The Saint in Miami Read Free Page A

voice. “I wondered if that was what was in it … But has it occurred to you that every coast-guard boat for a hundred miles will be headed here? We might have a lot of explaining to do if they got curious about Hoppy’s footrest.”
    Simon didn’t argue. Part of what she said was already obvious. Not so far ahead of them, many new lights were rising and falling in the swell, and searchlights were smearing long skinny fingers over the ocean. The Saint had no definite plan yet, but he had seldom used a plan in any adventure. Instinct, impulse, a fluid openness of approach that kept his whole campaign plastic and effortlessly adaptable to almost any unexpected development-those were the only consistent principles in anything he did.
    “I brought him along because we couldn’t leave him in the house,” he said at length. “The servants might have found him. We may drop him overboard out here or not-I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
    “What about the lifebelt?” said Patricia.
    “I peeled the name off and burnt it. There’s, nothing else to identify it There wasn’t any identification in his clothes.”
    “What I want to know,” said Peter, “is how would a single sailor get lost overboard from a submarine at a time like that.”
    “How do you know he was the only one?” said Patricia.
    Simon put a fresh cigarette between his lips and lighted it, cupping his hands adroitly around the match.
    “You’re both on the wrong tack,” he said. “What makes you think he came off a submarine?”
    “Well-“
    “The submarine wasn’t sunk, was it?” said the Saint. “It did the sinking. So why should it have lost any of its crew? Furthermore, he wasn’t wearing a British naval uniform-just ordinary sort of seaman’s clothes. He might have come off the ship that was sunk. Or off anything. The only incriminating thing was the lifebelt. A submarine might have lost that. But his wrist was tangled up in the cords in quite a peculiar way. It wasn’t at all easy to get it off-and it must have been nearly as difficult to get it on. If he’d just caught hold of it when he was drowning, he wouldn’t have tied himself up to it like that. And incidentally, how did he manage to drown so quickly? I could have held my breath from the time the torpedo blew off until I saw him lying at my feet, and not even felt uncomfortable.”
    Peter took the bottle out of Patricia’s hands and drew a gulp from it.
    “Just because Justine Gilbeck wrote a mysterious letter to Pat,” he said, without too much conviction, “you’re determined to find a mystery somewhere.”
    “I didn’t say that this had anything to do with that. I did say it was a bit queer for us all to come to Miami on a frantic invitation, and then find that the girl who sent the invitation isn’t here.”
    “Probably somebody told her about your reputation,” Peter said. “There are a few oldfashioned girls left, although you never seem to meet them.”
    “I’ll ask you one other question,” said the Saint. “Since when has the British Navy adopted the jolly Nazi sport of sinking neutral ships without warning? … Now give me another turn with that medicine.”
    He took the bottle and tilted it up, feeling the drink forge his blood into a glow. Then, without looking round, he extended his arm backwards and felt the bottle engulfed by Mr Uniatz’s ready paw. But the glow remained. Perhaps it had its roots in something even more ethereal than the whisky, but something nevertheless more permanent. He couldn’t have told anyone why he felt so sure, and yet he knew that he couldn’t possibly be so wrong. The far fantastic bugles of adventure were ringing in his ears, and he knew that they never lied, even though the sounds they made might be confused and incomprehensible for a while. He had lived through all this before …
    Patricia said: “You’re taking it for granted that there’s some connection between these two things.”
    “I’m only taking the