“What do you think?” retorted March scornfully.
“I think you’re a goddam liar,” said the Saint.
March spluttered: “Why you—”
“I think,” Simon proceeded, in the same impersonal and unruffled voice, “that you were out cruising to see if the tanker really would blow up, and when you were satisfied about that you turned round and came home.”
He was watching March like a hawk then. He knew that his time was measured in seconds, but he hoped there would be enough of them for March’s reaction to tell him whether his unformed and fantastic ideas were moving in anything like the right direction. But March’s stare had a blankness that might have been rooted in any one of half a dozen totally different responses.
And then March glanced up with a quick change of expression, and Simon heard Hoppy Uniatz’s disgusted voice behind him.
“Chees, boss, I couldn’t help it. He got de drop on me.”
The Saint sighed.
“I know, Hoppy,” he said. “I heard him coming.”
He turned unflurriedly and inspected the new arrival on the scene. This was not another steward or a deck hand. It was a man of medium height but square and powerful build, who wore a captain’s stripes on the sleeve of his white uniform. The square and slightly prognathous cut of his jaw matched the cubist lines of his shoulders. On either side of a flat-lipped mouth, deep creases like twin brackets ran down from the nostrils of an insignificant nose. Under the shadow of the peak of his cap his heavy-lidded eyes were like dry pebbles. He held a .38 Luger like a man who knew how to use it.
“Ah, Captain,” said March. “It’s lucky you came along.”
The captain stayed far enough away, and kept his Luger aimed mid-way between Simon and Hoppy, so that he could transfer the full aim to either one of them with a minimum of waste movement.
“I heard some of the things he said, so I thought something must be wrong.” His voice was deep-pitched and yet sibilant, an incongruous combination which jarred the ear to an antagonism as deep as instinct. “What does he want?”
“I think he’s crazy,” said March. “I don’t even know how he got on board.”
“Shall I send for the police and have him removed?”
The Saint selected a fresh cigarette from a jar on the table, and lighted it from the stump of its predecessor. He looked out at the lights of Miami.
“They tell me that the local jail is up in that tower.” He pointed languidly. “It seems to be a very nice location. You take an elevator up to the twenty-fourth floor. It’s a beautiful modern hoosegow with a terrace where the prisoners take their constitutionals every day. I suppose Hoppy and I might get as much as thirty days up there for boarding your yacht without permission. I just wonder how much of that time you’d really feel like gloating over us.”
There was nothing very menacing in his voice, certainly nothing frightening about his smile, but Randolph March fingered a wispy blond growth on his upper-lip and shot a glance at the girl.
“Karen, my dear, we may have some trouble with these men,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better go inside.”
“Oh, please,” she pouted. “This is much too much fun to miss.”
“That’s the spirit, Karen, darling,” murmured the Saint approvingly. “Don’t ever miss any fun. I promise I won’t hurt you, and you may have some laughs.”
“Damn your impudence!” March sprang up. He was bolder now that the tough-featured captain had arrived. “Don’t talk to her like that!”
Simon ignored him, and went on: “In fact, darling, if you like tonight’s sample you may call me up tomorrow and we’ll see if we can organise something else.”
March took a step forward.
“Damn your impudence,” he began again.
“You repeat yourself, Randy.” Simon cocked a reproachful eyebrow at him. “Perhaps you’re not feeling very well. Do you have a sour stomach, burning pains, nervous irritability, spots before the eyes, a flannel tongue? Take a dose of March’s Duodenal Balm, and in a few minutes you’ll be mooing like a contented cow…Or do you really want to start something now?”
It was curious what a subtle spell his lazy confidence could weave. Even with the added odds of the captain’s muscular presence, and the Luger which was really the dominant factor in the scene, there was something about the Saint’s soft-voiced recklessness which made Randolph March’s natural caution reassert itself. His clenched fists relaxed slowly.
“I don’t have to dirty my hands on anyone like you,” he stated loftily, and half turned. “Captain, call some of the crew and have these men taken away.”
“You’ll find a couple of your pirates tied up in the store locker,” the Saint told him helpfully. “I had to park them there to keep them out of the way, but you can let them out. You can probably wake up a few others. Bring as many as you can, so it’ll be interesting…And when you call the police, maybe you’d better tell them who they’re sending for. You forgot to be inquisitive about that.”
“Why should we be?” The captain’s voice had a sudden sharpness.
Simon smiled at him.
“The name is Simon Templar—usually known as the Saint.”
2
So far as Randolph March was concerned, the announcement was a damp squib. A quick pucker passed across his brows, as if the name struck a faintly familiar note and he was wondering for a moment whether it should have meant more.
Simon wasn’t sure about the girl Karen. Her glamourous, wide-eyed attitude towards March, he felt certain, was nothing but a very polished pose, but whether the pose sprang from stupidity or cunning he had yet to learn. Since events had begun to occur, she had exhibited an unusual degree of detachment and self-control. She had only moved once, in the last few minutes, and that was to refill her champagne glass. Now she sipped it tranquilly, watching the proceedings like a spectator at a play…
Oddly enough, the captain was the only one who gave a satisfactory response. In pure dimension, it was very slight: it only meant that his Luger moved to definitely favour the arc of fire in which the Saint stood. But to Simon Templar, that in itself was almost enough, even without the stony hardening of the pebbly eyes under the shading peak of the cap. It gave Simon a strange creeping sensation in his spine, as if he had come close to the threshold of a discovery that was not yet definite enough to seize.
“What about it?” said March. “I don’t care what your name is.” The captain said, “But I know him, Mr March. The Saint is a well-known international criminal. The newspapers call him ‘the Robin Hood of modern crime.’ He is a very dangerous man. Dangerous to you and to me and to everyone else.”
“So wouldn’t it be very much simpler and safer,” said the Saint, “not to call the police? Why not go for another evening cruise—take us out to sea and quietly destroy us and sink our boat and let the underwriters write us off as spurlos versenkt—like you did with Lawrence Gilbeck and his daughter?”
“The man’s a maniac,” said March in a colourless tone.
“I am,” Simon confessed affably, “completely nuts. I’m loony enough to think that after you’ve moved us into that elegant penal penthouse, Hoppy and I will just stroll around the roof garden wondering how long it’ll be before you join us. I’m daft enough to think that I can send you to the chair for a very fine and fancy collection of murders. Like the murder of Lawrence Gilbeck and his daughter Justine. And some poor kid who was washed up on the beach tonight, with one wrist conveniently tangled into a lifebelt with the name of a British submarine on it. Not to mention a much larger collection of guys who went down with a tanker that got itself torpedoed tonight by a mysterious submarine which I think you could tell us plenty about. Of course, that’s just another of my screwy ideas.”
He knew that it was screwy, but he had to say it: he had to find out what sort of response the outrageous accusation would bring.
March sat up, and his eyes narrowed. After a moment he said slowly: “What’s
this about a submarine? The radio said the tanker blew up.”
“It did,” said the Saint. “With assistance. As it happens, I saw the submarine myself. So did three other people who were with me.”
March and the captain exchanged glances.
The captain said, “That’s very interesting. If it’s true, you certainly ought to tell the police about it.”
“But why do you think I should know anything about it?” demanded March.
“Maybe on account of the Foreign Investment Pool,” said the Saint.
He was firing all his salvoes at once, in the blind hope of hitting something. And it was dawning on him, with a warm glow of deep and radiant joy, that none of them were going altogether wide. Not that there was anything crude and blatant about the way they rang the bell. It was far from making a sonorous and reverberating clang. It was, in fact, no more than an evanescent tinkle so faint that an ear that was the least bit off guard might have doubted whether anything had really happened at all. But the Saint knew. He knew that his far-fetched and delirious hunch was coming true. He knew that all the things he had linked together in his mind were linked together in fact somehow, in some profound and intricate way which he had yet to unravel, and that both Randolph March and the captain were vital strands in the skein. He knew also that by talking so much he was putting a price on his own head, but he didn’t care. This was adventure again, the wine of life. He knew.
He knew it even when March relaxed and took a cigarette from the jar and lounged back again with a short laugh.
“Very amusing,” said March. “But it’s getting quite late. Captain, you’d better get rid of him while he’s still funny.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” said the captain again, and this time he said it with only the most delicate shade of added emphasis. “If I thought he was making a threatening movement, I might have to shoot him.”
“Go ahead,” said March in a bored voice.
He put the cigarette in his mouth and looked for a match. Simon stepped over to him, flicked his lighter, and offered it with an obsequious efficiency which could not possibly have been rivalled by the steward for whom he was deputising. The muscles of his back crawled with anticipation of a bullet, but he had to do it. March stared at him, but he took the light.
“Thank you,” he said and turned his slight puzzled stare to the captain.
Simon surveyed them both.
“You had a chance then,” he remarked. “I wonder why you didn’t take it? Was it because you didn’t want to shock Karen?” He put the lighter back in his pocket with the same studied deliberation. “Or did it occur to you that if the police had to investigate a shooting on board they might dig out more than you’d want them to?”
“As a matter of fact, Mr March,” said the captain placidly, “I was wondering how many other people he might have told his ridiculous story to. You wouldn’t want to be annoyed with any malicious gossip, no matter how silly it was.”
“Perhaps you’d better find out,” March suggested.
“I’ll take him ashore to the house and do that while we’re waiting for the police.”
Probably that was the precise mathematical point at which the Saint’s last lingering fragments of doubt dissolved, creeping over his scalp with a spectral angle on their way out before they melted finally into nothingness.
The dialogue was beautifully done. It was exquisitely and economically smooth. There wasn’t a ragged tone in it anywhere that should have betrayed anything to the listener who wasn’t meant to understand too much—and Simon wondered whether the girl Karen was in that category. But in those few innocuous-sounding words a vital problem had been considered, a plan of solution suggested and discussed, a decision made and agreed on. And Simon knew quite clearly that the scheme which had been approved was not one which promised great benefits to his health. What would happen if they got him safely away into a secluded room in the house, and what that huskily soft-spoken captain’s notions might be on the subject of likely methods of finding out things from a reluctant informant, were not the most pleasant prospects in the world to brood about. But he had staged the scene for his own benefit, and now he had to get himself out of it.
Simon knew that not only the fate of that adventure but the fate of all other possible adventures after it hung by a thread, but his eyes were as cool and untroubled as if he had had a platoon of infantry behind him.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “But Gilbeck left a letter which might be much more of a nuisance to you.”
“Gilbeck?” March repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a letter which he thoughtfully left in his house before you kidnapped him.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I happen to be living in his house at the moment.”
The furrow returned between March’s brows.
“Are you a friend of Gilbeck’s?”
“Bosom to bosom.” Simon refilled his champagne glass. “I thought he’d have mentioned me.”
March’s mouth opened a little and then an expression of hesitant relief came over his face.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. He laughed, with what was obviously meant to be a disarming heartiness. “Why ever didn’t you say so before? Then what is all this business—a joke?”
“That depends on your point of view,” said the Saint. “I don’t suppose Lawrence Gilbeck and Justine found it particularly funny.”
March plucked at his upper lip.
“If you really are a friend of theirs,” he said, “you must have got hold of the wrong end of something. Nothing’s happened to them. I talked to the house today.”
“Twice,” said the Saint. “I took one of the calls.”
“Mr Templar,” said the captain carefully, “you haven’t behaved tonight like one of Mr Gilbeck’s friends would behave. May we ask what you’re doing in his house while he is away?”
“A fair question, comrade.” Simon raised his glass and barely wetted his lips with the wine. “Justine asked me to come and be a sort of general nursemaid to the family. I answer the phone and read everybody’s personal papers. A great writer of notes and jottings, was Brother Gilbeck.” He turned back to March. “I haven’t ferreted the whole business out yet, Randy, but it certainly does look as if he didn’t really trust you.”
“For what reason?” March inquired coldly.
“Well,” said the Saint, “he left this letter I was telling you about. In a sealed envelope. And there was a note with it which gave instructions that if anything happened to him it was to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
March sat quite still.
The girl lighted a cigarette for herself, watching the Saint with intent and luminous eyes.
March said, in an uneven voice, “Better put your gun away, Captain. It’s nice of Mr Templar to come and tell us this. We ought to know more about it. Perhaps we can clear up some misunderstandings.”
“Pardon me, sir.” The captain was perfectly deferential, but he kept his gun exactly where it was. “We should be more certain of Mr Templar first.” He turned his dry stony eyes on the Saint. “Mr Templar, since you seem to be so sure that something has happened to Mr Gilbeck, did you carry out his instructions and mail that letter?”
Simon, allowed his glance to shift with a subtle hint of nervousness.
“Not yet. But—”
“Ah, then where is the letter?”
“I’ve still got it.”
“Where?”
“At the house.”
“It would be so much better if you could produce it to Mr March and prove that you’re telling the truth.” The captain’s eyes were as hard and flickerless as agates. “Perhaps you didn’t really leave it at home. Perhaps you still have it with you.”
He took one step closer.
The Saint’s left hand stirred involuntarily towards his breast pocket. At least, the movement looked involuntary—a defe
nsive gesture that was checked almost as soon as it began. But the captain saw it, and interpreted it as he was meant to interpret it. He took two more steps, and reached towards the pocket. Which was exactly what Simon had been arranging for him to do.
A lot of things happened all at once, with the speed and efficiency of a highly specialised juggling routine. They can only be catalogued laboriously here, but their actual sequence was so swift that it defeated the eye.
The Saint made a half-turn and a neat flick of his right wrist which jarred the bubbling contents of his champagne glass squarely into the captain’s eyes. Simultaneously the fingers of the Saint’s left hand closed like spring-steel clamps on the wrist behind the captain’s Luger. Meanwhile, all the unexpected physical agility which justified Hoppy Uniatz’s professional name, and compensated with such liberality for the primeval sluggishness of his intellect, surged into volcanic activity. One of his massive feet swung up from the rear in a dropkick arc which terminated explosively on the base of the captain’s spine, and almost immediately, as if the kick had only been timed to elevate the captain to meet it, the top of the captain’s skull served as a landing field for the whisky bottle for which by this time Mr Uniatz had no further practical use. The captain lay down on the deck in a disinterested manner, and Simon Templar turned his Luger in the direction of Randolph March’s slackly-drooping jaw.
“I’m sorry we can’t stay now,” he murmured. “But I’m afraid your skipper had some unsociable ideas. Also it’s getting to be time for Hoppy’s beauty sleep. But we’ll be seeing you again—especially if Lawrence Gilbeck and Justine don’t show up very soon. Try not to forget that, Randy…”
His voice was very gentle, but his eyes were no softer than frozen sapphires. And then, as quickly and elusively as it had come, the chill fell away from him as he turned to smile at the girl, who had not moved at all in those last hectic seconds.
“You’ll remember, won’t you?” he said. “Any time you feel like some more fun, you know where to find me.”
She didn’t answer, any more than March, but the recollection of her raptly contemplative gaze stayed in his mind all the way home and until he fell asleep.
The Saint in Miami (The Saint Series) Page 5
