“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” the girl said, and she began to cry.
“Who said I didn’t believe you?” protested the Saint with elaborate innocence. “Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
She sniffled, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. It was growing dark now, and the increasing traffic glared with headlights.
“You believe me?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that, exactly. I said why shouldn’t I believe you? What else can I do? I was going to suggest that when we got to my hotel we could telephone your parents, but I guess that’s out of the question.”
She looked at him indignantly.
“You’re callous,” she said. “Making fun of an orphan.”
Simon, because he was driving, could not devote a really effective squelching look to her.
“Now listen to me, young lady,” he said with impressive firmness. “I am not making fun of you. I have not even questioned your fantastic identity. I have lost a world-record trout because of you, scuffed my shoe kicking your enemies into the river, and am now in the process of further saving your neck. So if you start pulling female temperament on me, I’m going to lose patience and give you a spanking.”
She stared at him, her big eyes getting rounder.
“Spanking?” she squeaked.
“Yes. You look very spankable, and just the right size to fit across my knee. And I can’t say I wouldn’t enjoy it... for more reasons than one.”
With compressed lips, she smiled in spite of herself.
“I’m too old for a spanking,” she said without defiance.
“Not you,” said the Saint. “Let’s see, your father died in 1945. That makes you about... twenty-two at the least.”
“Twenty-three,” she said.
“Before we go any more into your earlier history, tell me something: why are those men trying to kill you?”
She shook her head.
“Oh. They weren’t. They were trying to capture me.”
“You said they were killers.”
“Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth. I couldn’t tell you the whole story right then, and I had to make you take me away in a hurry, so that seemed the best thing to say.”
Simon nodded.
“Who are they, then?” he asked.
“They’re SS men. They slipped into Ireland on a submarine with me during the last weeks of the war. There were four originally, sworn just to protect me, but one died and another one killed himself when somebody discovered his real identity.”
“And where have you been all this time — since the end of the war?”
“In a convent. And those men have lived nearby on a little farm.”
“What did the nuns think about all this?” Simon asked, slowing as Emmet Road took them in toward the heart of Dublin.
“Only the Mother Superior knew who I really was. She was a close relative of one of the high party members — the Nazi Party, I mean. The other nuns were given the story that I was the illegitimate daughter of a bishop.”
Simon covered his mouth with one hand and appeared to cough.
“The illegitimate daughter of a bishop?” he repeated, solemnly, more for confirmation of the sound than as a question.
“Yes. But I wasn’t to be raised as a nun. That way I’d have been lost to the world forever. Instead I was given my own little apartment — if you can call it that — in a wing of the convent. What a lonely life that was! I had tutoring, and all the books I wanted...”
“And nice clothes,” the Saint said, glancing at her fashionable suit.
“Oh... this? I bought this after they took me out. In fact that’s how I gave them the slip. I was in the changing room of the shop to try it on, and I discovered a way out the back. So then I went along an alley to the main street and borrowed that Volkswagen. Unfortunately they realized I was taking too long and came after me, and I never managed to shake them completely.”
She was sitting bolt upright in her seat, hands folded in her lap, completely absorbed in her own words, chattering at a rate that would have shamed an auctioneer.
“Lucky thing they taught automobile driving at the convent,” Simon said.
She didn’t bat even one eye.
“Oh, they didn’t teach me there. The SS taught me on the farm. In case something happened to them they figured I might need to know how.”
“So you lived on the farm too?”
“Only for a few days, right after they took me out of the convent.”
Simon turned and crossed River Liffey between the ornate iron lampposts that lined either side of O’Connell Bridge.
“So here you are,” he said. “All grown up, a skillful and sensible driver, with lots of books under your belt and lovely clothes on your lovely back. There’s just one thing: Why were your guardians chasing you?”
“Because I didn’t want to co-operate.”
“Co-operate in what?” Simon asked.
“Their plan is to take me back to Germany as the figurehead for a new Nazi movement.”
They had reached upper O’Connell Street and the Gresham Hotel, so Mildred’s narrative had to be interrupted at that climactic point, with no really worthy response by the Saint. Surrendering the car to the doorman, he led her through the lobby, where the egress of well-clad guests for dinner, theater, or cinema was just beginning.
“Would you like to use my room for freshening up?” Simon asked.
“I’d much rather have a drink.”
“Drinking too?” he remarked as they entered the mezzanine Cocktail Bar. “What goes on in these convents?”
She looked at him with doe-eyed ingenuousness.
“I have to learn, don’t I?”
“If it’s learning to drink you want,” Simon said in a louder voice with traces of an Irish brogue, “here’s just the teacher for you.”
Patrick Kelly, who was seated at the bar attending to a bottle of Jameson, turned his great red head and split its lower half with a prognathous grin.
“Simon, ye ould dog!” he bellowed. “Ye tould me ye were goin’ fishin’, but niver that this was what it was ye were fishin’ for!”
“Pat, meet Mildred,” said the Saint, “and call for two more glasses.”
Kelly gave her a more than appreciative look and his ham-sized mitt enveloped her fingers.
“I’m charmed. A face like a darlin’ jewel itself she has — and here I’ve slept the entire mornin’ away.”
“It’s evening,” Mildred said innocently, taking a stool between the men.
“Oh, and shure you’re mistaken,” said Kelly, rearing back to inspect the watch on his hairy wrist. “Seven in the mornin’ it must be. Here — have a bite o’ breakfast.”
He poured whiskey into the clean glasses brought by the bartender. Mildred shivered and looked over her shoulder.
“What if they followed us?” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Simon said. “And what could they do in a public place?”
“What could who do?” Kelly asked. “Who’s followin’ ye?”
Simon finished his drink and stood up.
“It’s a long and wonderful story, and I’ll leave Mildred to tell it to you while I change for dinner. I’ve been fishing and fighting all afternoon.”
Kelly swelled like an excited bullfrog.
“Ye mean to say I missed a fight, too?”
“Big one,” the Saint said casually. “SS men.”
Kelly snorted.
“Ye don’t mean them big German fellas with the black uniforms? Now ye’re handin’ me a pail of malarkey, man. There’s been none of them about for twenty years.”
“Ask Mildred,” Simon said.
As he strolled away from the bar, he heard her begin in a low confidential voice:
“How much do you remember about Hitler’s death?”