the childlike trust which so many englishmen have in their institutions is a source of never-ending wonder to irishmen, more especially the englishman’s blind faith in the integrity of the post office in both countries. long after sinn fein had made the irish post office its chief source of information, the government and public continued happily and blindly to confide their confidential correspondence to the tender mercies of the king’s enemies, and at the same time expressed their bewildered astonishment at the uncanny amount of information that the sinn fein secret service was able to obtain.
it is highly doubtful if blake would ever have even thought of obtaining information from the mail bags, if a young subaltern, who commanded a platoon of the blankshires temporarily stationed in the ballybor police barracks, had not made the suggestion one night at dinner, and had even offered to carry out the operation himself if blake had any official qualms. at first blake refused, knowing that 167the authorities did not approve of tampering with the public’s private letters; but being desperately hard up for certain information he gave in, and it was arranged that jones, the subaltern, should carry out the search.
a cross-country letter in the west of ireland will often take nowadays any time from three to five days to arrive at a town only twenty miles away, and of the chief reasons of this delay one is that the mails often lie for twelve to twenty-four hours in a head post office before being sent out to rural sub-offices for distribution, or in a railway van at some junction awaiting a connection. this was well known to blake, who had often to complain of delay in delivery of official letters, and also of letters from the “castle” being frequently opened in the post.
examining the mails in the ballybor post office was out of the question, owing to the almost unbelievable fact that the staff, from the postmaster to the charwoman who washed out the tiled floors of the post office every morning, were sinn feiners, one and all, so that there only remained to search the mails in the train.
at this period the western railways were slowly dying from a creeping paralysis caused by the engine-drivers and guards refusing to carry the armed forces of the crown, quite oblivious of the fact that it was only possible to pay the railway men’s enormous wages through the government subsidy. for a time some lines shut down, but a goods train managed 168to reach ballybor six days a week with mails and the bare necessities of life for the inhabitants—chiefly porter barrels. by good luck the guard on this train chanced to be a loyalist—probably the only one on the line—and it was arranged with him that the mails should be searched by jones while the mail van waited in a siding for several hours at a junction about sixteen miles from ballybor.
disguised as harvestmen, jones and his servant were dropped at night from a crossley close to the junction and admitted to the mail van by the guard; they at once set to work with electric torches, the batman opening the letters, whilst jones read and made a note of any useful information, and when they had finished returned in the car to ballybor barracks.
on returning to the barracks, blake and jones went carefully through the information, and found that one letter addressed to a noted sinn feiner, mr pat hegarty, who lived near a village called lissamore, about eight miles away, gave sufficient evidence on which to hang mr hegarty. the writer stated that on the 3rd inst. hegarty was to expect the arrival of an officer of the i.r.a. in uniform, who would come from the direction of castleport on a bicycle about 10 p.m. hegarty was to keep this officer in his house, place the new supply of american arms at his disposal for ambushes, and the officer would not leave the district until blake had been either killed or kidnapped.
some months previous to this blake had 169been in the south on special duty, and during his absence, macnot, the d.i. who relieved him temporarily, had called a truce with the volunteers as long as all appeared well on paper, with the result that the volunteers had been able to make full preparations for a second effort to wipe out the police in the district. soon after his return to ballybor blake heard strong rumours of a second landing of american arms during his absence—this time, at night at ballybor quay—and the letter confirmed the rumours.
on the night mentioned in the letter, blake and jones, accompanied by a police sergeant and two constables, left ballybor barracks in a car after dark in the opposite direction to that in which the village of lissamore lay, and after going about three miles turned off at a byroad and proceeded by unfrequented roads, until they reached a small wood about half a mile from hegarty’s house on the castleport road; here they blocked the road with the car, and waited for their victim.
there was bright starlight, and punctually at 9.45 they saw a cyclist approaching from the direction of castleport; but so dark was it in the wood that the cyclist only avoided running into the car by throwing himself off, to be quickly seized by two stalwart policemen before he could let go of his handle-bars, gagged and well tied up. they then took him into the wood, removed his uniform, dressed him in an old police uniform, and finally deposited him at the bottom of the car.
170jones then put on the volunteer officer’s uniform, took his bicycle, and rode on to hegarty’s house, while the police backed the car up a bohereen and waited there. before starting out they had arranged that jones should camouflage his english voice by a yankee twang, as a brogue was quite beyond his powers.
on arriving at hegarty’s house, jones leant his bicycle against the wall, and gave three mysterious knocks at the door. for quite two minutes there was no answer, and just as he was preparing to knock again, the door opened about three inches, and a girl’s voice asked in a whisper who was there, and what he wanted at that time of night.
now, unfortunately, the letter had not given the name of the i.r.a. officer, so jones, being afraid to give a name lest the hegartys might know the officer’s real name, muttered that he was a republican officer, and had come to see pat hegarty. the door at once closed, and he could hear the girl open and close a door at the back of the house, and for fully ten minutes nothing further occurred.
this was not part of the play which jones and blake had carefully rehearsed in the barracks that afternoon, and jones was quite nonplussed what to do next. being young and impetuous, he was just on the point of ruining the whole show by breaking in the door, when it opened and the girl’s voice told him to come in.
the room was pitch dark, and for a second 171jones hesitated; but the girl laid her hand on his sleeve, and led him through to a lighted room at the back, where he found hegarty with his wife and son about to sit down to supper. hegarty bade him welcome, and the meal started.
after they had eaten for some time in silence, hegarty asked him several questions about where he had been recently, and of prominent volunteers in other parts of the country. jones made the best answers he could, not forgetting to keep up his american accent, and mentioned casually that he had only recently come over from the states, where his parents had been living for some years.
for a time there was silence again, but jones could feel that the eyes of maria hegarty were on him all the time; and presently she began to ask most awkward questions about places and people in the states, and jones was hard put to it to avoid suspicion. luckily maria mentioned that her friends lived in the eastern states, so that it was easy for jones’s people to live far away in the west, and the situation was saved.
supper over, the women cleared the table and retired, while hegarty produced a large jar of poteen and tumblers, and the three men settled themselves round the fire to drink and talk. for the next two hours jones extracted all the information he could out of the hegartys, who, though shy at first, warmed up after several glasses of poteen, and jones learnt from young hegarty that the arms were kept 172under the floors of a disused protestant school-house in the rectory grounds at cloonalla, the rector of which was a notorious loyalist, and would have died sooner than conceal arms knowingly for the rebels.
at this point jones, who had never tasted poteen before, suddenly realised that he was nearly drunk, and that before he became quite drunk it would be wiser to lie down on a bed. on inquiry, he found that he was to sleep with young hegarty, the idea of which so staggered him that he felt soberer at once, and determined to try and hold out.
suddenly there came a violent knocking at the front door, followed by what sounded like the bang of a rifle-butt on the back door. at once the hegartys put out the light, and started to hustle jones up a ladder to a loft above the kitchen.
but by now the poteen had quite got to jones’s head; and when the police went into the kitchen, they found old hegarty and his son still struggling to get an i.r.a. officer up the ladder. the hegartys now let go of jones, who promptly closed with blake, and a tremendous struggle started in the kitchen.
in a few minutes jones was overcome, and lay on the floor with a heavy constable sitting on his chest. blake then ordered the hegartys to light the lamp, and afterwards to stand against the wall with their hands over their heads, and the constables to take jones outside and shoot him. but he had not reckoned on maria, who burst into the kitchen and with 173piercing screams endeavoured to throw her arms round jones’s neck. maria was a strong girl and desperate, and it took jones and the two constables all they knew to shake her off and struggle out of the house.
luckily maria did not attempt to leave the house, and ten seconds after the back door had closed, six revolver shots rang out in quick succession, followed by the sound of a heavy body falling on wet ground. after telling maria and her mother to go to their bedroom, blake took hegarty and his son into the back-yard, and showed them the body of the unfortunate volunteer officer thrown by the police on the manure-heap. during the next half-hour he had little difficulty in getting all the information he required about local volunteers (he made no mention of the arms), and after warning them not to move the corpse, the police left the house.
maria appears to have been greatly taken with jones’s youthful beauty, and nearly ruined the whole show again by insisting on her father and brother going out to bring in the corpse and lay it out in the kitchen. luckily the hegartys were too much afraid, and jones told blake afterwards that the agony of lying with his face buried in liquid manure was nothing to the agony he suffered listening to the hegartys arguing whether his corpse should be left lying on the manure-heap to be eaten by dogs, or brought into the kitchen and laid out as a “dacent son of ould ireland” should be.
174while this argument was still raging a car stopped at the front door, and again the police rushed into the house, out at the back door, dragged the corpse off the manure-heap, through the house, and flung it on top of the real volunteer officer in the back of the car. after telling the hegartys that they would throw the body into the lake, the police drove off at a furious rate in the direction of ballybor.
on returning to barracks, jones at once rushed off to have a hot bath, while blake went to his office to find his two clerks snowed up with paper, correspondence which had arrived by the goods mail while they had been out. after they had some food, jones was all for raiding the rector of cloonalla at once; but blake made the fatal mistake of attending to the correspondence then, and putting off the raid to the following night.
the next night they set out with a strong force of police for the cloonalla rectory, but found, though there were evident signs that their information had been correct, that the arms had been removed; the rector was most indignant, and they returned defeated.
a few nights afterwards, when at dinner, blake showed jones the following paragraph in an irish paper.
“a brutal murder.
“on the night of the 3rd inst., about midnight, armed men in uniform, some of them wearing trenchcoats, raided the house of mr patrick hegarty, a 175respectable farmer, who has never been known to take any active part in politics. inside these men found a young man alleged to have been wearing the uniform of an officer in the i.r.a.
“this unfortunate young man, without trial of any kind, was at once dragged outside the house, riddled with bullets, and his body thrown on a manure-heap in a most callous and brutal manner.
“after brutally ill-treating mr hegarty and his family, the murderers left, to return again, saying that they would take the body away and throw it into the lake. though the lake has been carefully dragged, no sign of this unhappy youth’s body has yet been found.”
