Leslie Charteris - The Saint Returns

“They’ll get me,” she gasped, stumbling up to him and clutching his arms. “Hide me. Do something.”

She was a foot shorter than the Saint, and had to look almost straight up to meet his skeptical blue eyes at that 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 Volkswagen 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 supple 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, taking advantage of momentary slackness in the line, seemed about to free himself, but Simon reeled in, tugged, and brought the man wincing and stumbling forward. 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, placidly 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 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.”

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 imperturbable 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.