Leslie Charteris The Saint 22 The Saint in Miami

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'Listen, son," he said. "Every tout, grifter, dip, gambler, yegg, land shark,
and mobster, from Al Capone down to any lush-rolling prostitute, hits this
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city sooner or later, and we find 'em sunnin' their bottoms along our shore."
The Saint fluttered his eyelids and said: "But how poetical you are, daddy.
Please tell sonny more."
Haskins' face remained glum, except for a passing glint in the depths of his
lethargic grey eyes which might equally well have come either from anger or
amusement
"Big and little, man and woman, killers an' punks," he said, "I've met 'em
all. They don't none of 'em scare me."
"That takes a great load off my mind," said the Saint, with the same dulcet
challenge.
"I thought it might do you good to know."
"Well," drawled the Saint, with dangerous camaraderie. "Neighbour, that shuah
is white of you. Ah ain't met sech a speerit o' kindheartedness sense mah ole
gramppaw had his whiskers et plumb off by General Beauregard's horse in the
Civil Wah."
Haskins rounded out a cavernous cheek with his cud of tobacco.
"Simon Templar," he said, without heat, "you may think that's a southern
accent, but it stinks of Oxford to me." He leaned back in his chair and stared
skyward. "Modern police methods are makin' it awful tough for the boys, son. I
sent a cable to Scotland Yard last night, an' I got an answer just before I
come out heah."
"Give me one guess and I'll tell you who answered you." A joyful smile began
to dawn on the Saint's face. "Is it possible - No, this is too good! . . . But
is it possible that it could have been signed with the name of Teal?"
The Sheriff crossed his legs and fanned the air with a number eleven toe.
"I wonder if you'll be so infernally happy when you know what he had to say."
"But I know what he had to say. That's what makes me so happy. If you'd only
come to me in the first place, I could have saved you the cost of your wire.
Let's see-it would have been something like this . . . He told you that I'd
run the gamut of crime from burglarly to murder-he thinks. That I dine on
blackmail and arson seasoned with assault and battery-he suspects. That every
time a body is found under the Chief Commissioner's breakfast table, or
somebody puts a home-made shilling into a cigarette machine, the whole CID
spews itself into prowl cars and dashes off to arrest me-they hope. Was that
it?"
"It didn't have all those fancy touches," Haskins allowed, "but that's about
how it read."
Simon trickled blue smoke through insolent and delighted lips.
"There's only one thing wrong with your reading," he murmured. "You must have
got so excited over the first part that you didn't stop to read through to the
end."
"An" what might that have done for me?"
"You might have found out that all the first part was really nothing but the
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foam on poor old Teal's fevered brain. You might have discovered that none of
those things have ever been proved, that I've never been convicted of any of
them or even brought to trial, that there isn't the single ghost of a charge
he could bring against me today, and that I'm known to be getting pretty damn
tired of having every dumb cop in creation ringing my doorbell and making me
listen to a lot of addlepated blather that he can't prove."
Haskins' left hand sought daylight again without the plug of tobacco, and its
blunt thumbnail made a test for stubble around the deep cleft of his chin.
"Son," he said, "I've been compared to everything from the disappearin' view
of a racehorse at Tropical Park, to havin' my maw never find out what my paw's
last name was. It ain't never got a rise out of me. I don't aim to change my
tactics now. You and your friends are guests in a prominent citizen's home,
an' I'm treatin' you as such. But as Sheriff of this county I've got a few
questions to ask you, and I expect you to answer 'em."
It was a rare event for Simon Templar to feel admiration for any professional
enforcer of the Law. But admiration for any cool unflustered opponent who
could meet him in his own field and exchange parry and riposte without
vindictiveness but with a blade sharp enough to match his own, was a tribute
which none of his instincts could refuse. He drew at his cigarette again, and
over his fingers his eyes twinkled calculatingly blue but with all malice
wiped out of them.
"I suppose that anything I say can be used as evidence against me," he
remarked cheerfully.
"If you're fool enough to tell me anything incriminatm'," said Haskins,
"that's true. Don't blame me for it."
"Shoot," said the Saint.
Haskins considered him.
"I saw you scootin' around in Gilbeck's speedboat last night, and I sort of
wondered at the time why he wasn't along with you."
"I sort of wondered myself. You see, we came here on a special invitation to
visit him. And as you've already found out, he isn't here."
Haskins took the rather long end of his nose between thumb and forefinger and
wiggled it around.
"You mean they wam't here to welcome you, so you just thought you'd move in
an' wait for 'em."
Simon nodded.
"Sort of noblesse oblige not to leave without seeing your hosts."
The Sheriff took off his black hat and fanned himself thoughtfully.
"Where did you go last night after I chased you away?"
"We took a little spin. The moonlight kind of got me."
"It used to do that to me when I was your age. So you took a little spin an'
came back ashore."
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"That's right."
"Here?"
"But of course."
"There was a lot of funny goin's-on around Miami last night," said Haskins,
with an air of perplexity. "They don't make sense to me. Some time in the
small hours of the mawnin', my office got a call that Randolph March was
carryin' an unreported body around on his yacht. Silly sort of thing, warn't
it?"
"Was it?" Simon asked innocently. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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