Free The Saint in Europe by Leslie Charteris

spoken, but his clear gaze turned on her with its hint of the knowledge veiled down almost to invisibility. Even so, it took her by surprise.
    “Why-yes,” she stammered; and then in an instant her confusion was gone. She slipped her hand under the old man’s arm and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “But I suppose it’s all very ordinary to you.”
    The Saint shook his head.
    “No,” he said gently. “I’ve known what it is to feel just like that.”
    And in that moment, in one of those throat-catching flashes of vision where a man looks back and sees for the first time what he has left behind, Simon Templar knew how far he and the rest of the world had travelled when such a contented and unassuming honesty could have such a strange pathos.
    “I know,” said the Saint. “That’s when the earth’s at your feet, and you look at it out of an enchanted castle. How does the line go”?-‘Magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn…’”
    “There’s music in that,” she said softly.
    But he wondered how much she understood. One never knows how magical the casements were until after the magic has been lost.
    She had her composure back-even Rhine Maidens must have been born with that defensive armour of the eternal woman. She returned his gaze calmly enough, liking the reckless cut of his lean face and the quick smile that could be cynical and sad and mocking at the same time. There was a boyishness there that spoke to her own youth; but with it there were the deep-etched lines of many dangerous years which she was too young to read.
    “I expect you know lots of marvelous places,” she said.
    The Saint smiled.
    “Wherever you went now would be marvelous. It’s only tired and disillusioned people who have to look for sensations.”
    “I’m spoiled,” she said. “Ever since we left home I’ve been living in a dream. First there was New York, and then the boat, and then Paris, and Cologne-and we’ve scarcely started yet. I haven’t done anything to deserve it. Daddy did it all by himself.”
    The old man shook his head.
    “No, Gretchen, I didn’t do it all by myself. There was dot great man who helped me. You know?” He looked at the Saint. “Und he is on this train himself!”
    “Who’s that?” asked the Saint cheerfully.
    “Mr Voyson. Mr Bruce Voyson. He has der big factory where I vork. When I safe a little money I put it in his company because they pay so big dividends, und so there is alvays much more money; und I invest dot also, und so it all helps us. All my money I have in his company.”
    Simon hardly moved.
    “Sometimes I see him in der factory, und he has alvays something to say to me,” said the old man almost reverently. “Now today I see him on der platform at Cologne. You remember, Greta? I think he is very tired with all the vork he does to look after the factory, because he is vearing dark glasses und he is very stooped like he never was before und his hair is gone quite white. But I recognize him beнcause I have seen him so often, und besides he has a scar on his hand dot I remember so vell und I see it when he takes off his glove. So I go up und speak to him und thank him, und at first he does not recognize me. Of course he has so many employees in der big factory, how can he rememнber every one of them all der time? But I tell him, ‘You are Mr Voyson und I vork in your factory fifteen years und I invest all my money in your company, und I vant to thank you that now I can retire and go home.’ So he shakes hands with me, und then he is so busy that he has to go away. But he is on der train, too.”
    “You put all your money in Voyson’s company?” reнpeated the Saint, with a sudden weariness.
    The old man nodded.
    “Dot is how I mean, I didn’t do it all by myself. If I hadn’t done that I should’ve had to vork some more years.”
    Simon Templar’s eyes fell to the newspaper on his knee. For it was on that day that the collapse