Read Online The Saint Returns by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online

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 cot tage 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 repre sented 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 countermeas ure 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 mas sive 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