In November a representative of the International Executive of the Revolutionary Organization was sent over from the Continent to make a special report on the situation in Ireland. The following is an extract from a secret report drawn up by him, after spending three months in Ireland secretly touring the country:
“… For the moment it would be a tactical blunder to expel Comrade Gallagher from the International. At the same time there can be no doubt that the Irish Section has deviated entirely from the principles of revolutionary Communism as laid down in the laws of the International. Comrade Gallagher rules the national Organization purely and simply as a dictator. There is a semblance of an Executive Committee but only in name. The tactics are guided by whatever whim is uppermost in Comrade Gallagher’s mind at the moment. Contrary to the orders issued from Headquarters, the Organization is still purely military and has made hardly any attempt to come into the open as a legal political party. This is perhaps not entirely due to Comrade Gallagher’s fault. There are local causes, arising out of the recent struggle for national independence, which has left the working class in the grip of a romantic love of conspiracy, a strong religious and bourgeois-nationalist outlook on life and a hatred of constitutional methods. This makes it difficult for the moment to check Comrade Gallagher’s hold …”
VII
Gallagher’s eyes had opened wide when the three men came into the room. Then they narrowed until they became thin slits under their long black lashes. He nodded to Mulholland and Connor. Then he stared at Gypo.
Gypo returned the stare. The two men, unlike in their features and bodies, were exactly alike in the impassivity of their stare. Gypo’s face was like a solid and bulging granite rock, impregnable but lacking that intelligence that is required by strength in order to be able to conquer men. Gallagher’s face was less powerful physically, but it was brimful of intelligence. The forehead was high and it seemed to surround the face. The eyes were large and wide apart. The nose was long and straight. The mouth was thin-lipped. The jaws were firm but slender and refined like a woman’s jaws. The whole face had absolutely no colour, but there was a constant movement in the cheeks, as if tiny streams were coursing irregularly beneath the smooth glossy skin. The hair was coal-black and cut close. The ears were large. The neck opened out gradually from the base of the shoulders on either side, like a hill disappearing into a plain.
Then he jumped off his high stool and stood with his legs wide apart in front of Gypo. He was five feet eleven inches and a half in height, but Gypo towered over him with his extra two inches. Gallagher wore a loose brown raincoat, from his throat almost to his ankles, that made his well-built frame look larger and stouter. Yet Gypo, standing bare in his dungarees that were now almost sodden with rain, looked immense compared to him. Gallagher held his hands in his raincoat pockets thrust in front of his body, as if he were pointing pistols at Gypo. Gypo held his hands loosely by his sides, two vast red hands hanging limply from whitish round wrists. Gallagher wore a broad-brimmed black velour hat of a fashionable make. Gypo’s tattered little round hat was still perched on his skull, like a tiny school cap on an overgrown youngster.
They looked at one another, the one, handsome, well dressed, confident and indifferent; the other crude, ragged, amazed, anxious.
“Well, Gypo,” drawled Gallagher, in the irritating, contemptuous tone that he affected. “Ye don’t seem glad to see me.”
“Can’t say that I am,” replied Gypo curtly, almost without moving his lips. “I don’t see no reason to be glad to see ye, Commandant Gallagher. Ye were never a friend o’ mine, an’ I ain’t in the habit o’ crawlin’ on me belly to anybody that don’t like me. I’m not one o’ yer pet lambs any more, so ye needn’t do any bleatin’ as far as I’m concerned. One man is as good as another in this rotten ould world. I’m usin’ yer own words, amn’t I?”
Gallagher laughed out loud, a merry laugh that showed his white teeth. He shrugged his shoulders and took a turn around the room. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket as he walked and selected one. He kept laughing until he paused to light the cigarette over near the stained-glass window.
“Yer a queer fish, Gypo,” he said, again laughing, as he paused to throw the used match into a spittoon.
Then he cast a glance all round the room and came back again to Gypo. Mulholland and Connor watched him all the time with that loving interest with which a crowd watches the movements of a champion boxer who is walking around the ring in his dressing-gown, preparatory to a big fight. They smiled when Gallagher laughed. They stopped smiling when he stopped laughing.
Gypo, on the other hand, watched Gallagher’s movements angrily. He felt a desire to pounce on him and crush him to death before he could do any harm.
Then Gallagher came up to him and caught him by the right shoulder in a friendly and confidential manner.
“Listen Gypo,” he said. “You’ve got a grudge against me no doubt for getting you expelled from the Organization, but you have nobody to blame but yourself. I
