The Saint in Miami (16 page)

By this time, Toots’s disintegrating seams had left nothing but four wide streamers of black lace hanging from her shoulder-straps. With a last revolution of her curvilinear body which spread them like the blades of a propeller, she reached the curtained doorway. The lights dimmed. There was a round of applause, to which Hoppy Uniatz lent his cooperation by thumping his flat hand on the table until it shuddered under the punishment
The music and the spotlight struck up again together. Apparently intoxicated by her success, but at the same time handicapped by the shredding of her gown, Toots compromised by coming back without it. She had nothing now but the palmleaf fan, which being only about twelve inches in diameter was not nearly large enough to cover all the vital scenery. Her valiant attempts to alternate concealments and exposures held the audience properly spellbound.

“Stay where you are,” Simon ordered sternly, as Hoppy’s chair began to slide away from the table. “Haven’t you ever been out before?”

“Chees, boss,” said Mr Uniatz bashfully, “I never see nut’n like dis. In New York dey always got sump’n on.”

Simon had to acknowledge that the comparison was justified, but he still kept Mr Uniatz in his seat. He was trying to anticipate what the arrival of March and Friede portended. By saying nothing to Haskins about the Saint’s felonious activities of the night before they had positively established themselves as asking no favours from the Law, but it was impossible to believe that they had decided to forget the whole thing. Their arrival at the Palmleaf Fan, after Simon had been led there by such a devious trail, had to be more than mere coincidence. And a kind of contented relaxation slid through the Saint’s muscles as he realised that by the same portents their personal presence guaranteed that whatever was in the wind was not going to be a waste of anybody’s time …

The peregrinations of Toots returned to the curtained doorway as the music drew to a conclusion. She stood weaving the fan with slower provocation through the last bars, scanning the audience as though making a choice. The applause grew wild. Mr Uniatz put two fingers in his mouth and emitted a whistle that pierced the room like a stiletto. The strident sound seemed to settle her selection. With a smile she tossed the fan away in his direction, blew him a kiss, stood posed for an instant in nothing whatsoever, and vanished through the curtain as the spotlight blacked out
The nimble MC tripped back to the microphone.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, just one more sample of what we are offering you tonight. That lovely personality- Vivian Dare!”

Vivian wore a beautifully cut dress of blue tulle, and had a considerably better soprano than Toots.

“You’re very quiet,” said Karen. “Is the show so absorbing, or are you shocked?”

Simon grinned.

“You may not believe it, but I’ve been watching Randy most of the time. He seems to like the place.”

“It’s the sort of place he does like. He could have bought it for the money he spends here.”

The Saint nodded. He had already observed the extra attentiveness of waiters around March’s table, and deduced that this was by no means a first visit. The attraction seemed to radiate to other quarters as well, for two blondes and a brunette were at that moment happily attaching themselves to the party.

“Did he bring you here much?” Simon asked.

“Often.”

“Do you think he’s trying to show you that he doesn’t need to bring a girl here?”

She laughed.

“That isn’t for my benefit. He always had girls to the table even when I was with him. It’s his kind of fun.”

She spoke without rancour, without any personal emotion that he could detect, as if she had been mentioning that March had a stamp collection. But once again Simon was brought up against the enigma of her, wondering about so many things that were unsaid.

And he was still watching March’s table for the first warning of where danger would come from. Their complete detachment was beginning to make him tense again. Neither March nor the captain had given a sign of greeting or recognition to anyone in the room except the waiters, and Karen, and the ladies of pleasure who had just joined them; and yet he knew that their arrival must have been a signal for wheels to begin turning. He wondered if that was really the only signal there would be …

Vivian had begun to carry her song among the tables, and now she was at their booth, addressing the words intimately to Mr Uniatz, who gaped up at her as if in hopes that the blue tulle would begin to come off her before she moved away.

You are
The promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long;
You are
The breathless hush of evening …”

Hoppy’s chest expanded like a balloon, and he shifted his weight to the detriment of the chair. It had always been one of the tragedies of his life that so many women were blind to his hidden loveliness of soul.

The singer reached out and stroked his cheek.

“You are the angel glow
That lights the stars;
The dearest things I know
Are what you are …”

Simon choked over his drink.

“Some day
My happy arms will hold you-“

It was too much for Mr Uniatz. He tried to wrap one arm around the svelte enticing figure that was bending over him; but Vivian was ready for that. A swift kiss was planted on Hoppy’s forehead, and his clutching hand caught nothing but a mass of curly hair, which came off in the form of a wig, revealing a strictly masculine haircut underneath.

“You nasty rough beast!” squeaked Vivian, and snatched the wig back from him and fled towards the floor.

Like lightning, before Simon could move, Mr Uniatz let go with the carafe of water. It crossed the room like a damp comet, caromed off the clarinet player, boomed off a drum, and came to a cataclysmic end among the cymbals. Then Simon had Hoppy’s wrist and was holding him down with a grip of iron.

“Cut it out,” he gritted, “or I’ll break your arm.”

“We oughta take dis jernt apart, boss,” said Mr Uniatz redly.

“You damn fool!” snarled the Saint. “They were just waiting for us to start something.”

And then he realised that the room was rocking with laughter. Everyone seemed to be laughing. March’s table was in an uproar, with March himself leading it. Even Captain Friede’s tight mouth was flattened broadly across his teeth. The clarinetist was helped out by a grinning waiter, apparently being a person of no consequence. The chortling orchestra leader waved his baton, and a new dance number blared out. Giggling couples were filtering on to the floor. The head waiter appeared at the booth and smiled only a little more restrainedly.

“Your first time here?” he said, more as a statement than a question.

“My friend isn’t drunk,” said the Saint “But he’s a little hasty.”

The head waiter nodded tolerantly.

“Well, there was no harm done. Shall I bring you some more water?”

“Thank you.”

The Saint felt incredibly and incredulously foolish. And yet it had seemed so obvious. Start something, bring on the bouncers, and anything could happen in the resultant brawl.

But the opportunity had been ignored. It had been taken as a good joke.

He lighted another cigarette and tried to say unconcernedly to Karen: “It’s a good thing they’ve got a sense of humour here.”

“Something happens here almost every night,” she said casually. “But nobody gets excited.”

Not that, then … And yet she also seemed expectant, in a way that he could not pin down on to any outward sign. There was no nervousness in the handling of her cigarette or the leisured sipping of her liqueur. Perhaps it was because of that very tranquillity that he felt on edge, as if he sensed that she was playing a part to which he was not admitted.

Then where was it coming from? A shot from somewhere during a blackout? Too conventional-and too risky. He still couldn’t get out of his head the conviction that March Friede must still be bothered by the protective letter that he had spoken about. And they were here now, much too prominently present to have any expectation of being named as suspects. A poison in the Scotch, or the new carafe of water? Impossible, for the same reason. Then what? Could he have been altogether wrong in every single calculation, and could he be a helpless particle in a ferment that he knew nothing about and for whose chemical combinations he was utterly unprepared?

Hobgoblin centipedes inched up his back into the roots of his hair …

And then the dance had ended, and the exquisite MC was skipping up to the microphone again, as the floor cleared and a miniature piano was trundled in.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you another of those unique entertainments which have made the Palmleaf Fan famous: that great and goofy singer, the maestro of murky music, lewd lyrics, and dirty ditties-the one and only Jesse Rogers!”

The was a concerted blast from saxophones, trombones, clarinets, and cornucopias; and the man Simon Templar had been looking for walked on.

2
Hoppy Uniatz, still crushed beneath his recent humiliation, swilled whisky around his glass and put it down. He leaned across the table.

“Boss,” he divulged in a despondent whisper that reached every corner of the room, “I gotta go.”

“Shut up,” snapped the Saint. “You can go afterwards. This is the guy we came out here to see.”

Mr Uniatz reviewed the performer with sour disillusion.

“It don’t mean a t’ing in dis jernt, boss. I betcha he’s just a wren wit’ pants on.”

Simon could appreciate the justification for Hoppy’s prejudice, but he also realised that Jesse Rogers was definitely not the right subject for it.

Rogers was a normal type if there ever was one, even though it was not a type which entirely harmonised with the atmosphere of the Palmleaf Fan. He had more of an air of filling in there while paying his way through college. He had a round and rather juvenile face made studious by rimless glasses, and his shoulders and complexion both looked as if they were indebted to a much more healthy background.

His repertoire, however, certainly did not. His first song ran a gamut of transparent double entendre and monothematic suggestion that would have brought blushes to the cheeks of the blowsiest barmaid, ana was accordingly received with tumultuous applause. It was plain that he was a popular performer. As the ovation subsided, there were sporadic shouts of “Octavius!” Rogers smiled with cherubic salaciousness, and said: “By request-Octavius, the Octogenarian Octopus.”

The difficulties, vices, and devices of Octavius were unfolded in the same strain. They were biologically improbable, but full of ingenious concepts; and they went on for a long time.

A waiter came by the table, picked up the Peter Dawson bottle, and tilted it over the glasses. It was an unproductive service, for Mr. Uniatz had not taken his revised standards of alcoholic quality seriously enough to leave anything unpoured. The waiter leaned over with respectful discretion and said: “Shall I bring another bottle, sir?”

“I suppose you’d better,” said the Saint, with the fatalism of long experience. “Or do you make special rates by the case?”

The waiter smiled politely and went away. The song went on, with the diversions of Octavius becoming more recherche in every stanza. Currently, they seemed to be concerned with some whimsical prank involving bathing girls in Bali. Karen said curiously: “What are you making of him?”

“He knows his onions, for what they’re worth,” said the Saint judicially. “I’ve been trying to estimate what else he’s worth. At first I thought something was haywire again, but now I’m not nearly sure.”

“Does he look tough to you?”

“He does-now. He’s tougher than Jennet. It’s a funny twist, but you’re always surprised when a villain you’ve built up in your imagination doesn’t turn out to look like a professional wrestler, and yet some of these baby-faced guys are more dangerous than any plug-ugly knows how to be.”

He felt no incongruity in discussing Rogers so dispassionately with her. The mere fact that she should be sitting there with him at that time achieved a culmination of unreality beside which all minor paradoxes were insignificant. And yet even that apical absurdity had become so much a part of the fantastic picture that he no longer questioned it.

The saga of Octavius ended at last, and Rogers was shaking his head, smiling, in answer to the disappointed yells for more as the piano was whisked away. The MC tripped on again like a pixie and said: “Jesse Rogers will be back before long, ladies and gentlemen, with some more of those sizzling songs. We can’t give you the whole show at once. Let’s dance again, and then we’ll have another treat for you.” The orchestra took its cue, and the ball kept rolling. It could never be disputed that the Palmleaf Fan worked tirelessly in its dubious cause.

Simon still looked between the gathering dancers, and saw that Rogers had been stopped on his way out through the curtained doorway by a waiter. Something about the back of the waiter’s close-cropped head seemed oddly familiar … Simon was trying to identify the familiarity when Rogers looked directly at him across the room. In that instant the Saint grasped the fleeting shadow of recognition.

It was the waiter who had just taken his order for another bottle of Scotch.

Nothing to make any difference. The waiter had other duties. But Rogers had looked straight across the room. And in the circumstances …

Karen Leith’s face was a lovely mask. She might not have seen anything.

“So you’ve seen him,” she said. “Now what are you going to do?”

“I was just wondering?” Simon replied slowly. “We might wait till he comes on again and shoot him from here. But the management might resent that. Besides, I want to know where he gets his orders from … Do you think you’re getting enough inside information to please Randy?”

He was deliberately trying to hurt her again, to strike some spark that would end his groping. But instead of hatred, her eyes brightened with something else that he would much rather not have seen.

“Dear idiot,” she said: and she was smiling. “Don’t ever stop being hard. Don’t ever let anyone fool you-not even me.”