The Saint Returns

1

The golden sun grew fat in its old age, and as it sank low over the distant Irish hills the whole countryside seemed to share in the hush of its going. There was no breeze. The birds were still, and even the stream, moving deep and slow between green banks, made scarcely a murmur. Only now and then a trout, striking at some floating insect in the shallows, would break the silence with a sudden splash whose purl quickly smoothed and silently vanished.

Simon Templar stood tall and lean by the water, his blue eyes watching the surface for signs of trout within range of his line. An ambiguous swirl downstream failed to distract him. He had chosen this pool because instinct — sharpened by a lifetime of hunting human prey, and not rarely being hunted himself — told him that in this widening of the stream would be lurking a prize worthy of his time and skill.

So he waited, poised and strong, his rod held ready.

That the man known somewhat incongruously as the Saint should be found in such peaceful surroundings was unusual. (His true character was better described by another of his informal appellations, voiced by police officers and criminals with equal unease, the Robin Hood of Modern Crime.) That such peace should last long, even in rural Kildare, half an hour’s drive from Dublin, was inconceivable, for the Saint could no more escape adventure than a fish could escape its brook and stroll off across the fields, and in general he had no desire to do so.

But even a man whose natural medium is excitement occasionally wants a change of pace, and for the moment Simon Templar wanted and had found it — though his sixth sense, nagging like the faintly expanding sound of a speeding car in the distance, warned him to enjoy it thoroughly now before his fated propensity for trouble swung the balance back to normal.

The Saint had driven into Dublin on the previous afternoon with the plan of meeting an old friend, the soldier of fortune, Patrick Kelly, at the Gresham Hotel, spending the night there, while Kelly enjoyed a reunion with comrades-at-arms, and then going out to Kelly’s house in the country seventy miles west for two or three days of fishing.

All had gone as planned up to and including Kelly’s enjoyment of his reunion, in which he had insisted Simon take part. But Kelly’s enjoyment had been so immense, and celebrated with such grand libations of porter and thrice-distilled Gaelic fire, that he had found himself disinclined to go on with the rest of the schedule when Simon wakened him by house phone at noon. He had found himself unready, in fact, to leave his hotel bed, and had announced in that brief interval between prolonged periods of unconsciousness that the drive to his cottage would have to be delayed at least until evening — and since they would be paying for another night in the hotel anyway, probably until the next morning.

The Saint, after a one p.m. brunch, had gone on out into the country for two reasons: he was in the mood for fishing, and he did not want to spend the afternoon near the hotel, where he would almost inevitably get involved in somebody else’s problems. Among Pat Kelly’s more exuberant activities of the night before, once he got to the table-pounding stage, had been the repeated proud bellowing of Simon’s name not only in the Cocktail Bar of the Gresham, but also in numerous other places along the streets of Dublin’s fair city. Such widespread advertising of the Saint’s presence was a virtual guarantee that he would not have been able to spend an afternoon in town undisturbed by some stranger.

Near the center of the stream the surface swirled, and a slowly waving tail broke the orange-gold reflections of overhanging trees. The Saint made a perfect cast upstream of the fish. The brightly colored fly drifted with the current toward the target of concentric ripples made by the trout’s rising, and Simon carefully reeled in just enough of the floating line to insure control if the big fish struck.

The sound of the fast-moving automobile which a few moments before had been almost imperceptible was now much closer. Tires squealed less than two hundred yards away. The only road in the vicinity followed the stream where Simon was fishing, and he was standing within thirty feet of a sharp curve in the pavement. He was not worried about his own safety, however, but about his car, which was parked on the shoulder between road and stream and could easily be demolished if the speeder overshot the turn.

Irish country roads are not made for fast travel. Cars are few, carts and sheep are plentiful, and a normal brisk driving speed is thirty-five miles per hour. So it was particularly irritating to Simon that some maniac had chosen this stretch of asphalt on which to attempt suicide, and that the aberration had to occur just when a rising trout begged for all his concentration.

Once the racing car hit the curve, there was nothing Simon could do but jerk the fly from the very mouth of the expectant fish and prepare to dodge a hurtling ton of metal. It was a green Volkswagen, and it skidded with an anguished howl of scorching rubber, rear end swinging as the driver narrowly missed Simon’s car by slamming on brakes and heading for the old stone wall on the opposite side of the road. Then to avoid smashing into the wall the driver made an immediate sudden turn back toward the outside of the curve. The Volkswagen pirouetted completely around on all four wheels as if it had been on ice, miraculously failed to turn over, left the road, and skidded toward the stream, its locked rear wheels plowing up turf, and came to a halt between two trees without hitting either.

As Simon strode toward it, his rod still in hand, the engine was dead, and the driver, a girl, was slumped forward over the wheel. But, before he had covered half the distance between them, she looked up suddenly with terror in her eyes, and it was obvious that she had been shaken rather than knocked unconscious.

She was young — scarcely nineteen, Simon estimated on first sight — and the deep brown eyes that were fixed on him were extraordinarily large. Her chestnut hair was chopped short, her mouth was small and provocative, her nose pert and uptilted.

The Saint realized instantly that neither the acrobatics of her car nor his own appearance — which considering his frame of mind probably had a rather threatening aspect — was the cause of the stark fear on her pretty face. After the initial moment of staring at him, she looked up the road in the direction from which she had come, grabbed at the door handle, and scrambled out of her car.

It was then that Simon heard the second car rushing nearer, with the same screech of tires on curves which had preceded the arrival of the girl, and realized that it was the apparent cause of her panic.

“Le Mans is that way,” he said helpfully, gesturing with his fishing rod. “You must have missed a turn somewhere.”

“Please!” she cried. “Help me!”

She was hurrying toward him, the short tight skirt of her stylish suit restricting her legs, her stiletto heels stabbing into the damp earth of the stream’s bank.

“Help you do what?” he asked. “Change tires for the next stretch? I’m sorry, but I don’t have much sympathy for anybody who...”

“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.”

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 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.

But that was only a passing thought, since men in white jackets, even when not wearing their white jackets, 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 innocence. “Why shouldn’t I believe you?”

She sniffled, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. It was growing dark now, and the increasing traffic glared with headlights.

“You believe me?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that, exactly. I said why shouldn’t I believe you? What else can I do? I was going to suggest that when we got to my hotel we could telephone your parents, but I guess that’s out of the question.”

She looked at him indignantly.

“You’re callous,” she said. “Making fun of an orphan.”

Simon, because he was driving, could not devote a really effective squelching look to her.

“Now listen to me, young lady,” he said with impressive firmness. “I am not making fun of you. I have not even questioned your fantastic identity. I have lost a world-record trout because of you, scuffed my shoe kicking your enemies into the river, and am now in the process of further saving your neck. So if you start pulling female temperament on me, I’m going to lose patience and give you a spanking.”

She stared at him, her big eyes getting rounder.

“Spanking?” she squeaked.

“Yes. You look very spankable, and just the right size to fit across my knee. And I can’t say I wouldn’t enjoy it... for more reasons than one.”

With compressed lips, she smiled in spite of herself.

“I’m too old for a spanking,” she said without defiance.

“Not you,” said the Saint. “Let’s see, your father died in 1945. That makes you about... twenty-two at the least.”

“Twenty-three,” she said.

“Before we go any more into your earlier history, tell me something: why are those men trying to kill you?”

She shook her head.

“Oh. They weren’t. They were trying to capture me.”

“You said they were killers.”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth. I couldn’t tell you the whole story right then, and I had to make you take me away in a hurry, so that seemed the best thing to say.”

Simon nodded.

“Who are they, then?” he asked.

“They’re SS men. They slipped into Ireland on a submarine with me during the last weeks of the war. There were four originally, sworn just to protect me, but one died and another one killed himself when somebody discovered his real identity.”

“And where have you been all this time — since the end of the war?”

“In a convent. And those men have lived nearby on a little farm.”

“What did the nuns think about all this?” Simon asked, slowing as Emmet Road took them in toward the heart of Dublin.

“Only the Mother Superior knew who I really was. She was a close relative of one of the high party members — the Nazi Party, I mean. The other nuns were given the story that I was the illegitimate daughter of a bishop.”

Simon covered his mouth with one hand and appeared to cough.

“The illegitimate daughter of a bishop?” he repeated, solemnly, more for confirmation of the sound than as a question.

“Yes. But I wasn’t to be raised as a nun. That way I’d have been lost to the world forever. Instead I was given my own little apartment — if you can call it that — in a wing of the convent. What a lonely life that was! I had tutoring, and all the books I wanted...”

“And nice clothes,” the Saint said, glancing at her fashionable suit.

“Oh... this? I bought this after they took me out. In fact that’s how I gave them the slip. I was in the changing room of the shop to try it on, and I discovered a way out the back. So then I went along an alley to the main street and borrowed that Volkswagen. Unfortunately they realized I was taking too long and came after me, and I never managed to shake them completely.”

She was sitting bolt upright in her seat, hands folded in her lap, completely absorbed in her own words, chattering at a rate that would have shamed an auctioneer.

“Lucky thing they taught automobile driving at the convent,” Simon said.

She didn’t bat even one eye.

“Oh, they didn’t teach me there. The SS taught me on the farm. In case something happened to them they figured I might need to know how.”

“So you lived on the farm too?”

“Only for a few days, right after they took me out of the convent.”

Simon turned and crossed River Liffey between the ornate iron lampposts that lined either side of O’Connell Bridge.

“So here you are,” he said. “All grown up, a skillful and sensible driver, with lots of books under your belt and lovely clothes on your lovely back. There’s just one thing: Why were your guardians chasing you?”

“Because I didn’t want to co-operate.”

“Co-operate in what?” Simon asked.

“Their plan is to take me back to Germany as the figurehead for a new Nazi movement.”

They had reached upper O’Connell Street and the Gresham Hotel, so Mildred’s narrative had to be interrupted at that climactic point, with no really worthy response by the Saint. Surrendering the car to the doorman, he led her through the lobby, where the egress of well-clad guests for dinner, theater, or cinema was just beginning.

“Would you like to use my room for freshening up?” Simon asked.

“I’d much rather have a drink.”

“Drinking too?” he remarked as they entered the mezzanine Cocktail Bar. “What goes on in these convents?”

She looked at him with doe-eyed ingenuousness.

“I have to learn, don’t I?”

“If it’s learning to drink you want,” Simon said in a louder voice with traces of an Irish brogue, “here’s just the teacher for you.”

Patrick Kelly, who was seated at the bar attending to a bottle of Jameson, turned his great red head and split its lower half with a prognathous grin.

“Simon, ye ould dog!” he bellowed. “Ye tould me ye were goin’ fishin’, but niver that this was what it was ye were fishin’ for!”

“Pat, meet Mildred,” said the Saint, “and call for two more glasses.”

Kelly gave her a more than appreciative look and his ham-sized mitt enveloped her fingers.

“I’m charmed. A face like a darlin’ jewel itself she has — and here I’ve slept the entire mornin’ away.”

“It’s evening,” Mildred said innocently, taking a stool between the men.

“Oh, and shure you’re mistaken,” said Kelly, rearing back to inspect the watch on his hairy wrist. “Seven in the mornin’ it must be. Here — have a bite o’ breakfast.”

He poured whiskey into the clean glasses brought by the bartender. Mildred shivered and looked over her shoulder.

“What if they followed us?” she whispered.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Simon said. “And what could they do in a public place?”

“What could who do?” Kelly asked. “Who’s followin’ ye?”

Simon finished his drink and stood up.

“It’s a long and wonderful story, and I’ll leave Mildred to tell it to you while I change for dinner. I’ve been fishing and fighting all afternoon.”

Kelly swelled like an excited bullfrog.

“Ye mean to say I missed a fight, too?”

“Big one,” the Saint said casually. “SS men.”

Kelly snorted.

“Ye don’t mean them big German fellas with the black uniforms? Now ye’re handin’ me a pail of malarkey, man. There’s been none of them about for twenty years.”

“Ask Mildred,” Simon said.

As he strolled away from the bar, he heard her begin in a low confidential voice:

“How much do you remember about Hitler’s death?”

When Simon returned from his room, showered and immaculately dressed, he found Kelly looking dazed and Mildred chattering like a magpie just recovered from laryngitis.

“Simon!” the Irishman exclaimed. “Ye should only hear what she’s been tellin’ me!”

His sidewise look at the Saint held more doubt than his voice. He obviously wanted some confirmation or denial, but he got only a helpless gesture of upturned hands.

“Let’s go eat,” Simon said. “Mildred’s problem isn’t the kind of thing I like to think about with an empty stomach.”

She clutched his arm in what was becoming an habitual gesture.

“I’m frightened to go out,” she said. “What if they...”

“No need to be frightened while I’m about,” Kelly assured her, displaying a fist big enough to crack the Blarney stone. “Simon an’ me have handled worse than a couple o’ second-hand supermen.”

“And we don’t even need to leave the hotel,” Simon said. “The Grill here is as good as anyplace in town.”

As they were leaving the bar, Kelly stopped, tucked in his chin, and stared down at Mildred.

“But only imagine,” he said, “a tiny thing like this going to conquer the world!”

3

Simon placed his fork on the platter which minutes before had been heaped with the delectable cadavers of Dublin Bay prawns, looked contentedly around at the elegant red and black decor of the Gresham Grill, and finally let his gaze come to rest on Mildred, who avoided a direct meeting with its intensity by chasing a last bit of lettuce across the salad plate. Kelly was still engaged in demolishing a double-cut steak done to dry death in the manner admired by true Gaelic countrymen.

“Mildred,” said the Saint thoughtfully, “what are we going to do about you?”

She shrugged uncomfortably.

“I don’t know. But I think I must get out of Dublin — and out of the country. I’ll hide someplace where they’ll never find me.” Her eyes grew brighter as inspiration began to flow again. “I once read a story about a girl who disguised herself as a boy and signed on a ship and nobody found out for months. I’ll take a schooner to the South Seas, and then I’ll...”

Kelly looked at her figure appreciatively as he mopped his mouth with a napkin.

“I’m afraid ye’d never get away with that disguise for more than an hour.”

“No,” said Simon. “I’m sure there must be a better way. Are you sure you’ve told us all the facts, exactly as they are?”

She looked him in the eye.

“As incredible as it sounds, it’s all the gospel truth.”

“And I don’t suppose you know anybody who can help you?” the Saint said.

“Not a soul. Only you — and I’ve given you too much trouble already — and put you in danger.”

She closed her eyes and tears appeared on her long brown lashes. The Saint and Kelly exchanged unbelieving but concerned glances.

“Simon,” said the Irishman, “shure and to let her go now would be like castin’ out a kitten in a snowstorm.” He pushed back his chair and gave the table a decisive thump with a meaty paw. “If talk were cloth a man might have the makin’s of an overcoat— An ould soldier like me can’t stand such a quantity of speech without no action. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll take her out to my place. It’s so far from anything, God Himself couldn’t find it with a guidebook. There she’ll be safe, and Simon and me won’t mind havin’ a nice little girl about the house to make things cozy when we come in from fishin’ all day.” He looked at Mildred. “Me dear wife’s down in Cork visitin’ her mother, and I’m like a lost soul, with dirty dishes pilin’ clear up to the rafters.”

The Saint watched Mildred’s reactions to that speech and saw that she was delighted with the idea — though her eager expression wilted a little at the mention of dirty dishes.

“Well, Pat,” he said, “I couldn’t have thought of a better plan myself. If this poor misguided child honestly prefers us to the SS, she’s welcome to come along. Maybe a little fresh country air will clear our heads and give us some good ideas for the next step.”

Mildred was ecstatic.

“You really don’t mind?” she said excitedly. “You’ll let me come?”

Simon nodded.

“And I think the sooner we get on our way the better. It’s just possible those guardians of yours recognized my face and could trace us here.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Why should they recognize your face?”

Her ignorance offended Kelly’s pride of friendship.

“Good heavens, girl! Haven’t ye heard of the Saint? Simon Templar — the Saint?”

He seemed to think that if he spoke the name to her loud enough she would be bound to recognize it. But she looked at him blankly.

“Saint?” she said.

“Never mind,” said Simon. “Remember, she’s been cooped up in a convent for over twenty years.”

There was a ray of dawn on Mildred s face.

“You mean you’re famous,” she said. “And I didn’t even know it. I’m so sorry.”

“Didn’t they give ye any newspapers or anything in that place?” Kelly inquired, as Simon asked their waiter for the check.

“They were very careful about what I saw,” Mildred explained. “No newspapers or magazines. I was brought up to think of my father as a great hero who tried to save the West from Bolshevism, and I was told that even though he had lost the war there were still millions and millions of people who believed in his cause and were only waiting for something to give them the courage to stand up and be counted. Then one day I came across something in one of the convent’s books that showed me some of the other side of the story. I guess with all the books they let me read they were bound not to screen them all quite carefully enough. So when I realized what the rest of the world seemed to think of my father I was shocked.”

“Made ye see the light, did it?” Kelly said.

“Well, naturally I didn’t just turn right around and deny everything I’d been taught since I was born — but I had enough doubts to want to find out both sides of the story before I let anybody use me to lead a big political movement. That’s why I ran away.”

Simon stood up, putting money on the table.

“A wise decision,” he said. “Now I think you’d be safer coming up to my room while Pat and I pack than staying down here by yourself.”

“If ye don’t mind,” said Kelly, “I’ll have a final spot o’ gargle for me nerves, and then I’ll be off to get me things.”

Mildred went with Simon out to the lobby as Pat waved down the waiter. Most hotel guests who were going out were out by now, and the receptionist, a blond woman, was intent on her record books. A dowdy man in a rumpled suit was reading a newspaper nearby. Then a porter came through the main entrance from the street carrying a pair of expensive-looking leather bags. Behind him walked a tall thin gentleman of about fifty-five, with a strangely egg-shaped head, long grey hair falling thick on the back of his neck, and bulging brown eyes. He was obviously in a hurry, and with those enormous compelling eyes fixed on the receptionist toward whom he was heading he did not notice the Saint and Mildred, who by then had just reached the elevator at one side of the lobby.

Simon would have thought nothing about the newcomer if it had not been for Mildred’s reaction. In a fraction of a second all the color drained from her face and she gasped audibly.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she whispered, averting her head. “Ladies’ room.”

And she disappeared into a public corridor next to the elevator.

Naturally the Saint’s former lack of interest in the stranger immediately increased by one hundred per cent, and he sauntered back into the vicinity of the reception desk and pretended to study the contents of a magazine rack. The rumpled man with the newspaper was likewise affected by the guest’s arrival. He got to his feet, put down his paper, and hovered expectantly like a suppliant waiting his moment to petition the passing emperor.

“Good evening, sir,” said the blond receptionist pleasantly. “Do you have a reservation?”

The protuberant eyes fixed her scornfully.

“I take it you do not recognize me?”

The woman, since she clearly did not recognize him, was a little flustered.

“No, sir. I’m afraid not. I...”

“It doesn’t matter,” he grumbled. “My name is Drew, and I have a reservation.”

She found his card quickly.

“Mr. Eugene Drew?” she said.

“That’s correct.”

She pushed the register toward him and he scrawled a signature.

“I’ve read about you, Mr. Drew,” she said. “In the papers. Consolidated Steel, and the coal mines, and...”

Her belated recognition of his importance failed to mollify him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said abruptly. “Have you held the suite I requested?”

“Of course, sir. The porter will take you up.”

As Drew walked from the desk the man who had been waiting came up to him.

“Mr. Drew, sir,” he said in a low voice, with an ingratiating smirk, “me name is Blaney, correspondent for the London Echo.”

“Wonderful,” Drew remarked, with superciliousness that would have shriveled an apple on the spot. “Now if you’ll pardon me...”

“Just a word,” wheedled Blaney, “on the reasons for yer visit.”

“No comment.”

“Is there any truth in this talk ye’re interested in buyin’ into the Hardacre Group?”

“Get out of my way.”

Drew stepped around the reporter, who moved along with him crab-style.

“There’s rumors, sir,” the reporter said in a more intense but less audible tone, “that serious troubles in yer family have...”

Drew stopped and turned to face the speaker.

“I shall not forget your name, Blaney, and if you address one more question to me I shall contact Lord Abbeyvale, the proprietor of your paper, and request that he dismiss you immediately. I assure you he will respect my wishes.”

The reporter, beaten, backed away with cringing nods.

“Thank yer, sir. Thank yer very kindly in any case.”

As Blaney made his exit, Simon returned to the corridor down which Mildred had disappeared. Before he had gone more than a few steps, however, he heard Drew’s name called breathlessly in the lobby he had just left. A glance over his shoulder told him that his alleged SS acquaintances from the trout stream had just come into the hotel — in dry clothes and unmuddied shoes — and were hurrying toward the elevator. They passed from his field of view, but he could hear the first exchange of words.

“Why are you alone?” Drew demanded.

“We thought we had her,” said one of the men, “but some bloke interfered. We have a strong clue, though, and we’ll soon pick up her trail, I’m sure.”

“Let’s not broadcast it to the whole world, shall we?” Drew said in a sharp, hushed voice. “Come to my room.”

There was a swoosh as the elevator doors closed behind them, and Simon was left with time for a few moments of silent meditation before Mildred rejoined him.

First, the SS man’s speech had betrayed more influences of Liverpool than of Berchtesgaden. He had no German accent at all. That came as no surprise to the Saint, who by now had about as much confidence in Mildred’s veracity as he did in the Flat Earth theory. The next obvious question was, then, what exactly was her relation to Eugene Drew?

Simon’s speculations on that were delayed by the cautious arrival of Mildred herself.

“He’s gone,” Simon said.

“Who?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“The man you were running away from.”

“I wasn’t running away. I told you where I was going.”

The Saint pushed the elevator button.

“Your friends are here,” he said casually.

“What friends?”

“Your SS friends.”

She looked completely shattered, and all but pulled at the parting elevator doors to get inside, glancing fearfully over her shoulder.

“Where? Did they see you?”

“No,” Simon said. “Nothing to worry about.”

He told the elevator operator his floor and discouraged Mildred from any more talking with a warning shake of his head. As soon as they were in his room she wanted to know everything.

“They came in and went straight for that fellow I thought you were avoiding,” said Simon, opening a suitcase on the bed and beginning to pack immediately, as Mildred paced up and down the Donegal carpeting.

“How could they have followed us here?” she asked, biting the edge of one of her pink-painted fingernails.

“I don’t think they did. They seemed to have an appointment with the gentleman you weren’t running away from — Eugene Drew.”

She showed no reaction at the name.

“You wouldn’t have heard of him, of course,” Simon continued, “considering the sheltered life you’ve led. But he’s one of the biggest industrialists in Northern Ireland.”

Mildred stopped pacing, and sucked in her lower lip.

“Maybe he’s one of them,” she theorized suddenly. “I heard them mention a man called Kleinschmidt, who changed his name and was some kind of Nazi agent here even before the war. He’s probably scheduled to take over all of Ireland when they make their move.”

The Saint looked at her with a kind of ambiguous admiration.

“Fantastic,” he said. “In a single day you’ve changed my whole picture of the history of our times.”

The phone rang, and Simon answered. It was Pat Kelly.

“I’m back in me own little room,” he said, “and sober as a judge, in case ye’re wonderin’. Shall we meet in the lobby in twenty minutes?”

“Fine,” said Simon. “I’m just about ready now.”

He was travelling light, and he had not even removed most of his clothes — the ones for fishing and country wear — from the suitcase during his short stay at the hotel. So he had only to pack his toilet kit, and then he was ready to call for the porter.

“I think we’ll send you down the stair well,” he said to Mildred. “Your guardians wouldn’t be likely to use it, and I’ll meet you...”

There was a knock at the door. Mildred froze and her eyes grew wide.

“It’s them,” she whispered.

“Clairvoyant too?” asked the Saint.

Mildred looked like a frightened rabbit.

“Who else could it be?”

“Maybe I’ve just won the sweepstakes,” the Saint suggested. “But in case you’re right, get in the wardrobe.”

She obeyed, and Simon hurried into the bathroom as the knocking continued. He took the bath brush from its rack and laid it on the edge of the washbasin so that the brush was under the faucet. He put an empty plastic soap dish on the brush and turned on the tap just enough to produce a fast drip. Within a short time the soap dish would fill enough with water to unbalance the brush and make it fall into the basin. The whole operation took only a few moments.

Simon closed the bathroom door, making sure the key was in the outside. Then he pushed the door of the wardrobe firmly shut and went to answer the knocking. While he was prepared for anything, the Saint was nevertheless a little surprised to see Mildred’s SS guardians standing there. He had considered the bath brush ticket a probable waste of energy.

But he did not show his surprise any more than he betrayed any concern over the pistol in the fat man’s hand. His face was as serene as his afternoon had been before they and Mildred had interrupted it.

“Looking for the clown auditions?” he asked obligingly. “The circus manager’s room is next door.”

“Never mind,” said the one with the gun, displaying a notable lack of a sense of humor. “Stand back.”

Simon obeyed, being sure that his calm retreat took him toward the closed bathroom door.

“Did you enjoy your swim?” he inquired.

“Where is she?” demanded the thin one.

“Who?” asked Simon.

“The girl.”

“Gone about her father’s business, I suppose.”

“Mister,” said the fat one, “you’re getting in our way. I dislike violence, but if I have to I’ll rub you out like a chalk mark.”

At that point the brush clattered into the washbasin, and Simon made an exaggerated move to put himself between the men and the bathroom door. The one with the gun stepped forward, then gestured for the thin one to investigate. There was a brief moment when the thin one was just inside the bathroom, and the fat one was off his guard, turning to peer over his companion’s shoulder. That was the moment the Saint chose to use his foot, for the second time that day, on the posterior of the plumper of the pair, who was propelled forward through the doorway, striking his partner with something like the effect of a billiard on a ping pong ball. The thin man caromed into the shower stall, while the fat one carried enough momentum to send him stumbling to another corner of the little room. Simon quickly closed and locked the door, and almost before the captives had had time to start shouting and thumping he had opened the wardrobe and let Mildred out.

“Our friends have a great affinity for water,” he said, picking up the telephone and dialing Kelly’s room.

“Oh, you’re wonderful!” said Mildred. She stationed herself at the door for a quick getaway. “How did you do it?”

“Pat,” Simon said, when his friend answered. “I’m afraid the turnover in this hotel is a little fast for us. We’ll have to hurry along and meet you at your house.”

Before the startled Irishman could reply, Simon hung up, lifted one of his suitcases in either hand, and followed Mildred out into the corridor toward the elevator.

“What if... Kleinschmidt is down in the lobby?” she asked.

“Kleinschmidt?” said Simon. “Oh — the one who’s taking over Ireland after the uprising. Well, I think I could handle him. If you prefer using the fire escape, go right ahead.”

She chose to come with him in the elevator.

“Here, now, sir,” the aged operator said, hurrying to take the suitcases. “Couldn’t ye get a boy for helpin’ with those?”

“We were in a hurry,” the Saint answered. “Some people were anxious to see us, but we weren’t so anxious to see them.”

“Ah, and that’s understandable enough,” said the operator with a wink, casting an appreciative eye over Mildred’s shape and virgin ring finger. “We’ll have someone get those bags out front for ye now in a jiffy.”

Simon tipped him and walked with Mildred to the desk, where he paid his bill and asked for his car to be brought around to the main entrance.

“I heard a lot of banging on my floor,” he said to the clerk. “Like somebody trying to break a door down.”

“I’ll see to that, sir,” the clerk said, and rang for a porter.

“Oh, Mr. Templar,” Mildred said admiringly as they went out to the street, “how did you ever lock up both those men?”

“It’s no more miraculous than the fact that they knew where we were.” He looked at her closely. “Is it?”

“I... guess not. They’re... diabolical. They’ve got agents everywhere. And maybe they did recognize your face this afternoon, and found out where you were staying.”

The doorman stood by Simon’s car at the curb.

“It’s possible,” Simon said as he helped Mildred in. “But I’m sure there’s a simpler explanation. When we’ve had a chance to catch our breath, I want you to tell me the truth about it. If that won’t be too frightful an effort.”

4

As the Saint drove west through Dublin along the Liffey, he had the unmistakable feeling that his request for truth had put a damper on Mildred’s ordinary talkativeness. She did not say anything, indeed, for more than twenty minutes. That fact was not totally without its charm, so Simon did not try to change the situation until they were driving through the dark countryside toward Leixlip and Kilcock.

“Now,” he said, “how about telling me your real story.”

Mildred performed a flouncing jerk and twisted around so that she was facing her own side of the car. A moment later Simon heard whimpering sounds.

“I realize the thought of being honest must be terribly painful for you,” said the Saint, “but try to bear up.”

There were snuffling noises, and then Mildred suddenly turned and looked through the back window.

“I think they’re following us,” she said in an urgent voice.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No,” she insisted, wiping her eyes excitedly as she went on looking. “I didn’t mention it before, but I thought they picked us up just after we left the hotel. They must have got out of your room faster than we thought.”

“The Keystone Stormtroops?” said Simon. “It doesn’t seem very likely.”

“They’re probably just staying back there waiting till we stop someplace where they can get me.”

In the rear view mirror Simon could see two pairs of headlights several hundred feet behind. He slowed his own car as a test of the others’ reactions, and they began closing the distance at a normal rate.

“If they were following us,” he said, “they probably wouldn’t catch up like that.”

He increased the pressure of his foot on the accelerator.

“I can’t help it,” said Mildred. “I still think I saw them.”

“And I still think you’re looking for ways to avoid talking about yourself, Miss Hitler.” He glanced at her. “Or is it Anastasia? Bridey Murphy?”

Mildred gave a sigh, let her shoulders slump for a moment, and then sat up straighter and looked at him.

“I think you know who I am,” she said.

“I’m touched by your confidence.”

Mildred’s voice had lost some of its little-girl quality.

“You saw me react when my father walked into the lobby at the hotel.”

“SS Führer Kleinschmidt is your father?”

“Eugene Drew is my father,” she replied patiently. “And I think you’ve known all along.”

The Saint nodded.

“You seemed a little young to be Hitler’s daughter — though there was a family resemblance.”

“Thanks.”

They were driving through Leixlip, and Mildred pointed to a pub on a corner just ahead.

“Oh, let’s stop in there a minute I I feel like a beastly mess after all that sniveling — and I could use a shot of something.”

Simon slowed the car.

“I thought you were so worried about those goons you claim are following us.”

She looked back.

“Maybe I was wrong — and we’ve got to stop sometime. Anyway, what can they do in the middle of town? Drag me kicking and screaming out of the local?” She gave him a stern look, like a child threatening its parent. “And if you won’t stop here I’ll never tell you why they’re after me — and all the other juicy tidbits.”

Simon turned off the main street and pulled up across from the pub.

“All right, Mildred, or whatever your name is at the moment...”

“It is Mildred,” she interrupted.

Simon came around and opened her door.

“I guess we should celebrate your dropping old Adolf from your family tree,” he said.

“Righto! And where are we going from here?”

“To Kelly’s place, of course, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

They crossed the quiet street, and Simon failed to see any sign of a lurking Mercedes in any direction.

“I mean where is Kelly’s place?” Mildred asked.

“Somewhere east of Athlone, in the middle of nowhere. Why?”

“Well, naturally I’m curious.”

Simon was sure that his own curiosity at least equaled hers, and by now it involved much more than the simple questions of why she was so anxious to avoid her father, and why a certain pair of rather bumbling bloodhounds were so anxious to have her not avoid them. Two or three obvious explanations were at the top of his consciousness, but something told him that where Mildred was involved the obvious could never be automatically taken on trust.

He was content with the way things were going, though, and saw no reason to push the natural unfolding of events. The peace of his holiday was probably irretrievably lost, but peace had been replaced by the fascination of a Chinese magician’s puzzle, in which illusion and reality were intriguingly mixed. Simon hoped, as a matter of fact, that the sleight-of-hand would not be entirely unmasked too soon. To be involved as he was gave the thrill of baiting a trout with a little brightly colored imitation of life on the rippled surface of a stream.

It required patience, but a man of Simon Templar’s relaxed confidence could always command a supply of that virtue.

The pub was dim, smoky, and redolent of stout and the honest sweat of hiking from home to the tap. A dozen and a half of what appeared to be neighborhood regulars were enjoying the hospitality.

“Find us a table, will you, dear?” asked Mildred. “I’ve got to go and repair the damage.” She indicated her face. “And make mine a Guinness.”

Simon found a table in a corner, and the volume of talk, which had briefly diminished because of the arrival of a pair of strangers, soon returned to its original level. The barman took the Saint’s order, brought it, in his own leisurely time, and several minutes later Mildred had still not returned. Finally the Saint, aware of the insatiable addiction of some women for ritualistic applications of face paint, and secure in the knowledge that his car key was in his pocket, sat back with a sigh and began to drink alone.

When his share of the foamy dark liquid was half consumed, Mildred came back, looking cheerful and un-contrite.

“Now,” she said brightly, “what would you like to know?”

She slipped into the chair beside him, propped her elbows on the table, and drank deeply from her glass, rolling her eyes to look at him as he answered.

“Let me see how much more you need to tell me. You’re Eugene Drew’s daughter. You obviously don’t want to see Eugene Drew, but it seems that your father would like to see you. It seems, in fact, that he would like so much to see you that he has hired a couple of private investigators to find and catch you. Right so far?”

She nodded vigorously, her lips on the rim of her glass.

“Now, unless insanity runs in your family — which is a possibility I haven’t by any means completely discounted — the most likely explanation is that you have run away from home and your poor distraught father is exerting every effort to bring you back into the fold. Just why you left home is another question. Maybe you did something naughty, like smother your little brothers and sisters, or hock your mama’s diamond tiara, and you figure that any slaughtering that’s done when you get back home will involve you instead of a fatted calf.”

She giggled.

“You’ve got it right up to the end. But my feelings are hurt.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know why I ran away.”

Simon finished his stout.

“Should I?”

“Don’t you read the newspapers?”

“When I can’t find any really good fiction I sometimes sink to that.”

“Then why didn’t you read about me?”

“I don’t believe this escapade has been covered. I saw a reporter trying to worm something out of your father this evening. With no success, I might add.”

“That sounds like Dad. He’s rotten about the papers. That’s one reason why he was so absolutely furious when I ran away with Rick.”

“So there’s another character in the cast,” said the Saint. “Why haven’t I had the pleasure of meeting this Rick, if you’re running away with him.”

“That was last month. Rick is in America right now. It’s Rick Fenton I’m talking about.”

Simon shook his head.

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh!” huffed Mildred, looking mortified. “Rick Fenton, I mean. The actor.”

“Sorry,” Simon said. “Has he played Hamlet?”

“He’s a teeniebopper idol.”

“Sounds positively sacrilegious,” the Saint remarked. “What is it?”

“You know... all the teen-age girls scream and faint when they see him. He’s twenty-two but he looks seventeen, and he’s a really fantastic actor.”

“I’ll bet he is,” said Simon.

“He was in Beach Towel Tramp and Teen-Age Martian in a Girls’ Dormitory.”

“I missed both of those. You can tell what an alienated life I lead.”

“Anyway,” Mildred said with resignation, “I ran away with him... to get married. But they caught me, and it was in all the papers, with pictures and everything. There was one of Dad with his hat in front of his face. He almost died.”

Simon glanced at Mildred’s glass, which was still two-thirds full.

“Why don’t you drink up?” he suggested. “We can talk in the car. It’s still an hour and a half to Kelly’s place.”

She obediently sipped a little of the stout.

“You don’t want me to get drunk, do you?” she asked. “I’m very susceptible.”

Simon sat back in his chair.

“You have thirty seconds,” he said. “You used up most of your overtime in the powder room.”

Mildred tilted up her glass, gulped down several large swallows of Guinness, and went on talking, half out of breath.

“So this time I’ve run away to marry Rick,” she said. “We’re terribly in love, and my father is hopelessly stubborn and mean. He wouldn’t want me to marry the... the King of Arabia.”

The Saint nodded.

“Probably not.”

“And so,” Mildred went on, “Rick is stopping over at Shannon Airfield on his way from America to Paris on a personal appearance tour, and I’m going to join him.” She drained her glass. “And rats to Big Daddy.”

“When are you meeting Rick?” Simon asked.

Mildred opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and shook her head. She gave him a sly smile and wagged her finger.

“Oh, you won’t get me to tell you that,” she said. “What if I can’t really trust you? That’s all my father would need to know — when Rick was coming. Rick is smart. His publicity agent gave a false story to the papers, so as far as anybody knows, Rick isn’t coming anywhere near Ireland.”

“Brilliant,” said Simon. “Absolutely brilliant. And if you don’t trust me, how do you know I won’t turn you over to your father in return for a nice fat reward.”

She stared at him shocked, and clutched his arm as he stood up.

“Mr. Templar, you wouldn’t! I thought I had to tell you, and I’d never believe you were the kind of person who...”

“Who’d stand in the way of true love? No, I suppose I’m not — not for the few paltry pounds I could squeeze out of a Scrooge like your father.”

“You’re wonderful!”

She flung her arms around him, to the amusement of the other patrons of the public house, who unanimously became silent and grinned. It was probably the first time in the history of the establishment that there had been a total absence of talk during business hours for a period of four and a half seconds.

Simon left an overpayment on the table and steered Mildred out to the street, which was as empty as it had been when they first arrived. A few minutes later they were heading west out of town through the rolling moonlit countryside. Then Simon slowed the car a little.

Mildred shot him a worried look.

“You’re not... taking me back, are you?”

He shook his head, looking into the rear view mirror.

“What is it?” she asked.

She turned to peer through the car’s back window as Simon put down the accelerator again.

“I think,” he said, “to use the immemorial words of immemorial suckers, that this time we are being followed.”

5

Mildred began to show preliminary signs of hysteria.

“Oh, no! It’s them! I know it is! I told you they were on to us before!”

“Maybe,” said Simon coolly. “In any case, if you don’t want to be embraced rather forcibly into the bosom of your family, you’d better get a map and flashlight out of the glove compartment. How’s your navigation — or do you operate on intuition like your Papa Adolf?”

She snorted as she scrambled for the map and flashlight.

“I was a Queen’s Guide at school. I could navigate my way to the Christmas Islands just by watching which side of the fishes the moss grows on.”

She unfolded the detailed map of Ireland and turned the beam of light on it. The Saint had sped up along a straight stretch of road, and the other car was keeping pace about two hundred yards behind.

“You know where we are,” he said. “See if you can find a place where we can turn off and lose them — and end up somewhere except in a peat bog.”

Mildred bent close to the map and studied it. The short-lived directness of the highway degenerated into a series of snaky curves through a wooded section marked by rocky hillocks.

“There!” cried Mildred suddenly. “Up by that stone marker.”

The Saint jammed down the brake pedal and swerved into the side lane. It was no more than a pair of wagon ruts made semi-respectable by an old topping of gravel. The way abounded with holes and humps, and Simon-driving without lights — was forced to slow to fifteen miles an hour in order to hold the car on its higher leaps to anything below treetop level.

Luckily, the other automobile had been too far behind around a curve to see what its prey had done. It swept by on the main road, its headlamps sending flickers of light through the woods.

“We lost them,” Mildred said jubilantly.

The Saint was less enthusiastic.

“For the moment. If they’ve got any brains at all they’ll see in a minute they’ve lost us and then they’ll come back. Are there any other side roads near here that might confuse them?”

“Only one I can make out, and it looks like a dead end.”

Simon stopped and turned off the engine. Then he listened closely to the receding sound of the car that had been pursuing them. Before it passed completely out of earshot, the noise of wailing tires on distant curves came to an abrupt halt. The Saint’s sensitive ears just barely made out the gunning of the engine and a couple of brief screeching spins of tires on asphalt.

“I think they’ve caught on,” he said. “They’re turning around.”

He started his own car and continued down the horrendous trail, which was surely experiencing the passage of the first self-propelled vehicle in lifetime that must have dated back at least to Finn MacCool.

“Oh,” said Mildred in a low voice.

She was looking at the map, her face bouncing in the pool of light just above it.

“What?” said Simon.

“You know that dead end road I mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“We re on it.” The Saint’s commentary was internal and sustained.

“I see,” he said finally, with devastating quietness. “Mildred Hitler, girl guide, has done it again.”

At that point, the tortured car gave a sudden lurch and stopped, slumped at an angle toward Mildred’s side. Mildred’s head bumped the glass in front of her with a lack of force which the Saint found faintly disappointing.

He turned off the ignition.

“Well,” he remarked, “that’s the second immobilized auto you can chalk up to your record today.”

Mildred rubbed her head gingerly and looked even more gingerly at Simon.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Without checking on details, I should say that we have fallen into a hole.” He took a deep breath and opened the door. “So... let’s start walking. Under different circumstances I might stand and fight, but at the moment I really can’t think of anything worth fighting for.”

He walked around the front of, the car and looked briefly at the damage. The wheel had slipped into a deeply eroded channel.

Mildred picked her way over the stones to join Simon.

“Can’t you reverse out?” she asked.

“No. And I think the axle’s bent anyway.” He looked at her. “If your Papa Adolf’s superman theories amounted to anything, you’d be able to lift up the whole mess and set it straight again.”

Mildred did not answer, and Simon set off down the road in front of the car with swinging strides. Mildred hobbled and stumbled behind him in her high heels.

“Wait!” she cried finally. “I can’t keep up.”

“Stay behind then. I’m afraid you’ve used up your allotment of my chivalry. If the wolves catch you, they won’t bother chasing me.”

She let out a despairing wail and hurried after him up a moon-silvered hill, where the wagon track was thickly hedged with trees.

“Or maybe,” Simon mused happily as he trudged along, hands in his pockets, “the little people will get you.”

“Little people?” Mildred whimpered, catching up a bit.

“Sure. Leprechauns. This is just the spot for them. You look a bit pixyish. They might take you for one of their own.”

“Damn!”

Mildred’s exclamation had not been evoked by fear of Irish fairies. She balanced on one foot and held out her shoe for Simon to see. The stiletto heel had broken off.

“I can’t walk like this,” she moaned.

“Let’s see the other shoe,” said Simon.

She stood in her stocking feet and handed it to him. He grasped the remaining whole shoe firmly in both hands and snapped its heel off.

“There,” he said proudly, handing it to her. “Now you’re back on an even keel.”

She threw both shoes on the ground and vigorously recited a phrase which she most definitely had not learned either in a convent or as a Queen’s Guide.

“I’d advise you to wear those,” the Saint said, starting up the hill again. “They’re better than nothing — and your faithful followers may discover this road at any minute.”

She clumped along beside him in the modified shoes, panting and clinging to his sleeve for occasional support. Simon looked up at the stars.

“Now is the time for fortitude and inner strength,” he philosophized. “Keep the image of Rick firm in your mind. The course of true love never did run smooth.”

They went on for ten minutes, and then they saw the reddish glow of a fire through the trees at the base of the hill. Simon led the way and looked cautiously into the small clearing. Around a bonfire stood or sat five people, as yet oblivious to Simon’s and Mildred’s arrival. There were a man and woman of late middle years, and a pair of girls and a boy ranging from about twelve to eighteen. All of them were devoting their attention to a soot-blackened metal pot which steamed over the fire, suspended from a tripod. Nearby, a pair of horses grazed at the edge of a tiny brook. Like parts of a stage backdrop on the border of the circle of firelight stood two barrel-headed caravans — large painted wooden wagons like horizontal kegs on wheels — in which the family lived, and which it was the horses’ duty to pull.

“Gypsies,” whispered Mildred.

“A tinker, I think,” Simon said. “They’ve been travelling over Ireland like this since the beginning of time.”

The older man, who was seated in a folding canvas chair — undoubtedly a recent addition to the tinker’s inventory of household goods — waved his hand toward the pot and said to the boy, “What’s it now?”

The boy pulled a large thermometer from the liquid.

“Sixty-three.”

The older man turned to the adolescent girls.

“Put it in.”

The two girls each picked up a small sack and dumped its contents into the mixture while the boy stirred with a long wooden stick.

“Is that... potheen?” Mildred asked Simon in a hushed voice.

“It must be. The most potent stuff this side of hell-fire and brimstone. Let’s go in quietly and peaceably, but not as if we’re trying to sneak up. People who make illicit whiskey tend to shoot first and find out later whether their guests were revenue agents.”

As he and Mildred first appeared in the wavering, golden light the boy looked up from the pot and shouted, “Hey!”

For a moment the whole tableau was absolutely motionless. Even the heavy-necked horses seemed to sense the drama of the moment and froze in position. Then, like a squad of American football players shifting into a defensive formation, the whole family moved. The three women stood between the newcomers and the bubbling cauldron as the men stepped forward, the elder first, the younger just behind. Simon and Mildred waited.

“They don’t look friendly at all,” said Mildred out of the corner of her mouth.

“They’re not,” the Saint said simply. “Now’s a good chance for you to use your greatest talent. Think of some lie to make them love us.”

Smiling pleasantly, he stepped forward toward the grim-visaged men.

“Good evening. Our car broke down on the lane. We saw your fire.”

The older man squinted at him for a long moment, chewing on a splinter of wood. A cap, which looked as if it might never have been removed since it was first put on years before, effectively de-emphasized his cranium and eyes, and brought into full prominence the mushroom effulgence of his scarlet nose.

“Main road is behind ye,” he said finally.

Mildred came to the rescue then. Her face suddenly went into contortions of pain, and she stood on one foot and clasped her arms around Simon’s neck, letting him support her.

“I... was hurt,” she gasped, “when our car went in the ditch.”

She tried bravely to get her breath and stand straight again. Sympathetic glances were exchanged by various members of the tinker’s party.

“What ye want, then?” the eldest woman asked.

“Somewhere to stay the night,” Simon answered.

“This is not a hotel, mister,” she said.

Simon went forward another step.

“We’re nothing to do with the revenue, if that’s what worries you,” he said.

The women closed ranks in front of the pot.

“We’re just fixin’ ourselves a bit o’ stew,” the eldest said.

“Shure and why would the revenue care about that one way or the other?”

“What are ye, then?” asked the younger man.

Mildred took over again, bursting excitedly into rapid speech.

“Please... we’re running away from my stepfather to get married! He’s a terrible man. He’s already wasted away my mother’s fortune, and he wants what little I have left. If he catches us he’ll... We need your help — desperately!”

She broke off, sobbing violently.

“It’s the truth, is it?” asked the elder man.

“She’s been under a terrible strain,” Simon replied, avoiding any direct commitment as to Mildred’s veracity.

The lead man had begun shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.

“Hould on,” he said.

His entire group went into a huddle near the fire.

“We’ll be glad to pay,” Simon called, thus probably cutting several minutes off the secret discussion.

“Well now, ’tis all agreed,” the man said, straightening up and turning. “Ye can stay with pleasure, if ye don’t mind the company of a tinker and his family.” He held out his calloused hand and Simon shook it. “Delighted. And thank you very much.”

“Me name is Muldoon,” the tinker said. “And this is me wife. That’s me boy Sean, and these are Tessa and Genevra.”

“I’m Rick Fenton,” Simon said, “and this is Mildred Kleinschmidt.”

They went to the fire, where the boy, Sean, was stirring the pulpy liquid again. Mildred half closed her eyes and stepped back as some of the violently odoriferous steam drifted into her face.

“Delicious-looking stew,” the Saint said solemnly.

“It will be, when it’s finished,” said Muldoon, winking.

He pulled out the thermometer, looked, and dropped it back again.

“How would ye like a little of the finished product?”

“Fine,” answered Simon politely. Then he added, with concealed relief, “But I’m afraid we won’t be staying that long.”

“Oh, we have a sample here from the last batch.”

While Muldoon fetched the sample, his wife was questioning Mildred with great concern about her injuries and feeling her ankle for broken bones.

“Ye poor little bit of a thing,” Mrs. Muldoon murmured, with a reproachful glance at Simon. “Runnin’ away to be wed, and not even a pair o’ decent shoes for yer feet.”

Muldoon came around the fire with a large pickle jar. He unscrewed the cap.

“See what ye think of that.”

Simon braced himself, tilted up the jar, and swallowed as little as possible. The effect on his tongue and mouth combined various qualities of iodine, gasoline, and molten lava. He was damp-eyed and speechless for a moment. Finally he found that some small remnant of his vocal apparatus had miraculously escaped destruction.

“Delicious,” he said hoarsely, but with an expression no different from the one his face would have worn had he just been treated to a cup of Olympian ambrosia.

Muldoon beamed.

“Here, come on,” Sean said crossly. “Me arm’s dropping off.”

Muldoon went to take a turn at stirring the cauldron.

“Tessa,” he called, “go and fetch our guests somethin’ to eat.”

Simon unobtrusively separated some bills from the fold of money in his pocket and offered them to Muldoon.

“Here you are,” he said, “and many thanks.”

“Aw, it’s too much,” protested Muldoon, tucking the money into his shirt nevertheless. “Now why don’t you and yer bride let me wife show ye yer quarters?”

Sean, who had walked off toward the horses and back again, aggrievedly rubbing his overworked stirring arm, suddenly stiffened and cried out.

“Hey, Dad!”

There at the edge of the clearing, their faces menacing in the dancing light, stood Mildred’s hunters.

6

Simon’s response was so prompt and inspirational that not even two seconds passed between Sean’s cry and his own.

“Revenue men!” he yelled.

“The divil and it is!” roared Muldoon in outraged agreement.

He snatched his stirring stick out of the pot of potheen and charged across the clearing. His son charged too, grabbing up a makeshift cudgel from the heap of spare wood by the fire.

Simon’s only worry was that the private detectives might have guns, but if they did they had no time to use them. Muldoon and Sean sailed in with sticks flying, and Mrs. Muldoon and her daughters armed themselves with cooking pots from a chest beside the nearest wagon and ran to join the fray.

Mildred, who had let out a little shriek as the battle commenced, stood as if petrified, her hand to her mouth. Simon, seeing that the beleaguered detectives were getting a sound enough drubbing without any help from him, ran to prod her into motion.

“It’s time we were on the move again,” he said, towing her into the woods in a direction opposite the one from which they had arrived at the tinker’s camp. “Didn’t a train pass over this way?”

“I don’t remember,” panted Mildred.

“Not very observant for a Queen’s Guide.”

They were out of range of the firelight, hurrying downhill, and Simon recognized the voice of one of the detectives above the melee.

“There! They ran over there!”

“I think your friends are after us,” Simon said. “And the tinker’s probably wondering what kind of revenue men those are, leaving behind a big pot of potheen to chase us.”

Mildred had reached the limit of her strength by the time they emerged from the woods and stood on the level surface of a railroad embankment. The track came around a curve on their left and continued through a cut in the low hill to their right.

“I can’t go on,” Mildred gasped. “Let’s just give up. Let them catch me.”

“After all this trouble?” said the Saint. “Not on your life. I don’t like losing even ridiculous games like this.”

He held her hand, leading her along the tracks to the comparative shelter of the cut, where an irregular rocky face of earth rose up almost straight on either side.

“At least we’re not out in open moonlight here,” he said.

“What if a train comes along?”

“Then we’ll be squashed.” He met her shocked expression with a shrug. “It happens all the time to ants and caterpillars.”

Mildred held a finger to her lips.

“Listen,” she whispered. “I think they’re here.”

Simon heard the voices of two men in the woods not far away. Apparently the tinker and his tribe had been content to chase the detectives out of their camp, and then probably — confused as to whether they had been spotted by revenue agents or not — they would pack up and move on as soon as possible.

As Mildred and the Saint faced the track, their backs to the face of the cut, the detectives were searching along the edge of the forest to their left.

“Let’s move away from them,” Simon whispered. “Here — through the cut.”

He and Mildred, keeping their bodies inconspicuously flattened against the low cliff, edged along the side of the track. The detectives’ voices sounded louder. They had come out of the woods.

“Oh, no,” moaned Mildred.

“What?” Simon asked.

“I think I hear a train.”

“Yes. Exactly what I hoped!”

“Hoped? You said we’d be squashed!”

“Not if we’re clever, agile... and lucky.”

He was quiet as one of the detectives called to the other.

“I think they’re hiding here somewhere. We’d have heard them running.”

“Right!” replied the other. “You go on toward the cut. I’ll check this way. Wish we could just shoot the bloody pair of them and have done with it. I’m fed up, even for a hundred thousand quid.”

“I’ll shut you up, Finch, if you keep flapping your lip like that.”

Simon looked at Mildred with slightly raised eyebrows.

“A hundred thousand?” he whispered. “Your father must love you very much.”

“He’s despicable. And... and I don’t even know what anybody’s talking about.”

Simon mused aloud as he continued moving toward the other end of the cut.

“This case gets more interesting every minute.”

“And that train’s getting closer every second,” said Mildred.

What had shortly before been a distant rumble beyond the curve to their left was now such a growing noise that it was no longer necessary to whisper.

“We’d better hurry,” the Saint said.

Just at that moment, the fat man, nosing along near the rails outside the cut, spotted them and shouted the news to his partner. But just as he started to run in after them the sound of the train mounted toward a roar and the blazing, unsteady light of the engine swept around the curve a quarter of a mile away. The detective backtracked and ran up the hill along the edge of the cut, peering down to keep his eye on the Saint and Mildred.

“This way,” said Simon.

No longer making any effort to hide what he was doing, he grabbed Mildred’s hand and ran with her through the cut as the brilliant headlight of the train caught them in its beam. The fat detective saw that they were heading across the tracks to the opposite side of the cut. He screamed to the thin one, who was still on the ground which was level with the tracks.

“Get across there! They’re going up the other side!”

The thin one made a dash toward the tracks, then leaped back as he calculated that the engine would arrive abreast of his present location just as he arrived in front of the engine. The engineer, seeing people running along the rails, applied brakes, but with no chance of even slowing appreciably before he was well past the cut.

The Saint had no intention of ending his shining career in so messy or pointless a way as being flattened by the Dublin-Galway express while helping a fluff-brained girl run away from her father — or whatever it was she was really doing. He made certain that they got to the end of the cut ahead of the train, and then as the engine roared past, blaring infuriated warnings on its whistle, he dragged her up the lip of the cut opposite the fat detective, who could only watch, shouting and waving his arms.

He probably could scarcely even hear his own words, which were hopelessly swallowed in the click-clacking thunder of the passing carriages. The Saint waved at him pleasantly, bowed and tapped a greeting from his forehead. Then he took Mildred’s hand.

“Get ready to jump,” he said.

She stared at him, appalled.

“Jump?”

“Of course. This couldn’t have been handier if we’d had it planned by a travel agent.”

It was only three feet down to the moving tops of the cars and the train had just reached its minimum of speed brought on by the brakes.

“We’ll stand back a little bit, then take a running jump,” Simon said. “There’ll be nothing to it — as long as you don’t jump short and fall down between the train and the wall.”

“I won’t do it!” cried Mildred.

“Yes, you will. Remember dear Rick. Get ready now. Last car.”

The detectives, who were now together on the other side of the cut, sensed the Saint’s intention and were getting ready to jump in case he did. That was why he waited until the last carriage was passing — and the last half of that — until he grasped Mildred’s hand more firmly than ever, ran forward, and leaped.

When they landed, the Saint, like a cat, kept his balance, and for an instant was able to see the frustrated faces of the detectives not eight feet from his. Then they were left helplessly behind, watching the red warning lights on the rear of the train, like mocking eyes, disappear toward the southwest.

Simon sat down and made himself comfortable on the roof of the carriage. Mildred was lying down on her stomach, but once she caught her breath and got over the first fear of perching on top of a swaying, incredibly jolting train which appeared in danger of toppling off its rails at any moment, she also sat up cautiously and looked around.

“We’ll stay here at the top of the ladder,” said the Saint. “Then if we see a tunnel coming up we can climb down and get on the rear platform.”

Mildred made a piteous groaning sound as she leaned slightly toward the edge of the roof and looked beyond the handrails of the ladder at the ground blurring by near the train. The engine had picked up full speed again now, and the wheels chattered almost lightly on the track.

“I wouldn’t climb down that for anything,” she said.

Simon shrugged.

“Then you can just hope no tunnels come up.”

Mildred covered her head with both hands.

“And this wind is ruining my hair! Why did I ever let you get me into this mess?”

Even to a man as hardened as the Saint was to human ingratitude, and especially to feminine foibles, Mildred’s last question was rather hard to take, and he considered tossing her off into the first soft-looking ditch. But that would have been like throwing away a key piece of the puzzle which was just beginning to take shape.

He looked at her elfin face in the moonlight as they sailed past forests and sleeping cottages and wondered what the final truth about it would be. He no longer believed a word of what she had told him about herself, her family, or her plans, but there was no way to wring the truth from a slippery liar, who would scoot from any man’s grasp like a wriggling fish. He would have to play along with her until one among the dark hunches in his mind moved into the light.

Maybe she was an exceptionally large and pretty female leprechaun. The thought amused and pleased him, because in Celtic legend a leprechaun, when caught, reveals a hidden treasure.

7

The final leg of the Saint’s nocturnal odyssey with Mildred was prolonged but uncomplicated. At the town of Kildare they lay low on the roof of the carriage and no one saw them. From there the track turned briefly from southwest to west, and then bore northwest directly into the country between Lough Reagh and Lough Derg — two of the great Irish lakes — where Kelly lives. After less than twenty miles on the northwest course there was a stop at Tullamore, and after fifteen more miles they were at Athlone, on the lower end of Lough Reagh.

There, while the train was stopped, they climbed down between carriages and strolled away so nonchalantly that not even the brakeman, busy with his oil can, gave them a second glance as they passed.

They made the rest of the trip by taxi — an old and sagging conveyance whose driver apparently picked up a few extra shillings on off days by hauling pigs to market in the back seat. The driver was even older and more sagging than his cab, and he begrudged his passengers every mile he carried them. He had two desirable traits, however: he spoke not a word, and he knew the countryside down to the last compost heap and culvert. Though his response to Simon’s rather uncertain directions was an ambiguous grunt, he took off along the dark, twisting lanes of the rural landscape like a horse on its way back to the barn for supper. In an amazingly fast ten miles he deposited them at the gate of a white thatched cottage which stood alone in the midst of high hedges at the edge of some cleared fields. Simon recognized Kelly’s car and knew they had come to a resting place at last.

The taxi driver took the payment and generous tip, looked at the bills and coins as if they were a handful of dead cockroaches, and rattled away toward town.

“What a lovely place,” Mildred said. “I didn’t know your friend was a farmer.”

“In a small way,” Simon answered.

He opened the gate and let Mildred go ahead.

“Pat Kelly used to be the kind of man who was never happy spending more than six months in any one place, but his wife blew the whistle on him after he almost got his head hacked off in the Congo, and now he seems to be pretty content.”

The subject of their discussion opened his front door, and a wedge of light fell on Simon and Mildred.

“So here ye are at last!” bellowed Kelly.

“At last,” Mildred sighed, dragging her way across the threshold.

“And where’s yer car and all?” Kelly asked. “What happened at the hotel?”

The small living room of the cottage was made to seem even smaller by the amount of furniture and bric-a-brac crammed into it. Kelly’s wife’s interests were represented by china dolls, ornate clocks, and corner shelves laden with an indescribable assortment of glass and gold-leafed souvenirs — most of them bearing the word “souvenir” at some prominent point on their surface.

Kelly’s mementoes were along martial or exotic lines: an antique sword, African spears, shrunken heads, and primitive shields and masks. Perhaps as a countermeasure against that heathen paraphernalia, there were also on the walls violently hued lithographs of the Sacred Heart and the Virgin Mary.

“It’s a long story,” Mildred said.

She collapsed into an overstuffed chair with such a show of exhaustion that Kelly immediately looked shamefaced and apologetic.

“Shure, and it’s a poor way I’m behavin’ to welcome ye after yer journey with a lot of questions. Sit down, Simon, and I’ll fetch some rejuvenatin’ potions from the supply I brought out with me from Dublin.”

Simon’s stamina was remarkable, but he had nothing against a little relaxation at that point. It was after one o’clock — time enough to call it a day. He sank into one of the chairs opposite Mildred, stretched, and let his muscles go comfortably limp. Kelly, who had gone out through a dining alcove to the kitchen, came back with several bottles grasped by their necks in one of his massive hands, and the glasses held in the other.

“We may go hungry, but never thirsty,” he said, “and that’s the important thing.” He set the bottles and glasses on a low table and began to pour. “Did ye know that a man can go weeks without eatin’ but all it takes is a few days without liquid, and...”

He snapped his fingers expressively. Then he turned to hand Mildred her filled glass and saw that she had fallen asleep. Her head had flopped to one side, and her mouth was half open. She looked about fourteen years old.

“The poor girl,” Kelly whispered, turning to the Saint with another glass. “What have ye been doin’ to her?”

Simon looked at her wind-blown hair, her smudged face, her dusty suit, her now shoeless feet, and her run stockings.

“You might ask what she’s been doing to me.”

“What then, man? I’m on pins and needles. Have the Nazis taken over the west of Ireland? They can have the north and be welcome to it, but if they come here...”

“The Hitler’s daughter routine is a thing of the past,” Simon said.

Then he paused, looking suspiciously at Mildred’s childlike face.

“Before I tell you, is there a bed for her?”

“Shure. Me daughter’s room. Let’s put her there. And you can have what me wife is fond of callin’ the guest room, only till now there’s never been a guest near it. There’s a lot of spare gear, but I think we can clear a path to the bed.”

Simon stood up and went to touch Mildred’s shoulder. She did not stir even when he spoke her name, so he scooped her into his arms and carried her as Kelly led the way to a little bedroom.

“Do ye think she might be a lot more comfortable without all them clothes on?” Kelly asked wistfully, when Simon had put her on the bed.

Simon steered his friend out of the door and into the hall.

“She might be,” he said, “but it might have the opposite effect on you.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care,” Kelly sulked, “havin’ been with her the better part of the night already.”

They were back in the living room, and Simon smiled as they sat down and picked up their glasses.

“If that was the better part of the night,” he said, “I hate to think what the worst part has in store.”

“Well, have mercy and tell me what happened, would ye, before I split a blood vessel.”

Simon leaned forward and lowered his voice, jerking his head in the direction of Mildred’s sleeping-room.

“There’s just one thing,” he said. “Do you have a telephone?”

Kelly nodded.

“Amazing as it may seem, we do. And light, as ye can see. But no runnin’ water unless ye make it run by the strength of yer arm. Who’d ye want to call at this hour?”

“Nobody. But whatever you do, keep Mildred away from it.”

Kelly sat back impatiently and gulped at his drink.

“Now for heaven’s sake why is that?”

“Because every time I shake those two men who’re following her, they show up again faster than...”

“The SS, you mean?” Kelly interrupted.

“Except they’re not SS. According to her latest bulletin they’re private detectives hired by her father to catch her and bring her home before she can get married to some American actor.”

“And who might her father be this time?”

“For the moment, Eugene Drew.”

Kelly looked enlightened, and amazed.

“The rich fella,” he said. “It’s like a holy miracle, but I just looked at tomorrow’s paper I bought in the village and me eye fell on that story. A little squib in the back: rumored that Eugene Drew’s daughter has run away again — or somethin’ to that effect.”

“Was that all it said?” the Saint asked.

“It was only a couple of lines.” Kelly’s voice became alarmed. “But Simon, you helpin’ a runaway — and she here in me own house! It’s a dangerous game to be playin’ and for no good reason. And what’s this about detectives findin’ her, and her and the telephone and all? Shure and she’s not callin’ the very people she wants to get away from and tellin’ them where she is! She may be crazy, but that’s carryin’ insanity to obnoxious extremes.”

The Saint’s calmness was a marked contrast to Kelly’s excitement.

“I wouldn’t discount any possibility right now,” he said. “They knew I had a room at the hotel when they shouldn’t even have known my name. They caught up with us outside Dublin when they shouldn’t have had the faintest idea which way we were going.”

“Maybe she’s got one o’ them homin’ devices planted on her,” Kelly suggested. “I saw a film last week where they put some pin in this man’s lapel, and then they could know where he was no matter...”

Simon grinned and shook his head.

“There’s no need to make it so complicated,” he said. “Nothing has happened that can’t be explained by a little behind-the-scenes use of the common telephone.”

Kelly jumped to his feet impatiently and poured himself a fresh shot of whiskey.

“There ye are again — back to her and the telephone. If I’ve got a lunatic — or maybe two — under me roof, I’d at least like to know how she — or they — came to be here, so fill me in as directly as ye can.”

By the time Simon had given a strictly factual account of everything that had happened from the time he had left Kelly in the Gresham Grill until he and Mildred had arrived at Kelly’s cottage door, it was late enough that he definitely preferred sleep to the Irishman’s exotic speculations as to the truth behind the events.

“Let’s sleep on it, Pat,” the Saint said, getting to his feet. “The best thing you can do is see that Mildred doesn’t use the phone or leave your house.”

“Ye talk as if ye won’t be here,” said Kelly.

“Well, my car — or what’s left of it — is sitting with a bent axle in the woods somewhere west of Lucan. If you don’t mind, I’ll borrow your car and drive back there to see about having it towed out and repaired. I’m afraid I’d never get much action if I just telephoned. They’d probably want my personal authorization to take it, and it’s in a pretty obscure spot.”

“Ye’re welcome to me car,” Kelly said, “but we could all go if ye like.”

“I have a feeling you and Mildred will both be asleep, and I’d like to get an early start. Anyway, I’m afraid if we once let her out of the house we’ll mysteriously find that her chums are on our trail again.”

“But Simon, me boy, we can’t be holdin’ her prisoner, and why should we? I mean, it isn’t us that’s runnin’ away with her — and if me wife should come home unexpectedly and find her here, it’d be...”

“I’ll back up your story,” said the Saint. “And before I turn in I’ll explain what I have in mind. If Mildred’s story is on the level, she’ll be glad to hole up here till it’s time for her to meet her boy friend at the airport. She’d be a fool to show her face anywhere until the very last minute. Right?”

Kelly nodded his shaggy red head.

“Now,” Simon continued, “if she’s not telling the truth, and if she is the one keeping the hounds hot on her own trail, then the whole show must be for somebody else’s benefit.”

Kelly was swaying uncertainly on his feet, frowning in the intensity of his effort to understand what Simon was saying. He had drunk the entire contents of at least one of the bottles.

“Benefit,” he mumbled vaguely. “Whose benefit?”

“So far you and I are the only audience I know anything about,” the Saint replied.

“Ye mean it’s all a big joke?”

“No. I think it’s possibly a big show with a starring role written in for me. And since I’m one of the leading characters I just want to be sure there’s going to be a happy ending.”

“Ye’ve lost me,” said Kelly.

“Well, ponder on it,” Simon said, “and by morning I’m sure you’ll have come up with some of the same possibilities I have.”

“It’ll do me no earthly good to ponder at all,” Kelly said, showing the way to Simon’s room. “Me wife says I’m good for nothin’ but fightin’ and drinkin’ and sometimes I’m inclined to believe her.”

“You may have a chance to prove she’s right about the fighting if Mildred’s detective friends show up tomorrow.”

Kelly grunted.

“Listen — even the postman can’t find this place, let alone a couple of city yobbos like them. And if they do get here...”

He raised his fist expressively.

“That should discourage them,” Simon said. “Hold down the fort Pat, and if I’m gone when you get up I should be back by mid-afternoon.”

The next morning went according to the Saint’s plans. He needed no alarm clock to guarantee that he would wake up by a certain hour. He told himself before he fell asleep that he wanted to be awake at nine, and when he opened his eyes to the sun his wrist watch told him that his mental timer had been accurate almost to the minute. A short while later he was on the road that ran through Mullingar to Kilcock, about sixty miles from Kelly’s house. As he drove through the beautiful countryside, admiring the red and purple fuchsia against the whitewashed walls of cottages, he thought of the fishing he might be enjoying at this moment. Somehow or other he was going to extract a compensatory reward from this adventure, even if it took selling Mildred to an Arab slaver.

There were no more complications than might have been expected involved in having his car retrieved from the wilderness. He showed a towing truck from Kilcock the way, and the job was done in short order. The repair of the axle would take overnight, he was told, since parts would have to be obtained from Dublin. So he transferred his luggage from the trunk of his injured car to the trunk of Kelly’s, had a simple but decent lunch at a Kilcock hostelry, and drove back the same way he had come earlier.

It was after four when he stopped in front of Kelly’s cottage. The vine-covered gate was standing open. The door of the cottage was open a few inches also. In the living room, several pieces of furniture were overturned, one of the wooden African masks was broken in half and a Zulu assegai was embedded in the sofa. There was no blood, at least, and there were no bullet holes.

On the nail in the wall where the primitive mask had hung was a note on white paper. Simon took it down and read it.

8

Eugene Drew turned from the floor lamp and looked at the Saint with his uncommonly large and protuberant eyes. Then he turned back, held the note in the direct light of the bulb, and read it again.

It was nine o’clock in the evening of the same day on which Simon had plucked the note down from a nail on the wall of Kelly’s cottage. Arranging to see Drew had been momentarily difficult because the man was obsessed with the notion that nine-tenths of the newspaper reporters on earth were devoting themselves exclusively to scheming ways of invading his privacy. But Drew knew of Simon Templar by reputation, and there was also the note, as concrete evidence.

Still, the financier had made no secret of his mistrust when he admitted the Saint to his suite at the Gresham. He had stood there tall and slope-shouldered in a grey tweed suit much too heavy for the season, and with a total absence of cordiality or even politeness held out his hand.

“The note,” he had said.

Simon, with no greater display of warmth, had given it to him.

Now Drew, after the second reading, turned from the lamp and placed the paper on a table. He gave it a final glance and looked at the Saint, who had made himself comfortable in an armchair.

“You believe this note was left by the detectives I hired to find my daughter?” Drew asked.

“I’m reasonably sure of it. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? The problem is the same, whoever the kidnapper is.”

Drew paused, made a grunting sound of assent, and paced toward the window.

“I’m paying Brine and Mullins — the detectives — a salary much higher than they would normally be paid, and I promised them a large bonus if they were successful. Why should they risk everything, including their freedom, for...”

He stopped, shook his head, clasped his hands behind him, and paced again.

“Maybe they don’t have so much to risk,” Simon said. “A private detective’s pay wouldn’t make a truck driver very envious. Maybe once you gave them a whiff of higher things they just couldn’t resist the temptation to try for the jackpot. I assume your bonus didn’t approach a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Of course not,” Drew snapped. “After all, she’s just a silly little child running off to try to ruin her life with some long-haired nincompoop of an actor. There was no reason why I should offer a queen’s ransom to anybody just for tracing her. I offered more than I might have because when Brine and Mullins came to me and said they had a clue as to her whereabouts...”

“The detectives came to you?” Simon interrupted.

“Yes. When Mildred disappeared I began putting out quiet feelers immediately. Brine and Mullins got wind of what was happening and came and told me that they believed they could return my daughter within forty-eight hours — and without publicity. They asked a stiff price, but it seemed worth it.”

“Well,” said the Saint, “if they were honest in the first place, it would seem they got carried away by the heat of the hunt and decided to go crooked. I’ll have to admit we were leading them a merry chase there for a while.”

“And that’s something else, Mr. Templar,” Drew said, glaring at him. “Your summary of events on the telephone failed to explain just what you were doing with my daughter in the first place.”

“If you had been listening closely, you’d recall I said she insinuated herself into my good graces by telling lies. To be specific — that she was Hitler’s daughter and that your detectives were SS men.”

Drew all but spat on the floor.

“That’s preposterous!”

“Don’t blame me for weak points in Mildred’s upbringing. And just keep in mind that even though I was clever enough to surmise that she wasn’t really Hitler’s daughter, I had no way of knowing whose daughter she really was. By the time she confessed, we were a long way from Dublin.”

“Why didn’t you call me immediately, as soon as you knew who she was?”

Drew’s imperious tone irritated Simon, who sat quietly for a moment, the sapphire points of his eyes fixed penetratingly and coldly on the other man’s face.

“Remember, Mr. Drew, I’m not one of your hired lackeys, Your daughter — probably accurately — made you sound like a selfish ogre. I saw no reason to stop her doing anything she pleased.”

Drew glowered for a moment longer, then turned angrily away. The Saint got to his feet.

“Now,” he said, “are you going to pay up, or lose one of your tax deductions the hard way?”

Drew’s face was now more apprehensive than angry.

“You don’t think they’d... actually kill her?”

“I’m afraid unsuccessful kidnappers are more dangerous than successful ones.”

“What guarantee do I have they’ll return her even if I do pay the money?”

Simon shrugged.

“None. That’s one reason why I consider kidnapping one of the more nauseating crimes in the human repertoire. But if you don’t pay, the odds are something like fifty to one in favor of their killing Mildred. If you do, then naturally Brine and Mullins would rather look forward to enjoying their fifty thousand pounds apiece without a murder rap hanging over their heads. I’d advise you to pay.”

“Naturally,” Drew said, hardening his tone again. “Naturally you would. The note conveniently specifies that you and only you may bring the money. Let’s assume that you are not a part of this plot. That assumption may be erroneous, but for the sake of argument...”

Simon held up his hand and gave Drew a look of cold contempt.

“I was afraid you might make such nasty insinuations,” he said levelly. “So, to demonstrate my sincerity, I’ll simply remove myself from the whole situation and let you worry about it.”

He stepped toward the door. Drew moved after him quickly, his face showing sudden panic.

“No... Wait. I... I apologise.”

The Saint turned back, his expression only slightly softer, making it plain that he was not quite sure that the apology was adequate.

“What were you saying then?”

Drew opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again.

“Ah... I’m not sure,” he said.

“I think I can read your mind,” said the Saint. “You were going to ask what would prevent me from setting off for the crossroads with your money and going straight on to Brazil without even slowing down.”

“It’s a natural thought,” Drew said, with a conspicuous lack of the truculence his voice had carried a few moments before.

“I suppose it is, for the kind of man who would do it,” Simon responded pleasantly. “But I’m not that sort of man. And besides, they have an old friend of mine along with your daughter, and I wouldn’t like to be responsible for his being hurt. Does that reassure you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll have the money by tomorrow night?”

Drew nodded.

“Yes. Where will I find you?”

“I’ll be staying here tonight and for the day tomorrow. I’m getting tired of covering the road between Dublin and Lough Reagh. At four tomorrow afternoon I’ll come to your suite here and pick up the cash. Then if everything goes well, Mildred and my friend will be free before midnight.”

“All right,” said Drew. “I’ll have to trust you.”

Simon paused at the door.

“Yes. You should. Don’t try to follow me or have me followed. It may seem like a smart idea at first thought, but if Brine and Mullins suspected anything they might bolt before I could pay them — and possibly they’d do something drastic on their way out.”

“It’ll be in your hands then,” Drew said.

For the first time he showed signs of letting his tenderer emotions get control of him. His huge eyes moistened and his mouth threatened to tremble.

“And... tell Mildred,” he mumbled, “that who she marries is her own business, if that’s how it has to be. I won’t stand in the way.”

“I’ll deliver the message. It seems like a wise one.”

The Saint looked at Drew more intently. His final request, toward which it might be said that all the earlier part of his conversation had been secretly building, would have to be phrased in such a way as to arouse no suspicions. To slip now would be like settling weight on a false footing just inches before reaching the top of a precipice.

“There’s just one thing I’m curious about,” he said.

“What?” Drew asked.

“You’re very concerned about who has captured your daughter, and all about my character. I’m sure you’ll have me checked out thoroughly before I get my hands on that money tomorrow. The one thing you haven’t thought to ask is whether or not the kidnappers have your daughter.”

Drew was obviously taken aback. He looked a bit like a schoolboy caught in a ridiculous arithmetical error.

“Well,” he said defensively, “Brine and Mullins are far overdue in contacting me — which seems to confirm your story. My daughter, after all, is missing. And you’re so anxious for me to trust in your honesty: it was you who was with her, and who told me you left her in the house where you found the note. I don’t even understand what you mean, now...”

“I mean,” said Simon, “that I have never seen your daughter — before yesterday. Do you have a picture of her?”

Drew seemed flabbergasted that the Saint would bring up such a crucial question of identification at that late moment.

“Yes,” he said. “I brought this with me in case I had to ask the police to put out a public alarm.”

He went into the bedroom which adjoined the living room of the suite and returned with a large photograph in his hand.

Simon took it and studied it. Then he smiled.

“Yes,” he said, taking a last satisfied look. “That settles it.”

9

The fat man called Brine sat in an old Austin-Healey at the crossing of two unpaved roads six miles from the village of Birr. It was two minutes before nine o’clock, and though the man must have been tired, since he could have had little sleep in the past twenty-four hours, he was as alert as a sentry on the border of enemy territory. His head jerked toward the direction of the slightest sound, and the Saint was sure that his hand must never be far from the ignition key, so that he could start the engine and be off at the first threat of danger.

So the Saint, who was crouched in the trees just behind Brine’s car, had to be very quiet. The night was cloudy and thus exceptionally dark. That was one advantage. Another advantage was the mild but gusty wind which had come along with the cloudy weather. The noises it caused in the branches of trees and bushes would continually distract Brine and also tend to cover any sounds the Saint might make. Simon could have made do without those advantages, but their existence was convenient and seemed a good omen.

He crept forward like a stalking leopard into the road behind the car, carrying something in one hand which might have been even more alarming to Brine than a gun, had Brine been able to see it. It was a large can of white paint — a half gallon — with a strip of adhesive tape in the middle of both the top and the bottom.

When he had reached the rear of the car, Simon deftly and silently hooked the handle of the paint can over one of the bumper guards. Then he pulled the strips of tape from the top and bottom. Under each piece of tape was a small hole, and white paint began to drip slowly but regularly on to the dark earth of the road.

With as little sound as he had made in coming, the Saint moved away from the automobile and melted into the murky forest like a passing shadow.

When he was a safe distance from Brine, he quickened his pace and quickly covered the two hundred yards of woods which separated the Austin-Healey from his own car. He had arrived in the area before Brine and parked in an obscure little lane which was visible from neither of the roads which formed the crossing marked on the crude map the kidnappers had left behind at Kelly’s house. Now that his private mission with the can of paint was finished, it was a simple matter to start his engine, drive down to the crossroads, and arrive just on time for the meeting.

His car was facing Brine’s when he drove up, and in the glare of his own lights he could see Brine gesturing for him to drive alongside. Apparently the erstwhile detective wanted to keep the road ahead clear for a fast getaway, and also had no intention of leaving the security of the driver’s seat of his car.

Simon stopped so that his open window was less than two feet from Brine’s. He was greeted with a dim view of Brine’s pudgy face and the snout of a revolver.

“Got the money?” Brine asked nervously.

Simon, remaining in his car, picked up the attaché case which Drew had given him in the afternoon and handed it out through his window. Brine took it, dropped it onto the seat beside him, and kept his eye and gun on the Saint while his free hand fumbled with the latch. A few seconds later he held a handful of neatly stacked and banded bills alongside the gun, so that he could check their genuineness without dropping his guard. Then he put them back and inspected another handful. Obviously he was too nervous even to think of counting to see if the correct amount was there.

“This better be right,” he said. “Any tricks and it’s too bad.”

“It’s good money,” the Saint said lightly. “I wouldn’t mind having some of it myself.”

Brine snorted.

“Give me your car key,” he said.

Simon took the key from the ignition and handed it to Brine, who promptly threw it off into the bushes.

“Now, Mr. Brine,” said the Saint with mild reproach, “that isn’t very original. But at least it shows you learn by example. How long did you have to dive in that river the other day before you found yours?”

“I haven’t any time for talking, Templar.”

Brine started his car.

“What about Mildred and Kelly?” Simon asked.

“They’ll be let loose somewhere near a telephone.” He grinned. “Now if I were you I’d start hunting for that key.”

He pulled quickly away as Simon leaned down, tore a strip of tape from a niche under the dashboard, and inserted one of his spare keys into the ignition. The satisfaction he got from reaping the benefit of that bit of foresight was minor compared to his relief at seeing — when he flicked on his headlights and turned around — the spots of white paint clearly marking the route by which Brine’s car had disappeared.

Simon set a rate of speed which he felt would keep Brine from widening the gap between them. The white spots turned onto a paved road which led south for several miles, and then turned off into the woods again. The spots were difficult to see on the rocky lane, but it did not really matter since once on that particular pathway it would have been impossible for a car to deviate to one side or the other without leaving behind a swathe of broken undergrowth.

A little further on the woods became more sparse, and the crude road wound up the side of a hill. At the top of the hill was one of those broken-down castles which do so much to enhance the beauty of Irish tourist brochures.

Simon could see its single round tower black against the shredded clouds of the faintly luminous sky. With the lights of his car off, he drove to the edge of a grove which was within easy walking distance of the castle, but was far enough away that no one on top of the hill could have heard the sound of his engine or the careful opening and closing of the door.

The Saint stood for a minute looking up the slope at the crumbled heap of stone. If Brine or his partner had discovered the paint can on the bumper of the car, there could be trouble. The run up to the castle could be diversionary, and Simon would find that the white spots of paint led right off down the other side. That would mean, at the least, the loss of precious time. Worse, if Brine was on to the fact that he was being tailed, he could be lying in ambush somewhere among the broken walls above. But the Saint preferred to think that luck would stay with him. There was, after all, no logical reason for Brine to walk around and take a look at the rear of his car.

Simon chose the most direct path up the hill which offered a little cover in the form of scattered bushes and occasional low infrequent sections of an ancient stone wall. Probably stones from this wall as well as from the castle were a part of many a hearth in this neighborhood: the peasantry of all countries tended to regard noble relics of the past as no more than convenient quarries for common use.

There were few trees on the upper part of the hill. In fact, now that Simon had covered two-thirds of the distance between his car and the castle there was only one gnarled trunk breaking the open ground. He ran silently to it, then stopped in its shadow and looked at the ruins, which were now less than a hundred and fifty feet away. There was no trace of light escaping the gloom of the walls, and he could hear nothing except the wind.

He took the pistol from the holster under his left arm and moved on more cautiously than ever, covering the last stretch so quickly and soundlessly that even if someone had glimpsed him he might have been taken for an illusion of the night.

He was at the outer wall of the castle now. It had never been a large establishment. As in the case of most such places of any real antiquity, the tower had been built first — and built to last despite the neighboring lord’s most vigorous efforts to knock it down. The peasants, in their search for chimney-stones, had not fared much better than the besiegers of former times. The tower still stood almost unscathed while the rest of the structure, built later with the knowledge that the old donjon could be used as the ultimate in defence, lay mostly fallen about it in heaps of rubble.

Simon went around one of the traces of wall and stopped suddenly, slipping behind a half-collapsed archway. There was Brine’s car, no one in it, with the paint can still dripping, from the bumper. From the tower just beyond the car there came an unmistakable mutter of voices. The Saint circled, keeping himself out of sight, until he could see light through an arrow-slit window. Then he moved in and had a cautious look.

What he saw in the room at the base of the tower would have been enough to cause at least a temporary paralysis of the breathing mechanism in a man of less prescience.

The chamber was lighted with a kerosene lantern. Kneeling on the floor was Brine, flicking open the catch of the attaché case which Simon had given him. Standing alongside was the thin detective, Mullins, showing large facial bruises which must have been a result of his encounter with the tinker and his family the night before. Brine bore some of the same marks.

This much of the lurid spectacle of thieves eagerly salivating as they prepared to inspect their spoils was not unusual or shocking. But there was a third person present: Mildred. She was standing next to Mullins, not with the air of a languishing princess, nor even with the tearfully grateful air of a formerly languishing princess who has just been ransomed. She was leaning forward with the look of a kitten about to be fed, and when Brine opened the case and grinned as he held up a double handful of fivers, she fell onto her knees beside him and hugged him around the neck.

“Oh, Dad!” she said. “I can’t believe we really did it!” She was mixing laughter with her words, and even the sullen thin man smiled until he stretched a split lip and winced as he covered his mouth with one hand.

“Well, now, Phyllis,” said Brine proudly, clapping the case shut again, “you’ve proven you’re a chip off the old block this time. Your mother would have been proud of you.”

Mullins shook his head nostalgically.

“True enough. What a pity Moll couldn’t have been here to see this.”

Brine indulged in a moment of sadness, then shook off the feeling.

“Well, well,” he said. “We must let the dead bury the dead. And that goes for Simon Templar, too.”

That remark produced a laugh from the two men, but ex-Mildred, now Phyllis, looked worried.

“You didn’t hurt him?” she asked.

“Oh, no. But when Drew’s daughter doesn’t show up it’ll be the Saint left holding the bag. Or holding nothing, I might say.”

He laughed again.

“What about his pal?” asked Mullins.

They all looked toward a closed door so thick and so heavy with metal bindings that even the centuries had not brought it down from its massive hinges.

“Leave him, of course,” shrugged Brine.

“We can’t,” Phyllis said. “He’d never get out, and he’d starve to death.”

Brine clicked his tongue.

“Ah, Phyllis, I must warn you that your mother Moll was undone by that same sort of sentimentality. She was the only woman ever arrested in the Seaman’s Home while putting money back in a man’s trousers when she found he had eight hungry children. Of course they never believed her story.” He looked around the chamber and concluded absently, “I’m not sure I ever believed it myself.”

Mullins picked up a short length of rusted iron from the floor.

“This has a point on it,” he said. “He can use it to work his way out.”

“All right, then,” Brine agreed impatiently, “but hurry it up, would you?”

Mildred threw the bolt on the door.

“Now don’t you try anything,” Brine called to the prisoner. “I’ll have a gun on you. Mullins is going to throw you a little something you can chip your way out of there with in a couple of days if you work hard at it.”

Simon did not get a look at Pat Kelly as Mildred opened the door a crack and Mullins tossed in the piece of metal, but he did hear his friend’s voice, and it sounded gratifyingly robust and healthy.

“Ye bunch of cross-eyed orangoutangs! Let me out of here and I’ll fix ye up with yer legs around yer necks so ye can see behind when ye walk!”

He went on in the same vein even after his words were muffled by the door slamming again. Simon, meanwhile, moved around the outside of the tower until he came to the entrance, which was a doorless irregular hole that led directly into the chamber he had watched through the window. He waited until Phyllis picked up the lantern and turned with Brine and Mullins to leave. Then he showed himself, lounging easily, automatic in hand, between them and freedom.

“Hello, friends,” he said, with a pleasant smile.

Phyllis was the first to recover her voice.

“Simon! How did you... ever find me?”

“Your latest father left a trail,” he answered.

“What trail?” demanded Brine.

“Father?” cried Phyllis uncomprehendingly.

“Oh, Mildred Phyllis Hitler Drew Brine,” said the Saint with indulgent sadness, “I’m afraid you’ve come to the bottom of the name barrel. Somewhere at the core of all those lies there had to be a truth, and we might as well agree we’ve found it.”

“He’s been listening to us talk here,” Mullins said.

“Wonderful deduction,” said the Saint. “I can see how you became such a successful detective. Too bad you made such an unsuccessful crook.”

Brine was licking his lips nervously, glancing at his daughter and Mullins.

“Templar,” he blurted. “You’re in this with us. You deserve a share. We’ll split.” He smiled hopefully. “How’s that?”

“I agree that I deserve a share,” Simon said. “Let’s say something like a hundred per cent. I might send you a Christmas pudding in prison, though, if you’ll tell me just when you decided to include me in your plans. Was it before or after you conned Drew into thinking you were on his daughter’s trail?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Mullins said, “but we really were on to her trail — the real Mildred Drew’s, I mean. So we made that deal with Drew to find her.”

“And then you couldn’t produce,” volunteered the Saint, “so you decided to find a substitute Mildred.”

“That was all my idea,” Phyllis said proudly, looking no less ingenuously wide-eyed than she had in her role of millionaire’s daughter. “And since they couldn’t get anything for a Mildred who wasn’t a Mildred, they had to pretend to kidnap her and get the money that way.”

“And you needed a go-between who didn’t know Mildred,” Simon said. “Some innocent sucker who’d think he was serving everybody’s best interests by carrying messages and money.”

“Right!” said Phyllis brightly.

Brine’s pride in the scheme was more apologetic.

“Of course we didn’t plan to bring you into it till we just happened to hear your friend mention your name at a bar. Then we spotted you in the hotel, and...”

“And set up that performance where I was fishing,” said the Saint.

Brine and Mullins both nodded.

“The whole thing sort of... developed, you might say,” Mullins put in. “No offense intended.”

“We never went wrong before,” said Brine hopefully.

“We were always straight, going toward our old age grinding through divorce investigations for twenty quid a week. I... I guess the temptation was just too much.”

“That might bring a tear to my eye,” Simon said, “if I hadn’t already used up my sympathy on Mildred’s romantic problems. Now open the door there, and let my friend out.”

Pat Kelly’s last outburst had died away after the re-closing of the heavy door, and it seemed doubtful that he could have heard what had been going on since. Mullins looked apprehensively at the door.

“He’s... ah... pretty mad,” he said.

“Well, you won’t mind that,” said Simon. “Just throw the bolt and stand back. And Brine, you slide that case very gently across the floor in this direction.”

Brine hesitated, but the Saint gave him an encouraging waggle of his revolver, and then the detective obediently sent the attaché case scooting toward the exit. Mullins, in the meantime, with the tremulous caution of a demolition trainee defusing his first live bomb, was drawing back the bolt that held Pat Kelly prisoner.

That was when Phyllis dropped the lantern. The instant it shattered on the floor the wick went out and the place was blindingly dark. In the confusion of sounds and physical sensations, the Saint was aware that Pat had apparently charged out of his dungeon with such force and velocity that the massive door had swung wide and crashed back against the wall. It also seemed, judging from the accompanying crunch and groan, that Mullins had perhaps been flattened between the door and the wall like a hapless beetle caught in the pages of a rapidly slamming dictionary.

Simon yelled to identify himself to Kelly, and at the same time sensed from the shape of the bulk heaving itself at him out of the blackness that he was being attacked by Brine. He neatly sidestepped and tripped the fat man, whose impetus carried him sprawling to the floor.

“Simon!” Kelly was shouting. “Where are ye?”

“Grab the girl,” Simon said. “Do you have a match?”

Kelly quickly produced a flame, which revealed two men unconscious on the floor, but no Phyllis. There was also no attaché case.

“She must have run out while I was tending to Brine,” Simon said. “You watch these goons. I’ll catch her.”

He hurried through the door, dodged around piles of stone, and heard the sound of the girl’s running steps in the direction of the car. But he was too close behind to allow her any chance of starting the engine and pulling away. He had a glimpse of her jumping over some rocks and setting off at a dead run down the hillside.

Before he had chased her far she made the mistake of looking back over her shoulder to see whether or not he was gaining. She stumbled and fell violently head first, rolling several times but never loosing her grip on the case clutched against her chest.

She was lying face up, gasping for breath, when Simon arrived at her side.

“Hurt yourself?” he asked.

“My back,” she moaned. “It’s... I think it’s broken.”

“They’ll put it right for you in the prison hospital,” the Saint said sympathetically.

He bent down to help her, and she winced with pain as she started to raise herself. Simon saw the sudden movement of her right arm and averted his face to avoid most of the handful of earth she flung at him. Even so she managed to roll away, and dash off again. This time, though, he caught her before she had gone twenty feet and swung her around, making her drop the attaché case, and pinning her arms behind her.

“You want the money for yourself!” she cried. “You’re no better than the rest of us. In fact you’re worse.”

“Worse?” asked Simon mildly.

“Yes.” Phyllis’s big eyes suddenly welled with tears. “They... forced me to do it.”

“How?”

“My mother. She needs this dreadful operation. There’s only one surgeon in the world who can do it. In America. And he charges ten thousand pounds.”

The Saint threw back his head and laughed.

“It’s true!” said Phyllis. “Really.”

“I’m afraid the stage lost a great star when you decided on a life of crime.”

Phyllis looked more genuinely upset than she had a moment before.

“Simon,” she said, “you wouldn’t... really turn me in would you?”

“Oh, yes. You’re a very naughty girl.”

Her face crumpled, wet-eyed and kittenish.

“Please! I won’t do anything wrong ever again, I swear. If you’ll just let me go.”

Kelly was hallooing from the top of the hill, unable as yet to see where they were. Simon looked at Phyllis and loosened his grip.

“You promise you’ll live a clean and decent life, devoting yourself to good works and never telling any lies?”

“Oh, I do! I promise!”

“All right, then.”

He let her go entirely. She was unbelieving.

“You mean?”

“Go on,” he said.

She stood on her tiptoes, gave him a swift kiss, and turned to run. As she passed the attaché case she snatched it up and took off down the hill like a rabbit.

“Don’t try to spend any of that money, though,” Simon called after her.

“It’s counterfeit!”

She stopped and turned.

“What did you say?” she shouted through clenched teeth.

“It’s all counterfeit. Just bait to get your father to lead me here.”

The word she said then was not so impressive as the way she said it. She took the attaché case and hurled it to the ground. Then she ran and disappeared among the trees.

Simon went and knelt by the case, which had fallen open, spilling bundles of money — quite genuine Irish money — out on the ground. He made certain estimates of the value of his time, the expense of repairs to his car, and other worthy considerations, and stowed away what some less generous people might have considered a disproportionate number of the bundles of bills in his jacket pockets. But the Saint was an extraordinarily generous man, and he saw no reason to make an exception when being generous with himself.

Pat was coming down the hill.

“Are ye alone?” he called. “Couldn’t ye catch her?”

The Saint closed the attaché case and went to meet his friend.

“She’s still running,” he answered.

“Ah, well, and I’m not sorry,” said Pat. “She was a darlin’ little thing. Led astray by her ould man.” He gestured toward the castle. “Them’s the two buzzards I’d like to take apart.”

“Are they all right?”

“They’re trussed up so they couldn’t give a flea any trouble. I’ve a throat as dry as a Bedouin’s wit. What say we leave’m there to stew while we go get a spot o’ some-thin’ to ease the pain?”

“We’d better bring them along,” Simon said. “I’d like to get in touch with Drew before he decides I’ve made off with the loot.”

“I wonder where his real daughter is?”

“I did some checking, and it seems she definitely flew to Mexico the day she disappeared from home. By now she’s probably enjoying her honeymoon.”

“While we have our few days o’ peace and freedom ruined chasin’ after her all over Ireland,” said Kelly. “Well, maybe we can get in a day o’ fishin’ anyway.” He scratched his chin, and gave Simon a sly sidelong glance. “Still an’ all, it’s too bad that colleen Mildred, or Phyllis, or whativer her name really is, turned out to be such a naughty one. I’m thinkin’ ye might have had more fun with her than with me.”

The Saint grinned pensively at the moon.

“It’s a small world,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe, one of these days, I will.”