Attention Saint Patrick | Page 7

that the president had taken Moira with him. He ground his teeth. "Shenanigans!" he cried hoarsely. "After him!" He stamped his feet. His fury was awe-inspiring. When the ground-car drivers started back to Tara, Sean O'Donohue was a small, rigid embodiment of raging death and destruction held only temporarily in leash.
On the way, even his companions of the committee were uneasy. But one of them, now and again, brought out a small piece of whitish rock and regarded it incredulously. It was not an unusual kind of rock. It was ordinary milky quartz. But it had tooth marks on it. Some diny, at some time, had gnawed casually upon it as if it were soft as cheese.
* * * * *
Faint cheering could be heard in the distance as the ground-cars carrying the committee neared the city of Tara. To those in the vehicles, it seemed incredible that anybody should dare to rejoice within at least two light-years of Sean O'Donohue as he was at this moment. But the cheering continued. It grew louder as the cars entered a street where houses stood side by side. But there came a change in the chairman of the Dail Committee, too.
The cars slowed because the pavement was bad to nonexistent. Trees lined the way. An overhanging branch passed within two yards of Moira's grandfather. Something hung on it in a sort of graceful drapery. It was a black snake. On Eire! Sean O'Donohue saw it. It took no notice of him. It hung comfortably in the tree and looked with great interest toward the sounds of enthusiasm.
The deathly pallor of Sean O'Donohue changed to pale lavender. He saw another black snake. It was climbing down a tree trunk with a purposeful air, as if intending to look into the distant uproar. The ground-cars went on, and the driver of the lead car swerved automatically to avoid two black snakes moving companionably along together toward the cheering. One of them politely gave the ground-car extra room, but paid no other attention to it. Sean O'Donohue turned purple.
Yet another burst of cheering. The chairman of the Dail Committee almost, but not quite, detonated like a fission bomb. The way ahead was blocked by people lining the way on a cross street. The cars beeped, and nobody heard them. With stiff, jerky motions Sean O'Donohue got out of the enforcedly stopped car. It had seemed that he could be no more incensed, but he was. Within ten feet of him a matronly black snake moved along the sidewalk with a manner of such assurance and such impeccable respectability that it would have seemed natural for her to be carrying a purse.
Sean O'Donohue gasped once. His face was then a dark purple. He marched blindly into the mob of people before him. Somehow, the people of Tara gave way. But the sides of this cross street were crowded. Not only was all the population out and waiting to cheer, but the trees were occupied. By black snakes. They hung in tasteful draperies among the branches, sometimes two or three together. They gazed with intense interest at the scene below them. The solicitor general, following Sean O'Donohue, saw a black snake wriggling deftly between the legs of the packed populace--packed as if to observe a parade--to get a view from the very edge of the curb. The Chancellor of the Exchequer came apprehensively behind the solicitor general.
Sean O'Donohue burst through the ranks of onlookers. He stalked out onto the empty center of the street. He looked neither to right nor left. He was headed for the presidential mansion, there to strangle President O'Hanrahan in the most lingering possible manner.
But there came a roar of rejoicing which penetrated even his single-tracked, murder-obsessed brain. He turned, purple-face and explosive, to see what the obscene sound could mean.
He saw. The lean and lanky figure of the chief justice of the supreme court of the Planet Eire came running down the street toward him. He bore a large slab of sheet-iron.
As he ran, he played upon it the blue flame of a welding torch. The smell of hot metal diffused behind him. The chief justice ran like a deer. But he wasn't leaving anything behind but the smell. Everything else was close on his heels.
A multicolored, multitudinous, swarming tide of dinies filled the highway from gutter to gutter. From the two-inch dwarfs to the purple-striped variety which grew to eight inches and sometimes fought cats, the dinies were in motion. They ran in the wake of the chief justice, enthralled and entranced by the smell of hot sheet iron. They were fascinated. They were bemused. They were aware of nothing but that ineffable fragrance. They hopped, ran, leaped, trotted and galloped in full cry after the head of the planet's supreme