Read Online The Saint in Miami by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B

irreverently,
“But it would make things so dull for us. I thought of a much more exciting way of invoking the Law. I called the Sheriff’s office in the middle of the night and told them that they could find a dead body on the March Hare. I hope it gave Randy a lot of fast explaining to do.”
    “I hope you’ve got plenty of fast explanations yourself,” Peter said dampeningly, and pointed with one finger.
    Simon looked round towards the driveway.
    White dust swirled around the wheels of an approaching car. It disappeared behind the corner of the house. A minute later, Desdemona plodded heavily towards them across the patio. She came to anchor in front of the Saint, her brawny arms akimbo, and glared down at him with a face which intimated that she had found all her darkest forebodings justified.
    De she’iff man’s hyah at de doah,” she announced indig-nantly. “He wants to see you!”
    4
    “I think,” said Patricia, getting to her feet, “that Peter and I will let you amuse him while we have another swim.” Simon waved them away.
    “If you see me being taken off in the wagon,” he said, “don’t bother to wait lunch.”
    A couple of moments after they had gone, the official presence of Sheriff Newton Haskins cast its long shadow into the cheery courtyard.
    Seen in the bright light of day, the officer who had hailed them from the police boat appeared even thinner and more lugubrious than he had the night before. He was dressed in funereal black, defying the thermometer. His broadcloth coat was pushed open behind pocketed hands, disclosing a strip of spotless white shirt topped by a narrow and unfashionable black bow tie. He might very easily have been mistaken for an undertaker paying a business call on the bereaved-except for the width or the cartridge belt at his waist, which sagged to the right under the weight of a holstered gun.
    His approach was leisurely. Hands in pockets, he watched Patricia’s and Peter’s retreat to the beach, studied the flowers, and cast an appraising glance up at the cloudless sky. Only after he had apparently satisfied himself that the heavens were still in place did he condescend to notice the Saint.
    Extended backwards in his chair, with his ankles crossed on the table, Simon greeted him with a smile of carefree cordiality.
    “Well, well, well,-if it isn’t our old friend Sheriff Haskins! Sit down, laddie. All my life I’ve heard of this southern hospitality, but I didn’t think a busy officer like you” would have time to come and welcome a mere tourist like me.”
    Hands still in his pockets, Newt Haskins seated himself slowly in a metal garden chair with an exhibition of perfect muscular control. He began a survey at the Saint’s bare feet, enumerated his legs, reviewed his blue gabardine shorts and the rainbow pattern of his beach robe, and ended up gazing dispassionately into the Saint’s mocking eyes.
    “You’d be surprised, son, how many crooks I’ve welcome to Miami in the past ten years.”
    “Crooks, Sheriff?” Simon’s brows lifted in faint inquiry. “Do I misunderstand you, or is that meant to refer to me?”
    Haskins’ left hand crawled out of its pocket like a turtle, bearing with it a plug of black tobacco. His deep-set sharp grey eyes sank farther into his Indian brown face as he bit off a chew. Holding the remainder of the plug, his hand crawled back into its hole again. Watching the methodical working of the muscles along his lean jaws, Simon had an irresistible nostalgic memory of another officer of the Law with whose habits he was much more familiar-the gum-chewing Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard.
    “You, son? Now, there shuah ain’t no use leapin’ to conclusions thataway.” Haskins’ speech, when he was not shouting through a megaphone, lagged naturally into the native Floridian s drawl. “Actually, I come on a jaunt out heah to have a few words with Mr Gilbeck. Seein’ he warn’t around, I thought I might