“Get out of the room with you,” he said to his wife, “and shut the door. It’s down to the kitchen you’ll go and let me hear you doing it.”
Mrs. Sweeny was too wise to disobey or argue. She snatched a petticoat from a chair near the door and left the room hurriedly. Sweeny went to the window.
“What the hell work’s this, Peter Walsh?” he said. “Can’t you let me sleep quiet in my bed without raising the devil’s own delight in my back-yard. If I did right I’d set the police at you.”
“I’ll not be the only one the police will be at,” said Peter, “if that’s the way of it. So there you have it plain and straight.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is this. The young lady is off in her own boat. She and the young fellow with the sore leg along with her, and she says the master and the strange gentleman will be down for the Tortoise as soon, as ever they have their breakfast ate. That’s what I mean and I hope it’s to your liking.”
“Can you not go out and knock a hole in the bottom of the damned boat?” said Sweeny, “or run the blade of a knife through the halyards, or smash the rudder iron with the wipe of a stone? What good are you if you can’t do the like of that? Sure there’s fifty ways of stopping a man from going out in a boat when there’s only one boat for him to go in?”
“There may be fifty ways and there may be more; but I’d be glad if you’d tell me which of them is any use when there’s a young police constable sitting on the side of the quay that hasn’t lifted his eye off the boat since five o’clock this morning?”
“Is there that?”
“There is. The sergeant was up at the big house late last night. I saw him go myself. What they said to him I don’t know, but he had the constable out sitting opposite the boat since five this morning the way nobody’d go near her.”