Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Miami

He glanced at his cigarette, and flipped dead ashes on to the terrace. He finished his drink, with leisured appreciation. And he knew that those things made no difference either. In a ridiculous reckless way he was happy, happier than he had been since the beginning of the adventure. With no good reason, and at the same time with all the reasons in the world.

When he was sure enough of himself, he put out his hand.

"Then let's have another cocktail at the Roney Plaza," he said, "and decide where we'll go to dinner. Ana see how it turns out."

She stood up.

Her quiet acceptance seemed even grateful, but there was far more behind it than he could put together at once. It was so hard to penetrate that dazzling and intoxicating outer perfection. She was all white mist and moonbeams, cold flame of hair and cool redness of soft lips; and swords behind them.

But she took his hand.

"Let's have tonight," she said.

She could have said it in twenty ways. And perhaps she said it in all of them at once, or none. But the only certain thing was that for one brief moment, for the second time that day, her mouth had been yielding against his. And this time he had not moved at all.

At eleven thirty she was still with him. When he had looked at his watch and suggested that it was time they left the restaurant, she had said: "I can't stop you taking me home, but you can't stop me calling a taxi and going straight to the Palmleaf Fan."

So they were driving northwards, and on their right the sea lapped a pebbly strip of beach only about eight feet below them. The houses had thinned out and become scarce, and on the left a tangled barrier of shrubbery grew high out of grassy dunes. Only an occasional car dimmed its lights in meeting and flashed by. The road narrowed, and held down their speed with short scenic-railway undulations.

Simon drove with a cigarette clipped lightly between two fingers, and a deep lazy devilment altered the alignment of one eyebrow to an extent that only a micrometer could have measured. But there was a siren song in the wind that his blood answered, and when he put the cigarette to his lips his blue eyes danced with lights that were not all reflected from the glowing end.

He was insane; but he always had been. There could be nothing much screwier than going out to what looked more and more like an elaborately organised rendezvous with destiny in the company of a girl who had freely declared herself a wanderer from the enemy camp. And yet he didn't care. He had told her the literal truth, within its limits, exactly as he believed she had told him. The evening had been worth it, and they had bargained for that. They had had four hours for which he would have fought an army. Adventures could be good or bad, trivial or ponderous; but there had been four hours that would live longer than memory. Even though nothing more of the least importance had been said. They had known each other; and behind the screens of sophisticated patter and unforgettable cross-purposes their own selves had walked together, clear-eyed, like children in a walled garden.

And all that was over now, except for remembrance.

"We're nearly there," she said.

And all he had to be sure of now was that the automatic rode easily in his shoulder holster, without marring the set of a jacket which had been cut to allow for such extra impedimenta, and that his knife was loose in its sheath under his sleeve, and that the atavistic physiognomy of Hoppy Uniatz, whom he had stopped to collect on the way without any protest from her, still nodded somnolently in the back seat.

Ahead and to the left, the sand dunes flattened into a shallow gully with a wooden arch at its entrance. Over the arch a single dim bulb flickered in an erratic way that sent crazy shadows writhing across the road. As the Saint slowed down, he saw that the effect was caused by the uncannily lifelike effigy of a Negro boy which reclined on top of the arch with a palmleaf fan in one dangling hand. The fan, in front of the light, moved restlessly in the breeze and created the flickering shadows.

"This is the place," she said. "It's about half a mile in."

"Looks like a cheerful spot for an ambush," he remarked, and turned the car into the shell road.

Flame fanned past his ear, and a report like the crack of doom left the drum bruised and singing. Fragments of something showered from above, and the largest of them.fell solidly into his lap. He glanced at it as he instinctively trod home the accelerator, and for an instant a ghostly chill walked like a spider up his back. He had to force himself to pick up the black horror; and then suddenly he went weak with helpless laughter.

"What is it?" Karen whispered.

"It's nothing, darling," he said. "Nothing but the hand of a plaster Negro — detached by Hoppy's ever-ready Betsy."

Mr Uniatz leaned over the back of the front seat and stared at the hand remorsefully as Simon tossed it out.

"Chees, boss," he said awkwardly, "I am half asleep when I see him, an' I t'ink he is goin' to jump on us." He tried to cover his mortification with a jaunty emphasis on the silver lining. "One t'ing," he said, "if he's plastered he won't know who done it."

Karen brushed off her dress.

"He's just a big overgrown kid, isn't he?" she said in a tactful undertone. "When are you thinking of sending him to school?"

"We tried once," said the Saint, "but he killed his teacher in the third grade, and the teacher in the fourth grade thought he'd had enough education."

It was fortunate that there was half a mile from the entrance arch to the premises, he reflected, so that it was unlikely that anyone at the Palmleaf Fan would have been alarmed by the shot.

The road swung right in a horseshoe. His headlights ran along a thatched wall ten feet high, broken only by a single door, and picked up the sheen of a line of parked cars. There was not a vast number of them, and he imagined that the crowd would not get really thick until the other night spots were tiredly closing and the diehard drinkers flocked out to this hidden oasis for a last two or three or six nightcaps. Simon parked himself in the line, and as he switched off the engine he heard music filtering out from behind the impressive stockade.

"Well, keed," he said, as Mr Uniatz gouged himself out of the back, "here we go again."

She sat beside him for a moment without moving.

"If anything goes wrong," she said, "I couldn't help it You won't believe me, but I wanted to tell you."

He could see the pale symmetry of her face in the dimness, the full lips slightly parted and her eyes bright and yet stilled, and the scent of her hair was in his nostrils; but beyond those things there was nothing that he could reach, and he knew that that was not delusion. Then her fingers brushed his hand on the wheel briefly, and she opened the door.

He got out on his side, and settled his jacket with a wry and reckless grin. So what the hell?… And as they crossed to the entrance she said in a matter-of-fact way that clinched the tacit acceptance of their return to grim rules that had been half forgotten: "It's easier to get in here if you're known. Let me fix it"

"It's a pipe, boss," declared Mr Uniatz intrusively. "When de lookout opens de window, I reach t'ru an' squeeze his t'roat till he opens de door."

"Let's give her a chance to get us in peacefully first," Simon suggested diplomatically.

It was all strictly practical and businesslike again.

A hidden floodlight beat down on them, and a slit opened in the door — perhaps someone else had thought of Hoppy's method of presenting his credentials, for the slit was too narrow for even a baby's hand to pass through. But there was no need for violence. Eyes scanned them, and saw Karen, and the door opened. It reminded Simon a shade nostalgically of the glad and giddy days of the great American jest that was once known as Prohibition.