The Celtic Riddle

He sat up slowly and groaned again. "It's coming back to me," he said. "The bar, the music, and you disappearing down the back hallway: I caught just a glimpse of you. It looked odd, somehow, so I decided I'd better take a look. I got as far as the back door. I wonder if there were two of them. Hate to think I'd be overpowered by just one. Must be seriously out of practice. It's all that desk work they're giving me back home. Has to be. You don't think it could be middle age, do you? Ether, probably, or something similar if I judged correctly in the split second between the time the cloth went over my mouth and I blacked out. And if this ghastly nausea I'm feeling is any indication. Primitive, but effective. I was out like a light. Whoever it was must have knocked you out first, and then got at me from behind the door, or something. Never even saw it coming. I'm definitely out of practice."

"It was nice of you to come after me," I said at the end of his soliloquy.

"That's what we policemen do. Stop crime, save the damsel in distress, that sort of thing. Not that I'm doing such a fine job of it on this particular occasion."

"Did you happen to see who was pushing me out the door?" I asked.

"Unfortunately not. I could just see the top of your head, and the back of someone else's, but it didn't look right."

"Man? Woman?"

"Couldn't say. How about you? Voice mean anything."

"No, it was deliberately disguised, though, which probably means I'd know this person."

"Mmmm," he said. I heard him moving in the darkness, and in a moment, the flick of his lighter and the small flame. "See!" he said. "There are some advantages to smoking. Don't think I didn't notice that you don't approve."

We stood up, and as Rob moved the tiny light about, surveyed our prison. We were standing in a circular structure of some kind, about ten feet in diameter. The walls, made of stone, curved inward and upward to a small hole about twelve feet off the ground. There was an opening, a small door with metal bars, and Rob leaned hard against it. It didn't budge. He turned off the lighter. "I want to save fuel," he said, "while I think.

"With these walls curving in like that, it would be virtually impossible to climb up there to see if we could make a bigger opening in the top," Rob said softly in the darkness. "You'd have to be a spider or a fly, or something. Maybe you could stand on my shoulders and see if you could push some of the top stones away to widen the hole. But," he sighed, "we still couldn't get up there. Maybe, if I stood near the wall and pushed you up? Probably not," he said, resignation in his voice. I was inclined to agree with him.

"I have a question for you," he said after a few minutes of contemplation, "this being the first opportunity I've had to be alone with you since we got on the plane."

And who's fault was that, I wondered, what with him spending so much time with his favorite garda? "Ask away," I said.

"Do you really think I'm a drip, and a-what was that other unpleasant term you used?-a poop?"

Really, the male ego. "No," I said. "Well, maybe sometimes. If you could just be a little more relaxed with Jennifer."

"How so?"

"Do you think this is a good time to discuss this?" I sighed.

"Why not?" he declared. "Not much else doing around here, is there?"

"All right. Then I would submit that she's going to grow up, she's going to have boyfriends. Brace yourself, she's going to have sex. Why, instead of putting your energy into scaring the boys off, which frankly probably has the opposite effect of what you intended, why wouldn't you talk to her about practical things like birth control and STDs and stuff?"

"That's a mother's job," he replied.

I was tempted to say that since she didn't have one, the role was his. But of course he knew that, and he had done the best he could with Jennifer, and not a bad job at all.

"Anyway, I'm not as much of a dinosaur as you think. I know she probably won't marry her first high school sweetheart the way I did."

How could she when you won't let her have a high school sweetheart, I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut.

"Don't say anything," he ordered. "Even in the dark, I know exactly what the expression on your face looks like right now. I just don't think Gilhooly is a good place to start," he continued. "She's a little immature compared to some of her girlfriends. I mean how old is he, anyway? Old enough to be her father? He can't be ten years younger than I am. Well maybe ten." He paused. "Okay more than ten, but you get the idea."