Read The Adventures of Hiram Holliday for Free Online Page B

Ye'll pick up the main road. But you do be still a hunder and twenty mile from where ye be goin'.'
    The crash of gears and the revved engine rang through the sleeping town, and the big car leaped off and disappeared around the corner leaving Hiram Holliday shuddering quietly. There had been five men in the car. The street lamp had shone plainly on the man in the back in the middle. It was the German with the scar. He had a large piece of sticking plaster across his upper lip.
    'That,' said Hiram Holliday to himself, as he waited until the sound of the car had died awa y, 'is what you get for being a dramatic ass and not leaving well enough alone. You had the game won, and then you had to pull the Escape from the Train, and the Midnight Flight through the Countryside. I
will try to remember that. It is only the dramatic people who get into trouble '
    He saw no need to inform Heidi of what had happened.
    They drove, jammed together in a tiny Morris, through the high, twisting Devon lanes, on the back roads to Plymouth. Once Heidi had suddenly begun to laugh hysterically and
    cry'Oh, no, no.... No. You fought them with your
    umbrella.... With an umbrella'
    Holliday, embarrassed, glanced at the thing, still crooked over one arm, but the girl stopped laughing as suddenly as she had started, and said with the same wonderful tones in her voice that he had heard when she had defied the sky: 'Ach
    nein No, no. It is not an umbrella. It is a shining sword.'
    And she took it suddenly from his arm and pressed her lips to the crook of the handle that was the hilt, with a gesture that Hiram suddenly knew was many, many hundreds of years old.
    And once when he had told her his name she just sat and
repeated it over and over a gain: 'Hiram Holliday.... Hiram HollidayHiram Holliday'
    And finally they drove up to the Southern Railway Docks in Plymouth, where the tender was preparing to leave for the s.s. Bordeaux where she lay in the Sound, beyond the Hoe, outlined by her own lights, and Hiram Holliday with a little catch in his throat because the adventure was ended, said:' Goodbye, Heidi. And good luck in Paris - and everywhere.'
    The girl stood for a moment with both hands on his shoulders looking into his round, old-young face. She said: 'Goodbye, Hiram Holliday. Thank you. I do not think perhaps our ways will ever cross again, but I at least have known a great and gallant man. There are not many left. Goodbye, my dear.' She slipped her arms about his neck and kissed his lips, and Hiram had his reward. Then she and the child went aboard the tender. But the thing that sent a little cold chill down his spine was the behaviour of the nurse. She came to him and took his right hand with her head bowed and slightly inclined. And as she carried it to her lips, she bent her knee to him in a quick, curious curtsy.
    The tender emitted three sharp blasts and cast off. Hiram Holliday stood on the dock and waved to the three until they were out of sight, and then turned and walked slowly and wearily away, a very lonely, misshapen figure in a mackintosh and turned-up soft hat, with an umbrella crooked over his arm.
    He went to the Grand Hotel and slept until nine and then caught the ten o'clock train back to London. He had bought some English magazines to read on the way back. He was looking at a copy of the Sketch, a periodical devoted to Society and sport, but left it open on his lap as the express roared through a station, and he caught the name - 'Totnes,' and all the fantastic, impossible happenings of the night before came flooding back to him. He had fought against Nazi agents in a park in London for an unknown girl, with an umbrella, helped her to escape something he was not sure he even believed, and had nearly run her right back into them again.... He sighed and shook his head, and turned the page and felt his heart stop. It was a full-length reproduction of an oil portrait, and staring at him were Heidi, and the boy Peter. She was seated in a