The Saint Returns (6 page)

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 F
ü
hrer
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 irre
trievably lost, but
peace had been replaced by the fas
cination 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 neighbor
hood 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 in
satiable addiction of some
women for ritualistic applica
tions 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 con
sumed, 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 dis
counted—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
some
times 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
seven
teen, 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
stub
born 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 im
memorial 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
flash
light.