The Saint Returns (10 page)

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 un
expectedly 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 any
thing 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
pos
sibilities 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 to
morrow.”

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 coun
tryside, 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 trans
ferred 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.

Saint:

We have your friend and Mildred Drew. Tell Eu
gene Drew
that if he wants to see her alive he
must give you a
hundred thousand pounds which
you must deliver to us tomorrow night
at the
crossing marked on the map below at nine o’clock.
Come alone, your friend wont be
hurt if you co
operate, and neither will
the girl. Otherwise we’ll
kill them.

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 ob
sessed 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 mat
ter, does it? The problem is the same, whoever the kid
napper
is.”

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

“I’m paying Brine and Mullins—the
detectives—a sal
ary 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 free
dom, for …”

He stopped, shook his head, clasped his hands
be
hind 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 ad
mit 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 tele
phone 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 daugh
ter, 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 pene
tratingly
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 danger
ous
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 reper
toire. 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 for
ward to enjoying their fifty thousand pounds apiece
without a
murder rap hanging over their heads. I’d ad
vise you to pay.”