The Search Party/Chapter 8

ISS BLOW went straight from Clonmore Castle to the police barrack. She was received at the door by Constable Moriarty, who happened to be on duty at the time. He was a young man who had only recently joined the force. Miss Blow, after a glance at his smooth boyish face, asked to see the sergeant. She was shown into a small room, known as the office, and kept waiting while Sergeant Farrelly, who was digging potatoes in the garden, "cleaned himself." Her manner, when he joined her, was peremptory. She demanded that a search party should start at once and scour the country for Dr. O'Grady's body. Sergeant Farrelly was puzzled, and scratched his head. Miss Blow handed him Lord Manton's note. He read it, was very perplexed, and scratched his head again. Miss Blow pressed her demand.

"It will be better," said the sergeant at last, "if I go up to the Castle, and speak to his lordship myself. If you'll have the kindness, miss, to leave your name and address, I'll communicate with you."

"I'll wait here," said Miss Blow, "till you return."

"Is it in the barrack, miss?"

"Here," said Miss Blow firmly.

Sergeant Farrelly looked at her helplessly. He did not want a handsome young lady in the barrack; he thought his office an unsuitable place for Miss Blow; but he saw no way of altering her determination. He left her and summoned Constable Moriarty.

"The young lady within," he said, "will wait in the office until such time as I come back from the Castle, where I'll be speaking on business to his lordship. I leave it to you, Constable Moriarty, to see that she's treated with proper respect."

"Is it me?" said Moriarty.

"It is you. You can take her in yesterday's paper, and if it happens that she's read it already, you can talk to her, making yourself as pleasant and agreeable as you know how." Wilkins, Lord Manton's butler, was a good servant. He opened the door to Sergeant Farrelly at about twelve o'clock, and blandly gave the message with which he had been charged.

"His lordship is out, and it is uncertain at what hour he will return."

Sergeant Farrelly was baffled. He went back to the barrack. He found that Miss Blow had moved from the office, which was small and incommodious, and had settled herself in the men's day room. Constable Moriarty, embarrassed and very pink about the face, stood in front of her. Constable Cole, who was off duty, was grinning in a corner. Miss Blow at once reiterated her demand that a party should go out to look for Dr. O'Grady's body. Sergeant Farrelly reasoned with her. When reason failed, he tried to impress her with the majesty of the law. He was a portly man and over six feet in height. On patrol duty, on guard over a public-house on Sunday, or giving evidence in court as to the amount of drink taken by a prisoner, he was an impressive man. He did not impress Miss Blow. Being an English woman, she held the curious theory that the police exist for the protection of the public, and that they ought to engage willingly in the investigation of crime. Sergeant Farrelly knew, of course, that this was not true; but he was unable to explain his position to Miss Blow, because she would not listen to what he said.

At two o'clock, Miss Blow being still immovable in the day room of the barrack, Sergeant Farrelly started again for Clonmore Castle. This time he was accompanied by Constable Moriarty, who, reckless of the consequences of not obeying orders, refused to be left to entertain Miss Blow. Constable Cole slipped quietly out into the garden and took a turn at the potatoes which the sergeant had been obliged to leave undug.

Wilkins said politely what he had said before. Sergeant Farrelly and Moriarty sat down in the hall to wait. They waited till four o'clock. Then they returned to the barrack, hoping that Miss Blow would have gone home. They found that she had not gone and showed no signs of going. She was sitting in the men's room, eating biscuits out of a paper bag. It appeared afterwards that Constable Cole had gone out and bought the biscuits for her, fearing that she might be hungry. Sergeant Farrelly reprimanded him sharply for this.

Miss Blow gave the sergeant and his men her opinion of the Royal Irish Constabulary. She used plain and forcible language, repeating such words as incapacity, inefficiency, and cowardice at frequent intervals. She spoke for nearly half an hour, and then demanded again that the whole force should set out at once and search for Dr. O'Grady's body. Constable Cole grinned, and was caught in the act. The sergeant snubbed him promptly. Miss Blow took off her hat and jacket, and said she intended to stay where she was until a search party went out.

Sergeant Farrelly and his men withdrew and held a counsel in the kitchen. Constable Moriarty suggested that Miss Blow should be arrested on a charge of drunkenness, and locked up for the night.

"If she isn't drunk," he argued, "she wouldn't be behaving the way she is."

His advice was not taken. In the first place, she was a well-dressed and good-looking young woman; and Sergeant Farrelly, being unmarried, was a courteous man. In the second place, she had come to the barrack bearing a note from Lord Manton, and however unintelligible the note might be, it had unquestionably been written by a peer of the realm. In the third place, as Constable Cole pointed out, their object was not to keep Miss Blow in the barrack, but to get her out. Pressed by Moriarty and the sergeant for an alternative scheme, Cole suggested vaguely that they should resort to what he called a "stratagem." This sounded well; but it turned out in the end that he had nothing better to suggest than that Jimmy O'Loughlin should be induced to send a message to her to the effect that her dinner was ready and would be spoiled if she kept it waiting. The plan received no support. Sergeant Farrelly pointed out that it would be most unwise to confess their difficulty to Jimmy O'Loughlin.

"That fellow," he said, "would take a delight in turning the police into ridicule, and setting the whole country laughing at us. And besides," he said, with a look of withering contempt at Constable Cole, "it's not likely she'd be caring about her dinner after you giving her sixpennyworth of biscuits and more. Believe you me, she wouldn't mind this minute if she never saw dinner again." Half an hour later Sergeant Farrelly himself offered Miss Blow a cup of tea. He was a kindly man, as most police sergeants are, and it grieved him to think that the young lady who had established herself in his barrack was spending a whole day with nothing to eat except dry biscuits. She took the tea without thanks, and again demanded that the search for Dr. O'Grady should begin. Sergeant Farrelly became desperate. He set out at once again for Clonmore Castle. This time he was accompanied by both constables, and Miss Blow was left in sole possession of the barrack. He learned that Lord Manton was still out. After a short consultation, he and the two constables sat down in the hall to wait. They waited till ten o'clock, and would have waited longer still had not Wilkins informed them that it was his duty at that hour to lock up the house for the night. The police returned to their barrack, disputing hotly about the best way of disposing of Miss Blow for the night. To their immense relief they found that she had gone.

At nine o'clock next morning she walked into the barrack again and took her seat in the men's day room. This time she had with her a brown paper parcel. Constable Cole gave it as his opinion that it contained provisions for the day.

"I shall stay here," she said firmly, "until you choose to do your duty."

Sergeant Farrelly, who was refreshed and invigorated by his night's sleep, began to argue with her. The two constables stood near the door of the room and admired him. Miss Blow, adopting a particularly irritating kind of tactics, refused to pay any attention to his remarks. Whenever he paused to give her an opportunity of stating her case, she said—

"I shall sit here until you choose to do your duty."

She had just repeated her formula for the ninth time when a groom rode up to the door of the barrack. He brought a note from Lord Manton.

"Sergeant Farrelly, R.I.C. Lord Manton is seriously annoyed to hear that the police spent the greater part of yesterday afternoon and evening in the hall of Clonmore Castle. Lord Manton has not asked for police protection, and knows no reason why it should be forced on him. Lord Manton will not be at home to-day, and he requests that any communication by way of apology or explanation be made to him in writing."

The note was passed round and read with dismay. Sergeant Farrelly and the two constables, moved by a common impulse, withdrew together to the kitchen. For a time they stood silent and dejected. Then the sergeant, assuming an air of confident authority, gave his order.

"Constable Moriarty," he said, "you will take that note over to Ballymoy and hand it to the District Inspector. You will kindly explain at the same time the way we find ourselves fixed here."

"Maybe," said Moriarty, "it would be as well if I was to take the other note along with it—the one his lordship was after sending with the young lady about the corpse of Dr. O'Grady."

"It would be as well," said the sergeant; "I'd be glad he'd see that note too. But it's the young lady has it and not me. Did you happen to think now of e'er a way that it could be got from her?"

"Would you ask her for it?" said Constable Moriarty.

"I might ask her for it, and I might ask the King if he'd lend me the loan of his crown to go courting in. I'd be as likely to get the one as the other by asking. If you can think of no better way of getting it than that, Constable Moriarty, you may go and ask for it yourself; and you can come back here and let us have a look at you, when she smacks your face."

"We might try a stratagem with her," said Constable Cole, who had made a similar suggestion the day before. "I was reading a book one time about a man that was great on stratagems. There wasn't a thing would happen but he'd I'm sorry now I haven't the book by me."

"Stratagems be damned," said Sergeant Farrelly. "What stratagem would you be proposing to try? Maybe you'd like me to send for Jimmy O'Loughlin and him to tell the young lady that his wife was wanting the note the way she could use it for lighting the kitchen fire to boil the kettle for tea. Is that your stratagem? Tell me now."

"It is not," said Constable Cole, with dignity, "nor it isn't like it. If I was the sergeant here, I'd go to the young lady and I'd tell her, speaking civil and pleasant, that the District Inspector beyond in Ballymoy had sent a man over for the note, so as he could set the police all over the country looking for Dr. O'Grady, and that he wouldn't be able to do that same without he got the note, on account of the way the law does be at the present time."

"Is that what you call a stratagem?" said the sergeant. "It's a lie I'd call it myself, a whole pack of lies, and it's just what they might take the stripes off me for saying, if so be I was fool enough to say it. Is it looking to be sergeant yourself in the place of me you are, that you'd suggest the like of that?"

"All stratagems is lies," said Constable Cole soothingly. "The one I'm suggesting is no worse than another."

"Go and try her with it yourself, then," said the sergeant, "and see what you'll get out of it."

Constable Cole, pursued by the sniggering laugh of Moriarty, left the kitchen and went into the day room. Miss Blow had made herself quite at home. On the iron-legged table with which the police barrack was provided lay her hat, her jacket, and her gloves. She was knitting a silk tie, meant perhaps as a present for her father, perhaps as an adornment for the corpse of Dr. O'Grady when she found it. Constable Cole drew himself up stiffly to attention and addressed her—

"I beg. your pardon, miss, but Sergeant Farrelly will be obliged to you if you'll lend him the loan of the note that Lord Manton gave you. He's thinking of sending a man over to Ballymoy to the D. I."

"What's a D. I.?" asked Miss Blow.

"He's an officer, miss, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Goddard."

"Is he your superior officer?"

"He is, miss."

"Then I'll go and see him myself, and take the note with me."

The reply was quite unexpected. Constable Cole hesitated.

"It's better than twelve miles of a drive," he said, "and the road's none too good. And it could be, miss, that the D. I. might be off somewhere, shooting or the like, when you got there, and then you wouldn't find him."

"If he is out, I shall wait for him."

"I wouldn't doubt you, miss; but it could be"

"No, it couldn't," said Miss Blow. "At all events, it won't. Kindly go and get the car at once."

Constable Cole returned to the kitchen grinning broadly.

"It's yourself that's in luck this day, Moriarty," he said. "It's not every man that gets the chance of driving round the country on a car with the like of that one. Be careful now what you're saying to her, or you'll have the doctor out after you with a stick if he has to come all the way back from America for the purpose."

"What do you mean?" said Moriarty.

"She said she'd go with you to Ballymoy, as soon as ever she heard it was you that was going. But if I hear tell of any impropriety of conduct, I'll send word to the red-haired girl that you used to be walking out with on Sundays when you were up in the depōt learning your drill. I heard of you."

Moriarty was young, very young. He blushed hotly.

"I'd be ashamed of my life to be seen with her," he said. "I'd never hear the last of it."

"Off with you at once and get the car," said the sergeant. "In the name of God, if the girl's willing to go out of this, will you take her along with you before she changes her mind? Haven't we had enough of her this two days?" In less than half an hour the car—Jimmy O'Loughlin's car—was at the door of the barrack. Constable Moriarty, in full panoply, his grey cape rolled round his chest, his carbine between his knees, sat on one side. Miss Blow, looking very handsome, got up on the other. Sergeant Farrelly wrapped a rug round her knees and tucked the end of it under her feet. Then he presented her with a sixpenny box of chocolates. He had gone round to Jimmy O'Loughlin's shop and bought this offering while the horse was being harnessed.

"It's a long drive you have before you," he said, "and I was thinking maybe you'd like something to comfort you on the way. It's no more than a trifle, and not what you'd be accustomed to, but Clonmore is a backward place, and it's the most thing of the kind there was in Jimmy O'Loughlin's shop."

Constable Cole rushed from the barrack bareheaded, just as the car was starting. He had Miss Blow's brown paper parcel in his hand.

"You've forgotten your lunch, miss," he shouted. "You'll be wanting it before you're back."

He stowed the parcel in the well of the car, and was able as he did so to still further embarrass the unfortunate Constable Moriarty.

"By rights," he whispered, "you ought to be sitting on the same side with her. It's what she'd expect of you; and if you don't do it when you get off to walk up Ballyglunin Hill, she'll be in a mighty bad temper against you have her safe with the D. I. If you're half a man, Moriarty, you'll do it."

There was a good deal of excitement in the town when Miss Blow drove off under the escort of Constable Moriarty. The news that Jimmy O'Loughlin's car had been ordered for her and the constable spread so rapidly that by the time the start was actually made a small crowd had gathered in the street to see it. Afterwards, for more than an hour, men stopped casually at the barrack door, chatted on indifferent subjects with Sergeant Farrelly or Constable Cole, and then asked one or two leading questions about Miss Blow and her business. The police were very reticent. Sergeant Farrelly was an impressive man with a great deal of personal dignity. He knew that contemptible witticisms would be levelled at him and the force of which he was a member, if it came to be known that Miss Blow, a solitary young woman, had held up the police of Clonmore for the whole of one day and a part of the next. He dreaded the remarks of irreverent small boys if they heard how nearly he and his men had been forced to go in search of Dr. O'Grady's body. He was haunted by a terrible fear that the story might get into the newspapers.

"There's them," he said to Constable Cole, "who'd be only too glad to get a handle against the police—fellows up in Dublin writing for low papers. Believe you me, it'll be mighty unpleasant for us if you aren't able to keep your mouth shut."

Cole was no more willing than the sergeant to give information. The inquirers, baffled at the barrack, moved on to the bar of the hotel, and asked their questions there. Jimmy O'Loughlin had no information to give them. He did not know, any better than his customers, the reason for Miss Blow's expedition; but he liked to pose as being well up in the whole business. He shook his head gravely, made cryptic remarks, parried questions with other questions, and at last, without in the least meaning to, conveyed the impression that Miss Blow, by some mysterious process of law, had been arrested for Dr. O'Grady's debts. The opinion gained ground in the town as one after another of the inquirers emerged from the bar. Strong sympathy was felt with Miss Blow, and there was some talk of summoning a special meeting of the League to consider her case. It was generally agreed that a unanimous resolution would be appropriate, and that a series of questions might very well be asked in the House of Commons by one of the members for the county.