The Saint in Miami (32 page)

Karen and Hoppy had completed the group while he talked.

And down to the south-west, where his eyes had been fixed, a pillar of jagged crimson climbed into the blue-grey sky, stamping sharp filgree out of the massed blackness of the jungle and flickering spectrally over the intent turning of their faces. Seconds later the concussion pounded upon their eardrums, mingling with a tornado rush of wind that bowed the trees and drew weird whisperings out of the scrub, seemed like a deafened age before the shuddering earth grew still again.

“And I think Heinrich has pressed the button,” said the Saint

Epilogue

Simon Templar was watching an errant fly that was trying to gorge itself into a drunken stupor on a drop of Ron Rey that had been spilled on the polished bar of the Dempsey-Vanderbilt. He seemed to have been watching it for a long time, and he was a little tired of making bets with himself on how much longer it would be before it keeled over -or, alternatively, whether it could keep up its ingurgitation until Karen Leith came. With a final movement of impatience he pushed his glass across to the bartender and pantomimed to refill; while the fly, which by virture of either heredity or environment must have been a kind of insect Uniatz, took off across wind and zoomed away with only the slightest detectable wobble in its course.

Some silent-footed newcomer pulled out the adjoining stool; and the Saint turned, prepared either to bluff the seventh would-be intruder out of his right to the place, or to put on an expression of long-suffering reproach if it should actually be Karen herself. But he had no chance to do either.

At his side, the lengthy funebrial form of Sheriff Newton Haskins dripped black coat-tails down the back of his perch. He looked at Simon with a fair rendition of surprise, “Well, dang my eyes! Wheah did you come from, son?”

“I was here first,” said the Saint. “If you remember.”

The Sheriff’s lean jaws champed once on nothing. As though the motion reminded him of an omission, Haskins drew one hand slowly out of a pocket and bit off a chew from a fresh length of plug.

“Waitin’ for someone?” he queried conversationally.

“For youth, beauty, glamour, and red hair.” Simon’s gaze was cool and impudent. “Maybe you think you fill some of those qualifications, but to tell you the truth I hadn’t noticed it.”

“Nope,” Haskins said. “I guess that wouldn’t be me. But they let all sorts o’ people in heah. I happened to be out this way huntin’ for a dangerous killer. I sorter worked up a thirst, like. ‘Newt,’ I says, ‘what better place to kill a thirst than in the nearest bar?’ So in I comes. I see you heah all alone, so I jest thought you might like some company.”

“What a mind-reader you must be,” murmured the Saint.

He directed the bartender’s attention with his thumb as the fresh drink he had ordered was delivered.

“Bring me a water glass,” said Haskins, “an’ a bottle o’ rye.”

He pulled a bowl of pretzels closer, and munched one absently on the port side of his mouth where the traffic didn’t interfere with his other chewing.

“Who was this dangerous killer?” Simon asked. “It sounds quite exciting. Did you catch him?”

“Son-” The Sheriff’s mouth was slightly overloaded. He poured half a tumbler of rye into the water glass and tossed it down. “This warn’t exackly a killin’. Mo’ like wholesale slaughter, you might call it. Then, it warn’t exackly in my county, neither.”

“Really?” said the Saint politely. “Then where was it?”

“Way down in the Everglades, in a place not even half the conchs down theah could find. But I heard tell it was shuah one helluva mess. Seems like there was almost a dozen plumb dead bodies left lyin’ around. Even that feller Gallipolis we was talkin’ to got himself shot down theah.”

“Did he? How extraordinary! Do you think he could have tried to play both ends against the middle just once too often?”

“Mebbe.” The Sheriff’s wise old eyes held the Saint’s tantalising blue ones. “You wouldn’t know nuth’n about none o’ them bodies now, would you, son?”

“Corpses?” Simon protested. “Cadavers? Lying around?

… What a horrible thought. I always bury my dead bodies in a climate like this. It’s so much more hygienic… Unless you leave them to drown; and then of course the barracuda take care of them.”

“Yep, that’s what I thought,” Haskins said sagely. “The Coastguard’s been sorter pumpin’ me, son. Gilbeck says you pulled him out of a hot spot over on Lostman’s River. Seems like you was still waitin’ theah when the Coastguard Cutter comes nosin’ around. Had one helluvan explosion offa that coast night before last, too. The Navy seems to think somebody blew up a submarine.”

The Saint sipped his drink.

“It sounds fair enough,” he remarked. “The first time we met was on account of an explosion. There were a few small bangs in between. And now we can finish on a last big blow-up. It rounds everything out so nicely … Or have you got some extra professional reason for all these questions?”

Haskins reloaded his glass and repeated his remarkable feat of finding a third separate passage through his mouth. He wiped his lips with his large spotted cotton handkerchief.

“No, son,” he admitted. “Professionally speakin’, I ain’t got no business to ask questions. Seems a whole lot o’ big fellers come down from Washington to take charge, an’ they tell all us local officers not to meddle with any of it. Seems it ain’t supposed to be any concern of ours even if our respected citizen Randolph March is one o’ those dead bodies out at Lostman’s River. We ain’t even supposed to discuss it with nobody till they get ready to issue an official report from the State Department But you can’t blame me for being curious.”

“Naturally I don’t blame you,” Simon agreed gravely.

Haskins rubbed the side of his long nose, hopefully at first, then with increasing depression.

“Well,” he said at last, “that shuah is plumb understandin’ of you,”

I’m sorry,” said the Saint “But those guys from Washington told me the same thing too. And since they were good enough not to keep me locked up, I think I ought to play ball with them. They’ll break the whole story as soon as they’re set for it.”

Haskins drank again, gloomily.

“O’ course,” he said, “I don’t rightly know if that covers a feller in Ochopee who’s swore out a warrant agin you for assaultin’ him an stealin’ his blasted car.”

“Are you going to serve it?”

“Nope,” Haskins said. “I tore it up. I figured it warn’t legal. Who the hell ever heard o’ callin’ a boat with ten-foot wheels on it a car?”

Simon lighted a cigarette with some care.

“Daddy,” he said softly, “I was wondering whether you ever switched from rye whiskey if a friend of yours offered to buy a quart of champagne.”

“That, son,” said the Sheriff, “is something that nobody of my acquaintance has ever offered to buy; but with the thirst I’m luggin” around today I might give anythin’ a try.”

Simon caught the elusive bartender and placed the order.

“And after all,” he said, “who ever heard of calling a mild scalp massage an assault?”

“I dunno as I’d go all that way with you,” Haskins demurred judicially. “But seein’ as this feller was workin’ for Mr March, in a manner o’ speakin’, I figured mebbe no one would care very much.”

“You mean it was nothing but curiosity that brought you here?”

The Sheriff hunched his sinewy black shoulders and stared up at the clock over the bar. He shuffled a little stiffly on the stool.

“Son,” he said, “I told you once I had a sorter weakness for redheads myself. This afternoon it seemed that I ought to check up on one that we both know. She was packin’ bags in an almighty hurry when I got theah. Seems she had to catch a plane to somewheres in South America this evening. I reckon she just made it by now. But she took time out to write a letter an’ she asked me to give it to you after the plane left.”

He dragged an envelope out of an inner pocket and laid it on the bar.

Simon picked it up and opened it with hands of surgical precision.

Dear Saint:
When I made a date for tonight, I meant it. But it doesn’t seem as if any of us belong to ourselves any more. And there is so little time. I’ve had new orders already, to begin at once-and that means at once. I’ll barely have time to pack. I can’t even say Goodbye to you. I had thought of calling you to meet me at the airport, but now Haskins is here and I think I’ll send this note by him instead. The other would have been much harder for both of us.

1 could say Thank you, Thank you, a million times, and it wouldn’t mean anything. You know yourself fust how much you’ve done, as I know it too, and as they know it by now in London as well as Washington. That should be enough for both of us. But we both know that it’s still only a beginning. Both of us will have so much more to do before we can sit back in our armchairs again.

And fust for myself alone, it isn’t enough either. That’s why I’d rather write this than have to see you again. I can’t help it, darling. In spite of all the impossibilities, I still want that evening that we never had.

So silly, isn’t it? But if miracles happen and both of us are still alive when all this is over-we might meet somewhere. It won’t ever happen, of course, but I want to think about it now.

Goodbye. 1 love you.

Karen

Dry champagne frothed on the bar. Simon looked at the label on the bottle as he folded the letter slowly and put it away. Bollinger ‘28. That was what they had drunk when they first met He could see her still as he had seen her then, with her pale perfect face and flaming hair, and the deep violet of her eyes. And he saw her as she had last been beside him, with his gun speaking from her hand. And so-that was the story
Abruptly he raised his glass.

“Good luck,” he said.

Sheriff Haskins held him with that shrewd timeless gaze.

“I’ll say that to her too, son.”

“You’ve been a good father to me, daddy.” The Saint split a paper match with his thumbnail and twirled it in his glass, absently swizzling bubbles out of the wine. “Do you mind if I’m curious too? I’m not so used to all this co-operation from the Law.”

Haskins’ jutting Adam’s apple took a downward journey and vanished behind his black string tie.

“Well, son, it’s like this. A lot o’ strange critters bed together peaceable-like when a panther’s on the prowl. Let ‘em get to fightin’ too much among themselves, an the crazy cat will gollop ‘em all. Take rabbits, now.” The Sheriff filled his glass again and smiled ruminatively. “I reckon if enough rabbits ganged up together an’ got properly mad, they could put a bobcat on the run. Most times the folks in this country are homelovin’ an’ peaceful as rabbits-but it seems to me that the time for a little gangin’ up an’ gettin’ mad has more ‘n come. You’ve sorter helped me straighten that out in my mind.”

Simon looked at him through the smoke of his cigarette.

“Even though I broke your sacred law?’

“There ain’t no law,” Haskins declared slowly, “when some son-of-a-bitch is tryin’ to take over the whole of creation, an’ usin’ what laws there are to try an’ make it easier for himself. Like he lets little countries believe in laws of neutrality, which means they don’t begin gangin’ up on him until after he’s jumped on ‘em. An’ like he uses their laws o’ liberty to sneak in his spies an’ start fightin’ ‘em long before he comes out an’ calls it a war. I done a powerful lot o’ thinkin’ since we had a talk the other night. Some folks are gonna blind themselves to it, an’ the politicians are gonna help ball it up so they can keep gettin’ votes from the people who don’t want to think, but when I see a lot o’ thugs drillin’ right under my nose, screamin’ against our kind o’ government an’ generally thinkin’ they’re bigger ‘n the country they live in, I jest know the whole stinkin’ business is gettin’ too close to home.”

The Saint looked at him silently, a thin dowdy man against his bright butterfly background, a solemn and incongruous figure, and yet something that had been fined down to the ultimate unconquerable fibre of the land that had bred him …

Haskins drained his glass and set it back on the bar.

“That’s right good liquor.” He dried his mouth on the back of his hand. “I hate killin’. But there’s times when things get so damn hot there ain’t nuth’n but a little killin’ will stop a helluva sight more. I don’t know, o’course, but from what I’ve heard tell, you believe in back fires when things start to burn. Mebbe you’ve talked me round to your way o’ thinkin’. Mebbe more of us have to be talked round before this fire gets too big for us. I dunno.”

He stood up, and extended one muscular brown hand. “I got to go. But I’m hopin’ more of our folks will start gangin’ up before it’s too late. Mebbe I jest sorter like you, son.”

“Maybe it’s mutual, daddy,” said the Saint, and put out his own strong grip.

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