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