“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 believed 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 female 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 directly 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 nonchalantly 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 countryside 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 cottage 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 represented 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 countermeasure 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 massive 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 opposite effect on you.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care,” Kelly sulked, “havin’ been with her the better part of the night already.”