The Saint in Miami by Leslie Charteris Page A

tonight-“
    “And if he still accidentally happens to be alive in the morning,” Peter concluded, “there’s a fishing trip down to Wildcat Key on which anything can happen … It all hangs together, Chief. They’ve got about half a dozen covering bets, and your luck can’t hold for ever. They haven’t missed a loophole.”
    The Saint nodded.
    “You may be absolutely right,” he said soberly. “But there’s still no way out of it for me. If we want to get anywhere, we can’t barricade ourselves in the house and refuse to budge. I’ve got to follow the only trail there is. Because any place where there’s a trap there may be a clue. You know that from boxing. You can’t lead without opening up. I’m going with my eyes open-but I’m going.”
    They argued with him through lunch, but it would have been more useful to argue with the moon. The Saint knew that he was right, in his own way; and that was the only way he had ever been able to handle an adventure. He had no use for conniving and tortuous stratagems: they were for the ungodly. For him, there was nothing like the direct approach- with the eyes open. So long as he was prepared for pitfalls, they merely formed the rungs of a ladder, leading through step after step of additional discovery to the main objective. They might be treacherous, but there could be no adventure without risk.
    When it was ultimately plain that his determination was immovable, Peter demanded the right to take the risk with him. But the Saint shook his head just as firmly.
    “Somebody has to stay here with Pat,” he pointed out. “Certainly she can’t come. And I’d rather leave you, because you’re brighter than Hoppy. If there’s so much cunning at work, the whole scheme might be to get me out of the way for a raid on this place.”
    It was impossible to argue with that, either.
    And yet, as the Saint sped by the waters of Indian Creek and crossed it at 41st Street, he had few doubts that for the present he himself was the main centre of attraction to the ungodly. Later it might be otherwise; but for the present he was satisfied that the ungodly would regard his entourage as small fry to be mopped up at leisure after he had been disposed of.
    The open 16-cyIinder Cadillac which he had chosen from the selection in the well-stocked garage purred past the golf course and held a steady fifty to the Venetian Causeway. The islands of Rivo Alto, Di Lido, and San Marino, splashed with multihued homes of luxury, slid past them like a moving diorama. The Saint stole a glance at Lafe Jennet, who was packed like a blue sardine between himself and Hoppy on the front seat.
    “When we hit Biscayne Boulevard, Sunshine,” he said, “which way do we turn?”
    “For all of me,” Jennet said viciously, “you can run yourself into the bay-“
    The last word expired in a painful involuntary exhalation caused by the pulverising entrance of Mr Uniatz’s elbow into the speaker’s ribs.
    “De boss astcha a question,” said Mr Uniatz magisterially. “Or woujja like a crack on de nose?”
    “Turn left, an’ go west on Flagler,” said Jennet, and shut his mouth more tightly than before.
    A phalanx of skyscrapers swept by, towering reminders of the perverted Florida boom. A magic city with no more than four or five million acres to spread out in had had to drive its fingers of commerce into the sky.
    At Flagler Street they had to slow down. A traffic policeman, picturesque in pith helmet, white belt, and skyblue uniform, gazed at them without special interest while he held them up. But Hoppy Uniatz put one hand in his coat pocket and crowded the pocket inconspicuously into Jennet’s waist, and Jennet crouched down and made no movement. The policeman released their line, and they drove on.
    They had to crawl for some blocks-first through the better shops, whose windows reproachfully displayed their most stylish variety of clothing to a throng of sidewalk strollers whose ambition appeared to