Free The Saint Returns by Leslie Charteris

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