Simon’s only worry was that the private detectives might have guns, but if they did they had no time to use them. Muldoon and Sean sailed in with sticks flying, and Mrs. Muldoon and her daughters armed themselves with cooking pots from a chest beside the nearest wagon and ran to join the fray.
Mildred, who had let out a little shriek as the battle commenced, stood as if petrified, her hand to her mouth. Simon, seeing that the beleaguered detectives were getting a sound enough drubbing without any help from him, ran to prod her into motion.
“It’s time we were on the move again,” he said, towing her into the woods in a direction opposite the one from which they had arrived at the tinker’s camp. “Didn’t a train pass over this way?”
“I don’t remember,” panted Mildred.
“Not very observant for a Queen’s Guide.”
They were out of range of the firelight, hurrying downhill, and Simon recognized the voice of one of the detectives above the melee.
“There! They ran over there!”
“I think your friends are after us,” Simon said. “And the tinker’s probably wondering what kind of revenue men those are, leaving behind a big pot of potheen to chase us.”
Mildred had reached the limit of her strength by the time they emerged from the woods and stood on the level surface of a railroad embankment. The track came around a curve on their left and continued through a cut in the low hill to their right.
“I can’t go on,” Mildred gasped. “Let’s just give up. Let them catch me.”
“After all this trouble?” said the Saint. “Not on your life. I don’t like losing even ridiculous games like this.”
He held her hand, leading her along the tracks to the comparative shelter of the cut, where an irregular rocky face of earth rose up almost straight on either side.
“At least we’re not out in open moonlight here,” he said.
“What if a train comes along?”
“Then we’ll be squashed.” He met her shocked expression with a shrug. “It happens all the time to ants and caterpillars.”
Mildred held a finger to her lips.
“Listen,” she whispered. “I think they’re here.”
Simon heard the voices of two men in the woods not far away. Apparently the tinker and his tribe had been content to chase the detectives out of their camp, and then probably — confused as to whether they had been spotted by revenue agents or not — they would pack up and move on as soon as possible.
As Mildred and the Saint faced the track, their backs to the face of the cut, the detectives were searching along the edge of the forest to their left.
“Let’s move away from them,” Simon whispered. “Here — through the cut.”
He and Mildred, keeping their bodies inconspicuously flattened against the low cliff, edged along the side of the track. The detectives’ voices sounded louder. They had come out of the woods.
“Oh, no,” moaned Mildred.
“What?” Simon asked.
“I think I hear a train.”
“Yes. Exactly what I hoped!”
“Hoped? You said we’d be squashed!”
“Not if we’re clever, agile... and lucky.”
He was quiet as one of the detectives called to the other.
“I think they’re hiding here somewhere. We’d have heard them running.”
“Right!” replied the other. “You go on toward the cut. I’ll check this way. Wish we could just shoot the bloody pair of them and have done with it. I’m fed up, even for a hundred thousand quid.”
“I’ll shut you up, Finch, if you keep flapping your lip like that.”
Simon looked at Mildred with slightly raised eyebrows.
“A hundred thousand?” he whispered. “Your father must love you very much.”
“He’s despicable. And... and I don’t even know what anybody’s talking about.”
Simon mused aloud as he continued moving toward the other end of the cut.
“This case gets more interesting every minute.”
“And that train’s getting closer every second,” said Mildred.
What had shortly before been a distant rumble beyond the curve to their left was now such a growing noise that it was no longer necessary to whisper.
“We’d better hurry,” the Saint said.
Just at that moment, the fat man, nosing along near the rails outside the cut, spotted them and shouted the news to his partner. But just as he started to run in after them the sound of the train mounted toward a roar and the blazing, unsteady light of the engine swept around the curve a quarter of a mile away. The detective backtracked and ran up the hill along the edge of the cut, peering down to keep his eye on the Saint and Mildred.
“This way,” said Simon.
No longer making any effort to hide what he was doing, he grabbed Mildred’s hand and ran with her through the cut as the brilliant headlight of the train caught them in its beam. The fat detective saw that they were heading across the tracks to the opposite side of the cut. He screamed to the thin one, who was still on the ground which was level with the tracks.
“Get across there! They’re going up the other side!”
The thin one made a dash toward the tracks, then leaped back as he calculated that the engine would arrive abreast of his present location just as he arrived in front of the engine. The engineer, seeing people running along the rails, applied brakes, but with no chance of even slowing appreciably before he was well past the cut.
The Saint had no intention of ending his shining career in so messy or pointless a way as being flattened by the Dublin-Galway express while helping a fluff-brained girl run away from her father — or whatever it was she was really doing. He made certain that they got to the end of the cut ahead of the train, and then as the engine roared past, blaring infuriated warnings on its whistle, he dragged her up the lip of the cut opposite the fat detective, who could only watch, shouting and waving his arms.
He probably could scarcely even hear his own words, which were hopelessly swallowed in the click-clacking thunder of the passing carriages. The Saint waved at him pleasantly, bowed and tapped a greeting from his forehead. Then he took Mildred’s hand.
“Get ready to jump,” he said.
She stared at him, appalled.
“Jump?”
“Of course. This couldn’t have been handier if we’d had it planned by a travel agent.”
It was only three feet down to the moving tops of the cars and the train had just reached its minimum of speed brought on by the brakes.
“We’ll stand back a little bit, then take a running jump,” Simon said. “There’ll be nothing to it — as long as you don’t jump short and fall down between the train and the wall.”
“I won’t do it!” cried Mildred.
“Yes, you will. Remember dear Rick. Get ready now. Last car.”
The detectives, who were now together on the other side of the cut, sensed the Saint’s intention and were getting ready to jump in case he did. That was why he waited until the last carriage was passing — and the last half of that — until he grasped Mildred’s hand more firmly than ever, ran forward, and leaped.
When they landed, the Saint, like a cat, kept his balance, and for an instant was able to see the frustrated faces of the detectives not eight feet from his. Then they were left helplessly behind, watching the red warning lights on the rear of the train, like mocking eyes, disappear toward the southwest.
Simon sat down and made himself comfortable on the roof of the carriage. Mildred was lying down on her stomach, but once she caught her breath and got over the first fear of perching on top of a swaying, incredibly jolting train which appeared in danger of toppling off its rails at any moment, she also sat up cautiously and looked around.