“I have come to claim the twenty pounds reward offered by the Farmers’ Union for information concerning Francis Joseph McPhillip,” he said in a deep, low voice.
II
At thirty-five minutes past seven Francis Joseph McPhillip shot himself dead while trying to escape from No. 44 Titt Street, his father’s house. The house had been surrounded by Detective-Sergeant McCartney and ten men. Hanging by his left hand from the sill of the back-bedroom window on the second floor, McPhillip put two bullets into McCartney’s left shoulder. While he was trying to fire again, his left hand slipped and lost its hold. The pistol muzzle struck the edge of the sill. The bullet shot upwards and entered McPhillip’s brain through the right temple.
When they picked him out of the orange box in the back garden where he fell, he was quite dead.
III
At twenty-five minutes past eight Gypo left the police-station by a door in the rear of the building. In his pocket he carried twenty pounds in Treasury notes, the reward for information concerning Francis Joseph McPhillip.
He walked quickly along a narrow passage into a dark lane. The lane was empty. So it appeared at first. But as Gypo stood hidden in the doorway of an old empty house, piercing the darkness with wild eyes, he heard a footstep. The footstep made him start. It was the first human footstep he had heard, the first sound of his fellow human beings, since he had become an informer and … and an outcast.
Immediately he felt that the footstep was menacing, as if he were certain that it belonged to somebody that was tracking him. How strange! Within the course of ninety minutes the customary sound of a human footstep had, by some evil miracle, become menacing. Ninety minutes ago, his ears would not have challenged the sound of a human footstep, no more than they would have challenged the sound of the breath coming normally from his lungs. But now they pricked into attention at the trudging shuffle that approached from the left. His heart began to pant.
Of course it was nobody of consequence. It was only a ragged old woman of ill fame, with a debauched face and melancholy eyes. She paused drunkenly in front of him, muttering something unintelligible. Then she bared her ragged teeth. She spat and passed on without speaking. Was it an omen? Gypo did not notice that it was. He merely listened to the sound of her footsteps, splashing carelessly through the pools.
Then he looked ahead of him furtively and moved off with the careful listening, stooping movement of a man wandering alone at night in a forest gorge where lions are about. He turned a corner and came face to face with a blaze of light and a street with shops and crowds of people going about. At first he shuddered with fear. Then he swore and drew in a deep breath. What had he to fear? He knew the street well. Who was going to interfere with him? His giant fists clawed up, like talons enraged, and the muscles of his throat and shoulders stiffened. He imagined himself throttling these enemies who might be inclined to assault him. He felt comforted, reminded by this pressure of his muscles, of his enormous strength. He settled his little round hat jauntily on the back of his head. He stuck his hands in his trousers pockets. He swung his legs and rolled like a sailor out of the lane, arrogantly, into the glare of the street.
At the same slow, swinging, rolling gait, he crossed the street through the traffic without pausing, without stepping aside, without looking to the right or to the left. Motorcars, carts, bicycles and wagons swerved to avoid him. He went through them without looking at them, like a great monster walking through a cloud of ants, that are carrying on their futile and infinitesimal labours about his feet. They turned towards him to curse, but those that saw his face gaped and passed into the night with the curse unuttered. His face, with the humps on it shining in the glare of the lamps, was like a subtle mask. It was so … so dead.
He walked straight across the pavement into a public-house. He kicked the swing door open with his foot, without taking his hands out of his pockets, just as he had entered the police-station. He put a pound note on the counter with a slap of his palm and uttered the one word: “Pint.” He stared at the counter until the drink was served. He put the measure to his head, opened his throat and swallowed the contents at one draught. He uttered a deep sigh and handed the empty glass to the barman. He nodded. When he received another pint and his change, he walked over to the corner and sat down.
Now he definitely set out to form a plan of action. It had been a habit with McPhillip and himself. Whenever they had done any “stunt,” they immediately went into a public-house, got drinks and set about forming plans for an alibi.
“Never bother about yer ‘getaway’ until yer job is done,” used to be a motto of McPhillip’s.
Suddenly Gypo realized what a clever fellow McPhillip must really have been. He used to make plans so easily. They jumped to his mind one after the other, like lightning. Gypo had never given any thought to the matter of plans. He often used to say to McPhillip with a queer glassy look in his eyes: “Mac, you bite the easy side o’ the cheese. I got to do all the rough work an’ you do all the thinkin’. Strikes me you get away with it easy, mate.”
Now, for the first time, he realized the difficulty of making a plan without McPhillip. When he had to think it out for himself it appeared to
