“Asking who it might be for or the like? Would you say, now, Joseph Antony, that he was anyways uneasy in his mind?”
“He was uneasy,” said Kinsella, “but he’s easy now.”
“Did you tell him who the gravel was for?”
“Is it likely I’d tell him when I didn’t know myself? What I told him was that Timothy Sweeny had the gravel bought off me at five shillings a load and that it was likely he’d be sending it by rail to some gentleman up the country that would have it ordered from him.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“What he as good as said was that Timothy Sweeny and myself would have the gentleman cheated out of half the gravel he’d paid for by the time he’d got the other half. There was a smile on his face like there might be on a man, and him after a long drink, when he found out the way we were getting the better of the gentleman up the country. Believe you me, Peter Walsh, he wouldn’t have rested easy in his bed until he did find out, either that or some other thing.”
“That sergeant is as cute as a pet fox,” said Peter Walsh. “You’d be hard set to keep anything from him that he wanted to know.”
Kinsella sat for some minutes without speaking. Then he took a match from his pocket and lit his pipe for the third time.
“I’d be glad,” he said, “if you’d tell me what it was you had in your mind when you said a minute ago that the sergeant might maybe have more to do than he’d care for one of these days.”
Peter Walsh looked carefully round him in every direction and satisfied himself that there was no one within earshot.