And yet, half against his will, against the resentful primitive selfishness which is rooted in every man, adventurer or not, he found himself looking at something grand and indestructible. Even the enigma of the Rhine Maiden baffled him no longer. He saw it only as the riddle of the ultimate woman waiting for life in the fearless faith of the enchanted castle, waiting for the knight in shining armour who must come riding down the hills of the morning with her name on his shield. And he did not want to see the magic dimmed. “I don’t think you’ll have to do that,” he said. He smiled, and held out the thin folds of bills he had taken. Life was still rich; he could take plenty more. And some things were cheap at any price. “I had a word with Voyson myself. I think I made him see that he couldn’t get away with what he was doing. Anyway, he changed his mind. He asked me to give you this.”
The train was slowing up, and a guard came down the corridor shouting, “ Hier Mainz, alles umsteigen! ” Simon stood up and took down his valise. Being human, he was aware that the girl’s eyes were fixed on him with an odd breathlessness, and he thought that she could carry with her many worse ideals.
Tirol: The golden journey
Introduction
There are just a few stories which I genuinely regret losing, which were lost by force of circumstance and which I can do nothing about. They were all original Saint stories too, and I was thinking of them while working on a new collection of shorter pieces which I am now trying to finish up.
One of them, called “The Golden Journey,” was an open-air story about hiking in Germany in 1931, which was published in Harper’s in 1934. In 1931, if you remember, the French had only just moved out of the Rhineland, and Hitler was nothing but a beer-hall politician, and there was a new spirit among the youth of Germany — a spirit which at that time I think might have developed into something very fine if Nazism hadn’t taken it over and channeled it in the way we know. In those days they spent all their spare time rucksacking through the countryside on bicycles or on foot, singing along the roads and singing at night in the inns; it was, I thought at the time, a lot better than crashing around in hot rods and jitterbugging, although we know what it came to. It was a great background for a happy story then, and yet it is a story which I think it may never be possible to revive. Too many ugly things stand between that memory and the present and they cannot be forgotten even in a period of peace. But the story depends on that background entirely and can’t be translated to any other time nor place. So, let it die, along with many other pleasant things that will never come back.
— Leslie Charteris (1947)
( Editorial note: Needless to say, it was revived...)
1
Probably if Belinda Deane hadn’t been born with such liquid brown eyes, such a small straight nose, such a delightful chin, she would never have been spoiled. And if she hadn’t been spoiled, Simon Templar would never have felt called upon to interfere. And if he hadn’t interfered... But the course of far more important histories has been changed by the curve of an eyebrow before now.