The Saint in Miami by Leslie Charteris

his eyes into the dust of her departure.
    3
    Simon Templar poured gin and French vermouth into a tall crystal mixer, added a shot of Angostura, and swizzled the mixture with a long spoon. Then he poured some of it over the olives in three cocktail glasses and passed them around.
    “In spite of your lack of sex appeal,” Peter Quentin said frowningly, “Patricia and I have been getting attached to you. We’re going to miss you when you’re gone.”
    “Gone where?” Simon inquired.
    Peter flourished a hand which seemed to push back the walls of the house and patio and encompass the world outside.
    “Out to the Great Beyond,” he said sombrely. “When you start for that barge this afternoon, you might wear a target over your heart. It’ll give March’s snipers something to aim at, and save a lot of messy bracketing.”
    Simon regarded him compassionately, and tested his concoction.
    “You’re worrying about nothing. You heard Lafe Jennet boast about how he could shoot, and I believe him. That bloodshot eye was hatched out behind a rifle sight He could knock an ant out of a palm top, shooting against the sun.”
    “Then what was he trying to do-knock down the wall?”
    “The trouble with your peanut brain,” said the Saint disparagingly, “is that you’re putting the March Combine in the same class as Hoppy-bop ‘em quick, and the hell with where they fall. You’ve forgotten our mythical protective letter, and other such complications. If Jennet could have popped me if he’d wanted to, which I believe, then his orders only were to scare me. And the organiser of the scheme expected that we’d catch him. And the organiser also expected Jennet to squeal when things started to look too tough. And Jennet did. He squealed all he knew, which was exactly what he was meant to squeal, and did it much better that way than if they’d tried to coach him in a part. The idea being to make me think I’ve been pretty clever, and send me rushing out to this barge like a snorting warhorse.”
    “And that’s just what you mean to do, so everybody ought to be happy.” Peter finished his Martini and ate the olive. “Whatever they’ve arranged for you there goes through according to schedule, and you end up at the bottom of the Tamiami Canal, weighted down with a couple of tons of coal.”
    He went back to the portable bar for a refill.
    “His red-headed heart-throb won’t look so luscious in black,” said Patricia troubledly.
    “Believe it or not,” said the Saint, “she came here to tell me something.”
    “I notice you’re doing your listening with your mouth these days,” Peter remarked. “You shouldn’t have washed off her lipstick-it suited you.”
    Simon sprawled himself out in a chair and gazed at them both affectionately.
    “Do you two comedians want to listen?” he inquired. “Or would you rather go on rehearsing your new vaudeville act?”
    He told them everything that had happened from the arrival of Haskins to the capture of Lafe Jennet. They didn’t find the affair of the note so wildly hilarious as he had done, being more practically concerned with the miraculous good fortune that had deflated it; but when he came to his parting conversation with Karen Leith, they sat up, and then pondered it silently for several seconds.
    “Wouldn’t it be more likely,” Peter said at last, “that Karen’s visit was timed to find out whether the note business had worked?”
    “But she covered me up for Haskins.”
    “She covered up your visit to March,” Patricia corrected. “March wouldn’t want that brought in, anyway.”
    “And then, if the note had misfired somehow, she was there to put the finger on him for Jennet.” Peter was developing his theory with growing conviction. “And when Jennet missed, she could report back that you were on your way out to this gambling barge-“
    “And if you get out of that alive,” said Patricia, “she’ll have another chance on your date