The Saint in Miami s-22

by Leslie Charteris

  Then he recovered himself, and bowed to them both with mildly derisive elegance.

  "Good evening, little people," murmured the Saint.

  II How Mr Uniatz Found a Good Use for Empties, and Sheriff Haskins Spoke of His Problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "You're fired!" March exploded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What do you think?" retorted March scornfully.

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

  March spluttered: "Why you-"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  March took a step forward.

  "Damn your impudence," he began again.

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

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

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

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

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

  Simon smiled at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  March and the captain exchanged glances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Simon surveyed them both.

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

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