after many months of the sinn fein terror, the town of ballybor became a place of shadows and whispers. at night-time men saw shadows, real and unreal, moving and stationary, at every corner of the streets and in every lane; and during the day-time, when men met in the streets, they would only speak in low whispers to each other, and always keeping one eye over their shoulder.
public opinion withered and died. sinn fein had no use for it—men became completely detached, mere spectators of the unchecked and uncondemned orgy of crime; like the younger generation in england, who waste a large part of their lives in picture-houses, gazing at films of vice and crime. and if a man had been murdered in the main street at ballybor in the middle of the day, not a hand would have been raised to save the victim—the inhabitants would simply have regarded the incident in the light of a film, and then gone home to their dinners.
the oft-heard remark when a policeman has 237been murdered, “that it served him right for joining the r.i.c.,” epitomises the attitude of the majority of the irish public towards so-called “political murder.” as a rule, an irishman, on being asked if there was any news in the paper, would reply, “no, only the usual columns of murders and outrages.”
walter drake, as his name implies, was descended from an elizabethan soldier who had settled in the west of ireland and built a large house about two miles from ballybor, and here for many generations the drakes had lived, hunted, and farmed.
walter drake had at an early age entered the army through sandhurst, but retired after six years’ service on the death of his father, and since then had lived at the manor, spending a large part of his time helping his poorer neighbours in every way in his power: a quiet man of a retiring nature, a popular magistrate, and a good neighbour, but a determined loyalist. called up again in august 1914, he had served throughout the war with distinction in his old regiment, to return once more to his home.
had drake lived in any civilised country in the world, he would most assuredly have died in his bed when his time came, esteemed by all as a just, kindly, and honourable man; but, as in war, the best seem to be always taken, so it has been in ireland. his only crimes appear to have been that he continued to act as a magistrate after receiving an order from the i.r.a. to resign his commission of 238the peace, and devoting himself to helping ex-soldiers in the town to get their pensions and trying to get grants of land for such as were worthy. the granting of land to ex-soldiers was bitterly opposed by the transport union, who wanted every acre for their own landless members. and probably being a personal friend of blake’s and beloved by the police force, would constitute another crime in the eyes of the i.r.a.
on a certain monday night the constable on duty at ballybor barracks reported that a great light could be seen in the sky, and thought there must be a big fire not far from the town. going to the top of the barracks, blake at once saw that a large house must be on fire, and judging from the direction the chances were that it was the manor. taking a dozen men in a crossley, he at once went off there, to find the grand old house burning fiercely, and by the light of the fire he could make out a pathetic group of figures on the tennis-ground in front of the house.
the first person whom blake met was the old butler, who told a tale now familiar in many parts of ireland to-day. the household had retired at their usual hour of eleven, after which the butler had carefully closed up the house and gone to the servants’ hall to smoke a pipe before turning in. soon afterwards he heard a loud knocking at the front door, followed by a volley of shots, some of which must have been fired through the windows, as he could hear the sound of falling glass.
239the old man went and opened the front door, to be met by a ring of rifles, shot-guns, pistols, and electric torches, behind which he could make out the usual mob of masked ruffians. a strange voice then demanded major drake; and when the butler told them that the major had gone to dublin by the mail that day, a man handed him a letter telling him that in ten minutes’ time they were going to burn the house to the ground, and that he had better warn the inmates if he didn’t want them roasted alive.
the butler at once took the letter to miss drake, who read the following pleasant communication addressed to her brother:—
“major drake,—owing to your aggressively anti-irish attitude, we have received orders to burn your house to the ground. you will be given ten minutes to collect your clothes. by order.—i.r.a.”
the girl hurriedly slipped on a dressing-gown, and went down to the hall to find it full of the brutes sprawling in chairs and smoking. the leader came forward to speak to her, and she begged him to have mercy on her mother, who was old and in feeble health, and who would surely be killed by the shock of having her house burnt and being turned out into the night; and implored the man to take anything he wanted, offering him all the money she had and her mother’s jewellery. for answer the man pulled out his watch, and said that she had exactly ten minutes to get 240her old english mother out of the house, no more and no less.
seeing that it was useless to argue with the brute, miss drake called the butler and her mother’s maid, woke up the old lady, dressed her the best way they could, and as the household passed out through the central hall, they saw men sprinkling the furniture and carpets with petrol. hardly had they reached the lawn when the men rushed out past them. there was a violent explosion (petrol-tins bursting), and the house seemed to burst into flames in an instant. and here they remained on the tennis-ground, helpless and hopeless, their only crime loyalty, until blake found them there, silently crying.
seeing that the house was gone, that, in fact, it was impossible to save anything, blake put the drakes into the crossley, with the old butler and the servants, and drove them to a hotel in the town.
drake had been seen motoring through ballybor to the station on the monday, and by that evening there was a whisper in the town that something had happened to him, but what the something was the whisper did not mention. during tuesday rumour lay dormant. on wednesday, however, rumour awoke and rapidly made up for lost time, and by that evening it was freely whispered throughout the town that drake had joined the i.r.a.; that he had bolted to canada to escape from the i.r.a., only to be taken out of the train on his way to dublin by a flying column of 241gunmen, tried by a court-martial, condemned, and executed; that he had gone to dublin to join the auxiliaries; and lastly, that he had gone to london to get married.
on wednesday morning miss drake, whose poor old mother lay in a state of collapse at the hotel, came to blake in great distress, and implored him to find her brother. she was sure something must have happened to him, as she had wired twice, and then, getting no reply, had wired to the secretary of his club, where he had intended staying, and from whom an answer had just come to say major drake had not arrived.
blake promised to do all he could, and started off at once to the station to make inquiries. having found out that drake actually did leave ballybor by the mail train on monday, he next sent an urgent cipher message to the authorities in dublin, hoping they would be able to trace him there. blake then set out for knockshinnagh, the next station on the line to dublin, about a mile from the small town of the same name, and situated in the midst of a vast bog, which stretches towards the foot of the mountains to the east and west, and runs nearly as far as ballybor. here, acting on the assumption that the rumour of drake having left the mail train at this station was correct, blake carefully interrogated the station-master and the three porters. one and all denied having seen drake on the day in question—one porter, who had been there years, adding inconsequently that 242he did not even know him by sight, and thereby making blake sure that he was on the right track at last.
that night blake again visited the station-master at his house in the station after midnight; and pretending that he knew for certain that drake had left the train at knockshinnagh, warned the man of the serious consequences of refusing to give information. 1 a.m. is an unpleasant hour to interview armed men, and thinking that the police were uncomfortably near and the i.r.a. in the dim distance, the station-master made a full confession.
a few minutes before the limited mail arrived at knockshinnagh on monday, three armed and masked men had driven up in a ford car, and directly the train pulled up had made straight for the carriage in which drake was travelling. at once they seized him, and dragged him, struggling, out of the carriage to the car, and then drove off rapidly in the direction of ballybor. before the train pulled out, a stranger in a third-class carriage warned the station-master, in the name of the i.r.a., to give no information to any one. as no further information could be got from the station-master, blake returned to the barracks, and set out again for knockshinnagh after breakfast, to endeavour to trace the ford from there.
the road from knockshinnagh to ballybor runs practically the whole way through a vast bog, which is drained by the owenmore river, 243with a deep fringe of water-meadows on each bank. at intervals side roads connect up the villages on the higher ground near the mountains with the main road.
the police had covered nearly three miles of the road without getting any news of drake or the ford, when a sharp-eyed sergeant noticed the narrow tracks of a ford turning up one of these side roads to the east. the car had turned the corner sharply, leaving a deep track of two wheels in the soft ground on the edge of the road.
turning down this side road, they proceeded slowly without seeing any further car-tracks until they came to a long low cottage, standing back about fifteen yards from the road. here they found tracks which showed that the car had pulled up at the door of the cottage, turned, and returned towards the main road.
leaving his men outside, blake entered with a sergeant, in time to see the owner bolting out of the back door, only to be caught by the sergeant and brought back. the man said his name was moran, and protested his loyalty loudly before blake could ask him a question.
in ireland if you want information badly, often the best way to obtain it is to bluff your opponent into believing that you already know part of it, leaving him to guess as to how much you know. blake took this line of attack with moran, and asked him the names of the four men who had called at his cottage on the previous monday in a car. but moran knew the game as well as blake, and denied 244that any car had been to his house lately, or indeed at any time, whereby blake knew that the man lied, and had something to conceal.
he then threatened moran that if he did not tell all he knew he would arrest him and keep him until he did, and at the same time took him outside and pointed out the old tracks of a car in front of the cottage. this had the desired effect, and at long last blake thought their search was at an end.
moran, it appeared, was the caretaker of an i.r.a. cemetery, or rather an old disused cemetery, where formerly unbaptised children were buried, and which now was used to bury volunteers who had “gone to america.” on the monday in question three armed and masked men had driven up to his house with a prisoner, and after trying him by “court-martial” in the cottage, had taken him to the cemetery, and made moran help them to dig a grave, while the unfortunate prisoner looked on. they blindfolded and shot him, and finally forced moran to put the body in the grave and fill it in. they then left.
though hard pressed, moran denied any knowledge of the identity of the masked men or their victim; and when told to describe the murdered man, gave a description which might have applied to hundreds of men.
blake then ordered moran to show him the cemetery, but when thus driven into a corner he took on the courage of a cornered rat, and though they tried for an hour not one inch would he go. seeing that the man was desperate 245and would have died sooner than show them the cemetery, blake returned to the barracks.
that night, as soon as it was dark, a strong police force rounded up the six leading volunteers in ballybor, and took them out to moran’s house in two crossleys, arriving as the full moon was showing over the top of the mountains.
at the first knock on the door moran came out, his face contracted with fear, which turned to relief on seeing the uniforms of the police; but when he saw the six volunteers he nearly collapsed. blake now ordered moran to lead them to the cemetery, and so great was the man’s terror that he started off across the bog without a word.
after walking over a mile in the moonlight, they came to a low ridge of limestone mounds running through the bog and parallel to the mountains. here in a hollow was the old graveyard, which looked like a disused sheep-pen, such as the country people use for the rounding-up of mountain sheep when the different owners pick out their own sheep and lambs to brand them. the cemetery was surrounded by a stone wall, broken down in many places, and inside was a tangled mass of elder and thorn bushes.
after posting sentries round the graveyard, blake made moran point out the latest grave, and after the trembling man had shown them a mound between two bushes, he ordered two of the volunteers to start opening the grave with spades brought by the police. presently 246one of the spades met something in a sack, and on opening the sack they found the body of a short dark man—obviously a peasant—whereas drake had been a tall fair man. on examination they found wounds in the body and left leg.
for a moment blake was quite nonplussed—he had been so sure that the body would be drake’s. he was certain that the station-master had spoken the truth, and there seemed no reason to doubt moran’s evidence, though why he should be in such a state of terror was not plain. further, it was now five days since drake was supposed to have been murdered, and the body they had just dug up had obviously been in the ground two days at the most, probably only one.
a careful examination of the cemetery showed that there was no other recent grave.
blake’s thoughts were interrupted by one of the volunteers, a man called brogan, asking with his tongue in his cheek and an impudent sneer: “is yer honour satisfied now, and will we be after burying this poor fellow decently agin?”
taking no notice of brogan’s question, blake told a sergeant to make the volunteers carry the dead man to the crossleys, and to wait for him there. after they had gone he made moran go down on his knees and swear on his oath that the body they had dug up was the man who had been executed on the previous monday; but moran could only swear that he had been so frightened at the time that he had not taken any notice of the prisoner, 247but that to the best of his belief the body was the one he had buried. moran then broke down, and had to be half-carried, half-led to his cottage, where they left him, and returned to ballybor with the volunteers and the corpse for a military investigation.
the failure to find drake’s body in the bog cemetery forced blake to follow up the other rumours regarding his sudden disappearance, but every rumour and clue failed them, and it looked as though drake’s fate was to be added to the long list of unsolved irish crimes.
two days after the police had visited the cemetery, blake received information that arms for a police ambush had been brought into murrisk townland, and also that poteen was being freely made and drunk there.
having arranged with a company of auxiliaries stationed in annagh to co-operate with him, blake left the barracks with two crossley loads of police and a ford an hour before dawn one morning, and as the day broke the auxiliaries and police started to close in a cordon on the village and outlying farms where they suspected the arms were hidden.
the first signs of life were two women running across a bog, and when followed one of them was seen by blake with his glasses to throw a still into a bog-hole, while the other one took two large jars from under her shawl and smashed them together into pieces. the women were quickly rounded up, and on being taken to the nearest house, the police found six fully-dressed men well tucked up in two beds, and the remains of a huge fire in the 248kitchen, while the whole house reeked of poteen—good circumstantial evidence that the party of eight had spent the night running a still.
after a long and fruitless search for arms, blake found himself close to murrisk abbey; so, after sending the auxiliaries back to annagh, he went to pay the mac nessa a visit.
the old man was delighted to see him, and insisted that he should stay to dinner, and the police should have drink and food.
blake and the mac nessa dined alone, and over the port the old man started to tell blake tales of his youth. after his second glass and the long day in the cold, blake began to feel drowsy, and his thoughts wandered to drake and the grave in the bog cemetery, only to wake up with a start, hearing the old man say something about a grave, followed by, “is yer honour satisfied now?”
apologising for his deafness, he asked the mac nessa to begin again, and the old man told a rambling story of a butler of his young days called faherty, whose chief recreation was shooting rabbits in the park during the summer evenings. close to the park lived a pompous retired shopkeeper called malone, who had a very fine red setter, which was always wandering in the park, like faherty, after rabbits.
on several occasions faherty and malone had had words over the setter, and the climax was reached when malone arrived at the abbey one evening, purple with rage, and insisting on seeing the mac nessa, burst into his study, 249accused faherty of having shot his setter, and added that he knew that the dog was buried in a shrubbery at the back of the house. the mac nessa at once called for faherty; the three proceeded straight to the shrubbery with a spade, and faherty was made to open the grave which they found there. after digging down a short way he came on the body of a cur dog, to malone’s great astonishment and disappointment, and faherty asked in a voice of triumph, “is yer honour satisfied now?”
after malone had gone home, the mac nessa asked faherty for an explanation, and the butler told his master how he had shot malone’s setter by mistake in the dusk, and then buried him in the shrubbery. the following day he heard that malone suspected him, and had heard of the funeral in the shrubbery, so the next night he shot a cur dog, and buried him on top of the setter.
on the way back to the barracks blake could not help thinking of the similarity of the remarks of faherty and brogan when the bodies of the cur dog and the dark peasant were dug up, and that night he dreamt that he was opening an endless row of graves, and never knew whether he would dig up a cur dog or a dark peasant, and all the time he was hoping to find drake’s body. at last he came to a grave where he was positive he would find drake, and started to dig like mad, only to wake up and find his own red setter on his bed.
blake now determined to renew his efforts to find drake. he ordered the head constable to round up the same six volunteers, 250and as soon as this was done set off once more for the bog cemetery. making their way to moran’s house, they learnt from his wife that the previous evening her husband had been removed by masked men with shovel hats and wearing black mackintoshes. the wife, noticing the black mackintoshes, accused the police.
borrowing a couple of spades, the police then went to the graveyard, and as soon as the dark man’s grave could be found, blake ordered the volunteers to open it again, and at the same time watched brogan’s face carefully. on the way out to the cemetery, brogan had been laughing and sneering as on the former occasion, but directly he heard blake’s order he went as white as a sheet, and began to tremble, and a look of terror leapt into his eyes.
blake knew that at last he was on the right track.
none of the volunteers moved, waiting for brogan to give a lead, and blake had to repeat his order, calling on brogan by name to start digging. pulling himself together with a great effort, the volunteer commenced slowly to throw the earth out of the grave, the sweat, though it was a cold day, pouring down his face.
the lower brogan dug the slower he dug, until at last, when he had excavated about two feet of soil, he suddenly fainted and collapsed into the shallow grave.
the police were by now strung up to the highest pitch of excitement, and a huge sergeant, 251who had been a great favourite with drake, suddenly gave a hoarse shout, and, jumping into the grave threw brogan out, and started digging like a madman, while the rest began to fidget with the triggers of their rifles and look ominously at the uneasy volunteers.
suddenly the sergeant’s spade met a soft resistance, and in a few seconds he had uncovered and opened a sack, to find, as blake expected, the body of poor drake with a huge expanding bullet hole through his forehead.
the next five minutes will always be to blake a nightmare: the police went stark mad,—when highly-disciplined troops break they are far worse to handle than any undisciplined crowd,—and with a howl of rage made for the cowering volunteers, ignoring blake’s shouts; and to this day blake has no idea of how he kept his men from taking revenge on the volunteers.
probably he would have failed but for the lucky chance of noticing that brogan, who had come to, was trying to escape. the diversion of chasing brogan brought the police back to their senses, and by the time he had been captured and brought back, discipline was completely restored.
before they left the cemetery, brogan made a complete confession of all he knew about the tragedy. he told blake that information had been given to the g.h.q. of the i.r.a. in dublin that drake was on the point of taking command of a company of auxiliaries 252who were to be stationed in his own house, the idea being to use drake’s local knowledge, which blake knew to be quite untrue. on the sunday two gunmen arrived from dublin with orders to shoot drake and burn his house. finding out that drake intended to go to dublin the following day by the mail train, they commandeered a ford in ballybor, taking brogan with them as a guide, and took him out of the train at knockshinnagh; and after the murder they returned to ballybor, superintended the burning of drake’s house, and then disappeared into the night on stolen bicycles.
shortly afterwards brogan heard a rumour that drake had been murdered and buried in the bog cemetery, and he became very uneasy. that night he and three of the volunteers received orders to take part in a police ambush on the far side of the slievenamoe mountains, which order they obeyed, going in a ford.
in the ambush a strange gunman—none of the local volunteers knew who he was or where he came from—was killed, and when some argument arose as to how to dispose of his body, brogan at once volunteered to take the body back with him and bury it in the bog cemetery, his intention being to bury the gunman on top of drake, so that if by chance the police opened the grave they would find the body of the gunman and be put off the scent. after the first visit of the police the volunteers had removed moran to a sinn fein detention prison, fearing that he might break down and give information.
