Free The Saint in Miami by Leslie Charteris Page B

scuffed along the floor of the patio with a phlegmatic toe. “You look at: what’s been bustin’ loose. A tanker blows up, for no reason. I get a mysterious phone call that nobody can account for, about a body. An’ then it seems Gilbeck an his daughter ain’t heah, but you are, an’ nobody knows where they’ve gone.”
    “So,” said the Saint, “I must be mixed up with sinking ships and kidnapping millionaires as well.”
    Haskins’ eyes were flinty mist.
    “Son,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re mixed up with.”
    His right hand snaked suddenly out of his pocket and flattened out in front of Simon Templar. The Saint gazed down at the oblong slip of paper held in its palm. Written on it in plain capitals were the words:
LAWRENCE GILBECK:
YOU CAN’T GET AWAY WITH IT ALL THE TIME. I’M COMING TO PUT AN END TO YOUR TROUBLES.
    The thin linear figure drawn as a signature at the lower right-hand corner wore a halo slighdy askew.
    Simon stared at it for just three seconds.
    And then, progressively, he began to laugh.
    It started as a tentative chuckle, grew up into a louder richness that became tinged with the overtones of hysteria, and ended in a culmination of wild hilarity that mere words could scarcely choke their way through. The whole rounded gorgeousness of the business was almost too shattering to endure.
    The full magnificence of it had to work itself into his system by degrees. The March Combine had taken the hurdle of the planted body neatly enough-he had realised that. But in their impromptu comeback they had unsuspectingly sown the seeds of a supernal fizzle of which history might never see the like again.
    “Of course,” sobbed the Saint weakly. “Of course. I wrote ft. What about it?”
    The Sheriff scratched his long stringy neck.
    “That sort of note only means one sort of thing to me.”
    “But you don’t know the background.” The Saint wiped his streaming eyes. “Justine Gilbeck wrote us weeks ago that Papa was behaving like a moulting rooster: he seemed to be in trouble of some sort, but he wouldn’t tell her about it. She was worried stiff. She asked us to come here and try to find out what it was and help him. I can show you her letter. Let me get it for you.”
    III
How Simon Templar Made a
Pleasure of Necessity, and Patricia Holm Was Not Impressed
    Sheriff Haskins’ equine face seemed to grow longer and gloomier as he completed a patient reading of the letter. Then he referred again to the note signed with the Saint’s emblem.
    “‘You can’t get away with it all the time’” he read off it “What would that mean?”
    “Oh, I was always kidding him that you can’t make millions honestly,” Simon replied easily. “I always told him that one day his sins would catch up with him and he’d go to jail. It was a standing rib. So of course when Justine said he was worried I had to make a crack like that.”
    Haskins shifted his cud.
    “‘I’m coming to put an end to your troubles’ That would be sort of double meanin’, hunh?”
    “Yes.”
    “On account of what well call this fictitious reputation o’ yours.”
    “Naturally.” The Saint was still a little shaky with laughter. “Now wouldn’t it be fair to tell me where you got that note from?”
    “I dunno yet.” Haskins gazed at it abstractedly for a moment longer, and put it back in his pocket He returned his attention to Justine Gilbeck’s letter. He said, as if he were making a comment on the weather: “I guess there’s plenty of this letterhead in the house.”
    “And we’re all master forgers,” Simon assured him blandly. “Signatures are just baby stuff to us. We think nothing of four whole pages of handwriting.”
    Haskins put the letter back in its envelope and studied the postmark. He tapped it on his front teeth.
    “Mind if I keep this a while?”
    “Not a bit,” said the Saint. “There must be a bank in town that knows her writing, and they’ve probably got other friends here as