September wore out; October wore out; November arrived. The long,
unkind evenings of those months seemed a forcing ground for the terror,
which was going about like a disease that one person after another
catches. The private citizen, who asked only for peace, seemed to pass
to and fro looking neither to right nor left, as if he feared above
anything else to stir the curiosity of some partisan of the British
Government or of Sinn Fein.
Some evening walks I took through the chilly streets, seeing the lights
and the shining mud, hearing the clamour of the paper boys shouting
of other policemen shot, of other homes gone up in flames, have fixed
those days for ever in my mind.
And still the shaking, groaning lorries, crammed with troops, rumbled
round the corners, and still the lighter flying police cars fled up one
street and down another. In alleyway and shadowy doorway stood waiting
figures to be seen by him with eyes--pickets posted to give the alarm
to the meeting not far away; and in the bars and the coffee-houses
the man with eyes saw the messages passed, and might occasionally hear
passwords exchanged.
My French barber says one day, as his razor wanders round my Adam’s
apple, “I go. Zees country is no good to me.”
“What’s up?” I ask, speaking like a ventriloquist.
“I go out zees morning. I go by Merrion Square, and a young man come up
to me and look into my face, and he say, ‘Life is sweet.’ ‘It ees,’ I
sez, and turn round and come back home. He have mistook me for some one
else. I take no more reesks. I stay here with ze door locked until I
can sell ze beesness.”
An acquaintance of mine is rung up on the telephone. “Who’s there?” he
asks.
“Irish Republican Army Headquarters speaking. You have been observed
going about with Captain Jones. This acquaintance must cease.”
“Captain Jones is----”
“The conversation is closed.”
Captain Jones wonders why he has lost a friend.
Some one else receives with his breakfast egg the following warning.
“You are ordered by the Republican Authorities to leave the country
within thirty-six hours. If this order is not complied with, you will
be suitably dealt with. By Order.--I.R.A.”
But threat and intimidation were not the privilege of one faction. The
following reminder was received by a number of the members of Dail
Eireann, the Republican Parliament, which met when it could in secret
session--
“An eye for an eye,
A tooth for a tooth,
Therefore a life for a life.”
The worthy burghers of Drogheda were startled one morning by the
following poster--
“Drogheda, Beware!
“If in the vicinity a policeman is shot, five of the leading Sinn
Feiners will be shot. It is not coercion. It is an eye for an eye.
We are not ‘drink maddened savages’ as we have been described in the
Dublin rags. We are not out for loot. We are inoffensive to women. We
are as humane as other Christians, but we have restrained ourselves
too long. Are we to lie down while our comrades are shot by the
cornerboys and raggamuffins of Ireland? We say, ‘never,’ and all the
inquiries in the world will not stop our desire of revenge. Stop the
shooting of the police, or we will lay low every house that smells
Sinn Fein, and remember Balbriggan.
“(_By Order_) BLACK-AND-TANS.”
These shorter days of sharper winds I would cut across Stephen’s Green
to the top of Grafton Street, finding the gardens a more desolate place
than on the brilliant August morning I had strolled in them first.
One’s travels seldom took one into the arms of the Sinn Fein leaders,
who were “on the run,” and moved about as opportunity allowed, sleeping
nightly in different houses; but one did meet prominent women now and
then, for the British Government, fatherly and sentimental in this to
the end, continued to leave women severely alone, except in one or two
exceptional cases.
Round about the Green one would come upon the tall black figure of
Madam Gonne MacBride, looking like a cypress tree, or get a glimpse
of what one believed to be the Countess Markievicz, muffled up in
mediæval fashion. In the distance, with firm tread and firmer aspect, a
dispatch case always in her hand, would appear Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington;
round a corner, at her tireless trot, Mrs. Desmond FitzGerald in her
green dress; occasionally the charming figure of Mrs. Despard, the
Lord Lieutenant’s sister, slowly pacing with her stick, like a fairy
godmother in a Christmas story.
Once in a blue moon one did come upon some badly wanted man. Three
times, during the most violent spasm of the struggle, I passed the most
wanted man in Ireland. In each case he had an escort of eleven.
One of these escorts I met coming up Grafton Street, and two moving
parallel with Stephen’s Green. The men walked in pairs, their hands in
their pockets on their guns and their bombs. In the crowd each pair
kept a few yards apart, when the streets were empty they increased
the distance, to lose the appearance of a military formation. But the
man who knew what to look for could still pick them up. How was it
these escorts could move about unchallenged in the face of troops, and
police, and spies?
In the first place, most of the Sinn Fein leaders were not known by
sight to the Government agents. This, more than any other reason, gave
them immunity during those final two years. Secondly, these men, with
their armed escort, only appeared abroad on rare occasions, for a few
minutes, perhaps, when they left one meeting-place to reach another.
The ordinary Dublin Metropolitan policeman, who might recognise them,
was of no more consideration than a lamp-post. If necessary, he would
have waved the traffic back while they marched across the road.
There was more danger from some Government agent, swimming up and
down in the crowd like a predatory fish; but a solitary man could not
arrest twelve men, and he could do no more than shadow them to their
destination, and then was the difficulty of getting back to Dublin
Castle with the news. The telephone exchanges were full of Sinn Fein
spies who would give warning.
In the course of their travels these escorts would be passed by
constant flying lorries, choked with Auxiliary police. A Government
man, theoretically, could call upon these people for assistance;
but he himself was much more likely to meet his end than the men he
was shadowing. The Auxiliaries always travelled at breakneck speed,
sweeping round corners like a train. The slower the pace, the better
the target they made for ambushers. The only way our man could have
halted them would be by walking into the middle of the road and
holding up a hand. The Auxiliaries would not have pulled up; but, with
one accord, believing he was about to hurl a bomb, they would have
arisen and shot him to bits.
The Sinn Fein escort would have gone on its way rejoicing.
Occasionally, these wanted men went about without escorts, trusting in
fate. In such cases they would be unarmed, for occasionally pedestrians
were searched for arms. There were always rumours that in this street
or that street some well-known man had been seen cycling along, perhaps
Michael Collins (Minister of Finance), Richard Mulcahy (Chief of
Staff), or Charles Burgess (Minister of Defence), the three most wanted
men in the land--men whom fate and a Celtic renaissance had placed
astride a bicycle and set higher than a king.
Time and again military and police united in their efforts to get hold
of the Republican leaders; but generally without result. Extraordinary
precautions were taken for their safety. If a meeting was to be held
in a certain house, the streets would be picketed for a great distance
round by peaceful citizens leaning smoking against doorposts, and other
worthy townspeople propped up against lamp-posts, spitting. Not a fly
could have got through the final cordon without the agreed-on signs and
passwords. 47 told me once it was necessary to produce a tram ticket
of a certain value, dated the previous day, and folded in a certain
fashion. It was said on occasions street musicians were posted with
orders to play certain tunes in certain events. Many of these stories
were true, some legendary, no doubt. 47 was an instructor who taught
me well, and tramping Dublin streets, I saw much that was not given to
ordinary passers to see, and was told much that must not be repeated.
In the midst of this strange time, while the new movement was aiming to
push Ireland into the van of progressive nations, there occurred one of
those mediæval happenings which only take place to-day in Ireland, of
all parts of the British Isles.
The statues of Templemore began to bleed.
The story goes that on a Friday evening statues of the Blessed Virgin,
the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin with the child Jesus, and St.
Joseph with the Holy Child, belonging to a newsagent at Templemore,
began to ooze blood from heart and mouth. At the same time the statues
in a nephew’s house also started to ooze blood, and the nephew, a young
man of nineteen, had a vision of the Blessed Virgin. The Blessed Virgin
ordered the young man to make a depression in the floor of his room,
and immediately after there was a miraculous flow of water.
At once cures were effected, the first being that of a little girl in
the last stages of consumption, who was carried into the house and
restored to perfect health. The elders of the town gathered about the
statues and offered loud prayers, giving their thanks to God that the
town had been saved from the rage of the Black-and-Tans on the previous
Monday night, and that none of the innocent citizens had been destroyed.
The local clergy, as a whole, were chary of expressing their opinions;
but in spite of their silence a great pilgrimage began from all parts
of Ireland, travelling to Templemore on horse, on foot, on bicycle, in
gig, in dray, in dogcart, in jaunting car, bringing the sick in body
and the sick in soul. There was an amazing scene in the yard at the
back of the house, where the statues were placed upon a table covered
with a white cloth. Townspeople and countrypeople, grandmothers, and
their grandchildren, husbands, wives, knelt in a crowd about the table,
murmuring their prayers, and touching the statues with beads and
prayer-books.
This miraculous bleeding, which caused Ireland momentarily to hold her
breath, as if supernatural intervention was coming, became a nine days’
wonder, and then was no more. This week it was: next week it was not.
Perhaps it could not survive the arrival of the _Daily Sketch_ reporter
with his gimlet eye, his notebook, and his camera.
Once or twice I passed 47 in the street, but he took no notice of me,
and I let him go in case he had business on hand. He would not come to
see us, as the acquaintance might be unhealthy, and we did not like to
look him up without an invitation.
Finally, I dropped him a line telling him to meet me in the Botanical
Gardens if he were free. I wandered down to the water in the hollow,
and there he was coming across the little bridge. A yard or two off
he waved a hand in salute; we joined up and strolled down a sheltered
walk. He took a cigarette from me, and started to smoke without saying
a word.
“How do you like life?” I said.
“It’s interesting,” he admitted. Looking up, he added grimly, “Are you
finding your way about?”
I agreed Dublin was interesting.
“What have you seen?” he said.
“Plenty of your chaps about. At least everybody says they’re in
your line. Every man serving the Government seems to be called a
Black-and-Tan, but now and then some more exact person than the rest
hisses into your ear, ‘Those men are secret service.’”
47 said quietly, “Those fellows you see aren’t the old secret service.
They’ve been got together to meet this emergency.”
He proceeded to wind up. He was not a talkative fellow; but he could be
communicative when he liked. I have no doubt I was the only audience he
had had for many a day.
“A secret service isn’t built up in a day. An agent should be chosen
after long, long observation. After courage--more important than
courage, really--your man should possess the power of holding his
tongue.
“Our service has always been limited, and it was a good deal chopped
up in the war. Then we were faced with this business. We had to
be reinforced holus bolus. The men had to be trustworthy, and the
authorities decided to enrol ex-army officers. I dare say this was as
good a choice as any other. But it has its drawbacks. We work in all
strata of society, and we should belong to all classes of society. The
military man is limited. He is likely to be loyal and courageous; but
his caste prejudices are his ruin. He calls his enemies Shinners, and
smiles at their efforts.”
47 stopped, looked round suddenly and said, “Have you seen our mutual
friend since you came over?”
“Not once,” I told him.
“I have passed him a couple of times. A fellow I know told me he
bewitches them at the Castle of an evening with his piano. Well, he
told me once that when he was working in Germany during the war, before
putting a foot over the frontier he turned over what he would be, and
he decided to be a farmer. Accordingly, hour after hour, he practised a
farmer’s slouch. He sat down and invented his farm. Hour after hour he
lived in imagination on that place, until he saw it so clearly that he
could walk over every inch of it, discuss every foot of it, and he said
he had only to close his eyes to see it all again--the chestnut mare
with the wall eye, the duck with rheumatics. He tried to sell the place
to me.”
“Did you buy?”
“He knew his job; but what is happening now is pathetic. These
ready-made sleuths, who are the best-dressed men in Dublin, have been
arriving in batches. Men with eyeglasses appear suddenly to sell
bootblacking. Men in spats turn up to explain they hold an agency in
condensed milk. These people fill the lounges of the best hotels, drink
together, and talk confidently together.”
“And,” said I, breaking in, “the barmaids ogling them explore their
inmost souls, and the waiters bearing them cocktails pass on to Sinn
Fein headquarters the pearls that drop from their lips.”
He smiled. “Not as bad as that. I don’t suppose they give much away
apart from themselves; but wherever there is a decent lounge they
can be found gobbling like turkeys in a farmyard--turkeys that have
not heard of a Christmas dinner. I have seen one of those peaceful
commercial travellers drop an automatic pistol in the lounge of the
Shelbourne Hotel, and I slunk into the lift in horror. I have seen a
commercial traveller in spats leaning over a bar talking to a dimpled
barmaid, while a gentleman at his elbow, in a shabby black velour hat
and a dirty trench coat, took down his particulars. Even my ‘cousin,’
who has many of the best qualities of an agent, the keenness, the
tirelessness, and so on, is attacked with this autumn madness, and any
of these evenings if you care to hang outside his house, you will see
a Government car rattle and bang up to the door, you will see half a
dozen sleuths file up into his house, and presently they will come
down again with him. These merry gentlemen get into the car and rattle
away on some raiding expedition. And, of course, in the shadows on the
other pavement, is a gentleman in a black velour hat and a dirty trench
coat.”
“Do you think some of them are going to be done in soon?”
47 shrugged his shoulders. “Most of these chaps are doomed by the
Castle people to a double life. By day they pass as peaceable citizens.
At night they disappear into the Castle, rig themselves out in military
clothes, and turn out again to raid and arrest. By Gad! they work for
their living all right! There’s a legend that Sinn Fein agents watch
the Castle gates all day to get descriptions of all who go regularly in
and out. There are spies inside the Castle too, and officials in high
places in whom the Sinn Fein rot has set as a fungus attacks a tree.”
“You’re fed up,” I said.
“A bit. I’m a bit fed up. It’s a nervy game. We’re getting in a lot of
stuff; but we’re up against a pretty big thing. Half the nation are
ready to help the Sinn Fein intelligence. The joke is the women one
meets never cease singing the praises of their own intelligence people,
and in the same breath they damn us for spies.”
“What’s the opposite show like?”
“They’re not better than us--I don’t think they’re as good; but they
have the pull of working in their own country and having the backing
of three parts of the nation. They all look the same; but most of our
fellows are another caste.”
“You’d think your chaps would get no information. People would know
them and tell them nothing.”
“It’s not easy to get hold of good stuff; but man suffers from the
inability to keep his secrets. People with a little bit of news burst
to tell it, and sometimes the least thing is worth a lot. It may be the
link that was wanted to complete the chain.”
47 broke a leafless twig off a bush and began bending it in his fingers.
“Agent 1 reports that at 10.25 he found a dead man at such and such
a spot, and a hatless man with a smoking gun running away. Agent 2
reports at 10.30, five minutes away from Agent 1, he saw a hatless man,
panting hard, jump on a tram going to the station. Like Agent 1, who
found the body, he was not able to get a description of him.
“Agent 3 reports that as he left the station by the 10.50 train, a
hatless man jumped into his compartment. He was able to get a full
description of this man, which was, etc., etc. The man got out at such
and such a station.
“In a certain room in Dublin Castle a man sits putting together the
reports, which come in helter-skelter. He finds these three make up an
interesting story. Records are looked up, the description tallies with
a certain man, in whom Dublin Castle has been mildly interested for
some time. Inquiries are made where the gentleman in question left
the train; the gentleman in question is secured, and he finds himself
asked a number of questions that--but there’s no need to go on with the
story.”
47 shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the time?” he said next, and looked
at his watch.
“You’re not going yet,” I said. “I haven’t seen you for a month. The
tram fare here and back is sixpence. I want my money’s worth. What’s
your wife doing nowadays? Tell her we sent all sorts of good wishes.”
47 frowned. “It’s a lonely life for a woman,” he said, “and a nervy
one, too. Of course, one always is meeting new people, always going
from door to door; but in his heart a man is as lonely as a desert
islander. Never a word spoken in favour of his beliefs. Never, never,
never!”
A fish moved in the running water which was the boundary of this side
of the gardens. It brought 47 out of the brown study into which he was
falling.
“They’re trout,” I said. “I saw them earlier in the year, when the sun
was about. We’ll come and give your wife a look up.”
“Not yet,” he answered. “I expect it would be all right; but wait a
bit.”
“Don’t be too long, or we’ll come along in spite of you. Do you mean
you are shadowed?”
“Not as far as I know. Did you ever hear our mutual friend’s receipt
for getting rid of a follower?”
“No.”
“When you look behind and find what you suspected is a fact, and the
man in the dirty velour hat and shabby raincoat is still hanging a
hundred yards behind, saunter to a shop window. In a minute your friend
will follow suit a few doors down. Directly he has chosen his window,
you find you have seen all you want in your window, and you go along
and look in at his window. There you both stay. But sooner or later
somebody has to move, and you make sure that he does. Directly he moves
off you follow him. By the time he has gone down two streets and found
you at his heels he wonders what has happened. At the end of another
two streets he makes a bolt for a passing tram. He won’t come on any
more expeditions with you.”
“That sounds simple.”
“It wouldn’t do you much good if you stayed all the time in the same
place. You’d soon get picked up by somebody else. I’m off.”
“I wanted to hear how you think things are going.”
“I’ve not made up my own mind yet. I’ll tell you next time.”
Without any more fuss he started to walk away down the path, and I let
him go. It was some weeks before we saw him again.