Read Online The Saint in Europe by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B

she sat down, so that the unstudied symнmetry of her curving honey-blonde hair framed her face in a careless aureole. She was beautiful. But there was someнthing more to her than her mere unspoiled young beauty, something strange and startling that he could not define. She was the fairy princess that no man ever meets except in his most youthful dreams, the Cinderella that every man looks for all his life and knows he will never find. She was the woman that each man marries, only to find that he saw nothing but the mirror of his own hopes. And even when he had said that, the Saint knew that he had touched only a crude outline-that there was still something more which he might never be able to say. But because there seemed to be nothing of immediate importance in the newspaper he had bought at the station, and because even a lawless advenнturer may find his own pleasure in the enjoyment of simple loveliness, Simon Templar leaned back with the smoke drifting past his eyes and wove romantic fantasies about the Rhine Maiden and the old man who was with her.
    “This is der most vonderful river of der whole vorld, Greta,” said the old man, gazing out of the window. “For der Danube der is a valtz; but this is der only river in der vorld dot has four operas written about it. Some day you shall see it all properly, Gretchen-die Lorelei, und Ehrenнbreitstien, und all kinds of vonderful places-“
    An adventurer lives on impulse, riding the crest of life only because he takes the wave in the split second where others hesitate. The Saint said, quietly and naturally, with a slight movement of his hand: “I think there’s some better stuff over that way. Over around the Eifel.”
    The other two both looked at him; and the happy eyes of the solid old man lighted up.
    “Ach, so you know your Chermany!”
    Simon wondered what they would have said if he had explained that the police of two nations had once hunted him up from Innsbruck through Munich to Treuchtlingen and beyond, on a certain adventure that was one of his , blithest memories; but he only smiled.
    “I’ve been here before.”
    “I know dot country, too,” said the old man eagerly, with his soft German-American accent faltering a little in his throat. “When I vos a boy we used to try and catch fish in der river at Gemund; und vonce I get lost by myself in der voods going over to Heimbach. Now I hear der is a great Thalsperre, a big dam dot makes all der valley into a great lake. So maybe der is some more fish there now.”
    It was as if he had suddenly met an old friend; the sluiceнgates of memory were opened at a touch, and the old man let them flow, stumbling through his, words with the same naive happiness as he must have stumbled through the woods and streams he spoke of as a boy. There were many places that the Saint also knew; and a nod of recognition here and there was almost as much encouragement as the old man needed. His whole life story, commonplace as it was, came pattering out with a childish zest that was almost frightening in its godlike simplicity. Simon listened, and was queerly moved.
    “… Und so I vork and vork, und I safe money and look after my little Greta, und she looks after me, und we are very happy. Und then at last I can retire mit a little money, not much, but plenty for us; und Greta is grown up.”
    The eyes of the old man shone with a serenity that was blinding, the eyes of a man who had never known the doubts and the fretfulness of his age, whose humble faith had passed utterly and incredibly unscathed through the squalid brawl of civilization perhaps because he had never been aware of it.
    “So now we come back to der Faderland to see my brother dot is a policeman in Mainz. Und Greta is going to see der vorld, und buy herself pretty clothes, und do all kinds of vonderful things. Isn’t dot all we could vant, Gretchen?”
    Simon glanced at the girl again. He knew that she had been studying his face ever since he had first