Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Miami

The dealer ladled chips towards a winner, gathered up cards, and shuffled them with the speed of a boy's stick rattling along a picket fence. He dealt once around face down, and a second round face up. The Saint was high with a queen.

"Queen bets." The cigarette moved up and down.

The Saint squeezed his hole card up, peeped at it, and flattened it down. He had a pair, back to back, and he didn't like to start that well in a game.

"A buck," he said, and tossed a blue chip in.

The dealer stayed on a ten. Two of the bookkeepers dropped out, but the horsy man with a nine and the other bookkeeper with a seven spot stayed in. More cards fluttered from the dealer's agile hand, and finished up by leaving him a second ten.

"Pair of tens bets," he droned, and pushed out a yellow chip with a finger stained with nicotine to match it.

The horsy man said "Nuts!" and rid himself of his cards. The surviving bookkeeper with a seven and a jack showing spent five dollars. Simon figured him for a pair of jacks, and looked down at his own visible queen which had gotten married to a king.

"Let's make it expensive," he said, and flipped two yellows in.

The dealer stayed, but the bookkeeper folded up with a sigh. Simon got another king. The dealer gave himself an ace of spades. He removed the stub of his cigarette and said: "You bet, friend."

"The works," said Simon with an angelic smile, and used both hands to shove in his entire pile.

"Don't clown, brother." The dealer ran his thumb along the edge of the pack and snapped it with a flourish. "I told you there's a five buck limit on this game."

Simon's eyebrows rose in an arch of sanctimonious perplexity.

"What game?'

"Don't be funny," the dealer advised. "The game you're in now."

"Oh," said the Saint in a voice of silk and honey. "I wasn't betting on the game. I just want all the money back for my chips."

"See here," said the dealer dangerously, "what sort of a place do you think this is?"

The invisible coldness of angry men waiting for an explanation slid down like an avalanching glacier and crystallised the atmosphere of the room; but the Saint was utterly at ease. He leaned back in his chair and favoured the dealer with his most benevolent and carefree smile.

"I think," he said, "that it's the sort of place where ugly little runts like you give suckers a nice game with a marked deck." He sat up again; and suddenly, without warning, he snatched the pack out of the dealer's hand and smeared it in front of the other players. "Look for yourselves, boys. It's all done in the veins of the leaf in the left-hand corner. Nothing to notice if you aren't looking for it, but as plain as a billboard when you know the code. It's nice work, but it gives the house too much of an edge for my money."

The horsy man picked up some cards with a grin which held nothing but trouble.

"If you're right about this, guy, there's more coming to me than I've lost here today."

"Use your eyes," said the Saint cynically. "I don't know how many of you are in with him, but the rest of you can see it. You might like to do something about it. Personally, I'll have my dough back and talk to the manager."

"You'll do that," muttered the dealer.

There was the sound of one padding step in the alleyway outside, and a new man showed in the doorway with a sub-machine-gun covering the room.

The Saint knew an instant of frozen expectancy when all the other close calls he had ever had passed in review before the immutable knowledge that some day somewhere there must be a call too close to dodge, and he thought: "This is it." For a flash the whole set-up seemed entirely rational and obvious. A gambling barge, a quarrel over a card game, a few shots, and the whole thing might be settled in a way in which Randolph March couldn't possibly be implicated. Only a supreme combination of intuition and will-power kept his right hand from starting a hopeless dive for the butt of the Luger under his arm. It was a more than human feat to sit there without movement and expect the tearing shock of lead; but he thought: "That's what they're waiting for. They want to be able to say I fired first. I won't give them that break, anyway." But there were goose-pimples all over his body. The horsy man forced a laugh that clicked his teeth together, and stammered: "G-good God, Gallipolis, what's the ripper for?"

There was still no shooting, and it seemed to Simon that he had stopped breathing for a long time. In a detached but still partly incredulous way he began to take in the details of the prospective gunner.

Any cooperative reader who has been herded along the paths of romance and adventure by well-trained authors before, knows that a Greek must be fat, swarthy, and apparently freshly rubbed down with oil. It is this chronicler's discouraging task to try to convince such an audience that Mr Gallipolis most inconsiderately declined to conform to these simple requirements. His figure was svelte, almost feminine. Limpid eyes showed tar-black in a sunburnt face crowned with crisp black curls. He wore a pink polo shirt open at the neck, khaki pants, and very clean white tennis shoes. He leaned against the door jamb and exhibited flawless white teeth in a grin. His hands on the double grips of the Thompson gun were as slender as a girl's.

He didn't even seem to pay any special attention to the Saint. His eyes enfolded the dealer in a melting embrace.

"Why did you push the buzzer, Frank?" he inquired liquidly. "There's no stick-up here."

"That's what you think," said Frank. "This cheapskate you let in here was trying to pull a fast one and welsh on us."

The Greek said: "So?" and his eyes wrapped themselves around Simon. "Who the hell are you and how did you get on board? I never saw you before."

"I came in the back door," said the Saint. "I sat in the game and accused your dealer of cheating, that's all"

Gallipolis's face grew long with melancholy.

"Were you cheating, Frank?"

"Hell, no! He was getting in too deep, so he tried to start something."

"That's a lot of malarkey!" said one of the bookkeepers boldly. "He didn't start anything. He said these cards were crooked, and they are. We've seen 'em."

Gallipolis looked amused.

"I have a hell of a time with dealers," he told the Saint "How much you got coming?"

"Fifty dollars."

"Give him his money," repeated Gallipolis, with a broadening smile.

The dealer produced a ten and two twenties and slapped them on the table. Gallipolis stepped aside and spoke to the Saint again.

''Come on, mister. You must have something on your mind or you wouldn't have come in the back door. We can talk it over in the bar."

Simon took his money and stood up, admiring the way Gallipolis handled his gun. As Simon walked around the table, the Greek edged along the wall to keep the other players out of the line of fire. He was behind Simon when the Saint reached the door.

"Take it easy," he recommended, as the Saint stepped outside. "If you start running I can drop you before you make the end of the hall." He turned back to the other players. "See what you can get out of Frank, boys. If you're still short anything, see me before you go."

As Gallipolis left the room, the horsy man said: "Did you ever eat a pack of cards, Quickfingers?" and left the table to close the door.

The bar furniture comprised a simple pinewood counter and three kitchen tables flanked with chairs. The Saint, walking with a circumspect negation of haste, reached it alive, which he had at no time taken for granted. He discovered that the landward windows were shuttered to conceal an inside coating of thin steel. A square hole provided an outlook from the window at one end of the bar, and would also, Simon decided, have served very well for a gun port.