Two uniformed men stood in the doorway, with Pieter Liefman crowding in past them. Pieter put an arm around the Saint’s shoulders and spoke rapidly to the policemen in Dutch, and Upwater wilted as he realized that the trap was closed.
Some time later, as they all went out into the street, with Upwater handcuffed between the two officers, Simon looked for the car that had been parked on the far corner. It was no longer there.
Pieter intercepted the glance.
“It took off when I came back with the flatfeet,” he said.
Simon read the mute entreaty in Upwater’s white face, and shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “We won’t say anything about Mabel. After all, she was the one who really brought me into this.”
On second thought, after he saw Mr Upwater’s next expression, he wondered if that was quite the right thing to mention.
The Rhine: The Rhine maiden
1
Simon Templar always thought of her as the Rhine Maiden for the simple reason that he met her on his way down the Rhine. He had never found the time or the inclination to sit through Wagner’s epic on the subject, but he surmised that the Rhine Maidens of the operas would probably have been in keeping with the usual run of half-pint Siegfrieds and 200-pound Brünnhildes. The girl on the train was what Simon, in a mood of poetic fancy, would have liked a Rhine Maiden to be, and he didn’t care whether she could sing top F or not.