The Search Party/Chapter 5

ISS BLOW came back for her luncheon, and then, asking no more help or advice from Jimmy O'Loughlin, went out and made her way to Dr. O'Grady's house. It stood a few hundred yards from the village in the middle of a small field. Miss Blow knocked and rang at the door, though she had no real expectation of its being opened to her. She walked round the house and peered in at the windows. The rooms on the ground floor showed every sign of having been recently occupied by a person of untidy habits. She reached the yard, surveyed the coach house and the stable which had once sheltered a good horse. She tried the kitchen door and found it bolted against her. The kitchen had a disused and neglected appearance which puzzled her. She returned to the front of the house and sat down on a stone to think out the position in which she found herself.

Patsy Devlin, who had followed her from the hotel, watched her proceedings from a distance with great interest. He afterwards made a report to Jimmy O'Loughlin, a masterly report which interpreted her actions, and added a picturesque touch at the end. Patsy Devlin would have written good histories if fortune had made him a university professor instead of a blacksmith.

"You'd have been sorry for the creature," he said, "if you'd seen her sitting there on a lump of a stone with the tears running down the two cheeks of her the same as if you were after beating her with a stick."

"I am sorry for her," said Jimmy. "It's herself has her own share of trouble before her when she finds out that the doctor's off to America without so much as leaving word for her to go after him."

It did not seem likely that Miss Blow would easily arrive at a knowledge of the full extent of her misery. Biddy Halloran, the rheumatic old lady who had waited long on the roadside for the doctor in the morning, was still lurking near the house when Miss Blow reached it. She, like Patsy Devlin, watched the examination of the premises with deep interest. When Miss Blow sat down on the stone, Biddy Halloran hobbled up to her.

"Is it the doctor you're looking for?" she said. "For if it is, it's hardly ever you'll see him again."

Miss Blow was startled, and demanded an explanation of the words. Biddy, who was slightly deaf, pretended to be very deaf indeed. Miss Blow's clear voice and determination of manner subdued her in the end. She professed to be the only person in Clonmore who really knew what had happened to the doctor.

"Holidays, is it?" she said, recollecting what Patsy Devlin had told her, "no, nor work either. It's to Dublin he's gone, and it's little pleasure he'll find there. Och, but he was a fine man and it's a pity of him!" "Tell me at once," said Miss Blow, "what he went to Dublin to do."

"There was a lump in the inside of him," said Biddy, "a gathering like; and many's the time he told me of that same. It was the size of a young pullet's egg, and you'd feel it lepping when you put your hand on it, the same as it might be a trout. 'Biddy, agra,' he says, speaking to me, as it might be to yourself or to some other young lady that would be in it, instead of an old woman like myself, 'medicine's no good,' says he, 'but the knife is what's wanted.' 'Would you not be afeared,' I said, 'to be trusting yourself to them murdering doctors up in Dublin, and maybe a young lady somewhere that would be crying her eyes out after you, and you dead?' 'I would not be afeared,' says he—och, but he was a fine man! 'only I wouldn't like the girl that's to be married to me to know,' says he; 'I'd be obliged to you if you'd keep it from her,' says he; 'and what's more, I'll go to-morrow.'"

Miss Blow did not believe a word of it, but old Biddy Halloran reaped her reward. Jimmy O'Loughlin, when the conversation was reported to him, sent her a present of a bottle of patent medicine which had been a long time in the shop and appeared to be unsaleable. It professed to cure indigestion, and to free the system from uric acid if taken in teaspoonfuls after meals. Biddy Halloran rubbed it into her knees and felt her rheumatic pains greatly relieved.

Miss Blow sought and, after many inquiries, found the woman who had acted as Dr. O'Grady's housekeeper, and had basely deserted him in the hour of his extremest need. She had taken refuge, as a temporary lodger, with Patsy Devlin's wife. It was understood that she would pay for her board and lodging when her solicitor succeeded in recovering the wages due to her. The news of the doctor's flight had depressed her. She felt that she was greatly wronged; but even when smarting from her loss, she was not so heartless as to revenge herself by telling the terrible truth to an innocent and beautiful creature like Miss Blow. She gave it as her opinion that the doctor, driven to desperation, perhaps almost starved, had poisoned himself. He had, she asserted, bottles enough in his surgery to poison the whole country. His body, she believed, was lying in the house behind the locked doors.

"If so be," she added, "that the rats haven't him ate; for the like of that house with rats, I never seen. Many's the time, when the doctor would be out, I've sat the whole evening on the kitchen table, with my legs tucked up under me, and them running across the floor the same as hens would come to you when you'd be calling them. You couldn't put down a dish out of your hand, but they'd whip the bit off of it before your eyes, without you'd have some sort of a cover to put over it."

No one who was even slightly acquainted with Dr. O'Grady could suppose him capable of suicide under any conceivable circumstances. Miss Blow, who of course knew him well, was quite unimpressed by the housekeeper's horrible suggestion. But she realized that the truth, whatever it was, was not to be reached by inquiries. Jimmy O'Loughlin and Patsy Devlin lied to her. So did Biddy Halloran. So did the housekeeper. There was evidently an organized conspiracy among the people of Clonmore for the concealment of the truth. Miss Blow had a logical mind. It seemed plain to her that if everybody agreed to tell lies the truth must be something of a dangerous or uncomfortable kind. She had some knowledge of Ireland, gleaned from the leading articles of English newspapers. She knew, for instance, that it was a country of secret societies, of midnight murders, of defeated justice, of lawlessness which scorned the cloak of hypocrisy. She had heard of reigns of terror, emphasized by the epithet "veritable." She was firmly convinced that the lives of respectable people were not safe on the west side of the Shannon. Her father, Mr. Blow of the cigars, was an earnest politician, and at election times his house was full of literature about Ireland which his daughter read. Her experience of the people of Clonmore went far beyond her worst expectations. She made up her mind that Dr. O'Grady had been murdered; that everybody in the place knew the fact; and that, either through fear or an innate fondness for crime, no one would help to bring the murderers to justice.

It is very much to her credit that she did not take the next train home; for she must have thought that her own life was in great danger. But she was a young woman of determination and courage. She made up her mind to discover and bring to the scaffold the men who had done away with Dr. O'Grady. Her suspicions fastened, in the first instance, on Jimmy O'Loughlin and Patsy Devlin.

"Mr. O'Loughlin," she said, when she returned to the hotel after her interview with the housekeeper, "kindly tell me who is the nearest magistrate."

"You haven't far to go to look for a magistrate, miss, if that's all you want. I'm one myself."

"I don't believe you," said Miss Blow, rudely.

"Maybe not," said Jimmy; "but I'm telling you the truth for all that. Let you go into the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow, and see if I'm not sitting there on the bench; with the police and Mr. Goddard himself, that's the officer, if he happens to be over from Ballymoy, doing what I bid them, be that same agreeable to them or not; and oftener it's not, for them police think a lot of themselves. When you see me there administering the law you'll be sorry for what you're after saying. It's the Chairman of the Urban District Council I am, and an ex-officio magistrate, thanks be to God."

"Is there any other magistrate in the neighbourhood?"

"There is not; for the R. M. lives away off at Ballymoy, and that's better than twelve miles from this. There's ne'er another, only myself and Lord Manton up at the Castle, and he never sits on the bench from one year's end to another, unless maybe there's a job on that he'd like to have his finger in."

The title produced its effect on Miss Blow. Earls are much less common in the industrial districts of England than they are in Ireland. The statistics have never been exactly worked out, but there can be little doubt that there are far more earls to every thousand common men in Ireland than in any other part of the three kingdoms. This is not because governments are more generous to the Irish in the matter of titles. The explanation is to be found in the fact that untitled people in Ireland tend to disappear, thinned out by famine, emigration, and various diseases, while the earls survive. In England it is the noblemen who die away, being, as every reader of popular English novels knows, a degraded set of men, addicted to frightful vices, whereas the working men and the great middle class increase rapidly, their morality being of a very superior kind. Curiously enough, the English, though perfectly aware of the facts, respect their debauched earls greatly, on account, it may be supposed, of their rarity. The Irish, on the other hand, think very little of an earl, regard him as in many respects similar to an ordinary man; earls being, as has been said, comparatively common in Ireland. Miss Blow, who had never to her knowledge seen an earl, brightened up at the mention of Lord Manton.

"I'll go up to the Castle," she said, "and see him to-morrow morning."

Jimmy O'Loughlin sent a message to Patsy Devlin, asking him to call at the hotel that evening. The fact that he had not been elected inspector of sheep dipping still rankled in Patsy's mind. He blamed Jimmy O'Loughlin more than any one else for his rejection. He made up his mind to obey the summons, but not to be seduced from the path of righteous wrath by porter or whisky. He would refuse contemptuously to oblige Jimmy in any way.

He was received in Jimmy O'Loughlin's private office, a small room at the back of the hotel, which looked out on the yard. The walls were adorned with two pictures, enlarged photographs of eminent ecclesiastics with small eyes and puffy cheeks. The table was mahogany and was covered with circular stains of various sizes. There was a sideboard with a very dilapidated cruet-stand and two teapots on it. The chairs were all rickety. A writing-desk, which stood under the window, was littered with a number of exceedingly dirty papers. On the table in the middle of the room, by way of preparation for Patsy's visit, were arranged a jug of porter, a bottle of whisky, a water croft, and several tumblers.

"Fill your glass," said Jimmy hospitably, "and light your pipe. You can start on the porter, and finish up with the spirits."

Patsy poured out the porter suspiciously, and drank a tumbler full without any sign of appreciation.

"There isn't one about the place," said Jimmy, "that's better acquainted with the old earl up at the Castle than yourself. He thinks a deal of you, and well he may."

"He gave me a letter," said Patsy, "at the time of the election. But it's little heed you or the rest of them paid to it."

Jimmy was anxious to avoid the subject of the election. "I'm told," he said, "that whatever you might ask of him, he'd do."

Patsy was susceptible to flattery of this kind.

"He always thought a deal of me and my father before me," he said. "You could tell the opinion he had of me by the letter he wrote. And why wouldn't he when either my father or myself put the shoes on every horse that's come and gone from the Castle this fifty years."

"I could tell what he thought of you," said Jimmy. "Sure anybody could."

"You could tell it, if so be you read the letter."

"The doctor's young, lady," said Jimmy, "is going up to see the earl to-morrow. The Lord save her! but she's half distracted with grief this minute."

"And what good will going to the Castle do her? Sure he doesn't know where the doctor is no more than another."

"He might tell her the truth," said Jimmy.

"Be damn! but he might, not knowing."

"And if he did, the girl's heart would be broke."

"It would surely."

"We've kept it from her," said Jimmy, "and may the Lord forgive us for the lies we're after telling, fresh ones every hour of the day. And if so be that now, at the latter end, she hears how the doctor has gone and left her it'll go through her terrible, worse than the influenza."

"And what would you consider would be best to be done?" asked Patsy.

"I was thinking that maybe, if you was to see him to-morrow, early, before ever she gets at him with her questions, and if you were to give him the word, that it might be, coming from a man like yourself that he has a respect for, that he'd hold off from telling her."

"He might."

"And will you do it, Patsy Devlin? Will you do it for the sake of the fine young girl that's upstairs, this minute, heart scalded with the sorrow that's on her?"

"It's little you deserve the like from me," said Patsy, "you nor the rest of the Guardians. But I'll do it for the sake of the girl."

"I knew you would," said Jimmy. "It's a good heart you have in you, Patsy Devlin, and a feeling for them that's in distress. But the porter's finished. Will I draw you another jug of the same, or will you try the whisky for a change?"

Patsy indicated the whisky bottle with his thumb. He remained lost in deep thought while the cork was drawn and a considerable quantity of the spirit poured into the tumbler before him. Indeed, so complete was his abstraction that the glass might have been absolutely filled with undiluted whisky if Jimmy had not, of his own accord, stayed the flow of it.

"I'm collecting the town and the neighbourhood," said Patsy, "for the sports, and there's no reason that I can see why I shouldn't call on his lordship to-morrow and ask for a subscription."

"You might."

"And in the course of conversation I could draw down about the doctor and the young lady and give him the word."

"Take care now would she be beforehand with you, if so be you were a bit late in going."

"Let you see to that," said Patsy.

"I might try," said Jimmy; "but she's that headstrong and determined it's hard to stop her once she takes the notion into her head."

"Be damn!" said Patsy, "but however you manage you'll have to stop her. The old earl doesn't have his breakfast took till near ten o'clock, and if I was to try to see him before half-past ten, he'd eat the face off me."

"I'll do the best I can," said Jimmy. "I'll tell Bridgy to have the breakfast late on her. She does be wanting it at half-past eight."

"Let her want. If she gets it by half-past nine itself oughtn't she to be content? There's many a house where she wouldn't get it then."

"Content or not," said Jimmy heroically, "it's at half-past nine she'll have it to-morrow anyway."

"And after that," said Patsy, "it could be that the horse might be lame the way she'd have to walk."

"It could."

"And if you sent her round by the big gate," said Patsy, "it would put a couple of miles on her beyond what she'd have to walk if she was to go up through the deer park." "It would," said Jimmy; "but the talk she'll give after will be terrible to listen to."

"Don't tell me. A young lady like her wouldn't know how to curse."

"It's not cursing," said Jimmy, "but it's a way she has of speaking that would make you feel as if the rats beyond in the haggard was Christians compared to you."

"Let her talk."

"And she looks at you straight in the face," said Jimmy, "the same as if she was trying to see what would be in the inside of your head, and feeling middling sure all the time that there wasn't much in it, beyond the sweepings of the street."

"It's for her own good you're doing it," said Patsy.

There was some consolation in the thought. But Patsy, even while making the suggestion, felt that a good conscience is not always a sufficient support in well-doing.

"You might," he added, "be out about the place and let herself talk to her till the worst of it was over."

This plan, which perhaps would not have suited Mrs. O'Loughlin, commended itself to Jimmy; but it did not make him altogether comfortable about the future.

"I might," he said, "and I will, but she'll get me for sure at the latter end."

If he had done as his conscience suggested, Patsy Devlin would have gone home at once after settling Miss Blow's business for her. But the whisky bottle was still more than half full, and it seemed to him a pity to break up a pleasant party at an early hour. He started a fresh subject of conversation, one that he hoped would be interesting to his host.

"Tell me this now," he said. "Do you think that fellow down at Rosivera, the same that brought the pianos along with him, would give a subscription to the sports?" "I don't know," said Jimmy. "He's queer. I never set eyes upon him myself since I finished carting the packing-cases down to Rosivera."

"They tell me that he does be calling at your shop for his bread and the like, and leaving a power of money with you."

"I wouldn't say he left so much at all," said Jimmy cautiously. "And anyway it's a servant that did be coming every day till to-day, and then it was some sort of a foreigner with a written order, him not being able to speak English."

"Would you see your way to asking him for a subscription?"

"How would I do it, when he can't know a word I say to him, nor him to me? Why won't you talk sense?"

"And where's the man himself, and the fellow that did speak English?"

"How would I know? If it's a subscription you want from him, you'd better go over to Rosivera and ask for it."

"They say," said Patsy thoughtfully, "that he has plenty to give. A man like that with a motor car running on the road every day, and two foreign gentlemen, let alone an Englishman, to wait on him, must have a power of money. I wouldn't wonder now, if I took him the right way, but he'd give five pounds. I might drop him a hint that five pounds is the least that any of the gentry would give to the sports."

"Let you see what you can get out of him," said Jimmy, "and the more the better."

Jimmy had got all he wanted out of Patsy Devlin. He did not care very much whether Mr. Red subscribed to the sports or not. He took the whisky bottle and drove the cork home into its neck with a blow of his fist. Patsy looked regretfully at it, but he was a man of self-respect. He would neither ask for, nor hint that he wanted, a drink which his host did not seem inclined to offer him freely. He realized what the decisive blow given to the cork meant. There would be no more whisky for him unless he chose to go out to the bar and pay for it there in the usual way. This he was unwilling to do. Later on in the month, when the collection for the sports was complete, he might be in a position to spend lavishly; but for the present he felt it necessary to economize.

"It'll be off with me," he said. "It'll be best, seeing I have to be up at the Castle early to-morrow. Later on in the day I might be going over to Rosivera to see what's to be got out of the man that's there. If he's as rich as you're after telling me he'll never miss a pound, or for the matter of that five pound. I'll have a try at him anyway."