The Saint in Miami by Leslie Charteris Page B

be to wear as few clothes as the law would let them; then further westward past barkers, photo shops, fortune tellers, and curio vendors with despondent-looking families of tame Seminole Indians squatting in their doors. A newsboy with his papers and racing forms hopped on the running-board, and Simon noticed a card of cheap sun-glasses pinned to his shirt. He bought a pair, and stuck them on Jennet’s nose.
    “We don’t want some bright cop to recognise that sour puss of yours while you’re with us,” he said.
    Eventually the traffic thinned out, and Simon opened the big car up again. They whispered past the Kennel Club and golf course, and Jennet spoke again as they came in sight of the Tamiami Canal.
    “You turn left here. Go right on Eighth Street. Then you turn off again just before you hit the Tamiami Trail. You’ll have to leave the car there, whether you like it or not. There ain’t no way but walkin’ to reach that barge.”
    The relics of abandoned subdivisions grew less frequent. Flatwoods crept close to the highway. Thrust back by the hand of man, curbed but impossible to tame, the wilderness of Florida inched inexorably back and waited with primeval patience to reclaim its own.
    Jennet said: “You’d better slow down. Tain’t far, now.”
    They had gone several blocks without passing another car when he indicated a dim trail leading to the right Simon pulled the wheel over and nursed the big car skilfully over the rutted track carpeted with brownish pine needles. When the track petered out he eased the Cadillac into a thicket of pines which formed a natural screen against the outside world, and stopped the engine. He climbed out, and Hoppy Uniatz yanked Jennet out on the other side.
    “I never said Rogers would be here now,” Jennet growled sulkily. “What happens after this ain’t nuth’n to do with me.”
    “I’ll take a chance on it,” said the Saint. “All you have to do is to lead me on.”
    He was ready for the chance by then, ready with every trained and seasoned sense of muscle and nerve and eye. This was the first point at which ambushes might begin, and even though all his movements seemed easy and careless he was overlooking no possibilities. Under lazily drooping lids, his hawk-sharp blue eyes never for an instant ceased their restless scanning of the terrain. This was the kind of hunting at which he was most adept, in which he had mastered all the tricks of both woodsman and wild animal before he learned simple algebraic equations. And something that lay dormant in his blood through all city excitements awoke here to unfathomable exhilaration …
    The flatwoods ended suddenly, cut off in a sharp edge by encroaching grass and palmettos. Still in the shelter of the trees, he redoubled his caution and halted Hoppy and Jennet with a word.
    He stared out over a far-flung panorama of flatness baked to a crusty brown by years of relentless sun. A covey of quail zoomed up out of the bushes ahead with a loud whirr of wings, and were specks along the edge of the trees before the startled Hoppy could reach for his gun.
    A narrow footpath wound away through the palmettos. The Saint’s eyes traced its crooked course to where the unpainted square bulk of a two-storied houseboat broke the emptiness of the barren plain. Boards covered the windows on the side towards him, but a flash of reflected light from the upper deck showed that at least one window remained unboarded at the stern. The palmettos hid any sign of water, giving an illusion that the houseboat rested on land.
    Lafe Jennet said: “Come on.”
    The Saint’s arm barred his way.
    “Will Gallipolis be there now?”
    “He’s always there. Most time durin’ the afternoon he runs a game.”
    Simon tramped out his cigarette, conscious of the revealing smoke.
    “Keep him here,” he instructed Hoppy. “Don’t come any closer unless I call for you, or you hear too many guns going off. Keep well hidden. And if I don’t get back by