When Gallagher heard the first shot, he started to his feet angrily.
He thought that his orders had been disobeyed and that they had shot
the prisoner before taking him to the mountains. But even as he stood
up, his anger changed to terror. He heard the rushing of feet and the
babble of shouting voices, calling excitedly, in a panic:
“He’s escaped. He’s escaped.”
“The stairs. The stairs. Up the stairs, quick.”
Mary McPhillip screamed. Gallagher did not heed her. For three seconds
his body was numbed with fear. He could not move a muscle. His lips
blubbered. He was like an exhausted man about to have a heart attack.
He stood unstably, like an uprooted tree, balancing for its fall. Mary
jumped up and clung to him. He did not look at her. Then Mulholland
rushed in. He was livid with fear.
“He’s escaped, Commandant,” he gasped; “he’s gone.”
Then Gallagher shook himself violently, thrusting Mary from him
rudely. Uttering a volley of almost inarticulate oaths, he drew his
pistol and grasped Mulholland by the throat. Mulholland yelled and
struggled downwards to his knees.
“Don’t shoot me, Commandant,” he whined. “It wasn’t my fault. That man
is a devil out of hell. There’s a spell on him. Don’t fire for the
love of God.”
“Damn you and God,” snarled Gallagher, hurling him away.
He rushed out into the hall.
“After him,” he yelled. “After him. After him.”
There was nobody to take any notice of him. Everybody was on the
street in pursuit of Gypo, except the sentry, who stood uncertainly in
the doorway of the empty cell, with his pistol in his hand and his cap
turned backwards, terrified, gaping at Gallagher.
Then a rush of feet came on the stairs. Four men were coming down
carrying Flynn between them.
“Who is that?” cried Gallagher.
“It’s Flynn, Commandant,” whispered one.
“His jaw is broken in a jelly,” whispered another.
They arrived at the bottom of the stairs. Gallagher glanced at the
prostrate, sagging body of Flynn. “Throw him in there on a form at
once,” he said. “Mulholland. Come here. Where are those others?”
“Here they come, Commandant.”
“There’s no sight of him, Commandant,” gasped Tommy Connor, leaping
down the stairs. “We thought we had better come back.”
“All right,” said Gallagher. “Are you all here now?”
He spoke in a terribly calm voice now. It was terrifying. Nobody
answered for a moment.
“Hurry on, Peter,” said Connor to somebody that appeared at the top of
the stairs.
It was Hackett. He rushed down, panting, with wild eyes. They were all
back again.
“Who’s responsible for this?” cried Gallagher.
Nobody answered. He swore and strode away down the passage to the
cell. Connor and Mulholland followed him. The others stood spellbound.
Gallagher pushed the sentry out of the way with a curse and entered
the cell. He flashed his torch. He saw everything. A cold perspiration
started gently around his temples. He shivered. He left the cell
followed by the two men. Nobody spoke. They returned to the men at the
foot of the stairway. As Connor passed the room where Mary McPhillip
was, he ran in, picked her up from the floor and put her sitting on
the form. Then he rushed away to Gallagher.
Gallagher stood looking at the ground for a few moments, with the men
standing around him in silence. Then he looked around fiercely at
every one. He spoke gently and in a friendly tone.
“Comrades,” he said, “our lives are at stake. What’s more,
the Organization is in danger. The cause is in danger.
Comrades,—that—man—must—be—found. That man must be found if it costs a
hundred men. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Commandant,” cried they all eagerly.
“Finnigan and Murphy stay here on guard. Do you hear?”
They clicked their heels in silence.
“Mulholland, you take the rest with you in the van and try and cut him
off from the bridges. He will try and cross the river to the south to
get away to the mountains. Get away immediately. Place your men and
take up position yourself at the Butt Bridge. I’ll send reinforcements
to you there and another officer. Slattery, you get reinforcements.
Mobilize ten men from this district. Take them off your own list. Beat
it. Quick. Off you go, Bartly. Remember the Cause is at stake. We are
lost if that man gets away. He may be making for the police already.
Run for your lives.”
They went up the stairs, rushing with fanatical enthusiasm. In three
seconds Gallagher was alone at the foot of the stairs. One sentry took
up position at the top of the stairway. The other man went into the
guardroom with Flynn. Mary McPhillip was standing in the doorway of
the witnesses’ room, shivering, almost hysterical with fright.
Gallagher stood for almost a minute, motionless, looking at the
stairs, with his eyes almost shut. Then he shuddered and went into the
guardroom. The sentry, a red-faced, young grocer’s assistant, was
tying a red silk handkerchief around Flynn’s jaws. The only part of
Flynn’s face that was visible was his eyes. Gallagher watched the
sentry tying the knot at the back of Flynn’s skull. Then he looked
into Flynn’s eyes.
Flynn stared back coldly. Although he was suffering agonies of pain
from his broken jaw, his eyes betrayed no sign of pain.
“Did you fire at him, Dart?” cried Gallagher in a whisper.
Flynn made a slight nodding movement.
“Did you hit him?”
Flynn raised his right hand and waved it from side to side, like a
marker giving the signal for a washout. Gallagher sighed.
“Stick it out,” he said coldly. “We’ll get a doctor as soon as the
reinforcements come. Can you swallow a drop of brandy?”
Flynn nodded.
“Here’s my flask. Use it.”
He put the flask into Flynn’s hand. He pressed the hand as he did so.
Then he left the guardroom and walked over to Mary McPhillip.
She left the doorway when she saw him coming. He found her sitting on
the form. He stood beside her, looking at the ground, wrapt in
thought, gripping her shoulder with his right hand. She became
terrified at his attitude, at his silence and the look on his face,
which she could see dimly in the gloom. His face had become ashen
pale. His eyes had sunk and grown glassy. The blood had left his lips.
He was continually grinding his back teeth, slowly.
“Dan,” she whispered at length, “what’s the matter with you?”
He did not answer for several seconds. Then he started, gasped, and
let go her shoulder. He took two paces rapidly towards the door. He
halted and put his hand to his forehead. He wheeled about and looked
at her curiously.
“Oh yes,” he said calmly. “I forgot. Excuse me. I was thinking of
something and I didn’t hear what you said. Let me see. Yes.”
He sat down beside her. He took her right hand gently into both his
own and began to fondle it, with the soft gentle movements of a cat.
He began to speak gently, in a soft, sad voice, looking at the floor
in front of him.
“You’ll have to stay here with me now, Mary,” he said, “until I’m
leaving here. Maybe we’ll have to stay here two hours, maybe more.
Gypo has escaped. I can’t move until I get news of him. The prisoner
has escaped,” he repeated almost inaudibly. “If he can’t be found it
will be the end of me, Mary. He knows so much.”
Mary turned towards him eagerly and swallowed her breath. Her eyes
grew moist and her lips quivered. The gentle tone of his voice went
straight to her heart. It drew her towards him, not with the dreadful
fascination with which she was drawn towards him before, but with a
soft, gentle attraction, like what she had imagined love would be. Not
the calm, calculating, respectable affection she experienced for the
man she intended to marry, Joseph Augustine Short, but that
tumultuous, devouring passion which she had expected real love to be,
the love that was written of in books and poems. Ah! How she could
love him like this! Soft and gentle like this! She could approach him
and touch him, touch something in him that was soft and gentle and
sympathetic and human. He was in danger. Good God! It was good that he
was in danger, if it helped to disclose to her his real self. It had
made him weak, this danger, ridding him of the horrid, impenetrable
strength, that kept him cruel and cold. If she could have him to
herself like this, she would sacrifice even her religion for his love.
Aye! She would even forsake God for him like this.
So she thought, looking at him with tears in her eyes.
She smoothed his shoulder gently with her hand and whispered to him:
“Dan,” she said, “you are in danger. Can I help you, Dan? Dan, you
know I’d give my life for you.”
Gallagher turned towards her slowly.
“You would, Mary,” he said softly.
She nodded. He took her suddenly in his arms.
“You love me, Mary. Say you love me, Mary.”
“I love you, Dan,” she breathed on his lips.
They kissed passionately, with strange abandonment. Then they sat for
a minute, with their cheeks together, hardly conscious of anything but
of a strange exaltation that was undefinable. A hot feeling of joyous
exaltation pervaded their bodies. But it was not the exaltation of
love. It was an abandoned sadness born of grief. The grief of two
human souls clinging together for solace. It was beautiful and pure
like love, that exaltation, born of fear, and of the eternal
melancholy of the entramelled Irish soul, struggling in bondage.
For Mary perhaps, it was almost pure mating love. For she loved that
gentle voice, the last remnant of the gentle nature, that had been
devoured in the struggle of life and replaced by a cold, callous,
ambitious nature. She loved, but she only loved a phantom, a shy ghost
come for an hour of the night, to fly from the dawn.
But for Gallagher, his caresses were a mask. He had hidden behind his
gentle nature for the moment, as behind a mask, to rest and plot. Men
like him always lean on women for support in moments of extreme
danger.
Even as he sat with her arms about him, with her breathing words of
love on his lips, he was thinking, not of her, but of the great danger
that confronted him. Would Gypo inform again before he was caught?
At length, with a low exclamation he got to his feet, releasing
himself hurriedly from her embrace. He clenched his fists.
“Mary,” he said without looking at her, “you see how I need you. I
need somebody to talk to, somebody to trust. There is nobody else but
you I can trust, Mary. And I don’t know why I trust you.”
He paused. She was not listening. She was suffering a reaction from
her exaltation. Why was he talking like this? A lover did not talk
like this. He was only thinking of himself.
“But since the first time I saw you, standing in the crowd with
another girl, while I was addressing a strike meeting, I knew I could
trust you. I remember thinking as I saw your face, that you were the
woman for me. It was queer and I can’t explain it. Something in your
face told me that you were my woman. It’s very queer, that. You see
thousands of faces every day. There is something queer and mysterious
in them all, something suspicious and hostile. Then you see one face
that you have been looking for all your life as it were. There is
nothing hidden or mysterious in that face. It can hold nothing hidden
from you. It’s queer. I haven’t worked it out yet. It’s in the eyes, I
think. The eyes are the doors of the mind. But I haven’t worked it out
yet. But what am I talking about? It’s a sure sign that I’m worried
when I ramble off like this. I talk to myself in my room, for want of
a listener, when I’m up against it. I talk all night, sitting up in
bed, with a pistol in my hand.” He lowered his voice and smiled with
his lips, while his eyes glittered. He looked at her for a moment. “If
the boys knew that I get the wind up now and again, they wouldn’t be
afraid of me. And then. . . .” He drew his hand across his windpipe.
“Sure. That’s what keeps me safe. They are afraid of me. That’s all it
is. It’s not love. Oh no. I wouldn’t have it, anyway. There’s nothing
like fear. Nobody loves me. Not even that slobber of a fellow Hackett,
who stooped down one day on the quays to tie my shoelace. He’d die for
me, but only because he believes I’m cold and hard and callous and
that I could shoot him dead without a quiver of an eyelid. You
see . . . he’s the opposite from . . . There you are, Mary. Good God!
I must be very bad to-night. I’m wandering. Mary, does your right knee
tremble and you can’t stop it?”
“Dan, Dan,” cried Mary, seizing his right knee in both her hands,
“don’t worry. Don’t worry, Dan.” She began to rub the knee. “That’s
nothing. My father often gets it. It’s only nerve tension. A nurse out
of the Mater Hospital told me all about it. You can live to be a
hundred with it. She says it’s due to tea drinking. But . . . Dan, why
are you so hard and cynical all of a sudden about everything? Can’t
you give it all up and settle down? You said you——”
“Settle down?” cried Gallagher, jumping to his feet and looking at her
fiercely, as if she had suggested a heinous crime. “Give it up! How do
you mean? Pooh! Women, women, women! You don’t understand that it’s my
life. It’s my life, I say. You might as well tell me stop breathing
and . . . After all . . .” He seemed to think of something startlingly
unexpected, for he looked at her with open lips. He continued, shyly
almost, in a scarcely audible voice, as if he were soliloquizing.
“After all, you weren’t affected the way I expected you would be. You
would never understand. You would never join me in the way . . . Hm! I
see.”
“Now what have I said, Dan?” she whispered nervously, biting her
fingers.
She was terrified that she had lost him . . . yes, in a way, strangely
enough, she was terrified at losing his love, as if she had him
securely in her possession, as a loving husband for a long time . . .
that she had lost him by some foolish phrase.
“Nothing,” he muttered solidly.
He crossed his hands on his chest and began to pace up and down once
more. It was a long time until he spoke. She tried to get enraged with
him and could not do so. She began to pity herself.
“It’s waiting like this that’s hard,” he said suddenly in a whisper.
“I don’t mind dying. It’s not that I mind. It’s waiting without a
chance of knowing what’s going to happen. They talk of the bravery of
those louts that get the V.C. What are they but stupid carrot heads?
Theirs is the bravery of the dull-witted ox. A man must be intelligent
to be brave. It’s only the intelligent man that can visualize danger.
If he is brave he never seeks danger, but he seeks dangerous methods
of life. You see the difference? Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. I had
this all worked out a long time ago so I don’t need to discuss it very
much. But this is the point I have to explain now. There is no danger
in open warfare. There’s merely death, and death is not dangerous. The
Russians proved that. Not recently, but in Bielinsky’s time. That is,
of course, they proved it in relation to their own needs. But
according to my own calculations and discoveries, death brings us back
into the great consciousness of the Universe, which is eternal.
Therefore death, properly speaking, is not death. It is a second stage
of birth. No, that’s quite wrong. I can see where that would lead me.
There is neither birth nor death. But . . . All that’s out of the
count. We have to tackle a minor question. Obviously it’s a minor
question. Now that’s better. Now we see death is not a danger. But
defeat is a danger. Defeat by one’s enemies. Not defeat by one’s
friends. But of course there are no friends. Friends is a bourgeois
word. It has no longer any meaning. So defeat in the true sense means
defeat by one’s enemies. It’s synonymous. Well, I face defeat.
Therefore. . . .” Suddenly he waved his right hand in a circular
fashion above his head and then pointed it fiercely at the wall to his
left. “It’s waiting like this that’s hard,” he cried fiercely. “I’ve
been out with a gun many a time. I’ve been shot at. I have two holes
in me. That’s nothing. You don’t know what’s happening because you
become an animal. But waiting is different. You are in command. That’s
different. A brain, a mind, a great eye, probing the unknown.
But . . .” He stopped suddenly and tittered audibly in his throat.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph protect me,” Mary began to murmur rapidly to
herself. She shut her eyes and tried to think of Heaven. Her mind had
suddenly become void of all sense of knowledge and emotion. She felt
an intense cold in every pore of her flesh. As she rambled through the
prayer over and over again with her lips, a ridiculous rigmarole of a
song went through her mind with a tintillating sound, about, “Piping
Tim of Galway.”
He sat down beside her on the form, bent towards her and kissed her
coldly on the forehead. His cold lips remained on her forehead for
three seconds. Then he sighed and got to his feet again. He must keep
in movement. He must keep talking. He could not stop his brain from
thinking at an enormous rate and the only way to relieve the
congestion was by talking aloud. The formation and enunciation of the
words deflected a fraction of the brain forces and liquidated them.
Faster, faster, wilder, wilder he must talk, to keep pace with the
tremendous speed of his heated brain.
“Where is he now?” he whispered with a kind of cackle in his throat
that was like a laugh. “Where is he now? Why can’t we see with the
mind, long distances? How very stupid I am after all in spite of my
philosophy. He might be in the police station at this very moment,
with a big, fat sergeant taking down his statement.” He shuddered and
bit his lip. “Good Lord Mary! If you only knew what a statement he
could make. Ha! ha! He and Francis are the only two men in the
Organization who could tell anything worth while. And Francis is
dead.”
He paused. Mary bit her teeth, dispelled the tintillating rigmarole of
a song and began another prayer, one to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
“Ye see, Gypo was so useful. There were things he could do that no
other man could do. Not so much by his immense strength, as on account
of his particular mental qualities. It’s easy to get as strong a man,
but a mind like that is hard to find. I doubt if there is another. He
was priceless. Damn him. He’s a superhuman monster. Why did I say
_was_ before? He is. _He is._ That’s the worst of it. I wish he . . .
The government would give a million pounds for that statement. Good
Lord! I never thought Gypo could turn informer. It must have been a
mistake. I couldn’t be wrong about him. Some mistake. Sure. He isn’t
the type. Sure. I swear he isn’t. How could he be? He responds to me
like, like a needle to a magnet. Then how did he inform? On his own
pal too! That’s the strange thing about it. I’ve been studying him for
eight years and he never showed any signs of personal initiative.
Never once. I shouldn’t have dropped him for six months. But of course
I had to keep up respect for the rules of the Organization. Good
Lord!” he cried pathetically, looking at the ceiling and wringing his
hands almost in despair, “I’m alone with nobody to help me. Mary,
there’s nobody to give me advice. Why did nobody warn me against
expelling Gypo? What?”
He paused. She did not reply. She shuddered and did not look. It was
difficult to pray. She was so tired. And it was terrifying not to
pray. Then she might have to listen to him.
Then suddenly she was startled into an upright position, with her eyes
staring and her mouth wide open. Gallagher had uttered a strange
sound. Then he ran crouching to the form. He hurled himself upon it.
He clutched at her knees. He was looking with wild, strained eyes at a
point on the wall. He jabbered in a dry parched voice.
“There he is, Mary. I see him. I see him. I see the sergeant writing
it down. They are giving him a drink. D’ye see him, Mary, with his
little hat perched at the back of his head, making the statement? D’ye
hear him say my name? D’ye hear him?”
She drew his head towards her with both hands, trying to make him look
at her face, trying to get his staring eyes away from the wall, but he
struggled against her. His eyes were fixed wildly on some point in the
wall. He writhed.
Then suddenly he sighed, turned towards her and smiled. It was a
natural, healthy smile. His eyes danced humorously as he smiled. His
terror had passed away, giving place to a momentary joy. He felt
hilarious, like a woman drunk with wine. He took Mary suddenly into
his arms and kissed her. He tickled her neck playfully with his
fingers, laughing all the time.
But she struggled to free herself, panting. He loosed her and stopped
laughing, looking at her in surprise.
“Did I frighten you, Mary?” he said casually. “That’s all right. I
often get a fit of the blues like that. Don’t worry. Did you think I
was mad?” he added with a little laugh.
“Oh, you’re all right now, Dan, ha, ha.”
She was trying to laugh to cheer herself, but she made a poor job of
it.
“Sure I am, Mary. As right as rain. Everything will be all right. Of
course it will. Don’t worry.”
There was a long silence. They sat close together, looking at the
ground.
“Tell me, Dan,” whispered Mary awkwardly, “did you see anything that
time? When you were looking at the wall? Did you see anything? Tell
me, quick. It’s such a queer place, this. I think there are devils in
it.”
“Damn it!” snapped Gallagher. “Why did you bring the subject up again,
when I want to forget it? Devils! Huh! Devils!”
He jumped to his feet and took two paces forward, stretching his hands
out over his head with peculiar intensity, like a man with a rheumatic
twinge in his shoulder blades. Then he shrugged himself and rattled
off with startling suddenness, in a quite calm voice, cheerful and
debonair.
“You are right,” he said, “after all, in asking the question. I should
have explained at the time,” he yawned, “what I meant by seeing him.
Of course I was speaking figuratively. There are no such things as
devils, at least not supernatural creations, as the current
superstition understands them to be. The only devils to be afraid of
are human devils. I know numbers of them. They are real enough. But
they wear sheep’s clothing. Respectable, law-abiding fellows. I’ll see
them again in a few hours, if Gypo gets to the police station with his
story. They’ll drawl out slowly their sentence on me. Ha! Pretty boys.
And here I am doing nothing while they are . . .”
He moved rapidly up and down again, clutching his hands behind his
back, jerking his body about and crunching his teeth.
“I am alone,” he continued. “Alone. I stand alone. They can easily buy
off the rest of the Executive Committee. They’ll be only too glad to
get away free, with their lives, at any cost, if it comes to a fight.
If evidence is found against me, sufficient to prove certain things,
they can strike at me with impunity. My own rank and file would be the
first to stone me to death. Their damn superstitions always stand in
the way of revolutionary beliefs. They talk at International
Head-quarters about romanticism and leftism and all sorts of freak
notions. What do they know about the peculiar type of hog mind that
constitutes an Irish peasant?”
“How dare you?” cried Mary indignantly.
He looked at her. Her eyes were flashing. She sat erect on the form.
He had never seen a woman wild and imperious like that. He smiled
weakly.
“Sorry to hurt your feelings,” he said cynically. “But I’m beyond
that. Pish! I’ve got the whole country in a fine net and I’m within
the law until they find something definite to go upon. I can snap my
fingers at the lot of you.” He grew fierce and arrogant. “You and your
patriotic ideas! I was wrong about you. I don’t want you. I never
wanted you. Do you hear? I snap my fingers at the whole world. That
hulking swine can do his best. I will drain his blood before dawn.
Mark my words. He’ll never reach the police station. My destiny stands
against him. And——”
Just then the sentry’s challenge rang out. Gallagher immediately stood
stock still and listened. Then he rushed into the passage, drawing his
pistol and muttering something. Two men were hurrying down the stairs.
The first of them came up smartly to Gallagher and clicked his heels.
He was a small, slight man, with hawk’s eyes and a long, pointed,
curved nose. He wore a loose raincoat and a check cap. He was Billy
Burton, an Insurance Agent, a captain in the Revolutionary
Organization. Gallagher shook hands with him eagerly.
“Glad they found you in, Billy,” he said. “You’re the very man I
want.”
He led Burton into the guardroom and rapidly explained the situation.
Then he detailed a plan. He detailed the plan coolly and minutely as
if he had spent weeks at it.
Burton listened, blinking his little eyes, sniffing, biting his nails,
fondling the butt of his automatic pistol in his breast pocket.
Over on the form, Flynn was sitting, with his broken jaw swathed in a
red silk handkerchief. He sat impassively, inscrutably communing with
himself. He seemed to be unconscious of his surroundings, with his
mind fixed immutably on some infinite problem.
The only sounds in the room were the drip, drip of the water from the
many roofs and the patter of Gallagher’s voice.
His voice was again cold, hard, dominating, vital.