The Saint in Miami (The Saint Series) Page 10

  The horsey man picked up some cards with a grin which held nothing but trouble.

  “If you’re right about this, guy, there’s more coming to me than I’ve lost here today.”

  “Use your eyes,” said the Saint cynically. “I don’t know how many of you are in with him, but the rest of you can see it. You might like to do something about it. Personally, I’ll have my dough back and talk to the manager.”

  “You’ll do that,” muttered the dealer.

  There was the sound of one padding step in the alley-way outside, and a new man showed in the doorway with a sub-machine-gun covering the room.

  The Saint knew an instant of frozen expectancy when all the other close calls he had ever had passed in review before the immutable knowledge that some day somewhere there must be a call too close to dodge, and he thought, “This is it.” For a flash the whole set-up seemed entirely rational and obvious. A gambling barge, a quarrel over a card game, a few shots, and the whole thing might be settled in a way in which Randolph March couldn’t possibly be implicated. Only a supreme combination of intuition and will-power kept his right hand from starting a hopeless dive for the butt of the Luger under his arm. It was a more than human feat to sit there without movement and expect the tearing shock of lead, but he thought, “That’s what they’re waiting for. They want to be able to say I fired first. I won’t give them that break, anyway.” But there were goose-pimples all over his body.

  The horsey man forced a laugh that clicked his teeth together, and stammered: “G-good God, Gallipolis, what’s the ripper for?”

  There was still no shooting, and it seemed to Simon that he had stopped breathing for a long time. In a detached but still partly incredulous way he began to take in the details of the prospective gunner.

  Any co-operative reader who has been herded along the paths of romance and adventure by well-trained authors before, knows that a Greek must be fat, swarthy, and apparently freshly rubbed down with oil. It is this chronicler’s discouraging task to try to convince such an audience that Mr Gallipolis most inconsiderately declined to conform to these simple requirements. His figure was svelte, almost feminine. Limpid eyes showed tar-black in a sunburnt face crowned with crisp black curls. He wore a pink polo shirt open at the neck, khaki pants, and very clean white tennis shoes. He leaned against the door jamb and exhibited flawless white teeth in a grin. His hands on the double grips of the Thompson gun were as slender as a girl’s.

  He didn’t even seem to pay any special attention to the Saint. His eyes enfolded the dealer in a melting embrace.

  “Why did you push the buzzer, Frank?” he inquired liquidly. “There’s no stick-up here.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Frank. “This cheapskate you let in here was trying to pull a fast one and welsh on us.”

  The Greek said, “So?” and his eyes wrapped themselves around Simon. “Who the hell are you and how did you get on board? I never saw you before.”

  “I came in the back door,” said the Saint “I sat in the game and accused your dealer of cheating, that’s all.”

  Gallipolis’s face grew long with melancholy.

  “Were you cheating, Frank?”

  “Hell, no! He was getting in too deep, so he tried to start something.”

  “That’s a lot of malarky!” said one of the bookkeepers boldly. “He didn’t start anything. He said these cards were crooked, and they are. We’ve seen ’em.”

  Gallipolis looked amused.

  “I have a hell of a time with dealers,” he told the Saint. “How much you got coming?”

  “Fifty dollars.”

  “Give him his money, Frank.”

  “I’ll be—”

  “Give him his money,” repeated Gallipolis, with a broadening smile.

  The dealer produced a ten and two twenties and slapped them on the table. Gallipolis stepped aside and spoke to the Saint again.

  “Come on, mister. You must have something on your mind or you wouldn’t have come in the back door. We can talk it over in the bar.”

  Simon took his money and stood up, admiring the way Gallipolis handled his gun. As Simon walked around the table, the Greek edged along the wall to keep the other players out of the line of fire. He was behind Simon when the Saint reached the door.

  “Take it easy,” he recommended as the Saint stepped outside. “If you start running I can drop you before you make the end of the hall.” He turned back to the other players. “See what you can get out of Frank, boys. If you’re still short of anything, see me before you go.”

  As Gallipolis left the room, the horsey man said, “Did you ever eat a pack of cards, Quickfingers?” and left the table to close the door.

  The bar furniture comprised a simple pinewood counter and three kitchen tables flanked with chairs. The Saint, walking with a circumspect negation of haste, reached it alive, which he had at no time taken for granted. He discovered that the landward windows were shuttered to conceal an inside coating of thin sheet steel. A square hole provided an outlook from the window at one end of the bar, and would also, Simon decided, have served very well for a gun port.

  Gallipolis rested the machine-gun on the counter and nodded Simon to a chair. He studied the Saint with his ever-present grin.

  “Well, you’re on board. So what? You don’t look like a heist man. What are you, a Sam?” He answered his own question with a shake of his curly head. “No, you don’t look like the Law. Give friend, give. Who are you, and what do you want?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HOW MR GALLIPOLIS BECAME HOSPITABLE AND KAREN LEITH KEPT HER DATE

  1

  “I’m Simon Templar.” The Saint locked hands around his knee.

  Curtains veiled the Greek’s swimming eyes.

  “So? The Saint? I heard you were in the southlands.”

  “Who told you?”

  Gallipolis shrugged.

  “News leaks out fast to a boat like this. I thought you were big time—the biggest of the lot. What the hell’s the idea of picking on me?”

  Muffled noises came from the poker room, followed by curses and a groan. The Saint said, “I’m afraid your customers really are feeding that pack of cards to Frank. I wonder if he’s got a good digestion.”

  “He had it coming,” said Gallipolis, still grinning. “But you didn’t come out here just for that. What else have I got that you want?”

  The Saint found a smoke, thumbed his lighter, and inhaled pensively.

  “I’m looking for a guy named Jesse Rogers.”

  The Greek’s face remained pleasantly receptive, with just a faint upward movement of his strongly-marked black eyebrows. Simon could picture his expression staying exactly the same right up until his forefinger squeezed a trigger.

  “So?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Sure.”

  It was a spine-tickling sensation, having to take all the initiative while growing more firmly convinced that Gallipolis would give no illuminating facial reaction until something fatal was said, and then fatal would be the only word for it.

  “Do you want to tell me anything about him?”

  “Why not?” The Greek’s candour seemed engagingly unfeigned. “He’s an entertainer—sings smutty songs at the piano. He plays here sometimes.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, not professionally. I mean he gambles. He works every night at a dive uptown called the Palmleaf Fan. You could have found him there. Why did you have to come and make trouble here?”

  Simon decided that he couldn’t be any worse off if he played a line of equally calculated frankness.

  “I never heard of him until this morning, or you either,” he said. “Not until a friend of yours who calls himself Lafe Jennet took a shot at me and missed me by about three inches.”

  “You’re wrong both ways, Mr Saint.” Gallipolis was still grinning, but mechanically. “Jennet isn’t a friend of mine, and he didn’t take a shot at you, or he’d have hit
you. He could put a bullet up the rear end of a southbound flea.”

  “I wouldn’t be less excited,” said the Saint, “if he could pop a bedbug in the starboard eye. The point is that I hate being shot at, even in fun. So I told Lafe that I’d have to send him back to the chain gang where he belongs, after playing a few other games with him, unless he told me where he got this humorous idea. He told me that someone he met out on the barge blackmailed him into it.”

  Gallipolis considered his machine-gun and said, “Meaning me?”

  “No—this fellow Rogers. He said he didn’t know anything about him except that he often hung out around here. So I thought I’d drop out and see.”

  “You could have come to the door and asked.”

  “How did I know you weren’t in on it?”

  The houseboat was silent except for the sounds of breaking furniture and a body bumping up and down on the floor.

  “The bear came over the mountain,” said Gallipolis eventually, “to see what he could see. It’s a good story, anyhow. Where’s Jennet now?”

  “He’s waiting in the woods with a friend of mine.”

  “That’s a good story, too.”

  “How do you think I found this boat if Jennet didn’t show me?” Simon asked patiently.

  “You want to fetch him in?”

  The question was almost casual, but Simon knew that it was a challenge, and might become more than that. Gallipolis still had him guessing.

  But he had to balance the situation entirely by his own system of accountancy. It had seemed like a good idea at first to leave Jennet behind, not knowing what might be waiting on the barge. But he had found out more about that since—at least, enough for the present. He was a prisoner under the nozzle of a sub-machine-gun, which was an irrevocable temporary fact, regardless of what anyone was thinking or whatever other scheming might be going on. He had no further use for Mr Jennet. And he had told Hoppy to come after him if he hadn’t returned by nightfall, but Jennet would be a handicap to that, and in any event Hoppy could have been knocked off with ease, being no Indian fighter, before he had moved his own length into the open…It didn’t seem as if ceding the point could make anything much worse, and it might even make some things clearer.

  “If you want him badly enough,” said the Saint, and he had covered all those points in such a lightning survey that his hesitation could barely have been timed with a stopwatch.

  “I just want to know if all this is on the up-and-up,” said Gallipolis, and he might even have been telling the truth. “You’d better take your gun out first and slide it across the floor. If you want to try shooting it out okay, but you’re making a mistake. A Tommy gun is better than an automatic, no matter how good you are.”

  Simon obeyed, cautiously. The gun he was giving up meant nothing to him, being the one he had taken from March’s captain, and Gallipolis handled his weapon as if he had wielded it before.

  The Greek leaned against the lengthwise end of the bar, and it slid creakingly sideways, disclosing a good-sized hole in the floor under it. He toed the Luger into the hole, and said, “Stand up and turn around. I want to see if you’ve got any more.”

  Simon stood still with outstretched arms while Gallipolis explored him. The Greek’s touch was quick and thorough. He ended the frisking by patting Simon inside of each thigh.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “but I’ve got a bullet hole in my shoulder from a fellow I thought I’d disarmed. He was wearing a crotch gun, and when I turned around he pulled it on me by zipping open his fly.”

  The Saint said, “Gosh, what fun!” and forbore to mention the knife strapped to his forearm.

  “Come along,” said Gallipolis, backing into the passage. “But don’t get too close.”

  He stopped outside the poker room and rapped on the door. Still keeping Simon covered, he said through the panels, “You fellows stay inside until I say it’s clear. We’re having visitors. If you want to work on Frank some more, keep him on the table. He makes a noise when he hits the floor.”

  He motioned Simon in the opposite direction.

  At the other end of the hallway, facing the kitchen entrance, another door gave into a sort of reception room which covered the forward end of the barge. They had to zigzag around a counter which practically bisected it and at the same time provided an effective barrier against any too rapid entry or exit. On the other side of the counter was another screen door.

  “You go out and call ’em,” said Gallipolis. “I can watch you from here.”

  Simon stepped out on to the short cramped foredeck and semaphored with his arms. After a while he saw Mr Uniatz step out of cover, herding Lafe Jennet ahead of him.

  “I just wouldn’t shoot too quickly, comrade,” Simon said, in a tone of moderate counsel. “Some other friends of mine know where I am, and if I don’t get home they might pay you a call and ask questions.”

  “Some of your fairy tales seem to be true,” Gallipolis acknowledged impersonally. “We’ll see what happens. I never shoot till I have to.” He was watching the approaching duo at an edgewise angle through the door. “If this big baboon belongs to you, tell him to put his gun away before he comes in.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said the Saint, “but you’d better play down the ukulele. Hoppy is kind of sensitive about some things. If you wave that chopper in his face the wrong way, he might try to shoot it out regardless. You’d do much better to be sociable. Welcome him with liquor, and he’ll drink out of your hand.”

  He spoke idly, but his nonchalance was mostly simulated. Behind it, he was trying to make sense out of an absurd idea that had been gathering strength in his subconscious.

  The barge was authentic—a cheap hangout where cheap gamblers could lose their money breaking a grandmotherly law. But with that there went an enforced deduction that the Greek also might be authentic. And if Gallipolis was genuine, and Jennet was likewise, within their limitations, then there was nothing left but the absurd idea that they were only carefully placed stepping-stones to something else. And an idea like that did a superlative job of making everything meaningless and chaotic…It made it difficult even for such an actor as the Saint to throw off all artificiality as he watched Hoppy and Lafe Jennet reach the bank of the canal.

  “Hi, boss.” Mr Uniatz used the back of one hand to clear trickling sweat from his eyes. Patches of damp under the arms of his blazer testified further to his discomfort. “What makes out?”

  “Come on in,” said the Saint encouragingly. “They’ve got a bar.”

  “A bar!” Mr Uniatz’s face grew slowly radiant from within, as he appeared to gradually comprehend the all-foreseeing beneficence of a Providence which had not neglected to mitigate the horrors of even such a God-forsaken spot as that with Elysian springs of distilled consolation. Gathering new strength from the thought, he speeded the hesitant Mr Jennet up the rickety gangplank with his knee. “Gwan, youse,” said Mr Uniatz. “Whaddaya waitin’ for?”

  “Put your gun away,” said the Saint. “You won’t need it.”

  “But—”

  “Put it away,” said the Saint.

  Gallipolis spoke softly and said, “You come in now.”

  Simon complied, and cleared the doorway. Jennet came in next, boosted by Mr Uniatz’s ready knee. Mr Uniatz followed, and saw the Thompson gun. His hand started to move, and nothing but the Saint’s steady nerves and ancient familiarity with Mr Uniatz’s reflexes could have stopped the movement short of disaster. But the Saint said, exactly at the critical moment, in a voice of level confidence, “Don’t be scared, Hoppy. It’s just a house custom.”

  In spite of which he felt hollow in the pit of his stomach for an instant, until Hoppy’s arm relaxed. All the theories in the world would have little bearing on the subject if Gallipolis had cause to get nervous.

  “Okay, boss.” Mr Uniatz had been in houses with unusual customs before. “Where is dis bar?”

  “Through there,” said Gallipolis.

/>   They all went through. Gallipolis came last, heeling the door shut behind him. He crossed to behind the bar and laid the weight of his gun on the counter. He reached behind him, without averting his eyes, and hitched over a bottle. “With a repetition of the same movement he brought over four glasses, wearing them on his fingers like outsized thimbles, and plunked them on the bar beside the bottle.

  “Help yourselves,” he said, “and let’s hear more about this.”

  It was the merest chance that Simon happened to be standing in a position which gave him a direct sight through the shutter peephole on to a lone black shape that was stalking across the waste outside. It was an additional accident of eyesight and observation which identified the figure to him with instant certainty, even at that distance, and even though the identification left him windmilling on the brink of the ultimate chaos whose possibility he had barely divined three minutes ago.

  Very deliberately he uncorked the bottle and poured himself out a glass.

  “Before we do that,” he said, “maybe you’d better put the thunder iron away.”

  “For why?” The Greek’s voice had a delicate edge of invitation.

  “Because, literally, we’re all in the same boat,” Simon remarked conversationally. “You’ve taken away my gun, but Hoppy still has a concealed arsenal. And you can’t even conceal yours. It might make it awkward to explain things to the sheriff—and I just happened to see him ambling over this way.”

  2

  Gallipolis turned back from a quick stare through the peephole, and Simon had an uneasy feeling that the crisis would have no amusing features at all if the Greek failed to grasp his cue.

  Gallipolis said, in a low and rapid monotone, “What sort of a plant is this? There’s more men hidden in the trees. I saw them move. I’ve a notion to drill you, you dirty stool!”