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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
stub born 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.”
    “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 im memorial 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
flash light.
    “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