The Saint in Miami (25 page)

“Apparently,” she said, “we’re all literally in the same boat.”

“Marsh buggy,” Simon corrected disinterestedly. “It runs on land too, believe it or not. It isn’t exactly a Rolls Royce, but it’s a lot more use in the Everglades.”

“On land?” Her voice had a quick lift “You mean this thing can take us out of the swamps?”

“It brought us in.”

“Simon,” she said, “thank God you brought it. Don’t let’s waste any more time. I’ve got to get to the road-“

The Saint sat on the side of the buggy, his forearms on his knees. He eased his lungs of a long plume of smoke. The mantle of his detachment wrapped him in a cold armour of aloofness and gave his blue eyes an impersonal hardness that she had never seen before.

“I think you’re taking a lot for granted, darling,” he said in a voice of tempered tungsten. “The only question at the moment is whether we should take you with us where we’re going, or whether we should turn you loose again to keep walking.”

The shadow that passed through her eyes might have been dark and dull with pain; but the eyes themselves never flinched.

“I know,” she said. “I should have begun at the beginning.”

“Try it now,” he suggested dispassionately.

She drew the end of her cigarette hot and bright.

“All right,” she said, in a tone that attempted to match his. “I suppose you know that Captain Heinrich Friede is one of the chief Nazi secret agents in the United States.”

“I figured that out.” Simon flicked ashes into the oozing creek. “And your dear Randolph March is his principal stooge, or a sort of playboy financier of the Fifth Column. Go on from there.”

“You know that Randolph March has a hidden harbour that he calls a hunting lodge somewhere over there.”

“Hoppy found that out. All by himself. I can still top you. He keeps a German U-boat parked in it, and they go out and torpedo tankers.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re quite sure it is? You’ve seen this submarine?”

“I saw it today for the first time. It’s there now.”

“And what else?”

“The March Hare.”

“Once again we don’t fall over backwards. You know that because you were on board. As a matter of fact, I happened to see you.”

“There are two other people on board.”

“I know. Friends of mine. Arrested by phoney deputy sheriffs.” The Saint’s voice had the silky edge of a razor. “How were they when you left them?”

“They were still all right They’ll still be all right-according to what you do. They’re hostages for you.”

Then we’re still waiting for you to contribute. When do you start paying your way with something we don’t know already or hadn’t guessed for ourselves?”

She seemed to be holding herself in with terrible patience. “What else is there that matters?”

“There’s still the minor detail of what your stake is in this carnival.” Simon’s voice was without emotion, his face a smooth carving in brown marble. “We seem to keep running into you in a whole lot of funny places-most of them somewhere near Randolph March. You were with him and Friede when I met you. You came to visit me just at the time when one of their stooges twice removed took a shot at me that started a most ingenious trail towards my tombstone. You keep quiet about Rogers until I’d planted the very evidence against myself that I was meant to plant. You came with me to the Palmleaf Fan to be in at the death; and when the death failed to take place, you joined up with Randy and Friede again and beetled off, I skipped a lot of that while it was going on because it was fun, as I told you. But the fun is all over now, Ginger. It’s nothing but straight answers-or else.”

Her lips gave a funny little quirk.

“Dear man,” she said, “who do you think tipped off Rogers?”

He lifted his eyes to hers.

“According to the Sheriff,” he replied unyieldingly, “it was a mysterious kibitzer called A Friend. If that was you, say so.”

“It was.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“I told you before dinner, last night-you had to go through it all, in case you got anything else out of it. And then, if I’d told you at the Palmleaf Fan, you know you’d have still gone in to Rogers anyhow, and the plot would have worked. But I knew he belonged to the FBI, and I knew he’d be more cautious. I hoped that if I told him it might save you from being killed.”

“That was nice of you,” said the Saint politely. “So after you’d done that, you went back to March and Friede and helped them to kidnap my friends.”

“I didn’t. I wanted to cover myself. I went over and said that I didn’t know what went on, but you’d said something just as you left that sounded as if you already knew what the trap was and you’d organised things to take care of it. A couple of minutes later the waiter came and whispered to Friede, and he said I was right. He was raging. He gave a lot of orders in German that I couldn’t catch, and we all left. While they were getting the March Hare ready to sail, some men brought your friends on board.”

“I saw you enjoying the joke with Randy as you went past the Causeway.”

“I had to stay with them then. The one thing that mattered was to find out where they were going.”

Without shifting his eyes, the Saint blew smoke at the mosquitoes that were starting to rise in thickening clouds into the twilight.

“You still have a last chance to come clean,” he said ruthlessly. “Who are you working for?”

She seemed to make up her mind after a hopeless struggle.

“The British Secret Service,” she said.

Simon looked at her for a moment longer.

Then he put his face in his hands.

It was a few seconds before he raised it again. And then the expression in his face and eyes had changed as if he had taken off an ugly mask.

It was all clear now-all of it. And he felt as if he had taken the last step out of suffocating darkness into fresh air and the light of the day. He didn’t even have to ask himself whether she was telling the truth. If the unshadowed straightness of her wonderful eyes had not been enough, the circumstantial evidence would have been. No lie could have fitted every niche and filigree of the pattern so completely, He could only be astounded that that was the one answer he had never guessed.

Impulsively he reached out for her hand,
“Karen,” he said, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I?” But her face and voice were without rancour. “I wouldn’t have been any more use if I’d been suspected. I’d put too much into getting where I was. Even for you, I couldn’t endanger any of it. I knew you were supposed to be a sort of romantic Robin Hood, but how could I know how much of that was to be trusted? I couldn’t take a chance. Until now-I’ve got to.”

“Finish it now,” he said quietly.

She put her cigarette back to her lips and drew at it more evenly than she had done since he lighted it. It was as though a die had been cast and a decision made, and now for the first time she could rest a little while and let herself go with the tide.

“It started as a very ordinary assignment,” she said. “The Foreign Office knew about Randolph March, as they know about most people who might give them trouble one day. They knew he’d spent a lot of time in Germany since 1933, and had a lot of powerful Nazi friends, and a lot of leanings towards their point of view. But he isn’t the first rich man who’s thought the Nazi system might be a good thing. You know the technique-you scare a rich man into the Fascist camp with the bogey of Communism, because he’s worried about his possessions, and you scare the poor man into the Communist camp with the bogey of capitalism; and then the Communists and the fascists make an alliance and clean up … Well, after Czechoslovakia, they found out that March was doing some heavy speculation in Nazi bonds.”

“Through the Foreign Investment Pool?”

She nodded.

“So when the real war started, he was somebody to be watched. It was more or less routine at first-until I found out about Friede. Of course, I had to pretend that I had Nazi sympathies myself, but it was a long time before they’d open up at all. Even then, they never let me get near anything important-most of what I did find out was from listening at keyholes. Until last night … But before that, I’d heard the word ‘submarine’ once. I suppose I’d worked out the tanker business more or less the way you did. But if that was the scheme, I had to find the submarine base. That’s why I went with them last night because it seemed almost certain that they’d be going there. I was right. So as soon as I knew all I had to know, I slipped away. That was this morning … I saw from the map that the road couldn’t be very far away, and I’d have made it by now if those wild pigs hadn’t attacked me.”

The Saint thought back over the country they had traversed, and smiled rather grimly.

“I don’t suppose they’ve even bothered to try and catch you,” he said. Because they know better. We’ve been pushing this wall-eyed wheelbarrow through the swamp for about fourteen hours with an Indian guide who has X-ray eyes; and we haven’t arrived yet”

“But I’ve got to get out!” she said desperately. “You can take me. I can identify myself to the British Ambassador in Washington. I’ve only got to get to a telephone. He’ll drop a word to the State Department, and in half an hour the Navy and the Coastguard will be here.”

“Looking for a most illegal German submarine base,” said the Saint. “But not particularly interested in a couple of friends of mine.”

She stared at him almost incredulously.

“Are you still thinking about them?”

“It’s a weakness of mine,” he said.

She sat still.

Then she let the stub of her cigarette fall carefully into the stream. She reached out and took his own cigarette-case out of his pocket, and helped herself to another. She waited until he gave her a match.

She said: “For three months I’ve let myself be pawed by Randolph March and leered at by Heinrich Friede. I’ve pretended to sympathise with a philosophy that stinks to high heaven. I’ve let myself gloat over the invasion of peaceful countries and the bombing of helpless women and children and the enslaving of one nation after another. I’ve made myself laugh at the slaughter of my own people and the plundering of Jews and the torture of concentration camps. I’ve even let you walk blindly into what might have been your death, while all my heart loved you, because I’m not big enough to decide who is to live and who is to die while the civilisation that made us is trying to save all the lights in the world from going out. And all you can think of is your friends!”

Simon Templar gazed at her with clear eyes of bitter blue.

For a long time. While the intensely even tones of her voice seemed to hang in the sultry air and beat back savagely into his brain.

Lake an automaton, he lighted the fresh cigarette he had taken, and put his cigarette-case away. In the infinite silence, every scintilla of feeling seemed to empty out of his face, leaving nothing but a fine-drawn shell that was as readable as graven stone.

The mask turned towards Hoppy Uniatz.

“Do you think you could drive this thing?”

“Sure, boss,” said Mr Uniatz expansively. “I loin it on de farm at de reform school.”

The Saint’s eyebrows barely moved.

“Of course, you wouldn’t have thought of volunteering before.” His accent was amazingly limpid and precise. “Will you take it back the way Charlie Halwuk tells you?” He turned to the motionless Indian. “Which way is where we were going, Charlie?”

The Seminole raised a mahogany arm.

“Plenty straight into sun. No can miss now.”

Simon stood up, and caught a bough over his head, and swung himself swiftly on to the quivering shore.

“Thanks-Karen,” he said.

Her lips were white.

“What are you doing?” she asked shakily.

His smile was suddenly gay and careless again.

“You’ve got enough men to look after you, darling. I’m going to see if I can find Patricia and Peter before the Navy gets there. Give my love to the Ambassador.” He waved his hand. “On your way, Hoppy-and take care of them.”

“Okay, boss,” said Mr Uniatz valiantly.

He hauled back on the clutch levers. The giant wheels made a quarter turn, and stalled. Hoppy started the engine again and raced it up. Too late, the Saint saw what had happened. A log that had drifted down while they were talking had nosed in between the back wheels and embedded itself in the soft bank of the stream. But by the time he saw it, he could do nothing. Never a man to waste time on niggling finesse, Mr Uniatz had slammed the clutches home while the engine roared at full throttle. There was a deafening screech of rending metal, and every moving part came to a shuddering standstill with an unmistakably irrevocable kind of finality.

Mr Uniatz pumped homicidally at the starter, and succeeded in producing a slow spark and a soft puff of expiring smoke.

“Let it rest,” said the Saint wearily, and glanced at Karen again. “I did my best, darling, but I think Fate had other ideas.”

3
“I’ll have to go on on foot,” said the girl. “The way I started. If I had a guide-“

“What about it, Charlie?’ Simon interrupted. The Seminole shook his head impassively.

“Indian go. Maybe three-four days. White man no can do. White man die plenty quick.”

Karen Leith covered her eyes, just for a moment.

The Saint touched her shoulder.

“We may be able to steal a boat and get you out through the islands,” he said. “But we’ve got to get to the base first. And we’ve got to step on it”

Without the bright beams of the marsh buggy to light the way, an attempt to get through the trackless Everglades at night was hopeless and might well be fatal. And there was not much more time. Florida twilights were short, and darkness would drop like spilled ink as soon as the sun was gone.

Simon stood up.

“Charlie, you lead. We’ve got to make Lostman’s River before dark. Travel fast, but be as quiet as you can.”

The Indian nodded and got out. The ground quivered badly under Simon, but Charlie Halwuk’s moccasined feet seemed to possess some native buoyancy that prevented them from sinking.

Karen spoke to him with tormented calm.

“You’d better keep your eyes open, too. There may be a party out looking for me, in spite of what he said.”