The Saint Returns by Leslie Charteris

escaped
destruction.
    “Delicious,” he said hoarsely, but
with an expression no different from the one his face would have worn had he
just been treated to a cup of Olympian ambrosia.
    Muldoon beamed.
    “Here, come on,” Sean said
crossly. “Me arm’s dropping off.”
    Muldoon went to take a turn at stirring the
cauldron.
    “Tessa,” he called, “go and
fetch our guests somethin’ to eat.”
    Simon unobtrusively separated some bills from the fold of money in his pocket and offered them to
Muldoon.
    “Here you are,” he said, “and many
thanks.”
    “Aw, it’s too much,” protested
Muldoon, tucking the money into his shirt nevertheless. “Now
why don’t you and yer bride let me wife show ye yer quarters?”
    Sean, who had walked off toward the horses and back again, aggrievedly rubbing his overworked stirring
arm, suddenly stiffened and cried out.
    “Hey, Dad!”
    There at the edge of the clearing, their faces
menacing in the dancing light, stood Mildred’s hunters.
     
    6
     
    Simon’s response was so prompt and
inspirational that not even two seconds passed between Sean’s cry and his own.
    “Revenue men!” he yelled.
    “The divil and it is!” roared
Muldoon in outraged agreement.
    He snatched his stirring stick out of the pot
of potheen and charged across the clearing. His son charged too,
grabbing up a makeshift cudgel from the heap of spare wood by the fire.
    Simon’s only worry was that the private
detectives might have guns, but if they did they had no time to use them.
Muldoon and Sean sailed in with sticks flying, and Mrs. Muldoon and her
daughters armed themselves with cooking pots from a chest beside the
nearest wagon and ran to join the fray.
    Mildred, who had let out a little shriek as
the battle commenced, stood as if petrified, her hand to her mouth.
Simon, seeing that the beleaguered detectives were getting a sound
enough drubbing without any help from him, ran to prod her into motion.
    “It’s time we were on the move
again,” he said, towing her into the woods in a direction opposite the one
from which they had arrived at the tinker’s camp. “Didn’t a train pass
over this way?”
    “I don’t remember,” panted Mildred.
    “Not very observant for a Queen’s
Guide.”
    They were out of range of the firelight, hurrying down hill, and Simon recognized the voice of one of the detectives above the melee.
    “There! They ran over there!”
    “I think your friends are after us,” Simon said.
“And the tinker’s probably wondering
what kind of revenue men those are,
leaving behind a big pot of potheen to chase us.”
    Mildred had reached the limit of her strength
by the time they
emerged from the woods and stood on the level surface
of a railroad embankment. The track came around a curve on their left and continued through a cut in the low hill to their right.
    “I can’t go on,” Mildred gasped.
“Let’s just give up. Let them catch me.”
    “After all this trouble?” said the
Saint. “Not on your life. I don’t like losing even ridiculous games like
this.”
    He held her hand, leading her along the tracks
to the comparative shelter of the cut, where an irregular rocky face of earth
rose up almost straight on either side.
    “At least we’re not out in open moonlight
here,” he said.
    “What if a train comes along?”
    “Then we’ll be squashed.” He met
her shocked expres sion with a shrug. “It happens all the time to ants
and caterpillars.”
    Mildred held a finger to her lips.
    “Listen,” she whispered. “I
think they’re here.”
    Simon heard the voices of two men in the woods
not far away. Apparently the tinker and his tribe had been content to
chase the detectives out of their camp, and then
probably—confused as to whether they had been spotted by revenue
agents or not—they would pack up and move on as soon as possible.
    As Mildred and the Saint faced the track,
their backs to the face of the cut, the detectives were searching
along the edge