The Saint Returns Read Free

close
range.
    “This reminds me of a movie I saw
once,” he said blandly. “Except there the girl kissed the stranger
and said, ‘Please don’t look up—hold me!’ and then along came…”
    The girl interrupted him with a despairing
wail as a second automobile—this one a black Mercedes—came around the
curve at a slightly saner rate than her Volks wagen had done, put
on its brakes, and skidded to a stop on the road. Then it backed up with a
roar and a spinning of
wheels on to the shoulder between her car and Simon’s.
    “Do something!” she begged, putting the Saint between her and the emerging occupants of the Mercedes, and
grasping his arms more tightly than ever.
    “I’d have a better chance if my hands
were free,” he told her.
    As she let him go and cowered by the water,
the two men who had been in the black car sized up the situation and began moving
slowly forward, separating to divide Simon’s attention and cut down
possible routes for his and the girl’s escape. One of the quietly
methodical and confident-seeming
pursuers was rather overweight for his job,
and his tautly stretched trench coat looked as if it had seen better days on a slenderer version of
him. His bald dome gleamed red in the setting sun.
    The second man was considerably smaller, and
his trench coat was more rumpled than stretched. Graying sandy hair
was closely cropped on his narrow head, and veins showed large
around his temples. His tongue, like a snake’s, continuously darted out to
touch his thin lips.
    Since they did not speak, Simon saw no need
to initiate a conversation. He waited, relaxed and alert, and almost imperceptibly
stripped line from his reel. Finally, when the men were within
ten feet of him, he flicked the fly into the air, dropped it over the fat
man’s shoulder, and deftly sank the hook into his neck.
    As the fat one yowled and groped with both
hands behind him, his companion, thinking he was catching the Saint off guard, made an
ill-considered move. He charged forward as
Simon bent the fishing rod nearly double and let go the tip just in time to catch the attacker across the throat with the full force of the hissing whiplash
of sup ple fiberglas.
    The thin man went down on his knees, choking,
and Simon simply shoved him with one strong hand into the deep
stream. The obese member of the partnership, tak ing advantage of
momentary slackness in the line, seemed about to free himself, but Simon
reeled in, tugged, and brought the man wincing and stumbling for ward. It
was an easy matter to step out of his plump victim’s path and add
to the man’s momentum with a swift boot to his ample rear. The splash of
his belly-flop into the stream drenched the bank for yards around.
    “Run!” the girl cried.
    “It doesn’t really seem necessary,”
said the Saint, plac idly winding in his freed line as he watched
the men struggle in the water as the current carried them slowly downstream.
“Do you think they can swim?”
    The girl glared at the sputtering pair with
remarkable ferocity on her pixy face.
    “I hope not!”
    Simon gave her an inquiring look.
    “They’re killers,” she said.
    “Not very good at it, are they?”        
    The girl was all but jumping up and down in
her agitation.
    “How can you stand there?” she
whimpered. “They’re getting out. They’ll murder me. Please get me
away from here.”
    The two men, safely out of range of Simon’s
fly rod, were clawing at the bank, trying to haul themselves out. The Saint
was more than ready to take them on again, but he began to feel
that the girl was actually going to collapse in hysterics if he did not
humor her.
    “All right,” he said. “Let’s
go.”
    From the passenger seat of his car she
pleaded with him to hurry as he snatched the key from the ignition of the
Mercedes, and threw it out into the stream, bringing to an abrupt halt the
efforts of the swimmers to get out of the water. They went splashing
toward the spot where the key