“Very well,” said Gallagher, “return to your post. Peter Mulligan, you can go now. You will be taken home in the car that brought you here and we’ll see you right for any inconvenience that was caused to you.” He walked over to the judges and whispered something hurriedly. They all nodded and put their hands in their pockets. “One moment, Mulligan,” he called. They all gave him money. He added some from his own pocket. He came over to Mulligan and handed him a fistful of silver. “For the present this might help you. I’ll see what can be done for you later on. I’ll bring your case up before the Relief Committee. Good night, Comrade.”
Mulligan took the money with bowed head. He got up and moved to the door hurriedly without saying a word, with his hat crushed in his two hands and his overcoat flapping behind him. He disappeared out the door, head first, stooping, hauling his two flat feet after him as if he were dragging them against their will. Then, with a hard, biting cough he disappeared.
The sentries stood again across the door. Gallagher walked slowly back to his table. He sat down. There was a deadly silence.
The silence lasted only about twelve seconds. During this pause Gallagher took out a notebook and turned over the pages, while Mulholland bent over his shoulder whispering something, and the three judges murmured with their heads close together. But to Gypo these twelve seconds were as long as twelve years to a man stricken with a painful and incurable disease. A succession of terrors flitted through his mind. They were not ideas or thoughts, but almost tangible terrors that seemed to materialize in his brain as the result of the reasoning of some foreign being. His cunning and his assurance were gripped suddenly by that amazing foreigner and hurled out of him, clean out of him into oblivion, like two bullets fired through the air.
Ha! They were hurled out of him by the amazing fact of Mulligan’s disappearance, free, with money in his pocket given to him by Gallagher. They had given him money. They had called him comrade. They had promised to bring his case up before the Relief Committee. They sent him away free. He had gone. … Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What was the meaning of it?
Then suddenly, as he sat there, bolt upright on his seat, massive, those unspeakable terrors crowded into his mind. They came ready-made, fully matured, nauseating like bilious attacks, sharp and biting like bayonet wounds, heavy and ponderous like palpitations of the heart. They came, one, two, three, four … scores of them, lining up in his brain, shoulder to shoulder, in a mass, standing there solidly and then immediately disappearing like ghosts without a sound and giving place to others. There was a mass of them but each one was distinct. Each had its own peculiar silent screech. Each had its own peculiar demoniac grin. Each had its own peculiar … damn them all! The curse of them was that he did not know what they were. It seemed that his personality was bound in chains and he was unable to grapple with the cursed things. He must sit still, bolt upright on his wooden form, and permit them to stand there unchallenged in his brain. He was helpless. A cold sweat came out through every pore of his body.
Four seconds passed. Then his mind began to grope about among the terrors, timorously, like a snail that has been touched and has gone into his shell feigning death and has come out again touching blades of grass suspiciously and wriggling its horns. Gypo opened his nostrils and his mouth. He drew in a deep breath through both organs simultaneously. The cold sweat suddenly became warm. His blood flooded his head with a surging movement. He became ferocious. At first his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows that were like snouts bent down. Then his eyes opened wide and his eyebrows lifted, like guns that are elevated in order to train them on a target. His lower lip dropped. His mind began to work methodically. The terrors vanished out of it and gave place to an iron determination to fight to the bitter end.
With his blood maddened by alcohol, he became conscious of the vast strength in his body. He almost experienced a feeling of happiness at this opportunity for using it. It was that savage joy that is always present in the Irish soul in time of danger, the great fighting spirit of our race, born of the mists and the mountains and the gurgling torrents and the endless clamour of the sea.
He looked around him measuring those against whom he had to fight. To his left he saw Mary McPhillip sitting. She had her hands in her lap. She was leaning forward slightly, with a nervous expectant look in her eyes, looking at Gallagher. She cast a terrified glance, occasionally, towards Gypo, but her eyes always came back to Gallagher’s face as if they were fascinated by it. It was obvious that she was terrified and that her mind was trying to keep itself fixed on the object of the prayers which her moving lips were uttering. Gypo saw the terror in her quivering face and knew that he had nothing to fear from her. Then he looked at the three judges. He knew those masked men. They were merely puppets, politicians, figureheads who would do Gallagher’s bidding, afraid to contradict him. Ha! Gallagher was the man he had to fight. Gallagher and that rat Mulholland. He saw them over by the little table with their heads together. He fixed his eyes on them.
Feverishly he set himself to form a plan, not that he hoped anything at this hour from the formation of a plan, but merely because making a plan was an
