“Murder!” ejaculated Gallagher dreamily, as if he had heard the word for the first time in his life and he were reflecting on its significance, incredulously like a philosopher confronted unexpectedly by a stupendous superstition. Then his nostrils expanded and his face hardened into anger, as he realized her meaning and her attitude towards the sentence that was about to be passed on Gypo. “Murder, did you say? Great Scott! Do you call it murder to wipe out a serpent that has betrayed your brother? Where is your … ? Do you call yourself an Irishwoman? What? Good Lord! I don’t know what to make of it. What … ? Good Heavens!”
“Listen to me, Dan,” she said, sobbing; “for God’s sake, listen to me before you do this. Listen. I didn’t know until now how awful it is. I was foolish the way I talked at home this evening when all the people were there. I was so mad the way father was talking that I thought I could shoot the man that informed on Frankie myself. But it would be murder, Dan, just the same as any other murder. And—”
“Oh, hang it!” snapped Gallagher.
“Dan,” she whispered, “don’t do it, for my sake. I love you. Don’t do it, for my sake and I’ll do anything you want me. I feel I’m the cause of this.”
“Mary, do you love me?” whispered Gallagher excitedly, panting as he seized her right hand in both of his. He bent towards her. “Say it again. Say you love me.”
But he drew back immediately, with a strange and unnatural presence of mind. He was afraid that the passing sentry might see him.
Tears were rolling down Mary’s cheeks. She looked away towards the doorway. She kept silent. Gallagher leaned back from her, watching her face intently. He looked at her from under his bunched eyebrows. His lips were set firmly. His forehead convulsed. He appeared to be struggling with a savage passion and at the same time struggling to think coherently on the intellectual plane. He was trying to probe the movements of her mind so that he might conquer it with his mind. He wanted to conquer her mind and make her subject to him, to make her his mate on his own terms. He told himself that he was doing this, so that she might help him for the conquest of power. He refused to admit to himself that he was inspired by passion. He despised passion.
The silence was very peculiar and tense. Mary was conscious of it. But Gallagher was not conscious of it. Then Mary spoke. She talked rapidly without looking at him. She talked in an irritated tone.
“Take me out of this place immediately, Dan,” she said. “I was mad to come here with you. I had no business to come here atall. Also, if you were a gentleman you wouldn’t ask me to come. What I said just now about loving you was not true. I only said it trying to persuade you not to murder that man. Before, when I used to read in the papers about a man being shot, I used to think it was right, but it’s a different thing when a man you know does a thing like that. Frankie killed a man too, Lord have mercy on him. Oh, God, have pity on us all.” She became slightly hysterical. “Why can’t we have peace? Why must we be killing one another? Why—”
“Hush! Keep quiet. Keep quiet.”
“Isn’t it cruel, Dan?”
She let her head fall on her hands. Her body shook with silent sobs.
Gallagher stared at her dreamily.
“I will let her alone now,” he thought. “The logical sequence of this outburst will be this. Her mind will wheel around to the other extreme if I keep quiet and don’t irritate her by attempting to convince her that I am right. Her terror and her moral excitement will exhaust themselves and go to sleep. Then she will become aware of her strange surroundings, mentally, in a different way. When her mind becomes awake and normally acute again, she will see me, this place and what’s going to be done with Gypo, in an opposite light. When her mind is groping about in this new attitude it will be easy for me to influence her. I think I’m right. At least it always held good, that rule. I remember the struggle I had with Sean Conroy. But women are supposed to be different from men a lot psychologically. But I have to chance that. It would be suicidal to interfere with her now. That’s certain. Still … I’m not sure of myself with her somehow. … It’s not like the others. And …”
Again his passion surged upwards. He sat without thought, fighting it, squeezing his palms together, with his eyes on her bent neck.
XIII
When Gallagher left the inquiry room, Mulholland went silently to a form and sat down. The three men stood nervously in front of the table watching him. They watched him intently, in silence, as if each movement he made was fraught with grave consequences to themselves.
He took three matches from a box and placed them beside him on the form. He handled them slowly and deliberately, with a serious contemplative expression on his face, like an old fisherman baiting his hooks under the admiring glances of a party of tourists. Then he took out a clasp knife and opened it. He cut a piece off one match. He put the knife back into his pocket.
Then, suddenly, he cleared his throat with a noise that sounded enormous in the silence. The three men started. They looked at one another fearfully, as if each had been caught by the others in the commission of an indecency.
Mulholland rose calmly and approached them, holding the three matches on his open palm. Without speaking he pointed to them. Two long and one short.
