Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Miami

"It's a bottle of dat stinkin' Florida water, boss," Hoppy got out miserably. "I smelled dat stuff before. Dis ain't no bar — it's a wash-room."

Gallipolis turned insultedly from staring through the window.

"That's the hottest water you ever tasted, big boy. It comes fresh from a local spring. Why don't you try it?" He filled his own glass, grinned at Simon, and said: "Here's to crime!"

The Saint sniffed his portion experimentally. It didn't seem at first as if Hoppy could be entirely wrong. The bad-egg bouquet brought back memories of sulphur springs flowing through fetid swamps. But Hoppy had to be given a lesson in good manners.

Simon closed his eyes and drank the liquor down.

He realized the gravity of his error before the saber-toothed distillation of pine knots and turpentine was half through making scar tissue of his tongue. But by that time it was far too late. He tried to gasp out "Water!", but the descending decoction had temporarily cauterised his throat in one clean searing tonsillectomy. Smouldering vocal cavities excavated into strange shapes by the toxic stream sent out the request in an impotent whisper. Tear ducts dilated in salty sympathy. He propped himself feebly against the bar, believing that the power of speech was lost to him for ever.

Through a watery haze he watched Hoppy Uniatz, reassured, lift up the bottle, tilt back his head to the position of a baying wolf, and lower the contents by three full inches before he straightened his neck again.

"Chees, boss…"

Mr Uniatz momentarily released his lips from the bottle with the partly satiated air of a suckling baby. He stared at it with a slightly blank expression. Then, as if to batter his incredulous senses into conviction, he raised the bottle a second time. The level had dropped another four inches when he set it down again, and even Lafe Jennet's graven scowl softened in compulsive admiration.

"Chees, boss," said Mr Uniatz, "if dat's de local spring water I ain't drinkin' nut'n else from now on!"

The Saint wiped his scorched lips with his handkerchief, and looked at it as if he expected to find brown holes in the cloth. He was even incapable of paying much attention to the entrance of Sheriff Haskins into the bar. He breathed with his mouth open, ventilating his anguished mucous tissues, while Haskins draped himself against the door and said: "Hullo, son."

"Hullo, daddy." The Saint valiantly tried to coax his voice back into operation. "It's nice to see you again so soon. You know Mr Gallipolis? — Sheriff Haskins."

"Shuah, I know him." Haskins chewed ruminatively. "He's a smart young feller. Runs a nice quiet juke we've knowed about for a yeah or more. I figgered to raid it one o' these days, but I gave up the idea." He nodded tolerantly towards the reddening Greek. "He ain't big enough to use that much gas on. I'd have no time for anythin' else if I started knockin' off every ten-cent joint around Miami that runs a poker game an' sells a bad brand o' shine."

Gallipolis leaned his elbows on the" bar.

"Then what did you come for, Sheriff?"

"This."

Haskins moved like a striking rattler, snatching off the dark glasses that Simon had bought for Jennet.

Jennet snarled like a dog, and snatched at the bottle on the bar. It must always be in doubt whether Hoppy Uniatz's even faster response was the automatic action of a co-operative citizen or the functioning of a no less reflex instinct to retain possession of his newly discovered elixir. But no matter what his motivation might have been, the result was adequate. One of his iron paws grabbed Jennet's wrist, and the other wrenched the bottle away. There was a click of metal as Haskins deftly handcuffed the struggling convict.

"Thanks," said the Sheriff dryly, giving Hoppy the benefit of the doubt, and at the same time giving Mr Uniatz his first and only accolade from the Law. "You re wanted up near Olustee, Lafe, to do some road work you ain't never finished. Might think you were a tourist, the way you were ridin' around town.'

"I was kidnapped," Jennet whined. "Why don't you arrest them, too?" His manacled hands indicated the Saint and Hoppy. "They drug me out here at the point of a gun."

"Now, that's right interestin'," said Haskins.

He turned his back on Jennet and walked to a place beside Simon at the bar. He moved his left thumb, and Gallipolis produced another bottle of shine, Hoppy having cautiously taken the first bottle out of range of further accidents. Haskins refilled the Saint's glass, and poured himself a liberal drink.

Simon Templar contemplated the repeat order of nectar unenthusiastically. The stuff had an inexhaustible range of effects. At the moment, the first dose was still with him: his throat was cooling a little, but his stomach now felt as if he had swallowed an ingot of molten lead. Besides which, he wanted to think quickly. If there were going to be a lot of questions to answer, he had to decide on his answering line. And disintegrating as the idea might seem, he simply couldn't perceive any line more straightforward, more obvious, more foolproof, more unchallengeable, more secure against future complications, and more utterly disarming, than the strict and irrefutable truth — so far as it went. It was a strange conclusion to come to, but he knew that subterfuge was a burden that was only worth sustaining when its objective was clearly seen, and for the life of him he couldn't see any objective now. So he watched in silent awe while the Sheriff filtered his four ounces of sulphuretted hydrochloric acid past his uvula without disturbing his chew.

"Gawd A'mighty," Haskins exclaimed huskily, eyeing his glass in mild astonishment "Must have squeezed that out of a panther. Did you come all the way out here to get a drink of that scorpion's milk? Give me an answer, son."

"I'm glad somebody else thinks it's powerful," said the Saint relievedly. "Actually, Sheriff, I came out here looking for a man."

Haskins found a place between vest and pants, and scratched himself over the belt of his gun.

"I'll feel a sight better, son, if you tell me more."

"There's nothing much to hide." Simon felt even more certain of the rightness of his decision. "A few minutes after you left this morning, Jennet took a shot at me from the bushes. If you want to, we can drive back in and you can dig his mushroom bullet out of the Gilbecks' wall."

The Sheriff pushed back his hat, found a wisp of hair, twisted it into a point, and said: "Well, now!"

"My friend Hoppy Uniatz — that's him over there, under the bottle — caught Jennet. We also got a rifle with his fingerprints on it — it must have 'em, because he wasn't wearing gloves. You can have that, too, if you want to come back for it, and prove that it fired the bullet in the wall."

Haskins' shrewd grey eyes stayed on the Saint's face.

"Guess you wouldn't be so keen for me to prove it, son, if it warn't true," he conceded. "So I'll save myself the trouble. But it still don't say what you're doin' with Lafe out here."

"After we caught him," said the Saint, "we worked on him a little. Nothing really rough, of course — he didn't make us go that far. But we persuaded him to talk. I didn't have the least idea why he or anybody else should be shooting at me. He told me he was forced to do it by a guy named Jesse Rogers who knew he was a lamster; and he said he met this Rogers out here. So we just naturally came out for a look-see."

"That's a lie," said Gallipolis. "Jennet was just playing for time. He hasn't been here since he was sent up, and you can't prove anything else."

"That was only what he told me," Simon confessed.

Haskins replaced his corkscrewed forelock.

"I shuah am bein' offered a lot of easy provin' to do," he observed morosely. "What I want is the things you-all ain't so ready to show me. How about this guy Rogers?"