The Search Party. George A. Birmingham
of them. They’re beastly things as a matter of fact, and I don’t recommend them to friends, but they’re amazingly popular.”
“Write,” said Mr. Red.
“I am going to write. Don’t hustle me, like a good man. What I want to say to you is this, that I must send a line to Adeline Maud as well as to the police sergeant. I want to tell her that I’m not really dead, only bluffing.”
“That,” said Mr. Red, “is impossible.”
“Nonsense. There’s nothing impossible about it. It’s just as easy to write two letters as one. I shan’t mention the Brotherhood to her, and if I did she would have more sense than to talk about it. If you don’t believe me you can read the letter yourself.”
“I trust no woman.”
“That,” said Dr. O’Grady, “is a most illiberal sentiment, and I’m surprised to hear you utter it. If you’d been an old-fashioned Tory now, or an Irish landlord, or a Liberal Cabinet Minister, I could have understood your position; but in a military——”
“Anti-militarist,” said Mr. Red.
“That’s what I meant. In an anti-militarist, that sort of prejudice against women is most inconsistent. Who was it that hammered a nail into Sisera’s head? A woman, and an anti-military woman. Who was it that stuck a knife into that horrid beast Marat, when he was sitting in his bath? A woman again. Who was it that shot that Russian governor the other day? I’ve forgotten her name for the minute, but you know who I mean. It was a woman. She did for him on a railway platform. And yet you stand up there calling yourself an advanced kind of anarchist, and say that you can’t trust a woman. Emperor, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Just think the matter out and you’ll see that when it comes to thorough-going, out-and-out revolutions women are quite the most trustworthy kind of people there are.”
Mr. Red gave another brief order in his foreign language. The fair-haired anarchist stepped forward and took away the note-paper, pen and ink.
“What are you at now?” said Dr. O’Grady. “Surely to goodness you’re not going back on the suicide plan? Oh, very well. I can’t help it. But you’ll be sorry afterwards when the police come here looking for me.”
“I have spoken,” said Mr. Red.
“You have not. You’ve growled occasionally, but nobody could call your remarks speaking.”
“I leave you,” said Mr. Red. “Remember.”
“Remember what? Oh, you’re going, are you? Just wait one instant. You refuse to let me write to Adeline Maud. Very well. You don’t know Adeline Maud, but I do. Even supposing the police can’t find me, or my body after you’ve cut my throat, and supposing that Jimmy O’Loughlin and Lorraine Vavasour give up the pursuit—from what I know of Lorraine I think it most unlikely that he will—you’ll still have to reckon with Adeline Maud. She’s a most determined young woman. All the perseverance which has gone to making ‘Blow’s beauties’ the popular smokes they are at twopence each has descended from her father to her. When she finds out that I’ve disappeared she’ll go on searching till she finds me. The ordinary sleuth-hound is absolutely nothing to her for persistence in the chase. It will be far wiser for you—in the interests of the Brotherhood I mean—to let me head her off, by telling her that I’ll turn up again all right.”
“Farewell,” said Mr. Red.
“I ought to mention before you go,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that Adeline Maud may be in Clonmore to-morrow. I’m expecting a visit—— Damn it! The fool is gone and shut the door behind him.”
Mr. Red had, in fact, entirely ignored the announcement of Miss Blow’s impending arrival. He and his two friends left the room, and, distrustful of the parole which had been given, locked the door behind them. Dr. O’Grady turned to the breakfast provided for him with an excellent appetite.
“Silly old ass that Emperor is,” he murmured. “I suppose now he’ll go and sit down beside his yellow crocodiles in the dining-room and try to invent some new kind of dynamite. He ought, as a matter of fact, to be in an asylum. Some day he will be if he doesn’t blow himself up first. Anyhow this is a jolly good business for me. If he chooses to pay me four pounds a day for sitting here twiddling my thumbs, I’m quite content. I only hope it will be some time before they think of looking for me at Rosivera. I must try and hit on a plan for putting the police off the scent. I wonder how long it will last. The Field Marshal suggested four weeks. Seven times four—even putting it as low as four pounds a day—and I’ll try to screw him up a bit—seven times four are twenty-eight. And four times twenty-eight is a hundred and twelve. That with the tenner I’ve got will make £122. I’ll make a clear £100 out of it anyway, and they won’t have time to elect another dispensary doctor before I get out.”
CHAPTER IV
Patsy Devlin strolled into the Imperial Hotel at noon. He found Jimmy O’Loughlin, the proprietor, behind the bar, and was served at once with a pint of porter.
“It’s fine weather for the hay, thanks be to God,” he observed.
In Connacht the hay harvest is gathered during the month of August, and Patsy’s comment on the weather was seasonable.
“I’ve seen worse,” said Jimmy O’Loughlin. “But what’s on you at all, Patsy, that you haven’t been next or nigh the place this two months or more?”
“Be damn! but after the way you behaved over the election of the inspector of sheep dipping, the wonder is that I’d ever enter your door again. What would hinder you giving me the job as soon as another?”
Jimmy O’Loughlin did not wish to discuss the subject. He was, as a trader ought to be, a peaceful individual, anxious to live on good terms with all possible customers. He realized that the election was a subject on which Patsy was likely to feel bitterly. He filled another glass with porter from the tap and handed it silently across the counter. Patsy tendered a coin in payment.
“I’ll not take it from you,” said Jimmy O’Loughlin heartily. “It would be a queer thing if I wouldn’t give you a sup at my own expense now that you are here after all this length of time. How’s herself?”
Patsy Devlin took a pull at the second pint of porter.
“She’s only middling. She was complaining these two days of an impression on the chest, and a sort of rumbling within in herself that wouldn’t let her rest easy in her bed.”
“Do you tell me that? And did you fetch the doctor to her?”
“I did not then.”
“And why not?”
Patsy Devlin finished the porter and winked across the bar at Jimmy O’Loughlin. Jimmy failed to catch the meaning of the wink.
“If it was a red ticket you wanted,” he said, “you know very well that you’ve nothing to do but ask me for it. But Dr. O’Grady, the poor man, would go to you without that.”
“If I did be wanting a red ticket,” said Patsy, “it wouldn’t be you I’d ask for it. There’s them would give it to me and maybe something along with it, and what’s more, did give it to me no later than this morning.”
“Well,” said Jimmy, who guessed at the identity of the unnamed benefactor, “and if so be that his lordship is after giving you the ticket, why didn’t you go and fetch the doctor to herself?”
“I went for him right enough.”
“And do you mean to tell me that he refused to attend the call and you with the red ticket in your hand? For if he did——”
“He wasn’t within when I went for him.”
The