“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”
“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.
“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents—you’re not supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t nab that rent receipt—you’ll know it—it’s on blue, thick paper—what harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down for you, and the chance, Tom—think of that, my boy—the chance of having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs, gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”
“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies of the Irish World, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen, even if I lose my stripes.”
On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.
“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my oath—I mane this sarch-warrant—I demand any arms, ammunition, traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”
McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried, “Arrah! Sergeant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make, yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”
The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy, and the merciless jeering of the young student.
On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks. If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”
That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster, but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and disappeared from view.