The Saint in Miami (22 page)

The howl of the klaxon rasped through the cheeping stillness, and when Simon took his hand from the button the bullfrogs had stopped their oratorio. Close beside them on the left, the air was suddenly beaten to tatters with a deafening whirr like the wings of a thousand invisible angels. White shapes floated upwards, loomed briefly in the headlight beams, and were gone.

“Birds,” said Gallipolis mechanically. “We frightened them away.”

In the back, Mr Uniatz said pessimistically: “I bet de jernt has been padlocked.”

The Greek reached down beside him, turned around, and magnanimously presented Hoppy with a fresh quart of shine.

“I’m charging this stuff to you at a buck a bottle,” he told Simon. “It’s a good thing I brought some along.”

Simon sat still. A man had come slowly erect on the deck of the abandoned barge and was standing like a wood carving in the blaze of the spotlight. Over dirty white ducks, a long-sleeved jacket glowed with the colours of the rainbow. A red neckerchief was knotted about the man’s throat. The face of well-seasoned ancient mahogany was topped with long straight black lustreless hair.

It was the sight of the face that kept Simon so still. A black mustache covered wide thick lips. The slightly Negroid nose was straight and aquiline. Wrinkles made deep by the sorrows of a thousand years branched upwards from a firm strong chin. Large flat eyes lay close to his head.

The Indian stared straight into the spotlight, and his paunched eyes burned unblinkingly like the eyes of some jungle animal looking unmoved into the noonday sun. He moved as smoothly as rippling water, and with less sound. One second Simon was watching him on the dredge; in the next, he was beside the car.

Gallipolis said: “We were looking for you, Charlie. If you want to make twentyfive bucks, this gentleman with me has a job to do.”

“Got drink?” asked Charlie Halwuk, and stretched out his wrinkled hand.

Simon said over his shoulder: “It won’t hurt you to share your bottle, Hoppy.”

Mr. Uniatz surrendered it grudgingly. Charlie Halwuk took it and tilted it up.

The Greek said confidentially: “It’s strictly a Federal offence, but we’ll all have to drink with him. A Seminole has an idea that any party starting out to do anything just ain’t worth a damn if they’re dry.”

“Okay,” said the Saint, and wondered if he had at last stumbled upon the dark secret of Hoppy’s ancestry.

Charlie gave the bottle to Gallipolis and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The Greek took two swallows and passed it on. Simon touched it perfunctorily to his lips, and slid it back into Hoppy’s clutching paw. Mr Uniatz emptied it, tossed it out of the window, and breathed with deep satisfaction. Simon expected smoke to come out of his mouth, and was disappointed.

Charlie Halwuk had also watched the demolition with respect. He pointed a finger at Hoppy’s blazer.

“Plenty good drinker, big boy,” he stated admiringly. “Plenty pretty clothes. Him damn good man.”

“Chees,” said Mr Uniatz unbelievingly. “Dat’s me!”

Gallipolis pointed to Simon.

“This is the Saint, Charlie. He’s a good man, too. They say he’s one of the world’s greatest hunters with a gun.”

The Indian’s round wrinkled eyes shifted impassively to take in their new target.

“You know Lostman’s River?” Gallipolis went on.

Charlie nodded.

“The Saint wants to go down there where all that digging went on last summer.”

“Take boat?” asked Charlie Halwuk.

“No,” said Gallipolis. “He wants to go through the Everglades, and start tonight.”

The Seminole stared unmovingly.

“Take canoe?” he asked.

Gallipolis nodded.

“Plenty miles. Plenty tough,” said Charlie Halwuk. “No can do.”

“I’ll make it fifty dollars if you can take us there,” Simon put in.

“Plenty rain,” said Charlie. “Plenty bad. You great hunter. Rain too much for you.”

“Damn the rain!” Simon leaned across Gallipolis. In the light from the dashboard his blue eyes glinted with tiny flecks of steel, but his voice was quiet and persuasive. “You’re a great hunter and a great guide, Charlie Halwuk. I’ve heard about you from many people. They all say there’s nothing you can’t do. Now, I have to get to this place on Lostman’s River, and get there right away. If you won’t take me I’ll have to try it by myself. But I’m going to get there somehow, I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”

“Plenty big talk,” said Charlie Halwuk. “You get marsh buggy, maybe me go too.”

Gallipolis slapped a hand down on his thigh.

“By God, he’s got it!”

“What the devil is a marsh buggy?” Simon asked.

“They use it prospecting for oil around this part of the country,” the Greek explained. “It’s a combination boat and automobile that ‘ll run over any sort of ground and float across streams and rivers. It’s a hell of a looking thing with wheels ten feet high and cleated tyres that only carry four pounds of air.”

It sounded like a fearsome vehicle, but its advantages sounded considerable, Simon felt a microscopic flicker of excitement as he wondered if their prospects were brightening.

“Where can we get one of these amphibious machines?” he asked; and the Greek lifted his shoulders to shrug them and then stopped them in the middle of the movement.

“There’s a prospecting company at Ochopee that owns four, but you’ll probably be the first guy who ever tried to rent one by the day.”

“Could you drive it?”

“Hell, no. I’m not so keen on riding in one either, but for the the price you’re paying I’ll try anything.”

“I’ll get you a marsh buggy, Charlie,” said the Saint, and opened the back door. “Get in. We’re starting right away.”

“Wait,” said the Indian. “Get gun.”

Simon watched him climb up the side of the dredge, admiring his fluid agility. The Seminole might claim to be a hundred and two, but his limbs worked with the suppleness of a twenty-year-old acrobat He was back again in a moment with a light double-barrelled shotgun.

“I t’ought dey used bows ‘n arrers,” said Mr Uniatz, open-mouthed.

“That’s only when they’re acting in movies,” Simon explained to him. “This one hasn’t been to Hollywood, so he still uses a gun.”

“And good, too,” added Gallipolis, as Charlie climbed into the car.

They sped back to Ochopee. Gallipolis guided the Saint to a tremendous corrugated-iron garage that looked more like an airplane hangar about a hundred yards down a rutty turning off the main street. A small frame house adjoined the garage. Gallipolis gestured at it with his thumb.

“The manager lives in there. Maybe you can do business with him, but he’s a crusty guy.”

The Saint got out and banged on the bungalow door. Somewhere back of the house a dog barked viciously. Simon knocked again.

From a window opening on to the porch a man’s voice said heatedly: “Get the hell away from here, you damn drunk, or I’ll run you off at the end of a gun.”

“Are you the manager of the prospecting company?” Simon inquired placatingly.

“Yeah,” snarled the voice. “And we do our business in the daytime.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Saint, with the most engaging courtesy he could command. “I know this is the hell of an hour to wake you up, but my business won’t wait. I want to rent one of your marsh buggies and get it right now.”

Don’t be funny,” came the grinding reply. “This isn’t a garage running ‘See the Everglades’ tours. We don’t rent marsh buggies. Now run away and play.”

Muscles began to tighten in the Saint’s jaw.

“Listen,” he said with an effort of self-control “I’ll leave you a brand-new Cadillac as security. I don’t know what your machine is worth, but if it’ll do what I’ve been told it will I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a day for it, cash in advance.”

The man inside laughed raucously.

“I told you we weren’t in the rental business, and a hundred bucks a day is peanuts to the owner of this shebang.”

“Where is he?” Simon persisted. “Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

“Maybe he will,” agreed the man sarcastically. “Why don’t you go and talk to him? You can find him at Miami on his yacht, the March Hare. Now get the hell out of here and let me sleep before I put some bird-shot into you!”

4
Simon started to walk back a little shakenly towards the car. But the shock lasted for exactly three steps. And then it began to be transmuted into something totally different, something too exquisite and precious that the blood in his veins seemed to turn into liquid music.

“I told you he was a bastard,” said Gallipolis philosophically. “What do we do now?”

Simon slid in behind the wheel. His eyes were sparkling.

“We take a March buggy anyhow.” He turned to Hoppy. “You get out and stay here by the porch. I’m going to move on down and start a little work on the garage door. I don’t know how many men there are in that bungalow, but I don’t expect there are more than two. They’ll come out in a hurry when they hear me breaking in the lock. You take care of them.”

“Do I give ‘em de woiks?” asked Mr Uniatz hopefully.

“No,” said the Saint. “No shooting. We don’t want to wake up the rest of the town. Don’t be any rougher than you have to.”

“Okay, boss.”

Mr Uniatz vanished into the shadowy mist; and Simon started the car and turned it through an arc that ended close to the garage with the headlights flooding the corrugated-iron door. Simon got out and examined the fastenings.

And the rich beauty of the situation continued to percolate through his system with the spreading recalescence of a flagon of mulled ale. He had no belief that this oil prospecting outfit had any connection with March’s more nefarious activities-otherwise the manager would certainly have been a much smoother customer-but the coincidence of its ownership lent a riper zest to what had to be done anyway. Even with everything else that was on his mind, the Saint’s irrepressible sense of humour savoured the situation with an epicurean and unhallowed glee. To set out on that desperate sortie in a marsh buggy that belonged to Randolph March had a poetic perfection about it that no connoisseur of the sublimely ridiculous could resist …

Nor did there seem to be any great obstacle in the way. The door was secured with a padlock that could have moored a battleship; but the hasp and staple through which it had to function, as in most cases of that kind, were not of the same stuff. Simon went back to the Cadillac and found the jack handle. He slipped one end of it under the lock and levered skilfully. With a mild crash, one half of the rig tore completely out of its attachments.

In the bungalow, an apoplectic voice yowled: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

A light came on, and the irate manager burst from his dwelling, pounded across the porch, and charged valiantly towards the depredator who was destroying his garage.

He was a brave man, and he had a shotgun, and moreover he considered himself quite athletic. It therefore filled him with some confusion to find his avenging rush checked by a single arm that appeared from nowhere and encircled his body, clamping the shotgun against his own chest. The manager struggled frenziedly, but the arm seemed to have the impersonal solidity of a tree that had suddenly grown round him. His fluent cursing made up for his physical restriction for a couple of brief moments, until a large portion of the road seemed to heave up in the most unfriendly manner to smack him on the back of the head and turn the whole of his brain into a single shooting star that floated off like a dying rocket into a dark void …

Mr Uniatz ambled up with the man over his shoulder as Simon finished sliding back the doors.

“Boss, dis must be de only one.”

“Tie him up and gag him,” said the Saint.

With the aid of the headlights which now shone into the garage he was inspecting the nearest of the fabulous machines that were stabled there.

It looked like an automobile engineer’s nightmare, but there was no doubt that it also looked highly utilitarian. For coachwork, a boatlike body, blunt at both ends, hung between the four gigantic wheels. There was no luxurious upholstery, but it had an encouraging air of being ready to go places. The huge balloon tyres would serve the dual purpose of flattening out to lay their own road through mud and sand and buoying up the contraption when it was in the water, while in its aquatic manoeuvres the deep flanges on the rear tyres would continue to propel it after a fashion by turning them into a pair of extempore paddle wheels. He recognised the steering controls as being of the tractor type, and hoped that he had not forgotten a lesson in their manipulation which he had once been given by a friendly farmer.

He found a yardstick on the wall and measured the gasoline in the tank. It was nearly full, but he located an extra five-gallon can and put it in the back. He found a switch that kindled the two powerful high-slung headlights. He squeezed into the driving seat, and the starter unhesitatingly twisted the engine into a clattering roar of life. He took hold of the two clutch levers, put his feet on the two brake pedals, and gingerly worked the thing out of the garage.

He stopped it again in the road, and drove the Cadillac into the space that it left vacant. Hoppy by that time had made a compact bundle of the unconscious manager, which under Simon’s direction he jammed into the back of the car. They closed the garage doors and returned to the marsh buggy, in which Gallipolis and Charlie Halwuk were already installing themselves.

The Indian appeared to be quite unconcerned by the short spell of violence which he had witnessed.

“Too much plenty can happen,” he said stoically, as Simon and Hoppy got in. “Better take food.”

The Saint turned, settling beside him.

“I thought we’d be there by morning.”

“Maybe morning,” said Charlie Halwuk noncommittally. “Maybe night Plenty damn big country. Plenty too much trouble maybe. Maybe two-three day.”

“Maybe plenty damn glad I bring some shine,” contributed Gallipolis.

Simon lighted a cigarette. The check frayed at the tightly drawn fibres of his nerves, but he could hardly dispute its sober sanity.

“Where can we get food at this time of night?” he queried steadily.