“What did ye hear about him?” asked Mulholland, peering at her.
“What did I hear about him?” cried Biddy Burke. “What d’ye take me for, Bartly Mulholland? An information bureau or what? Don’t be botherin’ me.”
Mulholland sighed. Then he took out his pipe and lit it. He put his back against the wall and began to smoke in apparent comfort. There was silence. Through the open street door sounds of footsteps and of voices came in through the rain now and again. They were subdued sounds. It seemed that everything was waiting for something monstrous to happen.
The two young women began in their gruff, cracked voices to discuss the death of Francis Joseph McPhillip. They talked casually, in whispers, indifferently.
Mulholland peered at them for a moment. Then he sank back into his thoughts. His thoughts just then were not at all comfortable. He had lost track of Gypo. He had been wandering about trying to find his quarry again, absolutely without success. Gypo had been swallowed up. A more nervous man than Mulholland would have not taken the matter so philosophically, so coolly. Because if Gypo could not be found again, Mulholland’s own life would be in serious danger. But Mulholland was not considering that aspect of the affair. Mulholland was a sincere revolutionist. It was the danger to the “cause” that worried him. The “cause” was his whole existence. He did not understand any other purpose in life except the achievement of an Irish Workers’ Republic.
Still … as he sat on the stool, stoically smoking his pipe, other worries came into his mind. If he could not find Gypo and anything serious happened to himself as a result, what would become of his wife and his six young children? He hardly ever thought of them seriously, in this way, with a view to the future. The future held a workers’ republic, somewhere in the distance, when there would be no slums, no hunger, no sick wives, no children that got the mumps and the rickets and the German measles and the whooping-cough with devilish regularity. It never worried him to think that his wife and his six children were for the moment living in a miserable slum shanty, with his wife going rapidly into a decline through hard work. That had to be. The “cause” was above all these things. Why! It was his wife who often urged him on to give all his time to the “cause” whenever he became slightly despondent or disheartened, timorous or apathetic.
Ever struggling without reward!
So he thought suddenly. But almost as soon as the thought entered his brain another thought came in mad, bloodshot pursuit. He pulled savagely at his pipe and ejected the first thought in terror.
Even “mentally” it was dangerous to think of leaving the Organization without being expelled. After all … terror was the foundation of his zeal.
He forced himself into his habitual calm. His face assumed the impenetrable aspect which he had developed during five years of constant practice. He turned to Biddy Burke again.
“Where did ye say ye saw Gypo carrying on?” he said casually.
Biddy Burke looked at him ferociously, emitting two columns of cigarette smoke through her fat nostrils.
“I didn’t say I saw him carryin’ on anywhere, Bartly Mulholland,” she said angrily. “Be the holy! These late years every one o’ ye is as smart as a corporation lawyer. Now look here, Bartly. I don’t want to have any truck atall with ye or yer crowd. Ye know that too. I know ye, me fine bucko, an’ I don’t think … eh … well o’ course, Bartly … ye know what I mane. … It’s not … uh … that I mane any harm … but a poor woman like mesel’ … o’ course I’m ready as I said before to do me duty for me fellow-men … but it’s like this … what does a woman like me gain be gettin’ mixed up in politics … that is o’ course … look here,” she continued in a lower voice, “I heard he was up in Aunt Betty’s, raisin’ hell up there. He was one o’ your crowd, wasn’t he?”
Mulholland looked at her sombrely. She drew back immediately.
“Well, ye know me well, Bartly,” she muttered apologetically and nervously. “I’m not sayin’ anythin’ out o’ place. Am I, girls? Sure—”
Just then an interruption came from outside. Footsteps came rushing to the door. Then gasps were heard. Then a panting sound became audible. Then Katie Fox burst into the room, with her right hand on her hip, her eyes glittering, looking about her wildly. She rushed up to Biddy Burke. She bent down from the hips towards her and began to speak immediately, gasping after each word.
“What d’ye think of it, Biddy?” she cried. “D’ye know where I found him? D’ye know where I found him? The big hulkin’ waster! An’ she that’s not to fit to walk the same street as me with her big, ugly arms around his neck! She laughed in me face. She laughed”—screaming—“in me face! I wish to God
