on the tanker sinking. The reason for that was plain enough, for nothing new had developed. He realised that there was no reason why anything ever should, and he began to wonder if by a fortunate fluke the explosion had been just a little too sudden for the ungodly; and he was tempted to be glad that he had never said anything about the submarine. The plot should have called for at least one survivor to spike the theory that the disaster was due to spontaneous combustion, which seemed to be the accepted explanation pending the verdict of a Commission of Inquiry. After his own capture of the planted lifebelt, the loss with all hands must have been one of those unforeseen accidents to which the best conspiracies were subject.

The only additional information was that the tanker was sailing under the American flag, but had loaded with oil at Tampico and cleared for Lisbon — it was presumed that she had been working up the coast for the shortest possible dash across the ocean. It was a minor point, but it helped to round out the picture and dispose of another lurking obscurity. There had to be at least a good superficial reason for a British submarine to have done the sinking; and beyond Lisbon was Spain, at the back of France, with Franco responding to the strings pulled in Rome, where Mussolini's wagon careered behind the maniac star of Berlin. It could all be plausible… And the Saint wondered whether it was right that he should ruthlessly call it good fortune that no man had come out alive from that latest sacrifice to the ravening ambition of the hysterical megalomaniac who was putting out the lights of Europe as a screaming guttersnipe would break windows…

He went back to the bar room and found Gallipolis regarding Hoppy with a despairing frown.

"That cricket outfit is going to wow the Indians," he told Simon apprehensively. "But I gave you the only things I've got that 'd come near fitting him. Maybe he can swap it for a blanket. Anyhow it'll help keep the rattlesnakes away."

"We're goin' out huntin', ain't we?" argued Mr Uniatz. "I buy dese sport clothes in Times Square, so dey can't be nut'n wrong wit' dem."

Gallipolis gave it up and pushed back the bar.

"When I'm walking wide-eyed into trouble, I like my chopper," he explained. He took his Tommy gun out of the floor cavity, picked up a can of cartridges, and weighted down another pocket with a heavy automatic. A powerful flashlight followed. Simon was keyed for treachery like a taut violin string, but there was no sign of it. Gallipolis turned down the lamp until it flickered out, shone the flashlight against the door, and said: "Come on."

They followed the path across the palmetto land, with the Greek leading the way. There were small fleecy clouds playing tag with the moon, but the stars gave a steady glimmer of illumination that relieved the fluctuating dark. A frog barked in the canal, and the night was full of the gabble and screech of insects.

Simon stopped for a moment to examine Mr Uniatz's Lincoln again under the flashlight.

"This is what you came in, I suppose," he said.

"Dat's it, boss," assented Mr Uniatz unblushingly. "I borrow it from de clip jemt, on account of I t'ink I am goin' back."

"We'd better move it out — it's probably on the air by now. I'll stop about a mile up the road, and you can park it and get in with us."

He started the Cadillac and let it go, and braked again after they had been on the highway about eighty seconds and the last of Miami had fallen behind. While the lights of the following car went out, and he waited for Hoppy to join them, he took another look at the Greek.

"I don't want you to misunderstand anything, comrade," he murmured, "but there's one other side to that grand I promised you. If I can buy you, I expect anybody else can. But you ought to remember one thing before you go into the auction market. Hoppy and I are both a little quick on the trigger sometimes. If we thought you were going to try to be clever and turn that perforator of yours the wrong way, your mother might have to do her job all over again."

Gallipolis gave him the full brilliance of his limpid black eyes.

"I never met a big shot like you before, mister." he said curiously. "Does anybody know just what your angle is?"

"Believe it or not, I've done most of my killings for the sake of peace," said the Saint cryptically.

The Cadillac swept on again until the speedometer touched seventy, eighty, eightyfive and crept towards ninety. Bugs battered shatteringly against the windshield and disintegrated in elongated smears. Simon's face was a mask of cold graven bronze with azure eyes. Then the world about them disappeared entirely, and they were roaring through mist westward on the Tamiami Trail.

3

A single light showed like a puffball through the fog and rocketed up to meet them.

This is Ochopee," said the Greek, and touched Simon's arm.

The Cadillac slowed down. The light turned out to be a single bulb over a pump in front of a darkened filling station. It was the only sign of life in the shrouded town.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz from the back seat, in a voice of glum foreboding, "dey pulled in de sidewalks. If dey's a bar open now it's because somebody forgot to lock up."

Gallipolis said: "Charlie Halwuk lives on a dredge about half a mile on the other side of town."

"What sort of dredge?" Simon asked.

"There's a lot of 'em around here. They used 'em to build the road, and then left 'em. Now they're nothing but skeletons with most of the planking gone. Keep straight ahead."

Simon drove on. Above the whisper of the engine, the night emphasised its silence with the clatter of crickets and a throaty chorus of bullfrogs. It sounded like a thunderclap when the Greek said "Turn here." Simon pulled over and saw the headlights glisten on two lines of milky water.

"There's sand underneath it," said Gallipolis. "Go on."

They followed the ruts for a tenth of a mile or more, and then Simon stopped again. A great flat boat, with grinning ribs at the stern topped with a crazy superstructure, showed starkly in the double glare of the headlights. The Saint switched on the spotlight and played it from side to side.

Gallipolis called "Charlie!" musically, and said: "Blow your horn."

The howl of the klaxon rasped through the cheeping stillness, and when Simon took his hand from the button the bullfrogs had stopped their oratorio. Close beside them on the left, the air was suddenly beaten to tatters with a deafening whirr like the wings of a thousand invisible angels. White shapes floated upwards, loomed briefly in the headlight beams, and were gone.

"Birds," said Gallipolis mechanically. "We frightened them away."

In the back, Mr Uniatz said pessimistically: "I bet de jernt has been padlocked."

The Greek reached down beside him, turned around, and magnanimously presented Hoppy with a fresh quart of shine.

"I'm charging this stuff to you at a buck a bottle," he told Simon. "It's a good thing I brought some along."

Simon sat still. A man had come slowly erect on the deck of the abandoned barge and was standing like a wood carving in the blaze of the spotlight. Over dirty white ducks, a long-sleeved jacket glowed with the colours of the rainbow. A red neckerchief was knotted about the man's throat. The face of well-seasoned ancient mahogany was topped with long straight black lustreless hair.

It was the sight of the face that kept Simon so still. A black mustache covered wide thick lips. The slightly Negroid nose was straight and aquiline. Wrinkles made deep by the sorrows of a thousand years branched upwards from a firm strong chin. Large flat eyes lay close to his head.

The Indian stared straight into the spotlight, and his paunched eyes burned unblinkingly like the eyes of some jungle animal looking unmoved into the noonday sun. He moved as smoothly as rippling water, and with less sound. One second Simon was watching him on the dredge; in the next, he was beside the car.

Gallipolis said: "We were looking for you, Charlie. If you want to make twentyfive bucks, this gentleman with me has a job to do."

"Got drink?" asked Charlie Halwuk, and stretched out his wrinkled hand.

Simon said over his shoulder: "It won't hurt you to share your bottle, Hoppy."

Mr. Uniatz surrendered it grudgingly. Charlie Halwuk took it and tilted it up.

The Greek said confidentially: "It's strictly a Federal offence, but we'll all have to drink with him. A Seminole has an idea that any party starting out to do anything just ain't worth a damn if they're dry."

"Okay," said the Saint, and wondered if he had at last stumbled upon the dark secret of Hoppy's ancestry.

Charlie gave the bottle to Gallipolis and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The Greek took two swallows and passed it on. Simon touched it perfunctorily to his lips, and slid it back into Hoppy's clutching paw. Mr Uniatz emptied it, tossed it out of the window, and breathed with deep satisfaction. Simon expected smoke to come out of his mouth, and was disappointed.

Charlie Halwuk had also watched the demolition with respect. He pointed a finger at Hoppy's blazer.

"Plenty good drinker, big boy," he stated admiringly. "Plenty pretty clothes. Him damn good man."

"Chees," said Mr Uniatz unbelievingly. "Dat's me!"

Gallipolis pointed to Simon.

"This is the Saint, Charlie. He's a good man, too. They say he's one of the world's greatest hunters with a gun."

The Indian's round wrinkled eyes shifted impassively to take in their new target.

"You know Lostman's River?" Gallipolis went on.

Charlie nodded.

"The Saint wants to go down there where all that digging went on last summer."

"Take boat?" asked Charlie Halwuk.

"No," said Gallipolis. "He wants to go through the Everglades, and start tonight."

The Seminole stared unmovingly.

"Take canoe?" he asked.

Gallipolis nodded.

"Plenty miles. Plenty tough," said Charlie Halwuk. "No can do."

"I'll make it fifty dollars if you can take us there," Simon put in.

"Plenty rain," said Charlie. "Plenty bad. You great hunter. Rain too much for you."

"Damn the rain!" Simon leaned across Gallipolis. In the light from the dashboard his blue eyes glinted with tiny flecks of steel, but his voice was quiet and persuasive. "You're a great hunter and a great guide, Charlie Halwuk. I've heard about you from many people. They all say there's nothing you can't do. Now, I have to get to this place on Lostman's River, and get there right away. If you won't take me I'll have to try it by myself. But I'm going to get there somehow, I'll give you a hundred dollars."

"Plenty big talk," said Charlie Halwuk. "You get marsh buggy, maybe me go too."

Gallipolis slapped a hand down on his thigh.

"By God, he's got it!"

"What the devil is a marsh buggy?" Simon asked.

"They use it prospecting for oil around this part of the country," the Greek explained. "It's a combination boat and automobile that 'll run over any sort of ground and float across streams and rivers. It's a hell of a looking thing with wheels ten feet high and cleated tyres that only carry four pounds of air."

It sounded like a fearsome vehicle, but its advantages sounded considerable, Simon felt a microscopic flicker of excitement as he wondered if their prospects were brightening.

"Where can we get one of these amphibious machines?" he asked; and the Greek lifted his shoulders to shrug them and then stopped them in the middle of the movement.

"There's a prospecting company at Ochopee that owns four, but you'll probably be the first guy who ever tried to rent one by the day."

"Could you drive it?"

"Hell, no. I'm not so keen on riding in one either, but for the the price you're paying I'll try anything."

"I'll get you a marsh buggy, Charlie," said the Saint, and opened the back door. "Get in. We're starting right away."

"Wait," said the Indian. "Get gun."

Simon watched him climb up the side of the dredge, admiring his fluid agility. The Seminole might claim to be a hundred and two, but his limbs worked with the suppleness of a twenty-year-old acrobat He was back again in a moment with a light double-barrelled shotgun.

"I t'ought dey used bows 'n arrers," said Mr Uniatz, open-mouthed.

"That's only when they're acting in movies," Simon explained to him. "This one hasn't been to Hollywood, so he still uses a gun."

"And good, too," added Gallipolis, as Charlie climbed into the car.

They sped back to Ochopee. Gallipolis guided the Saint to a tremendous corrugated-iron garage that looked more like an airplane hangar about a hundred yards down a rutty turning off the main street. A small frame house adjoined the garage. Gallipolis gestured at it with his thumb.

"The manager lives in there. Maybe you can do business with him, but he's a crusty guy."

The Saint got out and banged on the bungalow door. Somewhere back of the house a dog barked viciously. Simon knocked again.

From a window opening on to the porch a man's voice said heatedly: "Get the hell away from here, you damn drunk, or I'll run you off at the end of a gun."

"Are you the manager of the prospecting company?" Simon inquired placatingly.

"Yeah," snarled the voice. "And we do our business in the daytime."

"I'm sorry," said the Saint, with the most engaging courtesy he could command. "I know this is the hell of an hour to wake you up, but my business won't wait. I want to rent one of your marsh buggies and get it right now."

Don't be funny," came the grinding reply. "This isn't a garage running 'See the Everglades' tours. We don't rent marsh buggies. Now run away and play."

Muscles began to tighten in the Saint's jaw.

"Listen," he said with an effort of self-control "I'll leave you a brand-new Cadillac as security. I don't know what your machine is worth, but if it'll do what I've been told it will I'll pay you a hundred dollars a day for it, cash in advance."

The man inside laughed raucously.

"I told you we weren't in the rental business, and a hundred bucks a day is peanuts to the owner of this shebang."

"Where is he?" Simon persisted. "Maybe he'll listen to reason."

"Maybe he will," agreed the man sarcastically. "Why don't you go and talk to him? You can find him at Miami on his yacht, the March Hare. Now get the hell out of here and let me sleep before I put some bird-shot into you!"

4

Simon started to walk back a little shakenly towards the car. But the shock lasted for exactly three steps. And then it began to be transmuted into something totally different, something too exquisite and precious that the blood in his veins seemed to turn into liquid music.

"I told you he was a bastard," said Gallipolis philosophically. "What do we do now?"

Simon slid in behind the wheel. His eyes were sparkling.

"We take a March buggy anyhow." He turned to Hoppy. "You get out and stay here by the porch. I'm going to move on down and start a little work on the garage door. I don't know how many men there are in that bungalow, but I don't expect there are more than two. They'll come out in a hurry when they hear me breaking in the lock. You take care of them."

"Do I give 'em de woiks?" asked Mr Uniatz hopefully.

"No," said the Saint. "No shooting. We don't want to wake up the rest of the town. Don't be any rougher than you have to."

"Okay, boss."

Mr Uniatz vanished into the shadowy mist; and Simon started the car and turned it through an arc that ended close to the garage with the headlights flooding the corrugated-iron door. Simon got out and examined the fastenings.

And the rich beauty of the situation continued to percolate through his system with the spreading recalescence of a flagon of mulled ale. He had no belief that this oil prospecting outfit had any connection with March's more nefarious activities — otherwise the manager would certainly have been a much smoother customer — but the coincidence of its ownership lent a riper zest to what had to be done anyway. Even with everything else that was on his mind, the Saint's irrepressible sense of humour savoured the situation with an epicurean and unhallowed glee. To set out on that desperate sortie in a marsh buggy that belonged to Randolph March had a poetic perfection about it that no connoisseur of the sublimely ridiculous could resist…

Nor did there seem to be any great obstacle in the way. The door was secured with a padlock that could have moored a battleship; but the hasp and staple through which it had to function, as in most cases of that kind, were not of the same stuff. Simon went back to the Cadillac and found the jack handle. He slipped one end of it under the lock and levered skilfully. With a mild crash, one half of the rig tore completely out of its attachments.

In the bungalow, an apoplectic voice yowled: "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

A light came on, and the irate manager burst from his dwelling, pounded across the porch, and charged valiantly towards the depredator who was destroying his garage.

He was a brave man, and he had a shotgun, and moreover he considered himself quite athletic. It therefore filled him with some confusion to find his avenging rush checked by a single arm that appeared from nowhere and encircled his body, clamping the shotgun against his own chest. The manager struggled frenziedly, but the arm seemed to have the impersonal solidity of a tree that had suddenly grown round him. His fluent cursing made up for his physical restriction for a couple of brief moments, until a large portion of the road seemed to heave up in the most unfriendly manner to smack him on the back of the head and turn the whole of his brain into a single shooting star that floated off like a dying rocket into a dark void…

Mr Uniatz ambled up with the man over his shoulder as Simon finished sliding back the doors.

"Boss, dis must be de only one."

"Tie him up and gag him," said the Saint.

With the aid of the headlights which now shone into the garage he was inspecting the nearest of the fabulous machines that were stabled there.

It looked like an automobile engineer's nightmare, but there was no doubt that it also looked highly utilitarian. For coachwork, a boatlike body, blunt at both ends, hung between the four gigantic wheels. There was no luxurious upholstery, but it had an encouraging air of being ready to go places. The huge balloon tyres would serve the dual purpose of flattening out to lay their own road through mud and sand and buoying up the contraption when it was in the water, while in its aquatic manoeuvres the deep flanges on the rear tyres would continue to propel it after a fashion by turning them into a pair of extempore paddle wheels. He recognised the steering controls as being of the tractor type, and hoped that he had not forgotten a lesson in their manipulation which he had once been given by a friendly farmer.

He found a yardstick on the wall and measured the gasoline in the tank. It was nearly full, but he located an extra five-gallon can and put it in the back. He found a switch that kindled the two powerful high-slung headlights. He squeezed into the driving seat, and the starter unhesitatingly twisted the engine into a clattering roar of life. He took hold of the two clutch levers, put his feet on the two brake pedals, and gingerly worked the thing out of the garage.

He stopped it again in the road, and drove the Cadillac into the space that it left vacant. Hoppy by that time had made a compact bundle of the unconscious manager, which under Simon's direction he jammed into the back of the car. They closed the garage doors and returned to the marsh buggy, in which Gallipolis and Charlie Halwuk were already installing themselves.

The Indian appeared to be quite unconcerned by the short spell of violence which he had witnessed.

"Too much plenty can happen," he said stoically, as Simon and Hoppy got in. "Better take food."

The Saint turned, settling beside him.

"I thought we'd be there by morning."

"Maybe morning," said Charlie Halwuk noncommittally. "Maybe night Plenty damn big country. Plenty too much trouble maybe. Maybe two-three day."

"Maybe plenty damn glad I bring some shine," contributed Gallipolis.

Simon lighted a cigarette. The check frayed at the tightly drawn fibres of his nerves, but he could hardly dispute its sober sanity.

"Where can we get food at this time of night?" he queried steadily.

"There's a general store a short way down the road," said Gallipolis. "Of course, they don't keep open all night, but I don't suppose that will bother you."

"We'll open it."

The marsh buggy started off again, and warped itself into the main street like some grotesque clumsy insect picking its course with great fiery eyes.

Simon stopped a short distance from the store that Gallipolis indicated, and switched out the lights. He moved through the mist like a wraith to the back of the building, and went to work on a flimsy window more stealthily than he had worked on the garage door. It took him less than two minutes to master it; and for the next ten minutes he was tracking down canned goods, an opener, a coffee pot, and a frying pan, and passing them out for Hoppy Uniatz to porter back to the buggy. He pinned two ten-dollar bills to the broken window with an ice pick, selected two bottles of Scotch and a bottle of brandy to complete the provisioning, and prudently took those to the buggy himself.

They rolled westwards, scattering wisps of fog.

Driving the buggy was not so easy as driving a car. The lever-and-pedal system necessitated by the obvious impossibility of applying conventional steering to wheels of that size was tricky to handle. To make a left-hand turn, for instance, you fed more power to the right-hand wheels, and disconnected and braked the left-hand ones, the sharpness of the turn being governed by the relative violence of both manipulations, up to the point where the buggy would practically whip round on its own axis. Keeping a straight course at any speed was much harder to do. The Saint was able to nurse it up to about thirty miles an hour, and found the pace more hair-raising than any driving he could ever remember having done.

A warm breeze laden with dampness beat across his face and ruffled his hair. In addition to the mechanical difficulties of control, he had to follow the road by clairvoyance rather than sight, for both sides were swallowed up in the mist. It seemed endless hours, endless leagues more than the estimated thirty miles on the map, before Charlie Halwuk touched his shoulder with an arresting hand and said: "Turn off road here."

Simon eased off the throttle and swung to the right. There was a fleeting moment of instinctive panic when the buggy nosed over the graded banking and felt as if it was rolling off the edge of the world. Then the headlights picked up a narrow unrailed bridge of logs which led across the broad ditch.

This was your idea," Simon told Charlie and Gallipolis impartially, and set his teeth as he sent their crazy chariot bucketing down.

The lights dipped woozily and rose slowly again towards the sky. When they levelled again, the way was barred with a solid curtain of sickly green that glittered with an unearthly luminescence. It took him some moments to realise that he was facing a motionless barrier of sawgrass with heavy stalks alight with clinging beads of dew.

"Plenty grass," said Charlie Halwuk. "But bottom got some sand right here. Drive on."

For an interminable hour the Saint clung to the levers with sweating hands as the marsh buggy ploughed on through. The parted grass gave off smoky clouds of midges and mosquitoes. They filled the air with a vicious droning hum that was audible above the rattle of the engine, beat against the headlights like a living storm, and massed into savage onslaught against every inch of exposed human flesh. The intermittent glugs of Hoppy's bottle alternated with stinging slaps of his palm. Gallipolis fanned himself and cursed interestingly in his mother tongue. Simon, with both hands occupied, finally stopped and tied his handkerchief round the lower part of his face for a modicum of protection, and took off his coat and draped it over his head like a bonnet in an attempt to save his neck and ears. Only the Seminole, at home in the lands of his ancestors, seemed completely untroubled. He sat almost somnolently beside the Saint, directing their passage with occasional grunts and touches on Simon's arm.

The sawgrass ended as suddenly as though some celestial gardener had taken a stroke with a stupendous scythe. Ahead was a clear wide space of flat metallic blackness. The mist hung above it in lowering clouds, letting the headlights sweep out to light a forest of death.

White with age, hoary with moss, and stark as the blasted timberlands of Hades might have been, the great gnarled cypresses loomed on the far side of the clearing, their upper branches lost in the low ceiling of fog.

"Plenty slow," said Charlie Halwuk. "Go on."

Simon went into bottom gear, and the great wheels settled down. It seemed as if the ground beneath them melted away, turning into a sheet of slaty liquid, foul and oleaginous, that threatened to rise and engulf them and suck them down. They sank into it relentlessly until it swirled sluggishly above the hubs of the wheels.

"Chees!" said Hoppy Uniatz, and was quiet after that.

Simon could have reached out beside him and touched the enveloping wetness with his hand. Slashing like some antediluvian swimmer, the marsh buggy went on.

Wings flashed startlingly ahead, beating branches; and the night was wild with hoarse cries as a hidden colony of egrets took to flight and crashed blindly heavenward before the approach of the terrifying intruder in their preserves. The amphibian wallowed on into the blanched grey forest, and the world of reality was gone.

A rudder at the stem of the hybrid craft, geared in with the dual clutch mechanism, took hold and lent its help to the steering, and the Saint had already developed a fair amount of assurance in the handling of his charge; but now there were new problems in the threading of a path through the trees. His piloting was an outstanding blend of inspiration and desperation. He judged each opening to a nicety, driving through gaps where there were only inches to spare; and yet as if they were caught in some gargantuan bagatelle table each opening, instead of bringing them to a clear passage, only brought them face to face with another tree.

Twice he turned hopelessly to the phlegmatic Indian to have his unspoken question met by Charlie Halwuk's flat "Drive on."

Shining eyes came redly towards them, moved together into a single stop light, and vanished as a twenty-foot alligator sank below the surface like a waterlogged tree.

The wheels began to churn on a different note, and Simon realised that they were not making any progress.

"We're stuck," he said as though he were afraid some unseen listener might hear.

"Log," said Charlie Halwuk. "Plenty back. Then go on."

The Saint reversed. The ten-foot flanged wheels at last took hold and dragged them backwards. He found another opening and coddled the marsh buggy through it, and sighed wearily at the sight of more grass ahead. He pointed without speaking.

The Indian said: "Plenty more grass now. Then swamp again. Then hammock. You keep a little more left."

Black mud boiled up under the landboat even as he spoke. The Saint fed more gas. Dripping water, the machine began to climb with a changing cadence, shaking itself like a mechanical bear. Beyond, the grass looked as if it stretched endlessly. Simon felt stifled and had to pull off his masking handkerchief in spite of the mosquitoes, searching for a draught of breathable air.

Life became a game of pressing down sawgrass and wondering how many times Charlie Halwuk would say "Drive on." Without warning they were in a swamp again. They got out of it. Then still more grass; and, suddenly, trees. They plunged into trackless jungle — a nightmare of dogging matted vines, falling logs, and pliant unbreakable trailers that seeped down from above to claw at their faces with inch-long thorns. At no time was there anything like a trail, or anything to point a direction; he sometimes wondered if he was driving round in circles, destined eventually to find himself back where he had been two hours before. But the Seminole never seemed to know any uncertainty, and kept warning him to veer left and right with as much wooden confidence as if he had been watching a compass.

Then at last, as though he were emerging from the dreamland of a dispersing anaesthetic, Simon began to realise that he could see around him, that the shining green under the headlights was fading, and above and about them the blackness was turning to a dull grey. Then, far above, the matted branches were touched with a thin blush of fire.

"Look," said the Saint.

Beside him, Charlie Halwuk said: "Day."

The marsh buggy pushed on into the blistering dawn.