“I know I’m dyin’, Gypo, an’ that’s why I came in. I got the consumption.” Gypo started. He was struck at that moment by an insane and monstrous idea. “I came in to get some money from me mother. An’ I wanted to see her before I die. Good God, it was awful, Gypo, out there on them hills all the winter, with me gun in me hand night an’ day, sleeping in holes on the mountains, with the wind blowin’ about me all night, screechin’ like a pack o’ devils, an’ every blast o’ them winds spoke with a man’s voice, an’ I lyin’ there listenin’ to them. Good God—”
Again he began to cough and he had to stop. Gypo was not listening to him. He had not heard a word. A monstrous idea had prowled into his head, like an uncouth beast straying from a wilderness into a civilized place where little children are alone. He did not hear McPhillip’s words or his coughing, although the monstrous idea was in relation to McPhillip.
“So I said to mesel’, that I might as well chance me arm be comin’ into town as lyin’ out there, starvin’ to death with the cold an’ hunger an’ this cough. So I came along here to see ye, Gyp, first, so as to get a bead on what’s doin’. Have they got a guard on the house?”
“Divil a guard,” replied Gypo suddenly, and then he started and stretched out his right hand towards McPhillip with a little exclamation. His eyes were wild and his mouth was wide open like the mouth of a man looking at a spectre. Gypo’s mind was looking at that uncouth ogre that was prowling about in his brain.
McPhillip leaned across the table. Gradually his eyes narrowed into an intense stare of ferocity. His lips curled up and his forehead wrinkled. He began to tremble.
“What is it, Gypo?” he hissed. “Tell me, Gyp, or I’ll …” He made a rapid movement with the wrist of the hand that clutched his automatic. “The cops are after me, Gyp, an’ I’m dyin’, so I don’t mind how I use the twenty-four rounds I got left. I’ve notched their noses so they can make a quare hole. There’s one for mesel’ too.” He shuddered as if at the thought of a tender pleasure. Then he scowled fiercely and half drew the butt of his pistol from his pocket. His voice was almost inaudible. “Tell me the truth about how things stand without any jig actin’ or I’ll plug ye.”
He glared at Gypo, his hand on his pistol, his right arm rigid to the shoulder, ready to draw the gun and fire in one movement. Gypo stared him in the eyes without any emotion, either of fear or of surprise. With the nail of his right forefinger he abstracted a string of meat from between two teeth. He spluttered with his lips and then he shrugged his shoulders. The spectre had suddenly gone out of his mind without his being able to make head or tail of it.
“No use talkin’ like that to me, Frankie,” he murmured lazily. “The only reason why I didn’t want to say anythin’ was because I didn’t like to …” Again the ghoulish thing came into his mind and he stopped with a start. But almost immediately he continued in a forced voice. He was beginning to be ashamed of that spectre as if he had already given way to the horrid suggestions it made, although he did not at all comprehend those suggestions. “I didn’t like to maybe send ye into harm’s way. Ye see, I don’t know if there’s a guard on yer father’s house or if there’s not. I generally knock around Titt Street, but I haven’t been near No. 44 since that night I went there with yer message an’ yer ol’ man told me never to darken his door again. There may be a guard on it or there may be no guard on it. But if I told ye there wasn’t and ye went there and got nabbed, ye know—”
“What are ye drivin’ at, Gypo?” growled McPhillip suspiciously.
“Nothin’ at all,” said Gypo with a great deep laugh. “But it’s how ye’ve come in on me so sudden, an’ I don’t know right what I’m talkin’ about. Ye see, I’m all mixed up for the last six months, wanderin’ around here, without a mate that ud give me a tanner for a flop if I were to die o’ the cold lyin’ in O’Connell’s Street with a foot o’ frost on the ground. They—”
“Oh, shut up about yersel’ an’ the frost an’ tell us somethin’.”
“Now don’t get yer rag out, Frankie. I was comin’ to that. I was comin’ to it, man. They held me up in the street the other day and had a long talk about ye. They’re after ye yet all right. Sergeant McCartney an’ another fellah from Sligo was there. That Detective-Sergeant McCartney is a bad lot. Huh, he’s a rascal, an’ no goin’ behind a wall to say it. He swore to me that he’d get ye dead or alive. ‘I wouldn’t care much for yer job then,’ says I to him, just like that, an’ he gave me an eye that ud knock ye stiff.”
“He says he’s goin’ to get me, did he?” murmured McPhillip dreamily. Suddenly his mind seemed to wander away and he lost interest in his present surroundings. His eyes rested vacantly on the table, about a foot away to the right.
Gypo looked hurriedly at the spot upon which McPhillip’s eyes were fixed. He saw nothing. He looked back again at McPhillip’s face
