The Saint Returns Read Free Page A

had gone down. Simon leisurely
clamped his rod on the roof rack of his car. (He had carried no creel, since he
had no way of using fish at the moment, and had released the ones
he had caught.) Then he plucked a burr from his trouser leg, slipped into
the driver’s seat, and started the engine, much to the relief of his
passenger.
    “Where to?” he asked as he turned
around his car and headed for Dublin. “Not that I’ll take you there, but
I’m curious to know where you’d choose if you had a choice.”
    The girl sank back in the seat, letting her
head loll and her mouth open to take a deep breath.
    “It doesn’t matter,” she sighed.
“Anywhere. I’m just so glad to get away.”
    “How about Dublin?” he asked.
    “That’s fine.” She looked dramatically with half-closed eyes at the twilit sky ahead. “Maybe there I
can … lose myself in the
crowds.”
    “Lose yourself in the crowds?”
Simon repeated.
    “Yes, it’s my only chance. And then
later, maybe, if they haven’t caught up with me, I could …”
    “Why don’t you start from the
beginning?” the Saint put in as her words faded in mid-sentence.
    “I … I can’t tell
it,” she said. “If you knew, your life would be in danger too.”
    “For all they know, I do know,”
said Simon. “So as long as my life is in danger anyway, I might as well have the satisfaction of being told why.”
    “Oh, that’s true!” she exclaimed,
clutching his arm. “I’m so sorry, Mr. … I don’t
even know your name.”
    “It’s no secret,” said Simon, and he
told her.
    She showed no recognition.
    “I’m sorry I got you into this, Mr.
Templar, and I don’t know how to thank you enough. I don’t even
have any money now. I left my purse in the car.”
    Simon gave her a teasing look.
    “Shall we go back and get it?”
    “Oh, no!” she said. “There… wasn’t much anyway.”
    “I think the best thing to do,” the
Saint said more seriously,
“is to stop at the next village and put in calls to the police and a towing service … But we’ll
have to explain …”
    She grabbed his arm again, shaking her head
violently.
    “We can’t do that. For one thing …
that car … wasn’t mine.”
    “Whose is it?”
    “I don’t know. I borrowed it.”
    “Stole it?” Simon asked.
    “Yes, in Carlow. It was the first one I
found with a key in it—after I got away.”
    Simon stopped at the Kildare-Dublin highway,
turned onto it, and picked up speed—just in case Thin and Fat had retrieved
their key.
    “Got away from what?” he asked.
    The girl sighed.
    “It’s such a long story, and you’ll never
believe it.”
    “Well, give me a try. For a start, what’s
your name?”
    “My real one?” she asked.
    “Preferably,” said the Saint drily.
    “You’d never believe that,
either.” He
shrugged.
    “I do have a nasty perverse habit of
never believing people’s names, but don’t let that stop you.” She hesitated.
    “I’m called … Mildred. And …”
    “And?” Simon said encouragingly.
    “And my father was Adolf Hitler.”
     
    2
     
    It was one of Simon Templar’s characteristics
that no blow to
his mental equilibrium, however severe, was allowed
to produce more than a ripple on his surface. So when his passenger announced that she was Hitler’s daughter, and looked at him timorously to see what
his reaction would be, she saw nothing
but the usual imper turbable
nonchalance.
    “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss
Hitler,” he said, as it occurred to him that he had possibly, just a few
minutes before, deposited two employees of a mental hospital in a
tributary of the River Liffey.
    But that was only a passing thought, since
men in white jackets, even when not wearing their white jack ets, would
not close menacingly in on an uninformed bystander without a word of
explanation.
    “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,”
the girl said, and she began to cry.
    “Who said I didn’t believe you?”
protested the Saint with elaborate