“You’re wonderful!”
She flung her arms around him, to the amusement of the other patrons of the public house, who unanimously became silent and grinned. It was probably the first time in the history of the establishment that there had been a total absence of talk during business hours for a period of four and a half seconds.
Simon left an overpayment on the table and steered Mildred out to the street, which was as empty as it had been when they first arrived. A few minutes later they were heading west out of town through the rolling moonlit countryside. Then Simon slowed the car a little.
Mildred shot him a worried look.
“You’re not... taking me back, are you?”
He shook his head, looking into the rear view mirror.
“What is it?” she asked.
She turned to peer through the car’s back window as Simon put down the accelerator again.
“I think,” he said, “to use the immemorial words of immemorial suckers, that this time we are being followed.”
5
Mildred began to show preliminary signs of hysteria.
“Oh, no! It’s them! I know it is! I told you they were on to us before!”
“Maybe,” said Simon coolly. “In any case, if you don’t want to be embraced rather forcibly into the bosom of your family, you’d better get a map and flashlight out of the glove compartment. How’s your navigation — or do you operate on intuition like your Papa Adolf?”
She snorted as she scrambled for the map and flashlight.
“I was a Queen’s Guide at school. I could navigate my way to the Christmas Islands just by watching which side of the fishes the moss grows on.”
She unfolded the detailed map of Ireland and turned the beam of light on it. The Saint had sped up along a straight stretch of road, and the other car was keeping pace about two hundred yards behind.
“You know where we are,” he said. “See if you can find a place where we can turn off and lose them — and end up somewhere except in a peat bog.”
Mildred bent close to the map and studied it. The short-lived directness of the highway degenerated into a series of snaky curves through a wooded section marked by rocky hillocks.
“There!” cried Mildred suddenly. “Up by that stone marker.”
The Saint jammed down the brake pedal and swerved into the side lane. It was no more than a pair of wagon ruts made semi-respectable by an old topping of gravel. The way abounded with holes and humps, and Simon-driving without lights — was forced to slow to fifteen miles an hour in order to hold the car on its higher leaps to anything below treetop level.
Luckily, the other automobile had been too far behind around a curve to see what its prey had done. It swept by on the main road, its headlamps sending flickers of light through the woods.
“We lost them,” Mildred said jubilantly.
The Saint was less enthusiastic.
“For the moment. If they’ve got any brains at all they’ll see in a minute they’ve lost us and then they’ll come back. Are there any other side roads near here that might confuse them?”
“Only one I can make out, and it looks like a dead end.”
Simon stopped and turned off the engine. Then he listened closely to the receding sound of the car that had been pursuing them. Before it passed completely out of earshot, the noise of wailing tires on distant curves came to an abrupt halt. The Saint’s sensitive ears just barely made out the gunning of the engine and a couple of brief screeching spins of tires on asphalt.
“I think they’ve caught on,” he said. “They’re turning around.”
He started his own car and continued down the horrendous trail, which was surely experiencing the passage of the first self-propelled vehicle in lifetime that must have dated back at least to Finn MacCool.
“Oh,” said Mildred in a low voice.
She was looking at the map, her face bouncing in the pool of light just above it.
“What?” said Simon.
“You know that dead end road I mentioned?”
“Yes.”
“We re on it.” The Saint’s commentary was internal and sustained.
“I see,” he said finally, with devastating quietness. “Mildred Hitler, girl guide, has done it again.”
At that point, the tortured car gave a sudden lurch and stopped, slumped at an angle toward Mildred’s side. Mildred’s head bumped the glass in front of her with a lack of force which the Saint found faintly disappointing.
He turned off the ignition.
“Well,” he remarked, “that’s the second immobilized auto you can chalk up to your record today.”
Mildred rubbed her head gingerly and looked even more gingerly at Simon.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Without checking on details, I should say that we have fallen into a hole.” He took a deep breath and opened the door. “So... let’s start walking. Under different circumstances I might stand and fight, but at the moment I really can’t think of anything worth fighting for.”
He walked around the front of, the car and looked briefly at the damage. The wheel had slipped into a deeply eroded channel.
Mildred picked her way over the stones to join Simon.
“Can’t you reverse out?” she asked.
“No. And I think the axle’s bent anyway.” He looked at her. “If your Papa Adolf’s superman theories amounted to anything, you’d be able to lift up the whole mess and set it straight again.”
Mildred did not answer, and Simon set off down the road in front of the car with swinging strides. Mildred hobbled and stumbled behind him in her high heels.
“Wait!” she cried finally. “I can’t keep up.”
“Stay behind then. I’m afraid you’ve used up your allotment of my chivalry. If the wolves catch you, they won’t bother chasing me.”
She let out a despairing wail and hurried after him up a moon-silvered hill, where the wagon track was thickly hedged with trees.
“Or maybe,” Simon mused happily as he trudged along, hands in his pockets, “the little people will get you.”
“Little people?” Mildred whimpered, catching up a bit.
“Sure. Leprechauns. This is just the spot for them. You look a bit pixyish. They might take you for one of their own.”
“Damn!”
Mildred’s exclamation had not been evoked by fear of Irish fairies. She balanced on one foot and held out her shoe for Simon to see. The stiletto heel had broken off.
“I can’t walk like this,” she moaned.
“Let’s see the other shoe,” said Simon.
She stood in her stocking feet and handed it to him. He grasped the remaining whole shoe firmly in both hands and snapped its heel off.
“There,” he said proudly, handing it to her. “Now you’re back on an even keel.”
She threw both shoes on the ground and vigorously recited a phrase which she most definitely had not learned either in a convent or as a Queen’s Guide.
“I’d advise you to wear those,” the Saint said, starting up the hill again. “They’re better than nothing — and your faithful followers may discover this road at any minute.”
She clumped along beside him in the modified shoes, panting and clinging to his sleeve for occasional support. Simon looked up at the stars.
“Now is the time for fortitude and inner strength,” he philosophized. “Keep the image of Rick firm in your mind. The course of true love never did run smooth.”
They went on for ten minutes, and then they saw the reddish glow of a fire through the trees at the base of the hill. Simon led the way and looked cautiously into the small clearing. Around a bonfire stood or sat five people, as yet oblivious to Simon’s and Mildred’s arrival. There were a man and woman of late middle years, and a pair of girls and a boy ranging from about twelve to eighteen. All of them were devoting their attention to a soot-blackened metal pot which steamed over the fire, suspended from a tripod. Nearby, a pair of horses grazed at the edge of a tiny brook. Like parts of a stage backdrop on the border of the circle of firelight stood two barrel-headed caravans — large painted wooden wagons like horizontal kegs on wheels — in which the family lived, and which it was the horses’ duty to pull.