The Saint Returns (9 page)

“We’ll stay here at the top of the
ladder,” said the
Saint. “Then if we see a tunnel coming
up we can climb
down and get on the rear platform.”

Mildred made a piteous groaning sound as she
leaned
slightly toward the edge of the roof and looked beyond
the
handrails of the ladder at the ground blurring by
near the train. The
engine had picked up full speed
again now, and the wheels chattered almost
lightly on
the track.

“I wouldn’t climb down that for
anything,” she said.

Simon shrugged.

“Then you can just hope no tunnels come
up.”

Mildred covered her head with both hands.

“And this wind is ruining my hair! Why
did I ever
let you get me into this mess?”

Even to a man as hardened as the Saint was to
human
ingratitude, and especially to feminine foibles, Mildred’s
last
question was rather hard to take, and he considered
tossing her off into
the first soft-looking ditch. But that would have been like throwing away a key
piece of the
puzzle which was just beginning to take shape.

He looked at her elfin face in the moonlight
as they sailed past forests and sleeping cottages and wondered
what the
final truth about it would be. He no longer be
lieved a word of what
she had told him about herself,
her family, or her plans, but there was no way
to wring
the truth from a slippery liar, who would scoot from any
man’s
grasp like a wriggling fish. He would have to play
along with her until
one among the dark hunches in his mind moved into the light.

Maybe she was an exceptionally large and
pretty fe
male leprechaun. The thought amused and pleased him,
because in
Celtic legend a leprechaun, when caught, reveals a hidden treasure.

7

The final leg of the Saint’s nocturnal odyssey
with Mildred was prolonged but uncomplicated. At the town
of Kildare
they lay low on the roof of the carriage and
no one saw them. From
there the track turned briefly from southwest to west, and then bore northwest
di
rectly into the country between Lough Reagh and Lough Derg—two of the
great Irish lakes—where Kelly lives.
After less than twenty miles on the
northwest course there was a stop at Tullamore, and after fifteen more
miles they
were at Athlone, on the lower end of Lough
Reagh.

There, while the train was stopped, they
climbed
down between carriages and strolled away so non
chalantly that not
even the brakeman, busy with his oil
can, gave them a second glance as they
passed.

They made the rest of the trip by taxi—an old
and sagging conveyance whose driver apparently picked up
a few
extra shillings on off days by hauling pigs to market
in the back seat. The
driver was even older and more
sagging than his cab, and he begrudged his
passengers
every mile he carried them. He had two desirable traits,
however: he spoke not a word, and he knew the country
side down to the last
compost heap and culvert. Though
his response to Simon’s rather uncertain
directions was
an
ambiguous grunt, he took off along the dark, twisting
lanes of the rural landscape like a horse on its way back
to the barn for supper. In an amazingly fast ten
miles
he deposited them at the gate of
a white thatched cot
tage which stood
alone in the midst of high hedges at
the
edge of some cleared fields. Simon recognized
Kelly’s car and knew they had come to a resting place
at last.

The taxi driver took the payment and generous
tip,
looked at the bills and coins as if they were a handful
of dead
cockroaches, and rattled away toward town.

“What a lovely place,” Mildred
said. “I didn’t know
your friend was a farmer.”

“In a small way,” Simon answered.

He opened the gate and let Mildred go ahead.

“Pat Kelly used to be the kind of man who was never
happy spending more than six months in any one
place,
but his wife blew the whistle
on him after he almost
got his head
hacked off in the Congo, and now he seems
to be pretty content.”

The subject of their discussion opened his
front door,
and a wedge of light fell on Simon and Mildred.

“So here ye are at last!” bellowed
Kelly.

“At last,” Mildred sighed, dragging her way across the
threshold.

“And where’s yer car and all?” Kelly
asked. “What
happened at the hotel?”

The small living room of the cottage was made to seem
even smaller by the amount of furniture and
bric-a-brac
crammed into it. Kelly’s
wife’s interests were repre
sented by
china dolls, ornate clocks, and corner shelves
laden with an indescribable assortment of glass and
gold-leafed souvenirs—most of them bearing the
word
“souvenir” at some
prominent point on their surface.

Kelly’s mementoes were along martial or exotic
lines:
an antique sword, African spears, shrunken heads, and
primitive
shields and masks. Perhaps as a countermeas
ure against that
heathen paraphernalia, there were also
on the walls
violently hued lithographs of the Sacred
Heart and the Virgin
Mary.

“It’s a long story,” Mildred said.

She collapsed into an overstuffed chair with
such
a show of exhaustion that Kelly immediately looked shamefaced and
apologetic.

“Shure, and it’s a poor way I’m behavin’
to welcome
ye after yer journey with a lot of questions. Sit down,
Simon, and
I’ll fetch some rejuvenatin’ potions from the
supply I brought out
with me from Dublin.”

Simon’s stamina was remarkable, but he had
nothing
against a little relaxation at that point. It was after one
o’clock—time
enough to call it a day. He sank into one of the chairs opposite Mildred,
stretched, and let his
muscles go comfortably limp. Kelly, who had
gone out
through a dining alcove to the kitchen, came back with
several
bottles grasped by their necks in one of his mas
sive hands, and the
glasses held in the other.

“We may go hungry, but never
thirsty,” he said, “and
that’s the important thing.” He
set the bottles and
glasses on a low table and began to pour. “Did ye
know
that a man can go weeks without eatin’ but all it takes
is a few
days without liquid, and …”

He snapped his fingers expressively. Then he
turned to hand Mildred her filled glass and saw that she had
fallen
asleep. Her head had flopped to one side, and her
mouth was half open.
She looked about fourteen years
old.

“The poor girl,” Kelly whispered,
turning to the Saint
with another glass. “What have ye been
doin’ to her?”

Simon looked at her wind-blown hair, her
smudged
face, her dusty suit, her now shoeless feet, and her run
stockings.

“You might ask what she’s been doing to
me.”

“What then, man? I’m on pins and
needles. Have the
Nazis
taken over the west of Ireland? They can have the
north and be welcome to it, but if they come here …”

“The Hitler’s daughter routine is a thing
of the past,”
Simon said.

Then he paused, looking suspiciously at
Mildred’s
childlike face.

“Before I tell you, is there a bed for
her?”

“Shure. Me daughter’s room. Let’s put
her there. And
you can have what me wife is fond of callin’ the guest
room, only till now there’s never been a guest near it.
There’s a
lot of spare gear, but I think we can clear a
path to the bed.”

Simon stood up and went to touch Mildred’s
shoulder.
She did not stir even when he spoke her name, so he
scooped her
into his arms and carried her as Kelly led
the way to a little
bedroom.

“Do ye think she might be a lot more comfortable
without all them clothes on?” Kelly asked wistfully, when
Simon had
put her on the bed.

Simon steered his friend out of the door and
into the
hall.

“She might be,” he said, “but
it might have the oppo
site effect on you.”

“I don’t suppose
you’d
care,”
Kelly sulked, “havin’ been
with her the better part of the night
already.”

They were back in the living room, and Simon
smiled
as they sat down and picked up their glasses.

“If that was the better part of the
night,” he said, “I
hate to think what the worst part has in
store.”

“Well, have mercy and tell me what
happened, would
ye, before I split a blood vessel.”

Simon leaned forward and lowered his voice,
jerking
his head in the direction of Mildred’s sleeping-room.

“There’s just one thing,” he said.
“Do you have a
telephone?”

Kelly nodded.

“Amazing as it may seem, we do. And
light, as ye can
see. But no runnin’ water unless ye make it run by the
strength of yer arm. Who’d ye want to call at this hour?”

“Nobody. But whatever you do, keep
Mildred away
from it.”

Kelly sat back impatiently and gulped at his
drink.

“Now for heaven’s sake why is that?”

“Because every time I shake those two
men who’re
following her, they show up again faster than …”

“The SS, you mean?” Kelly
interrupted.

“Except they’re not SS. According to her
latest bul
letin they’re private detectives hired by her father to
catch her
and bring her home before she can get married
to some American actor.”

“And who might her father be this
time?”

“For the moment, Eugene Drew.”

Kelly looked enlightened, and amazed.

“The rich fella,” he said.
“It’s like a holy miracle, but
I just looked at tomorrow’s paper I
bought in the vil
lage and me eye fell on that story. A little squib in the
back:
rumored that Eugene Drew’s daughter has run
away again—or somethin’ to that
effect.”

“Was that all it said?” the Saint
asked.

“It was only a couple of lines.”
Kelly’s voice became
alarmed. “But Simon, you helpin’ a
runaway—and she
here in me own house! It’s a dangerous game to be
playin’
and for no good reason. And what’s this about
detectives findin’
her, and her and the telephone and
all? Shure and she’s not callin”
the very people she wants
to get away from and tellin’ them where she
is! She may
be crazy, but that’s carryin’ insanity to obnoxious ex
tremes.”

The Saint’s calmness was a marked contrast to Kelly’s
excitement.

“I wouldn’t discount any possibility
right now,” he
said. “They knew I had a room at the hotel when they
shouldn’t even have known my name. They caught up with us outside Dublin
when they shouldn’t have had
the faintest idea which way we were
going.”

“Maybe she’s got one o’ them homin’
devices planted on
her,” Kelly suggested. “I saw a film last week
where
they put some pin in this man’s lapel, and then they
could know where he was no matter…”

Simon grinned and shook his head.

“There’s no need to make it so
complicated,” he said.
“Nothing has happened that can’t be
explained by a
little behind-the-scenes use of the common
telephone.”

Kelly jumped to his feet impatiently and
poured him
self a fresh shot of whiskey.

“There ye are again—back to her and the
telephone.
If I’ve got a lunatic—or maybe two—under me roof, I’d
at least
like to know how she—or they—came to be here, so fill me in as directly as ye
can.”