Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mac, who acknowledged his host of several pleasant dinners at the large round table in the (lining room. Mac moved nearer, to just below the bridge, and both men, one above the other, looked out into the darkness and shared silently their pleasure in the unique peace offered only by a ship far out in a vast ocean.
At sea, a ship was truly a world of its own, isolated for the duration of a voyage from all but others like it. Only lights, loudhailers and flags served to communicate news, greeting, requests or emergency.
In the distance, an eastbound steamer could be seen, her lights sparkling across the water. One began to flash, in what became an irregular sequence—obviously a message expertly sent. Mac and the Captain watched.
Eventually the steamer passed by, blowing two blasts from her horn in farewell. The sound was muted by distance and faded mournfully. The answering blasts from Thuringia destroyed the peaceful surroundings a moment; then those sounds too dispersed across the dark ocean, until the rippling wake of the ship and soft noises from her bowels, below-decks, provided the only distraction to a night of glittering stars.
"Do you read Morse, m'sieur?" asked the Captain suddenly. He was looking at Mac, seriously but with a kindly glint in his eye.
"Yes, Captain," answered Mac, looking still after the steamer, now indistinct, merging with .constellations on the horizon. "I am afraid I do." Mac's dejection had been observed by the seaman.
"As a Frenchman, it does not concern me," began the Captain, "but it seems, on our arrival in New York, you are going to have"—he paused—"problems, Mr. MacDonald."
Mac sighed and thrust both hands deep into his heavy coat.
"That is the third ship, today which has conveyed to me the same message," the Captain went on, "always, mid-Atlantic, we exchange news. After all," he smiled, "while we are at sea, the world might have come to an end."
He looked long and sympathetically at Mac. He had no love for the English or for their boorish colonial behavior. He turned to go back into the wheelhouse. "Can you swim?" he asked with a grin.
"Badly," replied Mac soberly, not appreciating the humor.
The Captain appraised his passenger, and his heart went out to the young man of whom, during the last week, he had grown rather fond. "Then I hope you have friends," he said, and re-entered the bridge.
Mac was alone. He looked up at the stars; the night was suddenly cold and bleak. Tears filled his eyes, not of self-pity, but of compassion for May, as she appeared in his memory with that smile and those eyes he would never forget. Somewhere, he hoped, she too was looking up into the starry sky; perhaps then she would remember what they had almost grasped and—no matter what—forgive him.
§
It is one hundred and forty-three miles from Lismore to Dublin. Lying in an armchair of the lounge in the Lismore House Hotel, George reviewed his situation. Ireland was crawling with police and detectives, all, it seemed, looking for the three Americans involved in the great Bank of England case. George was exhausted, having eluded one detective after another, keeping always ahead of danger with a sharp eye and cunning mind; now, for a moment at rest, analyzing his situation, he felt only a deep sense of despair and—worse —loneliness.
His head was back, eyes closed, his stomach full from a stodgy Irish meal, when another man entered the poorly lit, overly furnished lounge, belched twice, then sat down to read the evening paper. George opened his eyes a fraction and watched the man rifle the paper quickly, read the first two columns on its front page, then turn into the second and third, continuing the lead story.
The photogravure on the front page, without doubt, was from the photograph taken of George and Ellen in Paris. On reflection, it seemed sheer stupidity to have allowed her to keep it, but to Ellen it had been, at least for a while, precious. It made him look older than he was, especially since his clean shave, but the description beneath the picture would (no doubt with Ellen's help, he had sense enough to realize) have rectified that. He had not energy to curse the lady. His eyes found a figure printed below, large enough to read. Five thousand pounds reward!
The stout man with the paper put it down, rubbing his pudgy fingers on a handkerchief, which he then used to wipe his lips, around which the soup from dinner had dried yellow and brown. The large peasant-farmer face broke into a smile as George's eye caught his. The man nodded, gave George a long look and took up the paper as if to leave, but remained in his seat. Unaware that he was staring at George, he stroked his own long sideburns and absently twirled his sagging moustache, referring momentarily to the picture emblazoned on the Irish Evening News.
The man obviously was not sure of George—the hasty shipboard barbering had certainly changed his appearance—but there was something in George Bidwell's eyes that was unique; perhaps their pale color or the dark lashes and brows-whatever, the camera in Paris had captured the quality so admired by Ellen. George kept his eyes closed.
Suddenly with a great effort the stout man stood up, broke wind and waddled out of the large room. George took a deep breath; remembered that he had on his person, and in his coat in the cloakroom, all his valuables and lost no time at all in picking up the small bag beside him (his only luggage) which he had, as yet, not even taken to his room and left the hotel.
He could not gamble on passing unrecognized. It was going to be a long night.
The next twelve hours were a discovery for George of what keeps the grass green in Ireland. The rain bucketed down in torrents. He walked for an hour, until at the outskirts of Lismore he found a place with its light on, declaring JAUNTING CARS TO LET. He went round to the livery stable behind a house and found the hostler just uncoupling the harness from a "car." The young man touched his cap when George produced five sovereigns and listened intently as George asked the various routes to Dublin, impressing on the Irish lad the urgency of his journey and that it should begin immediately, not at dawn.
The hostler scratched his head for several moments before speaking. In George's mind it was crucial that he leave immediately; his increasing fears and growing desperation made him feel sure the detectives from Queenstown would not be far behind. The stout man at the hotel must have recognized him, he told himself. Perhaps it was merely pessimism, but to George it seemed that everywhere he went, people stared. A stranger is an immediate suspect; had he red hair and a hunch back he felt they would still accuse him, to gain the offered bounty.
Ireland had become too "hot." In George's mind was now the only alternative plan: to embark for Scotland, then race across England, out of the clutches of those who thought him "bottled up" in the Emerald Isle; over the Channel to Calais; on to Spain; from there to South America; then a slow boat to the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps New Orleans. If his pursuers followed him that far, they deserved his soul.
Despite his situation he smiled at that thought, and the Irish hostler responded, thinking the expression meant for him. He had now worked out a route for the first part of the gentleman's journey, and outlined the road to Clonmel, which was beyond Cahir, a place where Cromwell had once been so stoically resisted by the Irish defenders—"Where brutal retribution was meted out on their surrender," said the lad, now checking his horse's bit. George remembered the one thing he knew of Cromwell's Irish campaigns. "Without mercy," he said with some feeling.
The lad's eyes narrowed and he looked at this gentleman with renewed respect. George had made an instant friend.
"Is it, if you'll forgive me askin', sor, a Fenian man you'll be, sor?" The patriot in the man's heart had been touched deeply now, and any suspicion he held toward his prospective fare was dispelled.
"From America," said George, nodding, falling in with the assumption. "I'm a leader of a group there, who has returned to the home country to see the situation."
"From America!" the lad repeated in awe.
"And it's not entirely a welcoming committee I think I have on my heels," George said, deciding to commit himself to the fervor he'd stirre
d in the Irishman. He climbed into the jaunting car beside the lad. The one thing real about his newfound status was that George and these Irish Fenians shared a common enemy—the English.
"A Fenian man," whispered the lad as his sleek blood horse trotted out into the torrential rain. The lad looked at George with the passion of youth and patriotism. George nodded.
"For that, sor," he said—then, remembering the money, he grinned—"and your five sovereigns, it's to Hell I'll be takin' you if you wish it."
"Or Clonmel," said George, smiling at the Irish eyes.
"There's what I'd call a 'safe house,' the lad went on, "in that town. There they'll keep you, I'm sure; you'll be able to take the train on to Dublin and even Belfast—if you wish it."
"Then drive on, boy," said George, "to Clonmel or Hell."
"One and the same, sor," retorted the lad, grinning hugely, "one and the same."
The hostler stood up, shouted wildly, cracked a whip over the horse's back, then whistled loud above the noise of distant thunder as the jaunting car began to move. The rain seemed to become even heavier to George as they raced off toward a road that only the lad could make out. For George, who could see nothing but walls of water, it could well have been to Hell he was being taken.
In the jaunting car, the Irish patriot and the American brain behind the greatest disaster the Bank of England had ever suffered galloped at breakneck speed toward the black nothingness before them and disappeared into the torrential night.
§
Dawn came, and the sun made what impression it could on a dull countryside as rain continued unceasingly. George, exhausted and huddled in the jaunting car, was shaken into consciousness by the Irish lad. Opening his eyes, he saw behind the hostler—his coachman of the night—some distance away, two uniformed figures emerging from a house. Seeing the car, they started to approach. In an instant George was fully awake. They were police.
"Don't move, sor," said the lad quietly. He turned and waved to the two men, who, recognizing the lad, bent against the lashing rain, cursorily returned the greeting, then made off, swallowed by the deluge.
George was soaking wet, hungry and tired past caring; for the moment he had become a pathetic figure, and the boy's sympathies extended toward his "Fenian man." Seeming to make no impression on him, as if it were sustenance to the body and soul, the rain fell into the lad's eyes, splattered dark hair to his forehead and ran from a face that broke into an honest smile.
"You've not to worry, sor," he said; "they'll be lookin' after you here, sor." The lad sprang down from his seat, ran across the yard and through the half-open door from which the police had come. As George watched, his spirits sank and he wished only to be dry and warm, no matter what the consequences. He no longer cared whether the boy was trustworthy, the building offered refuge. He climbed down stiffly from the car and squelched across the mud, ignoring the puddles into which his boots slithered. At the door he paused, gripping his bag firmly. The lad came out, smiling broadly, and scampered back to his car waving encouragement; then he climbed up onto the rig. What the hell, thought George. He turned and stepped into the "safe house."
The room was not empty. A turf fire burned in the grate, and to one side was a long counter. The clock against one wall of the room, a grandfather, almost scraping the low ceiling, showed eleven. It was March 30 and a Sunday, George knew.
Beside the fire crouched a man with what appeared to be an apron round his waist. At one of the two windows stood another man. Both ignored George as he stepped toward the fire. The man from the window crossed slowly to the door, closed it and returned to his position. The man beside George at the fire stood up and faced this stranger. He nodded over at his companion; the man made a sign through the glass, a sign unseen by George, who now collapsed onto a stool at the grate.
There were three doors to the large low room, and in the next moment the two at the rear burst open and fifteen or sixteen men came crashing in boisterously, then, seeing George, fell silent, unmoving. The man beside George at the fire motioned to him to sit again, now with a smile.
"Sunday liquor, sor," he began, "in Oirland is—a delicate problem; 'illegal' is the word." He smiled and turned briefly to the men waiting for reassurance that George was not an intruder. The proprietor nodded; with that they seemed to relax immediately.
"But," the proprietor continued, "if you've an Irish heart, then it is neither an English conscience nor their law you'll be keeping." He bent toward the seated stranger and said confidentially. "Tell 'em, sor, in America, 'tis still the feelin' we have."
He paused as George reappraised the situation, dispelling all his worst imaginings. His relief was as obvious as had been his fears, and the proprietor, in company with several of the men, laughed at his answer.
"I will tell them," said George, "if I get back."
"Then indeed you will, sor," said the proprietor confidently, waving a hand to the others indicating that they were now free to cross to the counter, behind which were bottles of potheen, the homemade Irish brew that served to describe his "house" as a bar. "Indeed you will," he repeated, clapping George about the shoulders, "if we have anything to do with it."
George lay back in the alcove of the grate, where the fire now burned with a warmth that his bones received with thanks.
"You are," said the proprietor, "now amongst friends." The words were never better meant or more gratefully received. Although George had no choice, instinct told him he could trust these men. He wanted to weep, but didn't; instead he got quite specially drunk and joined in the singing amidst rags on the floor in front of the fire in the "house of potheen."
At the sign of the bell,
On the road to Clonmel,
Pat Flagherty kept a neat shebeen
were the last words of the song George absorbed, and he silently thanked "the man himself," before succumbing to dreamless oblivion.
§
Irving took up the daily paper to read aloud its news, and discovered on the front page of the New York Herald a verbatim cable dispatched^ from Great Britain. The Chief of Detectives read it out to his two subordinates, standing with his back to the window of his top-floor office.
"Three shabbily dressed men, who from their accent are believed to be Americans, were arrested in Cork, Ireland, this morning, while attempting to deposit twelve thousand dollars in that city. They are, it is thought, the parties who recently committed the Great Fraud on the Bank of England."
Irving looked across at his two assistants, who were sprawled in the "hospitality" chairs. Stanley and White—if not taxed too hard and allowed to exercise their delegated power (sadistically for the one, in bully-boy manner for the other)—were the perfect assistants for Irving. They both grinned.
"So they're done," said Stanley, shifting his thin frame and extending long legs, which he crossed and placed on a footstool.
"Then they ain't our bother no longer," said White. He sat forward, tensing his muscles, elbows propped on the armrests.
Irving walked to his swivel seat and slumped, taking his time to answer.
"Every day a report comes from somewhere that one of the boys is caught; why should this be any different? We know Mac's aboard Thuringia, so how do these Irish think they've made a coup with all three? If the boys have sense, they ain't travelin' together, and we know they ain't short of sense." He looked at his detectives, Stanley and White, and shook his head. He fixed them both with a stare of sheer pity. "Jesus Christ!" shouted Irving. The two men sat up quickly. "That Pinkerton 'private' was here tellin' us they've split and are off an' runnin', so how in hell do you think it ain't our bother no longer . . ." Irving stopped, exasperated. "I had to promise 'co-op-er-a-tion' (he spread the word sarcastically as he said it) to that investigator; but," he went on slyly, "I didn't tell him for who..." Expecting a response, he waited with a grin. This only perplexed both of his associates.
"We know one thing for sure," said Irving, wiping the smile from his face in dis
gust: "where our money's been comin' from. I ain't heard complaints from you two since you started s pen din' it."
The men squirmed in their seats now, uncomfortable.
"You two have to learn something—obligations." He paused to let them absorb the word. "Thirty thousand dollars in bonds, with more due, is for services rendered or help to come, boys—you understand?"
Stanley nodded and looked at White, who made an apologetic grimace at Irving, who spoke again, quietly now.
"Gentlemen," he said, "we owe them for sendin' it—so somehow," he continued after a pause, "we have to get Mac off his ship." He paused.
"Ain't got a clue—have you?" said Irving derisively. The two men coughed, one after the other, as if—like a yawn—it was compulsive. Irving was right: they hadn't even one idea.
"Jake!" shouted Irving. A uniformed policeman appeared at the door. "Bring him in," he commanded.
The policeman went, and reappeared with another man, poorly dressed, cap in hand, the unforgettable face of a city rough, spread with a large grin, showing more gaps then teeth.
"Gentlemen," said Irving to Stanley and White, who twisted round in their chairs.
"A onetime burglar and sometime seaman," finished living's introduction—"Johnny Dobbs."
The two detectives appraised the man and could barely manage a nod of recognition.
"I have a plan, and Johnny's going to help us—aren't you, Johnny?" asked Irving.
The man, Dobbs, became mock-serious a moment, utilizing the advantage of being, for one time in his life, on the right side of the law—or at least, under its auspices, which to Johnny Dobbs was the same thing.
"Glad to be of service, sirs," he said.
Irving waved at Jake to be gone; the policeman went quickly.
The Chief of New York Detectives, James Irving, leaned back in his seat, which he swiveled slowly from one side to the other, already deep in thought.
"Well, close the door," he said absently, biting the end of a pencil with which he tapped his teeth, "and sit down." By obeying this first instruction, the ex-convict Johnny Dobbs began working for the New York Metropolitan Police.
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