when bernard o’mahony found himself outside the convent gateway, he paused to consider matters.
the warm spring sunlight so broadly enveloped the square in which he stood, the shining white cottages and gray old walls behind him and the harbor and pale-blue placid bay beyond, in its grateful radiance, that it was not in nature to think gloomy thoughts. and nothing in the young man’s own nature tended that way, either.
yet as he stopped short, looked about him, and even took off his hat to the better ponder the situation, he saw that it was even more complicated than he had thought. his plan of campaign had rested upon two bold strategic actions. he had deemed them extremely smart, at the time of their invention. both had been put into execution, and, lo, the state of affairs was worse than ever!
the problem had been to thwart and overturn o’daly and to prevent kate from entering the convent. these two objects were so intimately connected and dependent one upon the other, that it had been impossible to separate them in procedure. he had caused o’daly to be immured in secrecy in the underground cell, the while he went off to secure episcopal interference in the convent’s plans. his journey had been crowned with entire success. it had involved a trip to cashel, it is true, but he had obtained an order forbidding the ladies of the hostage’s tears to add to their numbers. returning in triumph with this invincible weapon, he discovered now that o’daly’s disappearance had been placarded all over ireland as a murder, that his two allies were in custody as suspected assassins, and that—most puzzling and disturbing feature of it all—kate herself had vanished.
he did not attach a moment’s credence to the drowning theory. daughters of the coast of white foam did not get drowned. nor was it likely that other harm had befallen a girl so capable, so selfreliant, so thoroughly at home in all the districts roundabout. obviously she was in hiding somewhere in the neighborhood. the question was where to look for her. or, would it be better to take up the other branch of the problem first?
his perplexed gaze, roaming vaguely over the broad space, was all at once arrested by a gleam of flashing light in motion. concentrating his attention, he saw that it came from the polished barrel of a rifle borne on the arm of a constable at the corner of the square. he put on his hat and walked briskly over to this corner. the constable had gone, and bernard followed him up the narrow, winding little street to the barracks.
as he walked, he noted knots of villagers clustered about the cottage doors, evidently discussing some topic of popular concern. in the roadway before the barracks were drawn up two outside cars. a policeman in uniform occupied the driver’s seat on each, and a half-dozen others lounged about in the sunshine by the gate-posts, their rifles slung over their backs and their round, visorless caps cocked aggressively over their ears. these gentry bent upon him a general scowl as he walked past them and into the barracks.
a dapper, dark-faced, exquisitely dressed young gentleman, wearing slate-tinted gloves and with a flower in his button-hole, stood in the hall-way—two burly constables assisting him meanwhile to get into a light, silk-lined top-coat.
“come, you fool! hold the sleeve lower down, can’t you!” this young gentleman cried, testily, as bernard entered. the two constables divided the epithet between them humbly, and perfected their task.
“i want to see the officer in charge here,” said bernard, prepared by this for discourtesy.
the young gentleman glanced him over, and on the instant altered his demeanor.
“i am major snaffle, the resident magistrate,” he said, with great politeness. “i’ve only a minute to spare—i’m driving over to bantry with some prisoners—but if you’ll come this way—” and without further words, he led the other into a room off the hall, the door of which the two constables rushed to obsequiously open.
“i dare say those are the prisoners i have come to talk about,” remarked bernard, when the door had closed behind them. he noted that this was the first comfortably furnished room he had seen in ireland, as he took the seat indicated by the major’s gesture.
major snaffle lifted his brows slightly at this, and fastened his bright brown eyes in a keen, searching glance upon bernard’s face.
“hm-m!” he said. “you are an american, i perceive.”
“yes—my name’s o’mahony. i come from michigan.”
at sound of this milesian cognomen, the glance of the stipendiary grew keener still, if possible, and the corners of his carefully trimmed little mustache were drawn sharply down. there was less politeness in the manner and tone of his next inquiry.
“well—what is your business? what do you want to say about them?”
“first of all,” said bernard, “let’s be sure we’re talking about the same people. you’ve got two men under arrest here—jerry higgins of this place, and a cousin of his from—from boston, i think it is.”
the major nodded, and kept his sharp gaze on the other’s countenance unabated.
“what of that?” he asked, now almost brusquety.
“well, i only drove in this morning—i’m in the mining business, myself—but i understand they’ve been arrested for the m—— that is, on account of the disappearance of old mr. o’daly.”
the resident magistrate did not assent by so much as a word. “well? what’s that to you?” he queried, coldly.
“it’s this much to me,” bernard retorted, not with entire good-temper, “that o’daly isn’t dead at all.”
major snaffle’s eyebrows went up still further, with a little jerk. he hesitated for a moment, then said: “i hope you know the importance of what you are saying. we don’y like to be fooled with.”
“the fooling has been done by these who started the story that he was murdered,” remarked bernard.
“one must always be prepared for that—at some stage of a case—among these irish,” said the resident magistrate. “i’ve only been in ireland two years, but i know their lying tricks as well as if i’d been born among them. service in india helps one to understand all the inferior races.”
“i haven’t been here even two months,” said the young man from houghton county, “but so far as i can figure it out, the irishmen who do the bulk of the lying wear uniforms and monkey-caps like paper-collar boxes perched over one ear. the police, i mean.”
“we won’t discuss that,” put in the major, peremptorily. “do you know where o’daly is?”
“yes, sir, i do,” answered bernard.
“where?”
“you wouldn’t know if i told you, but i’ll take you to the place—that is, if you’ll let me talk to your prisoners first.”
major snaffle turned the proposition over in his mind. “take me to the place,” he commented at last; “that means that you’ve got him hidden somewhere, i assume.”
bernard looked into the shrewd, twinkling eyes with a new respect. “that’s about the size of,” he assented.
“hra-m! yes. that makes a new offense of it, with you as an accessory, i take it—or ought i to say principal?”
bernard was not at all dismayed by this shift in the situation.
“call it what you like,” he answered. “see here, major,” he went on, in a burst of confidence, “this whole thing’s got nothing to do with politics or the potato crop or anything else that need concern you. it’s purely a private family matter. in a day or two, it’ll be in such shape that i can tell you all about it. for that matter, i could now, only it’s such a deuce of a long story.”
the major thought again.
“all right,” he said. “you can see the prisoners in my presence, and then i’ll give you a chance to produce o’daly. i ought to warn you, though, that it may be all used against you, later on.”
“i’m not afraid of that,” replied bernard.
a minute later, he was following the resident magistrate up a winding flight of narrow stone stairs, none too clean. a constable, with a bunch of keys jingling in his hand, preceded them, and, at the top, threw open a heavy, iron-cased door. the solitary window of the room they entered had been so blocked with thick bars of metal that very little light came through. bernard, with some difficulty, made out two figures lying in one corner on a heap of straw and old cast-off clothing.
“get up! here’s some one to see you!” called out the major, in the same tone he had used to the constables while they were helping on the overcoat.
bernard, as he heard it, felt himself newly informed as to the spirit in which india was governed. perhaps it was necessary there; but it made him grind his teeth to think of its use in ireland.
the two figures scrambled to their feet, and bernard shook hands with both.
“egor, sir, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” exclaimed jerry, effusively, wringing the visitor’s fingers in his fat clasp. “are ye come to take us out?”
“yes, that’ll be easy enough,” said bernard. “you got my telegram all right?”
major snaffle took his tablets from a pocket, and made a minute on them unobserved.
“i did—i did,” said jerry, buoyantly. then with a changed expression he added, whispering: “an’ that same played the divil intirely. ’t was for that they arrested us.”
“don’t whisper!” interposed the resident magistrate, curtly.
“egor! i’ll say nothing at all,” said jerry, who seemed now for the first time to consider the presence of the official.
“yes—don’t be afraid,” bernard urged, reassuringly. “it’s all right now. tell me, is o’daly in the place we know of?”
“he is, thin! egor, unless he’d wings on him, and dug his way up through the sayling, like a blessed bat.”
“did he make much fuss?”
“he did not—lastewise we didn’t stop to hear, he came down wid us aisy as you plaze, an’ i unlocked the dure. ’t is a foine room,’ says i. ‘’t is that,’ says he. ‘here’s whishky,’ says i. ‘i’d be lookin’ for that wherever you were,’ says he, ‘even to the bowels of the earth.’ ‘an’ why not?’ says i. ‘what is it the priest read to us, that it makes a man’s face to shine wid oil?’ ‘a grand scholar ye are, jerry,’ says he—”
“cut it short, jerry!” interposed bernard. “the main thing is you left him there all right?”
“well, thin, we did, sir, an’ no mistake.”
“my plan is, major,”—bernard turned to the resident magistrate—“to take my friend here, jerry higgins, with us, to the place i’ve been speaking of. we’ll leave the other man here, as the editors say in my country, as a ‘guarantee of good faith.’ the only point is that we three must go alone. it wouldn’t do to take any constables with us. in fact, there’s a secret about it, and i wouldn’t feel justified in giving it away even to you, if it didn’t seem necessary. we simply confide it to you.”
“you can’t confide anything to me,” said the resident magistrate. “understand clearly that i shall hold myself free to use everything i see and learn, if the interests of justice seem to demand it.”
“yes, but that isn’t going to happen,” responded bernard. “the interests of justice are all the other way, as you’ll see, later on. what i mean is, if the case isn’t taken into court at all—as it won’t be—we can trust you not to speak about this place.”
“oh—in my private capacity—that is a different matter.”
“and you won’t be afraid to go alone with us?—it isn’t far from here, but, mind, it is downright lonesome.”
major snaffle covered the two men—the burly, stout irishman and the lithe, erect, close-knit young american—with a comprehensive glance. the points of his mustache trembled momentarily upward in the beginning of a smile. “no—not the least bit afraid,” the dapper little gentleman replied.
the constables at the outer door stood with their big red hands to their caps, and saw with amazement the major, bernard and jerry pass them and the cars, and go down the street abreast. the villagers, gathered about the shop and cottage doors, watched the progress of the trio with even greater surprise. it seemed now, though, that nothing was too marvelous to happen in muirisc. some of them knew that the man with the flower in his coat was the stipendary magistrate from bantry, and, by some obscure connection, this came to be interpreted throughout the village as meaning that the bodies of both o’daly and miss kate had been found. the stories which were born of this understanding flatly contradicted one another at every point as they flew about, but they made a good enough basis for the old women of the hamlet to start keening upon afresh.
the three men, pausing now and again to make sure they were not followed, went at a sharp pace around through the churchyard to the door of jerry’s abode, and entered it. the key and the lantern were found hanging upon their accustomed pegs. jerry lighted the candle, pushed back the bed, and led the descent of the narrow, musty stairs through the darkness. the major came last of all.
“i’ve only been down here once myself,” bernard explained to him, over his shoulder, as they made their stumbling way downward. “it seems the place was discovered by accident, in the old fenian days. i suppose the convent used it in old times—they say there was a skeleton of a monk found in it.”
“whisht, now!” whispered jerry, as, having passed through the long, low corridor leading from the staircase, he came to a halt at the doorway. “maybe we’ll surproise him.”
he unlocked the door and flung it open. no sound of life came from within.
“come along out ‘o that, cormac!” called jerry, into the mildewed blackness.
there was no answer.
bernard almost pushed jerry forward into the chamber, and, taking the lantern from him, held it aloft as he moved about. he peered under the table; he opened the great muniment chest; he pulled back the curtains to scrutinize the bed. there was no sign of o’daly anywhere.
“saints be wid us!” gasped jerry, crossing himself, “the divil’s flown away wid his own!”
bernard, from staring in astonishment into his confederate’s fat face, let his glance wander to the major. that official had stepped over the threshold of the chamber, and stood at one side of the open door. he held a revolver in his gloved, right hand.
“gentlemen,” he said, in a perfectly calm voice, “my father served in ireland in fenian times, and an american-irishman caught him in a trap, gagged him with gun-rags, and generally made a fool of him. such things do not happen twice in any intelligent family. you will therefore walk through this door, arm in arm, handing me the lantern as you pass, and you will then go up the stairs six paces ahead of me. if either of you attempts to do anything else, i will shoot him down like a dog.”
