The Saint in Miami s-22

by Leslie Charteris

  Nobody else had come out of the lodge, and it seemed a fair chance that there had been no one else in it.

  "Spread out that way," he directed Hoppy. "They don't know what sort of a raid they're up against yet, and we may as well give them something to think about."

  Mr Uniatz still lingered for a moment, nursing his cosmic grievance.

  "I don't get it, boss," he complained. "If dis ain't de Pool, what de hell are dey beefin' about?"

  "Maybe they were fond of Gallipolis," Simon told him. "You never can tell We'll talk about it some other time. Slide!"

  "Okay."

  Mr Uniatz edged away. His idea of stealth was rather like that of a prowling bison, but it was adequate for the circum­stances. And at least it needed no more detailed instructions. The Hoppy Uniatz who struggled in leviathan agony with the coils and contortions of the Intellect, and the Hoppy Uniatz of the life of direct action and efficient homicide, were two men so different that it was hard to associate their responses with the same individual. But it was in such situations as this that Mr Uniatz came into his precarious kingdom. Simon tried to follow him with his eyes and ears, lost him for a while, and then felt a weird tingle as something like a deliriously gaudy snake reached into the wedge of light from the lodge doorway and drew back quickly with the gun that the dead man lying there had dropped clutched in its maw. It was a half instant before he realised that the jazzy colouration was due to the sleeve of the Seminole chief's shirt which Hoppy still proudly wore. Thus having augmented his arma­ment, Mr Uniatz let off another shot which drew an answering shriek from somewhere out in the bay.

  The babble of incoherent voices that came over the water was dying away as a new crisper and harsher voice began to dominate them with a rattle of commands.

  "Friede," said the Saint inclemently, and felt the girl's left hand in the crook of his elbow.

  "I only wish we could spot him," she said. Somehow there was nothing that jarred him in the cold­blooded way she said it.

  Abruptly, a searchlight on the upper deck of the March Hare sizzled into life, thrusting a white spear over the tree-tops below the lodge. It swung high and wild for a moment, and then dipped towards the waterfront and began to sweep towards them, cutting a blinding arc out of the bay.

  Simon raised the machine-gun, settling his fingers on the grips; but before he had chosen his aim the gun that he had given Karen spat twice, shatteringly, across his right ear­drum. At the second shot, the white blade of light shrank suddenly back into a small red eye that faded and went out A faint tinkle stole over the pool, belatedly, to confirm the visual evidence.

  "At this range, darling," said the Saint respectfully, "I'll admit you've shown me."

  "I used to be pretty good," she said.

  Friede's voice began barking fresh orders, but it was too far for the guttural German to be distinguishable. However, dim figures could be seen moving on the March Hare's lighted decks, and Simon lifted the Tommy gun again.

  "It won't do any harm to keep them busy," he remarked, and hosed a short burst along the length of the yacht.

  As the clatter of the Tommy gun died away, and its echoes went dwindling across the startled Everglades, one or two hoarse yells floated back to suggest that the expenditure of precious ammunition might have shown another small profit. There were also four or five answering shots, aimed at the fiery flickering of the machine-gun's muzzle. They were born out of tiny sparks that blossomed on the yacht's deck, and spanged to extinction among the corrugated-iron shelters to left and right The darkness gave them a curious impersonality, making them seem as unfrightening as the first heavy drops of a thunder shower or a June bug banging against a lighted window.

  Then all the lights on the March Hare went out as somebody pulled a master switch.

  "I was afraid they'd think of that," Simon said conversationally.

  He strained his eyes to penetrate the obscurity of the bay. The moon had risen higher, thinning the darkness of the sky; there was enough light for him to see the pale beauty of Karen Leith's face beside him, watching with the same intentness as his own. But over the water, against the sombre unevenness of the opposite river bank, the illumination was deceptive and full of shadows that seemed to take form from imagination and then disappear. Yet he could see nothing that looked like the motorboat in which he had sent off Char­lie Halwuk and Justine and Lawrence Gilbeck. He had not kept track of the time, but it seemed as if they should have had almost enough leeway, with the current helping them, to steal far enough down river to be safe. Certainly he had heard none of the outcry or shooting that should have an­nounced their discovery.

  Karen was thinking the same thoughts.

  She said: "Do you really think they can make it?"

  "Once they get clear," said the Saint, "it's in the bag. I've done some travelling with that dried-up Seminole, and I can't think of any place I wouldn't back him to make in this country."

  It seemed quite natural that there was nothing to say about themselves. They were there. Without a guide, the jungle at their backs held them as securely as a prison wall.

  "I wish you could have done something about your friends," she said.

  "They may get a chance to do something about themselves in the excitement," he said, and they both knew that they were just talking. "They're wonderful people for getting themselves out of trouble.

  He was still listening. In a few more seconds, if nothing had gone wrong, it would be time to hear the motorboat en­gine starting its racket somewhere in the distance to the southwest. But it had not come yet. The jungle seemed to have fallen unearthly still, for the owl had departed to more peaceful glades, and not more than half the shocked insects had tentatively begun to resume their choir practice since the last burst of firing had stunned them to an abnormal silence.

  Then there was a muffled grating of wood, and a splash far fainter than a leaping fish would have made; and Simon suddenly was aware that a vague shape that had been drifting shorewards on the murkily moonlit water was neither the product of an overstrained retina nor the floating stump of a tree. At the same instant Hoppy fired twice, and the crack of Karen's gun jumped in on the heels of those explosions. Simon took a fraction longer to bring up the Tommy gun, but the thundering stammer of death that poured from it made up in quantity for its tardiness. The response came in shouts and screams, and a single thin piercing wail that seemed as if it would never stop before it was smothered in a choking gur­gle. The boat ceased to drift cross-stream and swung lazily round with the current, and something human plunged away from it with a loud splash and floundered wildly back towards the submarine. Karen's gun spoke once more, and the splashing stopped as if it had been cut off with a knife.

  The Saint's teeth showed in the dark mask of his face.

  "I wonder how the bastards like our blitzkrieg," he drawled.

  "I like it, anyway," she said, and the cool tension of excitement was in her voice, with no land of fear. "Now I know what it must feel like to fight Hitler's invaders. You're only scared until the first shot is fired. And then you hate their guts so much that it doesn't matter what they can do, if you can only get some of them before they get you."

  " 'They shall not pass'," he said crookedly. "I only wish we could make it stick. But there'll be more landing parties, and we haven't many more shots between us."

  "I'm only glad," she said, "that we could be together like this-just once."

  Their hands held, in an understanding that more words could only have made trivial.

  Hoppy Uniatz fired three times more, at spaced intervals, but without any audible repercussion.

  The new sound penetrated the Saint's ears-a faint pervasive hum that almost blended with the continuous buzzing of mosquitoes. He had barely time to recognise it as the carrier hum of a loud speaker before Heinrich Friede's magnified voice blared clearly across from the yacht "If Mr Templar is there, will he please fire one shot?" Simon hesitated a moment. Then- "What the hell?" he said
grimly to Karen. "They must know it's my outfit. The police or the Coastguard wouldn't have opened fire without some sort of parley . . . But stand by to duck."

  He fired one shot, trying to aim it at the voice, and then flung the girl aside and dropped fiat beside her behind the flimsy cover of the nearest storehouse. But the hail of machine-gun fire which he had half expected to cut loose in reply did not come.

  "Thank you," said the voice. "Now I think you have done enough damage. Another party has already landed higher up the river, and you will certainly be captured in a short time, but I should prefer not to lose any more men. Therefore unless you surrender at once we shall start working on Miss Holm and Mr Quentin, quite slowly and scientifically, so that their cries can be broadcast to you. If you wish to avoid this, you can signify your surrender by firing two shots close together."

  Then Patricia Holm's voice came clearly through, without a faltering syllable, so that he could almost see the brave set of her chin and the undaunted steadiness of her eyes.

  "Hullo, Simon, boy . . . Don't listen to the big ape. He's only saying that because he knows he can't catch you."

  "Tell him to go to hell," Peter put in.

  But a single sharp cry overtook the last word, and was instantly stifled.

  "I shall give you ten seconds to decide, Mr Templar," said Captain Friede.

  Simon bowed his head over the sub-machine-gun, and his hands were clenched on the grips as if he could have torn the weapon apart like a stick of putty.

  Karen Leith gazed at his face of frozen granite.

  Then she pointed her gun to the stars and pulled the trigger twice, quickly.

  As if in answer, far to the west, a motorboat engine awoke to spluttering life.

  The square bulk of Mr Uniatz lumbered uncertainly out of murk.

  "Boss," he said blankly, "was dat you? Dijja mean we say Uncle to dem Heinies?"

  "No, Hoppy," said the girl. "I did it."

  The Saint looked at her strangely.

  "At least," he said, "I shouldn't have expected you to help me break down."

  Her hands slipped over his, and her lovely face held the ghost of a smile of great understanding.

  She said: "My dear, they could have taken us. In the end. You know it as well as I do. Why should anyone suffer for nothing? Probably we shall still all be killed, but it may be quick. And we've done all that we hoped to do. Our messen­gers got away. Listen."

  He listened, steeping his spirit in the methodical chugging of the motorboat far off in the dark, before it was drowned out by the more steady thrum of a speed tender putting out from the March Hare-knowing that she had only spoken the truth, and glad of it, but still trying to reconcile himself to the paradox of defeat in victory. And he wondered if that might only be because his own personal pride had not yet been subdued, so that his insignificant individual fate must still obtrude on a cataclysmic background in which millions of individuals no less important to themselves would yet be consumed like ants in a furnace.

  And through that, after seconds that might have run into centuries, he came back to a sanity as immeasurable and enduring as the stars.

  Everything else went on. But there was a difference. A difference beyond which nothing could be changed. And yet the only way he could show it was in the recapture of the old careless mockery which had always gone ahead of him like a banner. Because other rebels and outlaws like him would still come after him, and the great game would still go on, as long as the spark of freedom was born into the souls of men.

  "Of course," he said. "And they still haven't killed us yet They could have their hands full even after they've got us.

  The speedboat was creaming in towards the dock.

  "Ya mean, boss," said Mr Uniatz dumbly. "I can't do no more practice on dese mugs?"

  "Not just now, Hoppy. We've got to get Patricia and Peter back with us first. After that we may be able to do something."

  And if he thought that the chance was very slight, the doubt could never have been heard in his voice.

  He threw the Tommy gun on the ground away from him, and with a similar gesture the girl tossed her automatic after it. More slowly, perplexed but still reluctantly obedient, Hoppy Uniatz followed suit. They stood in a silent group, watching the tender slacken in towards the pier landing.

  Simon took out his cigarette-case and offered it to Karen, as easily as if they had been standing in the foyer of a New York night club waiting for a table, while men leaped out of the speedboat, ran down the pier, and fanned out at the double into a wide semicircle with the efficient precision of trained storm troops-which, he reflected ironically, was what they probably were. But without giving them a glance he struck a match and held it for Karen. Their eyes met over the flame in complete understanding.

  "We did have fun, anyway," he remarked.

  "We did." Her voice was as steady as his; and he never wanted to forget the unchanged loveliness of her proud pale face, and the cool violet of her eyes, and the tousled flame of her hair. "And thanks for everything-Saint."

  He touched the match to his own cigarette and flipped it away; but the light still dwelt on them. It came from the con­verging beams of three flashlights in the ring that was closing in on them.

  Simon looked round the circle. Some of the men were in German naval uniforms, others, in ordinary seaman's dungarees, but they all had the square dry-featured brutalised faces which Nazi ethnology had set up as the ideal of Nordic superiority. They were armed with revolvers and carbines.

  Another man ran around the outside of the group, beyond range of the lights, and said: "Verzeihen Sie, Herr Kapitan. Die Gefangene sind verschwunden."

  "Danke."

  The second voice was Friede's. He strode through into the light. His heavy-jawed face was hard and arrogant, the flat-lipped mouth clamped in an implacable line that turned down slightly at the corners. His stony eyes swept quickly and unfeelingly over his three captives, ending with the Saint.

  "Mr Templar, this is not all your party."

  "You may have noticed a guy on the dock with his head blown open," said the Saint helpfully. "He was liquidated quite early in the proceedings. In fact, we did that ourselves. He didn't seem to be able to make up his mind which side to be on, so we put him into permanent neutrality."

  "I mean the Gilbecks. Where are they?"

  'How are your ears?"

  The captain did not move his head. But through the stillness everyone could hear the monotonous putter of the motorboat engine far out in the sweltering night.

  Friede's pebbly stare pored over the Saint from under lowering lids for long crawling seconds.

  Then he turned and rasped fresh orders at his men. Carbines prodded the Saint, driving him with Karen and Hoppy towards the barred lodge room from which he had released Gilbeck and Justine. Somebody went in ahead and turned on the light again as they were herded in. Outside, there was an exclamation and some throaty muttering as the dead body of the guard was discovered, cut short by another of the captain's wolfish commands. The storm troopers who had followed into the prison room cleared the doorway for Friede to march through. He stood back, but the lane stayed open.

  After a very brief pause of intense silence, Patricia and Peter were hustled through, to be pushed over with Simon and Karen and Hoppy into the back centre of the room.

  Peter said casually: "Hullo, Chief. It's a funny thing. I've never been able to make out where you collect such an ugly-looking bunch of boils to play with."

  Patricia Holm went straight to the Saint. He kissed her quickly, and his left arm still lay along her shoulders as he turned back to smile genially at Captain Friede.

  "Well, Heinrich, dear carbuncle," he murmured, "this makes a very cosy little get-together. Now what shall we do to amuse ourselves? If we only had some old treaties we could cut paper dolls. Or there's nearly enough of us to form a glee club and sing the pig trough or Horse Vessel song."

  But one more man still had to arrive to make the
get-together truly complete, and he came last through the door­way as two of the seamen moved back to close it.

  Randolph March's weakly handsome face was a little drawn with strain, and his fair hair was pushed just a lock or two out of its usual clean smooth grooming. In the same way, his soft white collar was just a little crumpled at the neck. The symptoms were insignificant in themselves, and yet taken together with the equally unexaggerated wildness of his eyes they made a definite picture of a man whose nerves were fall­ing infinitesimally short of the standard of discipline that cir­cumstances were demanding of them.

  "The Gilbecks," he said to Friede; and his voice was roughened to just the same slight but revealing extent. "If they got away in the motorboat-"

  ' I know," said the captain.

  "Why don't you send someone after them?"

  "Who?"

  "Well, you've got plenty of men, haven't you? There are two speedboats-"

  "And no pilots. No one here could find his way very far outside of our own channel. You know what these creeks are like. We chose this place for that reason."

  "Then they're bound to get stuck themselves, and we can catch them."

  "I'm afraid," said the captain, "it may not be so easy. Our friend Templar and his party got here. They must have been guided. Unless Miss Leith . . ."

  Both the men looked at Karen; and as if the full force of things that had been temporarily eclipsed by more immediate alarums rushed back on him as he studied her, Randolph March took a half step towards her with his mouth growing tight and ugly.

  "You treacherous little bitch!"

  "One moment." The captain's intervention had no hint of chivalry-it was plainly and practically dictated by nothing but cold-rolled efficiency. Recriminations were a waste of time; therefore he had no time for them. "Let Miss Leith tell us."

  Karen gazed at him with calm contempt.

  "It's always so nice to deal with gentlemen," she said satirically. "You wouldn't be rude, would you? You'd just fetch some hot irons and get on with it ... Well, as far as this goes I can save you the trouble. I didn't bring them here. We met accidentally, on the way. And they had a very good guide of their own."