Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Miami

Simon stepped back a pace and surveyed the calloused ankle.

"You escaped, Lafe," he stated impassively. "You hung it on the limb. Somebody knocked that shackle off you with a sledgehammer. Your ankle's still black and blue. Of course, if you'd rather talk to Sheriff Haskins than to me, we can always send for him."

Jennet's bloodshot eyes swivelled from left to right, as if in search of a way of escape that was not there. He sat erect for an instant, a picture of deadly hatred; then he slumped back and gripped his hands about one knee. "I'll talk to you, mister."

"That's splendid." Simon drew his cigarette into a glow. "Who hired you to shoot at us?"

"I don't know." The Saint raised his eyebrows. "Hoppy—"

"I told you, I don't know. That is, I don't know nuthin' except his name — Jesse Rogers."

Behind him, Simon heard the quick grating creak of a wicker chair. For some reason it made his mind flash back to the night before, when Karen Leith had spilled her champagne.

He turned quickly. She was lighting a cigarette with a tremorless hand. She had taken the match from a box on a table beside her — her shift of position in reaching for the light accounted for the sound.

Simon resumed his interrogation with a sheepish feeling that for once his nerves had played him false. "Where does this guy live?"

"I don't know."

"I suppose you don't know nothing except his address."

"See here," Jennet snarled. "I said I'd talk, an' I'm talkin'. I lammed from the gang a week ago from a road camp near Olustee. I got a friend owns a barge near heah. I done some-thin' for him once, so he done somethin' for me. He hid me out."

"What's his name?"

"A Greek called Gallipolis. This Rogers comes in to do a little gamblin'. Somehow he got on to me. He come out there early this momin'. It was a case of you or me. Either I did the job or he sent me back to the gang. I never saw him before, an' I don't know nuthin' about him."

"Are you sure," said the Saint, "that you weren't hired to kill a girl? A red-haired girl?" He pointed to Karen. "Like this one?"

"No, mister. It was you."

"You must be a lousy shot."

"I'm the best danged—"

Jennet broke off raggedly.

The Saint looked at him peacefully and said: "Oh, are you? Then under those humble and somewhat smelly overalls you must hide a kind heart after all."

"Mister, I never tried. If I'd tried, you wouldn't be standin' up now. I never could shoot a man in cold blood."

The Saint took a meditative saunter up and down the room. Nobody else moved. Aside from the almost inaudible pad of his bare footsteps, the only thing that intruded into the stillness was the sedative gurgle of good Scotch laving the appreciative palate of Mr Uniatz.

Finally he faced Jennet again, with his decision made.

"I'm going to give you a chance to prove your story," he said. "I want to meet this guy Rogers."

Jennet's face crinkled with a touch of fear.

"What good does that do me?"

"If your story's true," Simon told him, "I might forget my legal duty and not give you back to Sheriff Haskins."

"How do I know?"

"You don't," said the Saint unhelpfully. "You'll just have to take a chance. You're going to lead me to that barge after lunch… Hoppy, give him his shoes back and tie him up. I'll have some food sent over, but don't let Desdemona in. She might be a little startled. Take the tray at the door. I'm going to put on some clothes and get a drink."

As they crossed the patio, Karen Leith looked at her watch.

"I'm afraid I'll have to go," she said.

"Must you?"

"I've stayed too long already." She turned to Peter and Patricia. "It's so nice to have met you."

"You must come again," said Patricia, in a voice of arsenical sweetness.

Simon's lips twitched impenitently as he took the red-haired girl's arm and led her around the house.

"Did you change your mind about what you were going to tell me?"

"I'll exchange it for something else."

"Another catch?"

"You don't have to trade if you don't want to."

"Suppose you ask first."

She played with a bracelet on her wrist.

"I wanted to be here before Haskins arrived. I came as soon as I knew. Since I was late. I'd give anything to know how you were able to satisfy him."

The Saint laughed, softly and rapturously, like a small boy.

"That's making it too easy. I wanted you to know. I'd have told you anyway. I even wish I could be sure you'd go back to March and tell him. It's too good to lose."

"Why?"

"Because it was the best thing that could have ever happened. I didn't have to deny anything. I admitted that I wrote that note."

"But—"

"I know I didn't. But I might have. It fitted perfectly. You see, Justine Gilbeck wrote us a letter and begged us to come here, because her father was in some sort of mysterious trouble and she thought we might be able to help. I'd kept the letter. So I just had hysterics, and showed it to Haskins."

Her face showed a mixture of reactions too complex to analyse. Red lips and deep violet eyes were both as elusive as the reflections in rippling water; but he felt the involuntary stirring of firm muscles in her rounded arm.

"Now, Ginger," he said, "where did that note come from?"

"From the MIRAGE." Her voice at least was completely matter-of-fact. "It was found this morning, abandoned at Wildcat Key. There was no trace of the Gilbecks or their crew."

He walked a few steps in silence, trying to find a niche for this new knowledge.

"Where is this Wildcat Key?" he asked evenly.

"It's just outside of Card Sound, south of Old Rhodes Key." They had reached the cream-coloured Packard. "We could run down there on a fishing trip tomorrow — if your blonde girl friend wouldn't object."

He opened the car door.

"Let's have dinner tonight and talk it over — if you can get away from Randy again."

She settled herself on the maroon leather upholstery. The starter whirred, twisting the motor into a throaty purr.

"What else is there to talk over?"

"I still haven't asked you the most important question."

"What's that?"

"What is your place in this picnic?"

His hand was still on the car door, and for a moment her fingers rested lightly on his.

"Ask me tonight," she said. And then she was gone, and he was crinkling his eyes into the dust of her departure.

Simon Templar poured gin and French vermouth into a tall crystal mixer, added a shot of Angostura, and swizzled the mixture with a long spoon. Then he poured some of it over the olives in three cocktail glasses and passed them around.

"In spite of your lack of sex appeal," Peter Quentin said frowningly, "Patricia and I have been getting attached to you. We're going to miss you when you're gone."

"Gone where?" Simon inquired.

Peter flourished a hand which seemed to push back the walls of the house and patio and encompass the world outside.

"Out to the Great Beyond," he said sombrely. "When you start for that barge this afternoon, you might wear a target over your heart. It'll give March's snipers something to aim at, and save a lot of messy bracketing."

Simon regarded him compassionately, and tested his concoction.

"You're worrying about nothing. You heard Lafe Jennet boast about how he could shoot, and I believe him. That bloodshot eye was hatched out behind a rifle sight He could knock an ant out of a palm top, shooting against the sun."

"Then what was he trying to do — knock down the wall?"

"The trouble with your peanut brain," said the Saint disparagingly, "is that you're putting the March Combine in the same class as Hoppy — bop 'em quick, and the hell with where they fall. You've forgotten our mythical protective letter, and other such complications. If Jennet could have popped me if he'd wanted to, which I believe, then his orders only were to scare me. And the organiser of the scheme expected that we'd catch him. And the organiser also expected Jennet to squeal when things started to look too tough. And Jennet did. He squealed all he knew, which was exactly what he was meant to squeal, and did it much better that way than if they'd tried to coach him in a part. The idea being to make me think I've been pretty clever, and send me rushing out to this barge like a snorting warhorse."