the streets after dark, the curfew was advanced an hour. As a result,
the number of curfew prisoners greatly increased—so much so on the first
night that there was no room in the usual detention quarters, and the
officer of the guard was obliged to use an empty office for the
overflow.
While the General was working in his office after dinner, the officer of
the guard brought a note from the Mayor of the town, who, he explained,
had been found on the streets after curfew hour by a patrol, and was now
a prisoner in the office below. The note requested a personal interview
with the G.O.C., and stated that the matter was of the highest
importance. The General passed the note to Blake, who was puzzled by the
familiarity of the writing, but unable to remember where he had seen it
before.
After some hesitation the General decided to see the Mayor, who was
brought in by the officer of the guard, and left alone with the General
and Blake. After beating about the bush for some time, the Mayor asked
that he might be kept under arrest and, if possible, deported by sea to
England, as he was in great danger of assassination, but would give no
reason for the danger, only stating that he had received threatening
letters.
The General explained that under no circumstances would he allow the
Mayor to be detained under arrest or deported, unless he could show
sufficient reasons. The Mayor replied that he considered the threatening
letters an ample justification for his request; he had not brought the
letters with him, but that if allowed to go home with a guard he would
fetch them. But the General, being determined to get all the information
he could out of the man, and knowing that once he had granted his
request it would be impossible to get anything out of him, refused.
By now Blake had identified the Mayor’s handwriting with the writing on
the baker’s death-warrant, and getting out the latter, placed the two
papers in front of the General, who at once taxed the Mayor with being
the head of the Inner Circle in Esker. This he denied, but on being
confronted with the two papers, broke down and made a complete
confession.
It appeared that for a long time past he had been the leader of Sinn
Fein in that district, and though himself a moderate man, he had been
unable to control the wild men, who had forced him, as head of the Inner
Circle, to sign the death-warrants of the men condemned to be
“executed,” or, in other words, the men they wished out of the way.
After a time, being a very religious man, his conscience had rebelled
against wholesale murder, and he had refused to sign any more
death-warrants.
Whereupon the wild men, being afraid that the Mayor might give them
away, had signed his death-warrant themselves, and that very morning he
had received by post a warning to prepare for death.
The General was now quite satisfied to order his arrest and deportation
forthwith; but the Mayor asked that he should be allowed to go home to
say good-bye to his family, and that he might be arrested in his own
house at some early hour in the morning. It was now nearly midnight, and
the General, after granting his request, arranged that a patrol should
arrest him at 4 A.M.
At 4 A.M. to the minute Blake drove up to the Mayor’s house in a lorry
with an officer and fifteen men, but at once saw that something was
wrong. Instead of the house being in complete darkness, most of the
windows were lit up, and the loud wails of women could be heard in an
upstairs room.
Leaving the officer to post sentries at the front and back of the house,
Blake knocked at the door, which was opened after some delay by a woman,
who, on seeing a police officer, tried to slam the door in his face.
Blake, however, managed to slip into the hall, and asked the woman what
was wrong, but she ran upstairs, calling out to some one above that the
police had returned.
On the first landing the woman was joined by another woman and a man,
and after a lot of trouble Blake at last got out of them that an hour
previously a party of tall men in black mackintoshes, with soft hats
pulled over their eyes, had gained admittance to the house, and made
their way straight to the Mayor’s bedroom, where they found him kneeling
down by his bed praying. After pushing the Mayor’s wife out of the room
they shot him, threw his body on the bed, and rushed out of the house.
Blake asked to be shown the Mayor’s body, and the man led him to a
bedroom at the back and opened the door. After making certain that the
dead man was the Mayor, Blake left and drove straight back to the
General.
That day the town was seething with excitement, and it was openly stated
by many men that the Mayor had been murdered by the police.
Shortly afterwards a public inquiry was held, and it was clearly proved
that every policeman in the town could be satisfactorily accounted for
during the night of the murder, and, moreover, that every round of rifle
and revolver ammunition could also be accounted for. However, this did
not suit the Sinn Feiners, and a verdict of “guilty” was brought in
against the authorities, though there can be no possible doubt in any
unbiassed mind that the Mayor of Esker was murdered either by, or by the
orders of, the Inner Circle.
When he went home, after his interview with the G.O.C., the natural
assumption was that he had been giving information, and the Inner Circle
determined that he should give no more. Whether they knew that he was to
be arrested and deported at 4 A.M., and deliberately forestalled the
arrest, or whether they merely knew that he was at headquarters, and
were waiting to murder him on the first favourable opportunity, is not
clear, and does not affect the question of the guilt of the murder.
XII.
A BRUTAL MURDER.
The childlike trust which so many Englishmen have in their institutions
is a source of never-ending wonder to Irishmen, more especially the
Englishman’s blind faith in the integrity of the Post Office in both
countries. Long after Sinn Fein had made the Irish Post Office its chief
source of information, the Government and public continued happily and
blindly to confide their confidential correspondence to the tender
mercies of the King’s enemies, and at the same time expressed their
bewildered astonishment at the uncanny amount of information that the
Sinn Fein Secret Service was able to obtain.
It is highly doubtful if Blake would ever have even thought of obtaining
information from the mail bags, if a young subaltern, who commanded a
platoon of the Blankshires temporarily stationed in the Ballybor Police
Barracks, had not made the suggestion one night at dinner, and had even
offered to carry out the operation himself if Blake had any official
qualms. At first Blake refused, knowing that the authorities did not
approve of tampering with the public’s private letters; but being
desperately hard up for certain information he gave in, and it was
arranged that Jones, the subaltern, should carry out the search.
A cross-country letter in the west of Ireland will often take nowadays
any time from three to five days to arrive at a town only twenty miles
away, and of the chief reasons of this delay one is that the mails often
lie for twelve to twenty-four hours in a head post office before being
sent out to rural sub-offices for distribution, or in a railway van at
some junction awaiting a connection. This was well known to Blake, who
had often to complain of delay in delivery of official letters, and also
of letters from the “Castle” being frequently opened in the post.
Examining the mails in the Ballybor Post Office was out of the question,
owing to the almost unbelievable fact that the staff, from the
postmaster to the charwoman who washed out the tiled floors of the post
office every morning, were Sinn Feiners, one and all, so that there only
remained to search the mails in the train.
At this period the western railways were slowly dying from a creeping
paralysis caused by the engine-drivers and guards refusing to carry the
armed forces of the Crown, quite oblivious of the fact that it was only
possible to pay the railway men’s enormous wages through the Government
subsidy. For a time some lines shut down, but a goods train managed to
reach Ballybor six days a week with mails and the bare necessities of
life for the inhabitants—chiefly porter barrels. By good luck the guard
on this train chanced to be a Loyalist—probably the only one on the
line—and it was arranged with him that the mails should be searched by
Jones while the mail van waited in a siding for several hours at a
junction about sixteen miles from Ballybor.
Disguised as harvestmen, Jones and his servant were dropped at night
from a Crossley close to the junction and admitted to the mail van by
the guard; they at once set to work with electric torches, the batman
opening the letters, whilst Jones read and made a note of any useful
information, and when they had finished returned in the car to Ballybor
Barracks.
On returning to the barracks, Blake and Jones went carefully through the
information, and found that one letter addressed to a noted Sinn Feiner,
Mr Pat Hegarty, who lived near a village called Lissamore, about eight
miles away, gave sufficient evidence on which to hang Mr Hegarty. The
writer stated that on the 3rd inst. Hegarty was to expect the arrival of
an officer of the I.R.A. in uniform, who would come from the direction
of Castleport on a bicycle about 10 P.M. Hegarty was to keep this
officer in his house, place the new supply of American arms at his
disposal for ambushes, and the officer would not leave the district
until Blake had been either killed or kidnapped.
Some months previous to this Blake had been in the south on special
duty, and during his absence, MacNot, the D.I. who relieved him
temporarily, had called a truce with the Volunteers as long as all
appeared well on paper, with the result that the Volunteers had been
able to make full preparations for a second effort to wipe out the
police in the district. Soon after his return to Ballybor Blake heard
strong rumours of a second landing of American arms during his
absence—this time, at night at Ballybor quay—and the letter confirmed
the rumours.
On the night mentioned in the letter, Blake and Jones, accompanied by a
police sergeant and two constables, left Ballybor Barracks in a car
after dark in the opposite direction to that in which the village of
Lissamore lay, and after going about three miles turned off at a byroad
and proceeded by unfrequented roads, until they reached a small wood
about half a mile from Hegarty’s house on the Castleport road; here they
blocked the road with the car, and waited for their victim.
There was bright starlight, and punctually at 9.45 they saw a cyclist
approaching from the direction of Castleport; but so dark was it in the
wood that the cyclist only avoided running into the car by throwing
himself off, to be quickly seized by two stalwart policemen before he
could let go of his handle-bars, gagged and well tied up. They then took
him into the wood, removed his uniform, dressed him in an old police
uniform, and finally deposited him at the bottom of the car.
Jones then put on the Volunteer officer’s uniform, took his bicycle, and
rode on to Hegarty’s house, while the police backed the car up a
bohereen and waited there. Before starting out they had arranged that
Jones should camouflage his English voice by a Yankee twang, as a brogue
was quite beyond his powers.
On arriving at Hegarty’s house, Jones leant his bicycle against the
wall, and gave three mysterious knocks at the door. For quite two
minutes there was no answer, and just as he was preparing to knock
again, the door opened about three inches, and a girl’s voice asked in a
whisper who was there, and what he wanted at that time of night.
Now, unfortunately, the letter had not given the name of the I.R.A.
officer, so Jones, being afraid to give a name lest the Hegartys might
know the officer’s real name, muttered that he was a republican officer,
and had come to see Pat Hegarty. The door at once closed, and he could
hear the girl open and close a door at the back of the house, and for
fully ten minutes nothing further occurred.
This was not part of the play which Jones and Blake had carefully
rehearsed in the barracks that afternoon, and Jones was quite nonplussed
what to do next. Being young and impetuous, he was just on the point of
ruining the whole show by breaking in the door, when it opened and the
girl’s voice told him to come in.
The room was pitch dark, and for a second Jones hesitated; but the girl
laid her hand on his sleeve, and led him through to a lighted room at
the back, where he found Hegarty with his wife and son about to sit down
to supper. Hegarty bade him welcome, and the meal started.
After they had eaten for some time in silence, Hegarty asked him several
questions about where he had been recently, and of prominent Volunteers
in other parts of the country. Jones made the best answers he could, not
forgetting to keep up his American accent, and mentioned casually that
he had only recently come over from the States, where his parents had
been living for some years.
For a time there was silence again, but Jones could feel that the eyes
of Maria Hegarty were on him all the time; and presently she began to
ask most awkward questions about places and people in the States, and
Jones was hard put to it to avoid suspicion. Luckily Maria mentioned
that her friends lived in the Eastern States, so that it was easy for
Jones’s people to live far away in the west, and the situation was
saved.
Supper over, the women cleared the table and retired, while Hegarty
produced a large jar of poteen and tumblers, and the three men settled
themselves round the fire to drink and talk. For the next two hours
Jones extracted all the information he could out of the Hegartys, who,
though shy at first, warmed up after several glasses of poteen, and
Jones learnt from young Hegarty that the arms were kept under the floors
of a disused Protestant school-house in the rectory grounds at
Cloonalla, the rector of which was a notorious Loyalist, and would have
died sooner than conceal arms knowingly for the rebels.
At this point Jones, who had never tasted poteen before, suddenly
realised that he was nearly drunk, and that before he became quite drunk
it would be wiser to lie down on a bed. On inquiry, he found that he was
to sleep with young Hegarty, the idea of which so staggered him that he
felt soberer at once, and determined to try and hold out.
Suddenly there came a violent knocking at the front door, followed by
what sounded like the bang of a rifle-butt on the back door. At once the
Hegartys put out the light, and started to hustle Jones up a ladder to a
loft above the kitchen.
But by now the poteen had quite got to Jones’s head; and when the police
went into the kitchen, they found old Hegarty and his son still
struggling to get an I.R.A. officer up the ladder. The Hegartys now let
go of Jones, who promptly closed with Blake, and a tremendous struggle
started in the kitchen.
In a few minutes Jones was overcome, and lay on the floor with a heavy
constable sitting on his chest. Blake then ordered the Hegartys to light
the lamp, and afterwards to stand against the wall with their hands over
their heads, and the constables to take Jones outside and shoot him. But
he had not reckoned on Maria, who burst into the kitchen and with
piercing screams endeavoured to throw her arms round Jones’s neck. Maria
was a strong girl and desperate, and it took Jones and the two
constables all they knew to shake her off and struggle out of the house.
Luckily Maria did not attempt to leave the house, and ten seconds after
the back door had closed, six revolver shots rang out in quick
succession, followed by the sound of a heavy body falling on wet ground.
After telling Maria and her mother to go to their bedroom, Blake took
Hegarty and his son into the back-yard, and showed them the body of the
unfortunate Volunteer officer thrown by the police on the manure-heap.
During the next half-hour he had little difficulty in getting all the
information he required about local Volunteers (he made no mention of
the arms), and after warning them not to move the corpse, the police
left the house.
Maria appears to have been greatly taken with Jones’s youthful beauty,
and nearly ruined the whole show again by insisting on her father and
brother going out to bring in the corpse and lay it out in the kitchen.
Luckily the Hegartys were too much afraid, and Jones told Blake
afterwards that the agony of lying with his face buried in liquid manure
was nothing to the agony he suffered listening to the Hegartys arguing
whether his corpse should be left lying on the manure-heap to be eaten
by dogs, or brought into the kitchen and laid out as a “dacent son of
ould Ireland” should be.
While this argument was still raging a car stopped at the front door,
and again the police rushed into the house, out at the back door,
dragged the corpse off the manure-heap, through the house, and flung it
on top of the real Volunteer officer in the back of the car. After
telling the Hegartys that they would throw the body into the lake, the
police drove off at a furious rate in the direction of Ballybor.
On returning to barracks, Jones at once rushed off to have a hot bath,
while Blake went to his office to find his two clerks snowed up with
paper, correspondence which had arrived by the goods mail while they had
been out. After they had some food, Jones was all for raiding the rector
of Cloonalla at once; but Blake made the fatal mistake of attending to
the correspondence then, and putting off the raid to the following
night.
The next night they set out with a strong force of police for the
Cloonalla Rectory, but found, though there were evident signs that their
information had been correct, that the arms had been removed; the rector
was most indignant, and they returned defeated.
A few nights afterwards, when at dinner, Blake showed Jones the
following paragraph in an Irish paper.
“A BRUTAL MURDER.
“On the night of the 3rd inst., about midnight, armed men in
uniform, some of them wearing trenchcoats, raided the house of Mr
Patrick Hegarty, a respectable farmer, who has never been known to
take any active part in politics. Inside these men found a young
man alleged to have been wearing the uniform of an officer in the
I.R.A.
“This unfortunate young man, without trial of any kind, was at
once dragged outside the house, riddled with bullets, and his body
thrown on a manure-heap in a most callous and brutal manner.
“After brutally ill-treating Mr Hegarty and his family, the
murderers left, to return again, saying that they would take the
body away and throw it into the lake. Though the lake has been
carefully dragged, no sign of this unhappy youth’s body has yet
been found.”
XIII.
SEAL ISLAND.
Sergeant O’Bryan was as fine a type of the R.I.C. as you would meet in
half a dozen baronies: of magnificent physique, great courage, full of
tact, and with the perfect manners of a true Irishman.
At the end of 1918 O’Bryan found himself sergeant in charge of
Cloghleagh Barracks, a comfortable thatched house close to the shores of
Lough Moyra, and distant about four miles from Ballybor.
While at Cloghleagh his principal work consisted of trying to put down
the making of poteen, which was carried on extensively by the
inhabitants of two small islands at the south end of the lake; otherwise
the sergeant was on the best of terms with all the people of the
district, who often appealed to him for advice and help. And as O’Bryan
was a keen fisherman, he often managed to combine business with sport
while out in the police boat.
Soon after Blake became D.I. at Ballybor, orders were received from the
County Inspector to evacuate Cloghleagh Barracks, and for O’Bryan and
his men to proceed to Ballybor Barracks. As the country round Cloghleagh
had as yet shown no hostility towards the police, and as it was hard to
get a house in any town, O’Bryan asked and obtained leave for his young
wife and family to remain on at Cloghleagh Barracks; and here, not long
after the sergeant had gone, the youngest O’Bryan was born.
Two days afterwards, on a wet winter’s evening, there came a knock at
the barracks door, and when Mrs O’Bryan asked who was there, a man’s
voice bade her open in the name of the I.R.A. Obeying, she found two
masked men, who covered her with revolvers, and told her they would give
her five minutes to clear out of the barracks before they set it on
fire.
Mrs O’Bryan had seven children, the eldest about ten years and the
youngest two days old, most of whom were in bed by this time. As fast as
she could she roused and dressed the children; but the five minutes soon
passed, and the men entered and bundled the whole family, some of the
children only half clothed, out into the wet and cold of a winter’s
night.
Outside Mrs O’Bryan found a large party of Ballybor shop-boys, some of
them wearing black masks, led by four strange gunmen. This party had
arrived in Cloghleagh about an hour before, and had at once proceeded to
picket all roads leading to and from the barracks, and every unfortunate
countryman or woman they met making their way along the roads was at
once seized by the pickets, taken to the barrack-yard, and there placed
face inwards against the wall with their hands on top of their heads.
As soon as the O’Bryan family had been hustled into the road, the gunmen
threw paraffin and petrol on the thatch of the barracks, set it alight,
and in a very short time the building was a charred ruin. They then
mounted their bicycles and rode off into the night, leaving the
unfortunate O’Bryans to shift for themselves.
Leaving her family huddled under a hedge, the mother tried to get into
two neighbouring houses; but the blighting curse of the I.R.A. was on
her and hers, and not a house would even open its door, let alone take
them in. In the end she saw that it was hopeless, and returning to her
children, did her best to keep them warm with her own body and the few
blankets she had managed to bring out of the barracks. And here they
spent the night like the beasts of the fields.
Next morning some countryman, braver than the rest, brought word to the
Ballybor Barracks of the burning at Cloghleagh, and Sergeant O’Bryan
arrived on the scene to find his wife and family perished and starving.
Such is the mercy of the I.R.A. for the little children of the R.I.C.
O’Bryan took his family back to Ballybor Barracks, where they were fed
and warmed; but in Ireland nowadays a police barracks is no place for
little children and women, and before night they must leave. In vain the
sergeant tried to find lodgings; he might as well have tried to swim the
Atlantic. Every door was slammed in his face directly he made his
appeal. But the good Samaritan is not yet extinct in Ireland, and at
last the sergeant found a refuge for his family in the empty gardener’s
lodge of Ballybor House.
While being turned out of Cloghleagh Barracks, Mrs O’Bryan had
recognised two of the incendiaries, who had taken their masks off, as
two prominent Sinn Fein shop-boys of Ballybor, afterwards telling her
husband their names—Martin Walsh and Peter Lynch—and the sergeant never
forgot them.
On a glorious June day Blake was leaning over the parapet of the lower
bridge crossing the Owenmore river in Ballybor, watching the fishermen
hauling in a net full of silvery grilse, and wishing that he could
accept an invitation to fish at Ardcumber. After a time his eye wandered
to a fleet of boats below the bridge, some anchored, while others were
attached to mooring buoys. From force of habit he started to count them,
and on finding that there were no less than thirty-seven, he began to
make out their total carrying capacity, which roughly came to the high
figure of three hundred.
On the following Sunday he happened to be crossing the same bridge at
about ten in the morning, and stopped to look at three boats, packed
with young men, a few carrying fishing-rods, starting off down the
river. The fishing-rods were there right enough, but something seemed
wrong; the men looked too purposeful, and, moreover, eight or nine young
men in a boat with a couple of rods is an unusual sight.