Old women with shawls over their heads flitted about like shadows. They darted from doorway to doorway, talking, making threatening gestures at something remote, crossing themselves with their haggard faces turned upwards to the sky. Young women walked arm-in-arm, slowly, up and down the street. They looked at No. 44 as they passed it, in silence, with awe in their open, red lips.
No. 44 was the centre of interest. The horror that had come to it had aroused the whole street. It had aroused the whole quarter. Three streets away, bar attendants stood gaping behind their counters, while some man, with an excited red face and a big mouth, recounted the manner of Frank McPhillip’s death, with oaths and frenzied gesticulations. Everywhere, in the streets, in the public-houses, in the tenement kitchens, where old red-nosed men craned forward their shrivelled necks to hear the dreadful news, one word was whispered with fear and hatred.
It was the word “Informer.”
Gypo heard that word as he reached the junction of Titt Street and Bryan Road—a long wide road, lined with little shops, the sidewalks strewn with papers, little heaps of dirt in the gutters, two tramcar lines rusted by the drizzling rain, groups of loafers at every lamppost, at the public-house doors and on the Canal Bridge, where the road disappeared abruptly over the horizon, as if it had fallen over a precipice into space. He was passing Ryan’s public-house that stood at the corner, half in Titt Street, half in Bryan Road. The word came to him through the open door of the public bar. He had slowed down his pace on reaching the neighbourhood and when he heard the word uttered, he brought his left leg up to the right and instead of thrusting it forward for another pace, he dropped it heavily but noiselessly to the wet pavement of red and white glazed brick diamonds, with which the front of the public-house was decorated.
A squall of wind came around the corner just then and buffeted him about the body. He opened his mouth and nostrils. He distended his eyes. He thrust forward his head and listened.
“There must ’a been information gev, ’cos how else could they—” a tall lean man was saying, as he stood in the middle of the sawdust-covered floor, holding a pint of black frothing porter in his right hand.
Then a burly carter, with a grey sack around his shoulders like a cape, jostled the man who was speaking, in an awkward attempt to cross the floor through the crowd. But the man had said enough. Gypo knew that they were talking about the death of Francis Joseph McPhillip and that they suspected that information had been given.
Again the idea came into his head that he must form a plan without a moment’s delay. But the inside of his head was perfectly empty, with his forehead pressing against it, hot and congested, as if he had been struck a violent blow with a flat stick. The idea floundered about in his head, repeating itself aimlessly, like a child calling for help in an empty house. “No,” he muttered to himself, as he gripped his clasp knife fiercely in his trousers pocket, “I can’t make out anythin’ standin’ here in the rain in front of a pub. Better go ahead.”
He hurled himself around the corner against the squall into Titt Street with almost drunken violence. Then he realized with terror the fate that menaced him if … He saw the groups under the lampposts. He saw the flitting women. He saw the youths, hushed, strained, expectant. He heard the rumble of human sound. The dark, sombre, mean street that had been familiar to him until now, suddenly appeared strange, as if he had never seen it before, as if it had suddenly become inhabited by dread monsters that were intent on devouring him. It appeared to him rather, that he had wandered, through a foolish error of judgment, into a strange and hostile foreign country where he did not know the language.
He glared about him aggressively, as he walked up the Street. He planted his feet on the ground firmly, walking with his legs wide apart, with his shoulders squared, with his head thrust forward into the wind like the jib boom of a ship.
As he was passing an open doorway somebody cried “hist.” He halted like a challenged sentry. He wheeled savagely towards the doorway and called out.
“Who are cryin’ hist after?”
“It’s only me,” chirped an old lady in a clean white apron, a woman he knew well. “I thought ye were Jim Delaney, the coalheaver. I got to whisper on account o’ me throat. I got a cold a fortnight ago, scrubbin’ floors out at Clontarf, an’ it’s getting worse instead of better. The doctor—”
But Gypo glanced angrily at her bandaged throat and her dim blue eyes and passed on with a grunt without listening to her further. He arrived at No. 44 and entered through the open door without knocking.
No. 44 was the most respectable house in the street. Its redbrick front was cleaner than the other fronts. Its parlour window was unbroken and was decorated with clean curtains of Nottingham lace. Its door was freshly painted black. Its owner Jack McPhillip, the bricklayer, had already begun the ascent from the working class to the middle class. He was a Socialist and chairman of his branch of
