It was three minutes to six o’clock in the evening of the fifteenth of
March 192‒.
Francis Joseph McPhillip ran up the concrete steps leading to the
glass-panelled swing door that acted as street entrance to the Dunboy
Lodging House. The House, as it was called in Dublin, among criminal
and pauperized circles, was a grey concrete building of four stories.
It stood on the left-hand side of a wide wind-swept asphalt lane off
B—— Road on the south side of the city. A maze of slum streets
surrounded it. An indefinable smell of human beings living in a
congested area filled the air around it. From the building itself, a
smell of food and of floors being scrubbed with soap and hot water
emanated.
A drizzling rain was falling from a black bulging sky. Now and again a
flock of hailstones, driven by a sudden gust of querulous wind,
clattered down the lane, falling in little dancing groups on the hard,
perspiring asphalt.
McPhillip ran up the four steps and peered into the hall hurriedly
through the glass door. He put his face so close to the glass that his
excited breath caused an immediate blur of vapour on the frozen pane.
Then he turned about. He crouched against the angle of the doorway and
peered around the corner of the wall, up the lane through which he had
just come. He wanted to find out whether anybody was following him. He
was a murderer.
He had killed the secretary of the local branch of the Farmers’ Union
during the farm labourers’ strike at M—— in the previous October.
Since then he had been hiding out in the mountains with a group of men
who were evading arrest, brigands, criminals and political refugees.
He had just come into Dublin half an hour previously on a goods train.
The conductor of the train was a member of the Revolutionary
Organization, to which McPhillip himself had belonged when he shot the
Farmers’ Union Secretary.
He saw nobody of account in the lane. An old woman crossed near the
far end. She had a black shawl about her head and in her hand a milk
jug, with a corner of the shawl drawn across its mouth to keep out the
rain. A man was singing forlornly, facing the kerb on the right-hand
side, with his cap held out in front of him. He was begging, but
nobody took any notice of him.
McPhillip’s eyes darted about everywhere, with the speed and acuteness
of one who has perfected his detective sensibilities by necessity and
long practice. The street was quite safe. He sighed and turned about
to survey the interior of the House.
He was a man of middle size and slightly built, but his shoulders were
broad enough for a giant. His body narrowed down from the shoulders,
so that the hips and waist were totally out of proportion to the upper
part of the body. His right leg opened outwards in a curve below the
knee and he placed the toe of the right foot on the ground before the
heel when he walked, so that his walk had the crouching appearance of
a wild animal stalking in a forest. His face was thin and sallow. His
hair was black and cropped close. His eyebrows were black and bushy.
His eyelashes were long and they continually drooped over his eyes.
When his eyelashes drooped his eyes were blue, sharp and fierce. But
when he raised his lashes for a moment to think of something distant
and perhaps imaginary, his eyes were large, wistful and dreamy. They
were soft and full of a sorrow that was unfathomable. His jaws were
square, sharp and fleshless. His lips were thin and set tightly. This
gave the lower part of his face a ferocious appearance. His nose was
long and straight. His cheeks were hollow and on the cheekbones a
bright flush appeared when he was seized with a fit of hard, dry
coughing which he tried to suppress.
He was dressed in a shabby pair of wrinkled navy blue trousers and a
fawn-coloured, shabby raincoat, buttoned up around his throat like a
uniform. His boots were old and thin. They creaked with moisture
soaked in through their torn soles. He wore a grey tweed cap. Under
his left armpit he carried an automatic pistol in a leather holster.
The pistol hung from a lanyard that was suspended from his neck.
As he stood looking in through the door, the fingers of his right hand
were thrust in between the first and second buttons of his raincoat.
The tips of the fingers rested on the cold butt of the automatic.
Within the hall three old men were waiting in a row outside the closed
glass window of the office on the right-hand side. The nearest old man
to the door wore a brown pauper’s uniform. Both his eyes had cataracts
and he seemed to be on the point of going into a faint. He was leaning
on a stick and his head kept bobbing like a man that is in a drunken
stupor and is on the point of falling asleep. The second old man wore
a torn old dress suit. He looked like a waiter thrown out of
employment through old age. He had a sharp lean face. The farthest old
man was dressed in a medley of unspeakable rags and he shook his body
continually trying to scratch himself on the insides of his clothes.
The three of them stood in silence. Beyond them, four more concrete
steps led to a long passage through the building. A corridor crossed
the passage at the far end. Men passed along the corridor now and
again in groups.
McPhillip was about to push through the door when the glass panel was
pulled up with a screech and a man’s head appeared at the window. The
man cracked his thumb and forefinger and motioned the nearest old man
to approach, the old man dressed in rags. The old man started and
cried out in a weak, childish voice: “Oh be Janey I’d forgotten.”
Smiling weakly and muttering to himself he began to rummage among his
rags. The man at the window looked at him, pursed up his lips angrily
and disappeared.
Presently he reappeared from around the corner of the office. He came
up to the old man and stood in front of him with his hands on his hips
and his legs spread wide apart. His neat blue trousers were perfectly
creased. He was in his shirt sleeves, so that his diamond sleeve links
and the large diamond in his tie flashed in the half darkness. His
hair was glued to his head with perfumed oil. Its odour pervaded the
whole hallway. He looked at the old man with an expression of mixed
contempt and anger. The two other old men began to snigger fawningly
and tried to appear to have absolutely no connection with the ragged
old man.
At last the ragged old man found a red handkerchief, and in his
excitement he could not undo the knot that bound it together in a
ball.
“Here,” he cried, holding out the handkerchief to the clerk, “there
are five pennies and four halfpennies there. Me fingers are all stiff
with the rheumatism an’ I can’t untie it. Maybe ye’d do it for me for
th’ honour o’ God?”
Then he looked up into the clerk’s face with his mouth open. But the
clerk, without taking any notice of the handkerchief, was looking at
the old man’s face as if he were going to strike him. The old man
began to tremble.
“Get out of here,” yelled the clerk suddenly in a thunderous voice.
Then he became motionless again. The old man began to babble and
shiver. He turned about and shuffled down the steps to the door,
scratching his shoulder-blades against his clothes as he moved. He
went down two steps and then paused uncertainly and looked behind him.
Then he shuddered, took another step, lost his balance and slipped. He
slithered to the door on his buttocks. The other two old men began to
laugh and titter. The clerk scowled at them. “What are ye laughing
at?” he cried. They stopped immediately. “Hey you,” he continued,
pointing his finger at the ragged old man, who had reached the street
outside and was standing irresolutely on the kerb looking back over
his shoulders. “If I catch you here again, you old fool, I’ll hand you
over to the police. Go away now and get into the workhouse where you
belong. Huh!”
The old man wrinkled up his monkey-like face into a grimace of
surprise and misery. He cast a terrified look at the haggard face of
McPhillip, that peered at him out of the angle of the wall to the left
of the door. Then he mumbled something and set off down the lane at a
broken trot. The other two old men in the hall began to whisper to one
another as soon as the clerk turned his back and walked back into the
office.
“Be the holy,” said one, “he should be shot, wha?”
“So he should,” whined the other old man, “the dirty, rotten—to be
goin’ about like that.”
Then they shuffled up to the window for their bed tickets. The clerk
swore at them and called them filthy names, but they kept apologizing
to him and sniggering.
While the two old men were getting their bed tickets at the window,
McPhillip pushed through the door quietly and slipped along the hall.
He turned to the right at the far end. He stopped there. He leaned up
against the wall casually, took a cigarette from his pocket and lit
it. He looked around examining the passage. It was a wide corridor
with a concrete floor and walls of glazed brick. There were windows at
regular intervals opening on a large yard at the rear of the building.
In the alcoves formed by the windows seats were placed. By the
opposite wall there were spittoons placed at equal distances of three
yards or so. Men were strewn along the passage in groups, some sitting
on the seats conversing in low voices, others walking up and down
singly or in pairs, with their eyes on the ground and their hands
muffed behind their backs in their coat sleeves. They were all
wretchedly dressed and melancholy. Some were quite young, but their
faces had already assumed the dejected appearance that is usually
found only in the faces of old men who have been disappointed in life.
Puffing at his cigarette slowly, McPhillip examined the hall and the
men who passed, with the same quick, sharp cunning with which he had
examined the street. Again he could see nobody that aroused his
interest. Again he sighed gently and moved away to the right. He
entered a large room through a swing door.
The room was crowded. It was furnished with long tables and wooden
forms, like a café for the working class. There were newspapers on
some tables. On others there were games or draughts and dominoes. Men
sat at all the tables. Some read. Others played games. The majority,
however, sat in silence, their eyes staring vacantly in front of them,
contemplating the horror of their lives. Those who could find no seat
stood about the tables, watching the progress of the games, with their
hands in their pockets and their faces set in an expression of stolid
and absent-minded indifference.
McPhillip walked about from one table to another, his cigarette in his
left hand, the fingers of his right hand clutching the butt of his
automatic, between the two top buttons of his raincoat. Nobody noticed
him. The melancholy eyes, that were raised casually to look, saw only
another shabby wreck like themselves. Even had his identity been
suddenly disclosed by means of a loud trumpet to the men in that room,
it is questionable whether the news would have occasioned excitement
in more than a few breasts. Casual workers, casual criminals and
broken old men, their connection with the ordered scheme of civilized
life, with its moral laws and its horror of crime, was so thin and
weak that they were unable to feel the interest that murder arouses in
the tender breasts of our wives and sisters.
McPhillip examined the room carefully without discovering what he
wanted. Then he walked out into the corridor again. He entered another
room that was used by the occupants of the lodging-house for the
purpose of writing letters. That room was empty. Then he descended a
stairway to the lavatories and bathrooms. Here men were shaving and
washing themselves. He walked about and discovered nobody. He came up
again into the corridor and entered the dining-room.
The dining-room was very large and furnished with small deal tables
and long forms of the same material. The wooden floor was covered with
sawdust, like the floor of a slum public-house. Here and there the
sawdust was mixed with refuse that had been swept from the tables. At
the far end of the room a great number of men were gathered around an
immense range, some with frying-pans in their hands awaiting their
turn to cook, others rushing about attending to cooking utensils that
were already on the range. They all had knives, spoons and forks in
their hands. They were jostling, perspiring, cursing, laughing and
scratching themselves. There was a great din of voices and a smell of
food and of human bodies.
At the other end of the room there was a counter and behind the
counter a large bright kitchen, shining bright with white crockery,
polished brasses and the clean white uniforms of the women who served
in it. Three young women were there cooking and serving food, for the
lodgers who had not the means or the inclination to prepare their own
food. These lodgers stood at the counter buying tea, bread and butter,
cooked eggs and meat. They also purchased knives, forks, spoons and
salt, because these necessities were not provided by the management in
the lodging-house, owing to the moral character of the lodgers, except
on payment of a fixed sum, which was returned at the conclusion of the
meal, when the articles were handed back at the counter.
McPhillip walked down across the room to the far side. He had seen the
man he sought at the first glance. He walked straight to a table by
the wall at the far side. At that table a young man of thirty or so
was eating his supper.
He ate off an enamelled plate that was loaded high with potatoes,
coarse cabbage and a large piece of boiled bacon. A great steam rose
from the plate and twisted up towards the ceiling in front of the
man’s face. The man was dressed in a suit of blue dungarees, with a
white muffler wound round and round his neck. He had a close-cropped
bullet-shaped head, fair hair and dark eyebrows. The eyebrows were
just single tufts, one over the centre of each eye. They grew long and
narrowed to a single hair, like the ends of waxed moustaches. They
were just like ominous snouts, and they had more expression than the
dim little blue eyes that were hidden away behind their scowling
shadows. The face was bronzed red and it was covered by swellings that
looked like humps at a distance. These humps came out on the forehead,
on the cheekbones, on the chin and on either side of the neck below
the ears. On close observation, however, they almost disappeared in
the general glossy colour of the brownish red skin, that looked as if
there were several tiers of taut skin covering the face. The nose was
short and bulbous. The mouth was large. The lips were thick and they
fitted together in such a manner that the mouth gave the face an
expression of being perpetually asleep. His body was immense, with
massive limbs and bulging muscles pushing out here and there, like
excrescences of the earth breaking the expected regularity of a
country-side. He sat upright in his seat, with his large square head
bolted on to his squat neck, like an iron stanchion riveted to a deck.
He stared straight in front of him as he ate. He held his fork by the
handle, upright, in his left hand. He rapped the table with the end of
the fork, as if he were keeping time with the rapid crunching of his
jaws. But as soon as he saw McPhillip, his jaws stopped moving and the
hand holding the fork dropped noiselessly to the table. His face
closed up and his body became absolutely motionless.
McPhillip sat down at the opposite side of the table. He did not speak
and he did not express recognition by any sign or movement of his
body. But he knew the man quite well. They were bosom friends. The man
was Gypo Nolan, McPhillip’s companion during the strike of
farm-labourers, when McPhillip had killed the secretary of the
Farmers’ Union. Gypo Nolan had once been a policeman in Dublin, but he
had been dismissed owing to a suspicion at Headquarters that he was in
league with the Revolutionary Organization and had given information
to them relative to certain matters that had leaked out. Since then he
had been an active member of the Revolutionary Organization and had
always acted with Francis Joseph McPhillip, so that they were known in
revolutionary circles as the “Devil’s Twins.”
“Well, Gypo,” said McPhillip at last, “how is things?”
McPhillip’s voice was cracked and weak, but it had a fierce sincerity
that gave it immense force, like the force in the chirping of a tiny
bird whose nest is being robbed.
“Did ye leave them messages I gave ye?” he continued after a moment,
during which he gasped for breath. “I didn’t hear anythin’ from home
since I saw ye that evenin’ I had to take to the hills. What’s doin’,
Gypo?”
Gypo stared in silence for several moments, breathing slowly, with
open mouth and distended eyes. He never spoke. Then he made a strange
sound, like a suppressed exclamation, in his throat. He slowly cut a
large potato in four pieces with his knife. He transferred one piece
to his mouth on the tip of his knife. He began to chew slowly. Then he
stopped chewing suddenly and spoke. It was a deep thunderous voice.
“Where the divil did ye come from, Frankie?” he said.
“It don’t matter where I come from,” cried McPhillip in an irritated
tone. “I got no time to waste passin’ the compliments o’ the season. I
came in here to get wise to all the news. Tell us all ye know. First,
tell me . . . wait a minute. How about them messages? Did ye deliver
them? Don’t mind that grub. Man alive, are ye a savage or what? Here I
am with the cops after me for me life an’ ye go on eatin’ yer spuds.
Lave down that damn knife or I’ll plug ye. Come on, I’m riskin’ me
life to come in here and ask ye a question. Get busy an’ tell me all
about it.”
Gypo sighed easily and wiped his mouth with the back of his right
sleeve. Then he put his knife on the table and swallowed his mouthful.
“Ye were always a cranky fellah,” he growled, “an’ ye don’t seem to be
improvin’, with the spring weather. I’ll tell ye if ye hold on a
minute. I delivered yer messages, to yer father an’ mother and to the
Executive Committee. Yer ol’ man gev me dog’s abuse and drov’ me outa
the house, an’ he cursed ye be bell, book an’ candle light. Yer mother
followed me out cryin’ an’ put half a quid into me hand to give to ye.
I had no way o’ findin’ ye an’ I was hungry mesel’, so I spent it.
Well——”
McPhillip interrupted with a muttered curse. Then he was seized with a
fit of coughing. When the fit was over, Gypo went on.
“Well,” continued Gypo. “Ye know yersel’ what happened with the
Executive Committee. They sent a man out to tell ye. I wouldn’t mind
them sendin’ a letter to the papers sayin’ they had nothin’ to do with
the strike. It ud only be all swank anyway, an’ who cares? But I
declare to Christ they near had me plugged when I went in to report.
Commandant Gallagher was goin’ to send down men to plug ye too, but
lots o’ the other fellahs got around him and he didn’t. Anyway I was
fired out o’ the Organization as well as yersel’, although ye know
yersel’, Frankie, that I had nothin’ to do with firin’ that shot.
An’——”
“What the—” began McPhillip angrily, rapping the table; but again he
began to cough. Gypo went on without taking notice of the coughing.
“The police arrested me, but they could find no evidence, so they gev
me an awful beatin’ and threw me out. I ben wanderin’ around since
without a dog to lick me trousers, half starvin’!”
“What do I want to know about the Executive Committee?” grumbled
McPhillip angrily, recovering his breath. “I don’t want to hear
anything about executive committees or revolutionary organizations, me
curse on the lot o’ them. I want to hear about me father an’ mother.
What about ’em, Gypo?”
Gypo expanded his thick under lip and stared at McPhillip with
distended eyes. His eyes seemed to hold an expression of sadness in
their dim recesses, but it was hard to say. The face was so crude and
strong that the expression that might be termed sadness in another
face was mere wonder in his. For the first time he had noticed the
pallor of McPhillip’s face, the hectic flush, the fits of coughing,
the jerky movements and the evident terror in the eyes that used to be
so fearless.
“Frankie,” cried Gypo in his deep, slow, passionless voice, “yer sick.
Man alive, ye look as if ye were dyin’.”
McPhillip started and looked about him hurriedly as if he expected to
see death there behind his back waiting to pounce upon him.
“Have a bite,” continued Gypo, “’twill warm ye up.”
At the same time he himself began to eat again fiercely, like a great
strong animal, tackling the solitary meal of its day. The large red
hands with just stumps of fingers held the knife and fork so
ponderously that those frail instruments seemed to run the danger of
being crushed, like some costly thing picked up on the tip of an
elephant’s trunk. But McPhillip did not follow the invitation. He
looked angrily at the food for several seconds with wrinkled forehead,
as if he were trying to remember what it was and what it was for, and
then he spoke again.
“I know I’m dyin’, Gypo, an’ that’s why I came in. I got the
consumption.” Gypo started. He was struck at that moment by an insane
and monstrous idea. “I came in to get some money from me mother. An’ I
wanted to see her before I die. Good God, it was awful, Gypo, out
there on them hills all the winter, with me gun in me hand night an’
day, sleeping in holes on the mountains, with the winds blowin’ about
me all night, screechin’ like a pack o’ devils, an’ every blast o’
them winds spoke with a man’s voice, an’ I lyin’ there listenin’ to
them. Good God——”
Again he began to cough and he had to stop. Gypo was not listening to
him. He had not heard a word. A monstrous idea had prowled into his
head, like an uncouth beast straying from a wilderness into a
civilized place where little children are alone. He did not hear
McPhillip’s words or his coughing, although the monstrous idea was in
relation to McPhillip.
“So I said to mesel’, that I might as well chance me arm be comin’
into town as lyin’ out there, starvin’ to death with the cold an’
hunger an’ this cough. So I came along here to see ye, Gyp, first, so
as to get a bead on what’s doin’. Have they got a guard on the house?”
“Divil a guard,” replied Gypo suddenly, and then he started and
stretched out his right hand towards McPhillip with a little
exclamation. His eyes were wild and his mouth was wide open like the
mouth of a man looking at a spectre. Gypo’s mind was looking at that
uncouth ogre that was prowling about in his brain.
McPhillip leaned across the table. Gradually his eyes narrowed into an
intense stare of ferocity. His lips curled up and his forehead
wrinkled. He began to tremble.
“What is it, Gypo?” he hissed. “Tell me, Gyp, or I’ll . . .” He made a
rapid movement with the wrist of the hand that clutched his automatic.
“The cops are after me, Gyp, an’ I’m dyin’, so I don’t mind how I use
the twenty-four rounds I got left. I’ve notched their noses so they
can make a quare hole. There’s one for mesel’ too.” He shuddered as if
at the thought of a tender pleasure. Then he scowled fiercely and half
drew the butt of his pistol from his pocket. His voice was almost
inaudible. “Tell me the truth about how things stand without any jig
actin’ or I’ll plug ye.”
He glared at Gypo, his hand on his pistol, his right arm rigid to the
shoulder, ready to draw the gun and fire in one movement. Gypo stared
him in the eyes without any emotion, either of fear or of surprise.
With the nail of his right forefinger he abstracted a string of meat
from between two teeth. He spluttered with his lips and then he
shrugged his shoulders. The spectre had suddenly gone out of his mind
without his being able to make head or tail of it.
“No use talkin’ like that to me, Frankie,” he murmured lazily. “The
only reason why I didn’t want to say anythin’ was because I didn’t
like to . . .” Again the ghoulish thing came into his mind and he
stopped with a start. But almost immediately he continued in a forced
voice. He was beginning to be ashamed of that spectre as if he had
already given way to the horrid suggestions it made, although he did
not at all comprehend those suggestions. “I didn’t like to maybe send
ye into harm’s way. Ye see, I don’t know if there’s a guard on yer
father’s house or if there’s not. I generally knock around Titt
Street, but I haven’t been near No. 44 since that night I went there
with yer message an’ yer ol’ man told me never to darken his door
again. There may be a guard on it or there may be no guard on it. But
if I told ye there wasn’t and ye went there and got nabbed, ye know——”
“What are ye drivin’ at, Gypo?” growled McPhillip suspiciously.
“Nothin’ at all,” said Gypo with a great deep laugh. “But it’s how
ye’ve come in on me so sudden, an’ I don’t know right what I’m talkin’
about. Ye see, I’m all mixed up for the last six months, wanderin’
around here, without a mate that ud give me a tanner for a flop if I
were to die o’ the cold lyin’ in O’Connell’s Street with a foot o’
frost on the ground. They——”
“Oh, shut up about yersel’ an’ the frost an’ tell us somethin’.”
“Now don’t get yer rag out, Frankie. I was comin’ to that. I was
comin’ to it, man. They held me up in the street the other day
and had a long talk about ye. They’re after ye yet all right.
Sergeant McCartney an’ another fellah from Sligo was there. That
Detective-Sergeant McCartney is a bad lot. Huh, he’s a rascal, an’ no
goin’ behind a wall to say it. He swore to me that he’d get ye dead or
alive. ‘I wouldn’t care much for yer job then,’ says I to him, just
like that, an’ he gave me an eye that ud knock ye stiff.”
“He says he’s goin’ to get me, did he?” murmured McPhillip dreamily.
Suddenly his mind seemed to wander away and he lost interest in his
present surroundings. His eyes rested vacantly on the table, about a
foot away to the right.
Gypo looked hurriedly at the spot upon which McPhillip’s eyes were
fixed. He saw nothing. He looked back again at McPhillip’s face and
wrinkled up his forehead. Then he made a noise in his throat and began
to eat once more with great rapidity. He breathed on his food, to cool
it, as he put it into his jaws. He made noises.
McPhillip stared at the table for a long time. His right hand toyed
nervously with the butt of his pistol. His left hand rapped the table.
Then a strange sparkle came into his eyes. He laughed suddenly. It was
a strange laugh. It made Gypo start.
“What’s the matter, Frankie?” he asked in a terrified voice.
“Nothin’ atall,” said McPhillip, shaking himself. “Gimme somethin’ t’
eat.”
He began to eat ravenously, using his penknife as a knife and fork. He
had not eaten for a long time. He did not taste the food but gulped it
down at a great speed.
Gypo ate also, but he kept staring at McPhillip while he ate. Every
time his wandering little eyes reached McPhillip’s eyes they narrowed
and became very sharp. Then he would roll his tongue around in his
cheek and make a sucking sound.
At last McPhillip stopped eating. He wiped his penknife on his
trousers and put it into his pocket.
“Gypo,” he said slowly, “are there any cops watchin’ our house, the
old man’s place in Titt Street?”
Gypo shook his head three times in reply. His mouth was full. Then he
swallowed his mouthful, he put his fork to his forehead and set to
thinking.
“Lemme see,” he said at last. “Yeh. They had two cops watchin’ the
place until after Christmas. Then they took ’em off. They didn’t put
any on since as far as I know, but I believe that a fellah goes around
there now an’ again to make inquiries. O’ course they might have
secret-service men on it as well. God only knows who’s givin’
information to the Government now, an’ who isn’t. Ye never know who
yer talkin’ to. I never in me life saw anythin’ like it. Tell ye what,
Frankie, the workin’ class is not worth fightin’ for. They think yer
gone to the United States, but all the same it might be dangerous
goin’ down there now. I’m sorry I have no money to give ye, so as ye
could——”
“Where the divil did ye get all the gab?” cried McPhillip suddenly,
looking suspiciously at Gypo. “I never knew ye to let out all that
much talk in a day, or maybe a whole week. Are ye goin’ to the
university now in yer spare time or what ails ye?”
McPhillip began to rap the table again. There was silence. Gypo
nonchalantly transferred the scraps from his plate to his mouth on the
flat of his knife. When the plate was completely cleaned up he rattled
the knife and fork on to it. Then he stuck out his massive chest and
rubbed his palms along it.
Suddenly McPhillip swore and jumped to his feet. He stood, as if in a
dream, looking at the table for several moments. Gypo watched his
face, with his little tufted eyebrows quivering. At the same time he
cleaned his teeth with his left thumb-nail. At last McPhillip drew in
a deep breath through his teeth, making a noise as if he were sucking
ice.
“Right,” he said, with his eyes still on the table. “My ould fellah is
at home now, is he?”
“Yes,” said Gypo. “I saw him yesterday. He was over in the ’Pool on a
job, but he’s back this fortnight. I think he’s workin’ on a new house
out in Rathmines.”
“Right,” said McPhillip again. Then he raised his eyes, looked at Gypo
fiercely and smiled in a curious fashion. “See ye again, Gypo, unless
the cops get me.”
As he spoke he seemed to think of something. His face quivered and
darkened. Then he shrugged his shoulders and laughed outright. He
nodded twice and turned on his heel. He strode hurriedly out of the
room.
Gypo looked after him for a long time without moving. He had finished
cleaning his teeth. He just stared at the door through which McPhillip
had disappeared. Then gradually his mind began to fill with
suggestions. His forehead wrinkled up. His body began to fidget. At
last he jumped to his feet. He collected the plate, the knife and fork
and the salt. He walked into the passage and put them in a locker,
which was provided by the management for the lodgers. The locker did
not belong to Gypo. He had no locker because he was merely a casual
lodger since he had no regular income to pay for a bed by the week.
The locker belonged to a carter of Gypo’s acquaintance. Gypo had seen
the man put his next-day’s dinner in the locker and go away without
turning the key. Gypo knew also that the man would not be back until
ten o’clock that night. So he took the dinner.
He placed the things in the locker and walked away casually. He sat on
the corner of a seat in one of the alcoves. He rummaged in the pockets
of his dungarees and collected several minute scraps of cigarettes. He
carefully unrolled the scraps, collecting all the tobacco in the palm
of his right hand. Then he begged a cigarette paper from an old man
who sat beside him. The old man had none and said so with an angry
curse. Gypo wrinkled his forehead and sniffed as if he were smelling
the old man. Then he turned to a young man who passed and requested a
cigarette paper. The young man halted and supplied one grudgingly.
Gypo took the paper in silence, without a word or a nod of thanks. He
rolled his cigarette and lit it at the gas jet. Then he sat down
again, crossed his legs, let his body go limp and began to smoke.
His ears seemed to stick out very far, as he lay back limply in the
seat, in the half-darkness of the corridor.
For a minute the odour and the taste of the tobacco held him in a
state of enjoyment. He did not think either of the fact that he had no
bed for the night or of his meeting with McPhillip. Then gradually his
forehead began to wrinkle and furrow. His little tufted eyebrows began
to twitch. When he pulled at his cigarette his face was enshrouded in
a bright glow and the humps on his face stood out, glistening and
smooth. He began to shift about in his seat. First he uncrossed his
legs. Then he crossed them again. He began to tap his knee with his
right hand. He sighed. His cigarette wore out until it was burning his
lips without his becoming aware of the fact. Then he spluttered it out
of his mouth on to his chest and he jumped to his feet.
He stood looking at the ground with his hands deep in his trousers
pockets. He seemed to be deep in thought, but he was not thinking. At
least there was no concrete idea fixed in his mind. Two facts rumbled
about in his brain, making that loud primeval noise, which is the
beginning of thought and which tired people experience when the jaded
brain has spun out the last threads of its energy. There were two
facts in his brain. First, the fact of his meeting with McPhillip.
Second, the fact of his having no money to buy a bed for the night.
These two facts stood together in an amorphous mass. But he could not
summon up courage to tackle them and place them in proper
juxtaposition and reason out their relationship. He just stood looking
at the ground.
Then a drunken bookmaker’s clerk named Shanahan brushed against him.
He stepped aside with a muttered oath. He pulled one hand from his
pocket to strike, with the fingers extended in the shape of a bird’s
claws. Shanahan, doubled up in the middle by the helplessness of
intoxication, stared at Gypo with blue eyes that had gone almost
completely red. Gypo turned away with a shrug of his shoulders. At any
other time he would gladly have availed himself of this opportunity of
begging a shilling from Shanahan. Shanahan was always good for the
loan of a shilling when he was drunk. A shilling would procure Gypo a
bed for the night and leave a little for a light breakfast in the
morning. Ten minutes ago, a _rencontre_ of this sort would have been a
godsend to Gypo. But now, those two cursed facts stood in his brain,
making him unconscious of everything else.
He walked out of the House and up the lane towards B— Road.
He walked with his hands deep in his pockets, slowly, with his thighs
brushing on the insides as he walked. He seemed to haul his big boots
after him, bringing them as near the ground as possible. His hips
moved up and down as his feet went forward. His eyes were on the
ground. His lips were distended outwards. His little torn, brown,
slouch hat was perched incongruously on the top of his head, much too
small for his large square skull, with the brim turned up closely all
around. When a squall of wind, laden with little sharp hailstones,
struck him across the face and body, his clothes puffed out and he
curled up his short stubby nose in an angry grin.
He was looking into the window of a saddler’s shop in Dame Street,
when the relationship between the two facts became known to him. He
was looking at a pair of bright spurs and his face contorted suddenly.
His eyes bulged as if he were taken with a fit of terror. He looked
about him suspiciously, as if he were about to steal something for the
first time. Then he rushed away hurriedly. He moved through lanes and
alleyways to the river. He crossed the street to the river wall. He
leaned his elbows on the wall and spat into the dark water. With his
chin resting on his arms, he stood perfectly still, thinking.
He was contemplating the sudden discovery that his mind had made,
about the relationship between his having no money for a bed and his
having met Francis Joseph McPhillip, who was wanted for murder in
connection with the farm-labourers’ strike at M—— in the previous
October. A terrific silence reigned within his head.
Now and again he looked around him with a kind of panting noise. He
snorted and smelled the air and screwed up his eyes. Then he leaned
over the wall again and rested his chin on his crossed hands. He was
that way for half an hour. Then at last he drew himself up straight.
He stretched his arms above his head. He yawned. He stuck his hands in
his trousers pockets. He stared at the ground. Then with his eyes on
the ground he walked away at the same slouching pace as before.
He crossed the river and traversed a maze of side streets, with his
eyes always on the ground, until he reached the corner of a dark side
street, that had a bright lamp hanging over a doorway, half-way down
on the right-hand side. That was a police-station. He stared at the
lamp with his eyes wide open for several moments. Almost a minute.
Then he said “Huh” out loud. Then he looked around him cautiously on
all sides.
The street was empty. Rain drizzled slowly. He examined the street,
the warehouses on his side of the street, the blank wall on the other
side. Then his eyes came back to the bright lamp that hung above the
door of the police-station. He sighed deeply and began to walk slowly,
ever so slowly and ponderously, towards the lamp.
He walked up the steps, steadily, one at a time, making a loud noise.
He kicked the swing door open with his foot without taking his hands
out of his pockets. In the hallway, a constable in a black,
cone-shaped, night helmet stood facing him, pulling on his gloves.
Gypo halted and stared at the constable.
“I have come to claim the twenty pounds reward offered by the Farmers’
Union for information concerning Francis Joseph McPhillip,” he said in
a deep, low voice.