Simon came around and opened her door.
“I guess we should celebrate your dropping old Adolf from your family tree,” he said.
“Righto! And where are we going from here?”
“To Kelly’s place, of course, unless you’ve changed your mind.”
They crossed the quiet street, and Simon failed to see any sign of a lurking Mercedes in any direction.
“I mean where is Kelly’s place?” Mildred asked.
“Somewhere east of Athlone, in the middle of nowhere. Why?”
“Well, naturally I’m curious.”
Simon was sure that his own curiosity at least equaled hers, and by now it involved much more than the simple questions of why she was so anxious to avoid her father, and why a certain pair of rather bumbling bloodhounds were so anxious to have her not avoid them. Two or three obvious explanations were at the top of his consciousness, but something told him that where Mildred was involved the obvious could never be automatically taken on trust.
He was content with the way things were going, though, and saw no reason to push the natural unfolding of events. The peace of his holiday was probably irretrievably lost, but peace had been replaced by the fascination of a Chinese magician’s puzzle, in which illusion and reality were intriguingly mixed. Simon hoped, as a matter of fact, that the sleight-of-hand would not be entirely unmasked too soon. To be involved as he was gave the thrill of baiting a trout with a little brightly colored imitation of life on the rippled surface of a stream.
It required patience, but a man of Simon Templar’s relaxed confidence could always command a supply of that virtue.
The pub was dim, smoky, and redolent of stout and the honest sweat of hiking from home to the tap. A dozen and a half of what appeared to be neighborhood regulars were enjoying the hospitality.
“Find us a table, will you, dear?” asked Mildred. “I’ve got to go and repair the damage.” She indicated her face. “And make mine a Guinness.”
Simon found a table in a corner, and the volume of talk, which had briefly diminished because of the arrival of a pair of strangers, soon returned to its original level. The barman took the Saint’s order, brought it, in his own leisurely time, and several minutes later Mildred had still not returned. Finally the Saint, aware of the insatiable addiction of some women for ritualistic applications of face paint, and secure in the knowledge that his car key was in his pocket, sat back with a sigh and began to drink alone.
When his share of the foamy dark liquid was half consumed, Mildred came back, looking cheerful and un-contrite.
“Now,” she said brightly, “what would you like to know?”
She slipped into the chair beside him, propped her elbows on the table, and drank deeply from her glass, rolling her eyes to look at him as he answered.
“Let me see how much more you need to tell me. You’re Eugene Drew’s daughter. You obviously don’t want to see Eugene Drew, but it seems that your father would like to see you. It seems, in fact, that he would like so much to see you that he has hired a couple of private investigators to find and catch you. Right so far?”
She nodded vigorously, her lips on the rim of her glass.
“Now, unless insanity runs in your family — which is a possibility I haven’t by any means completely discounted — the most likely explanation is that you have run away from home and your poor distraught father is exerting every effort to bring you back into the fold. Just why you left home is another question. Maybe you did something naughty, like smother your little brothers and sisters, or hock your mama’s diamond tiara, and you figure that any slaughtering that’s done when you get back home will involve you instead of a fatted calf.”
She giggled.
“You’ve got it right up to the end. But my feelings are hurt.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know why I ran away.”
Simon finished his stout.
“Should I?”
“Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“When I can’t find any really good fiction I sometimes sink to that.”
“Then why didn’t you read about me?”
“I don’t believe this escapade has been covered. I saw a reporter trying to worm something out of your father this evening. With no success, I might add.”
“That sounds like Dad. He’s rotten about the papers. That’s one reason why he was so absolutely furious when I ran away with Rick.”
“So there’s another character in the cast,” said the Saint. “Why haven’t I had the pleasure of meeting this Rick, if you’re running away with him.”
“That was last month. Rick is in America right now. It’s Rick Fenton I’m talking about.”
Simon shook his head.
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Oh!” huffed Mildred, looking mortified. “Rick Fenton, I mean. The actor.”
“Sorry,” Simon said. “Has he played Hamlet?”
“He’s a teeniebopper idol.”
“Sounds positively sacrilegious,” the Saint remarked. “What is it?”
“You know... all the teen-age girls scream and faint when they see him. He’s twenty-two but he looks seventeen, and he’s a really fantastic actor.”
“I’ll bet he is,” said Simon.
“He was in Beach Towel Tramp and Teen-Age Martian in a Girls’ Dormitory.”
“I missed both of those. You can tell what an alienated life I lead.”
“Anyway,” Mildred said with resignation, “I ran away with him... to get married. But they caught me, and it was in all the papers, with pictures and everything. There was one of Dad with his hat in front of his face. He almost died.”
Simon glanced at Mildred’s glass, which was still two-thirds full.
“Why don’t you drink up?” he suggested. “We can talk in the car. It’s still an hour and a half to Kelly’s place.”
She obediently sipped a little of the stout.
“You don’t want me to get drunk, do you?” she asked. “I’m very susceptible.”
Simon sat back in his chair.
“You have thirty seconds,” he said. “You used up most of your overtime in the powder room.”
Mildred tilted up her glass, gulped down several large swallows of Guinness, and went on talking, half out of breath.
“So this time I’ve run away to marry Rick,” she said. “We’re terribly in love, and my father is hopelessly stubborn and mean. He wouldn’t want me to marry the... the King of Arabia.”
The Saint nodded.
“Probably not.”
“And so,” Mildred went on, “Rick is stopping over at Shannon Airfield on his way from America to Paris on a personal appearance tour, and I’m going to join him.” She drained her glass. “And rats to Big Daddy.”
“When are you meeting Rick?” Simon asked.
Mildred opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and shook her head. She gave him a sly smile and wagged her finger.
“Oh, you won’t get me to tell you that,” she said. “What if I can’t really trust you? That’s all my father would need to know — when Rick was coming. Rick is smart. His publicity agent gave a false story to the papers, so as far as anybody knows, Rick isn’t coming anywhere near Ireland.”
“Brilliant,” said Simon. “Absolutely brilliant. And if you don’t trust me, how do you know I won’t turn you over to your father in return for a nice fat reward.”
She stared at him shocked, and clutched his arm as he stood up.
“Mr. Templar, you wouldn’t! I thought I had to tell you, and I’d never believe you were the kind of person who...”
“Who’d stand in the way of true love? No, I suppose I’m not — not for the few paltry pounds I could squeeze out of a Scrooge like your father.”