The Saint Returns by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online

lose
them—and end up somewhere except in a peat bog.”
    Mildred bent close to the map and studied it.
The short-lived directness of the highway degenerated into a series
of snaky curves through a wooded section marked by rocky
hillocks.
    “There!” cried Mildred suddenly.
“Up by that stone marker.”
    The Saint jammed down the brake pedal and
swerved into the side lane. It was no more than a pair of wagon ruts made
semi-respectable by an old topping of gravel. The way abounded with holes and
humps, and Simon- driving without lights—was forced to slow to fifteen
miles an hour in order to hold the car on its higher leaps to any thing below
treetop level. .
    Luckily, the other automobile had been too far
behind around a curve to see what its prey had done. It swept by on the
main road, its headlamps sending flickers of light through the
woods.
    “We lost them,” Mildred said
jubilantly.
    The Saint was less enthusiastic.
    “For the moment. If they’ve got any
brains at all they’ll see in a minute they’ve lost us and then
they’ll come back. Are there any other side roads near here that might confuse
them?”
    “Only one I can make out, and it looks
like a dead end.”
    Simon stopped and turned off the engine. Then
he listened closely to the receding sound of the car that had been pursuing them. Before it
passed completely out of earshot, the noise
of wailing tires on distant curves came
to an abrupt halt. The Saint’s sensitive ears just barely made out the gunning of the engine and a couple of brief screeching spins of tires on
asphalt.
    “I think they’ve caught on,” he
said. “They’re turning around.”
    He started his own car and continued down the horrendous
trail, which was surely experiencing the passage of the first
self-propelled vehicle in lifetime that must have dated back at least to
Finn MacCool.
    “Oh,” said Mildred in a low voice.
    She was looking at the map, her face bouncing
in the pool of light just above it.
    “What?” said Simon.
    “You know that dead end road I mentioned?”
    “Yes.”
    “We re on it.” The
Saint’s commentary was internal and sustained.
    “I see,” he said finally, with
devastating quietness. “Mildred Hitler, girl guide, has done it
again.”
    At that point, the tortured car gave a sudden
lurch and stopped, slumped at an angle toward Mildred’s side. Mildred’s
head bumped the glass in front of her with a lack of force which
the Saint found faintly disappointing.
    He turned off the ignition.
    “Well,” he remarked, “that’s
the second immobilized auto you can chalk up to your record
today.”
    Mildred rubbed her head gingerly and looked
even more gingerly
at Simon.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    “Without checking on details, I should
say that we have fallen into a hole.” He took a deep breath and opened the
door. “So … let’s start walking. Under dif ferent circumstances I
might stand and fight, but at the moment I really can’t think of
anything worth fighting for.”
    He walked around the front of, the car and
looked briefly at the damage. The wheel had slipped into a deeply
eroded channel.
    Mildred picked her way over the stones to
join Simon.
    “Can’t you reverse out?” she asked.

“No. And I think the axle’s bent
anyway.” He looked
at her. “If your Papa Adolf’s superman theories amounted to anything, you’d be able to lift up the whole mess and set it
straight again.”
    Mildred did not answer, and Simon set off
down the road in front of the car with swinging strides. Mildred hobbled
and stumbled behind him in her high heels.
    “Wait!” she cried finally. “I
can’t keep up.”
    “Stay behind then. I’m afraid you’ve
used up your allotment of my chivalry. If the wolves catch you, they won’t
bother chasing me.”
    She let out a despairing wail and hurried
after him up a
moon-silvered hill, where the wagon track was thickly hedged with trees.
    “Or maybe,” Simon mused happily as
he trudged along, hands