At last he felt his drunkenness weakening, gradually, like the lessening of a pain at night. It did not disappear but its effects changed. Instead of feeling reckless and hilarious, he began to feel cunning, careful, gloomy, defiant, recklessly strong. His head cooled and steadied. It seemed to have become suddenly walled with steel, so that he almost experienced a physical pain from the pressure of his skull against the skin on his forehead. But he took away his hands from his forehead and he found that the pain vanished. His teeth set. His face assumed a look of stony apathy, the lips hanging flabbily, the cheeks loose, the eyes vacant. All the muscles of his body went loose, with the looseness of the athlete, who is standing at ease, but ready to plunge off somewhere like an arrow.
In response to this change, as it were in his personality, he got to his feet in a dignified, calculated, imperious manner. He cleared his throat. He held out his right hand. He spoke.
“Listen, men,” he said. “I had a drop taken when I came in here. I didn’t know what I was doin’. I just remembered now who I was talkin’ to an’ it nearly knocked me dead. Look at him.” He pointed a thick, short, hairy forefinger at Mulligan. “He wouldn’t speak to me. He’s afraid to look at me. I know why. It’s him that informed on Frankie McPhillip an’ he knows that I saw him.”
“It’s a lie,” screamed Mulligan, suddenly starting up and spreading out his hands and feet, downwards and outwards, as if he were resting exhausted after a race. His face was distorted with fear, amazement and rage. “It’s a lie, boys. It’s a lie I tell yez. Before the Blessed Mother of the Infant Jesus I swear on me knees that I never left the house today except to go to the chapel to say me prayers.”
“Ha! Me fine boyo!” cried Gypo excitedly. “Will ye listen to his oaths? It’s easy work for an informer swearin’ oaths.”
“Never—” began Mulligan again. But he was cut short by two of the armed men seizing him by the arms, forcing him back to his seat and putting a handkerchief over his mouth.
At the same time Gallagher rushed out of the inquiry room and across the passage with his pistol in his hand. His sallow, lean face was aflame with anger. His eyes sparkled like points of fire. He looked at Gypo for a fleeting moment. It was no longer the cold, contemptuous, patronizing look with which he had regarded him in the public-house. It was a look of fierce, relentless hatred. “The preliminary investigation” had convinced him of something.
Gypo, on the other hand, looked at Gallagher in a friendly, intimate, confident manner.
“Here he is,” he said, pointing at the convulsing body of Mulligan. “He knows it’s all up with him already. He went into fits when I taxed him with it. So he did.”
Then he opened his mouth and gave voice to a hoarse laugh.
Gallagher smiled faintly into Gypo’s eyes. There was something diabolic in the smile. It was so inhuman.
“Come on, you two witnesses,” he said icily. “You, Nolan, and you, Mulligan. You are wanted at the inquiry now. Lead them in, two of you.”
Gypo walked across the passage jauntily, swinging his shoulders, with his chest thrown out with his head in the air. Mulligan had to be carried across. He sobbed all the way fitfully. The two sentries with drawn revolvers again took up their position in the doorway. Now, however, they had their backs to the passage. They faced the two witnesses. The two witnesses were seated on a small form in front of the larger table. They sat side by side. The two armed men who had conducted them into the room stood close behind them. The three judges sat in front of Gypo and of Mulligan at the large table. Gallagher sat at the little table to the right, with Mulholland standing a little to his rear, peering over his shoulder at what he was reading. To the right of the judges Mary McPhillip sat on a form alone.
There was a deadly silence for several moments. Drops of water, one after another, in irregular succession, could be heard falling from the stone roof to the stone floor, near the walls. Then the centre judge spoke in a bored, drawling voice.
“Take Peter Mulligan’s statement, Comrade Gallagher,” he said.
As soon as Mulligan heard his name mentioned he tried to jump to his feet, but the man standing behind him held him down. At the same time Gypo put his hand on Mulligan’s thigh and made a threatening gesture with his head.
“Keep quiet, will ye? Ye rat!” he growled.
“Peter Mulligan,” said Gallagher, “give an account of your whereabouts from noon today until midnight when you were brought in here.”
Mulligan looked at Gallagher for some time before replying. He was obviously trying to speak. His lips moved. But terror held the tip of his tongue against his upper teeth. He could only jabber inaudibly. Then at last the tongue sprang loose
