“Excuse me coming in again. Father Murphy is coming to-night. He has just come back from Cork, and has met a priest who came from the place where Father Griffin was murdered. I have asked him to meet a woman who is interested in the Peace with Ireland League. I’d like you to come to-night, too, you might find it interesting. The Peace with Ireland League is going to do wonderful work. Lady Bange brought out a splendid pamphlet. Just plain facts; but the Government suppressed it. That’s freedom and justice. That’s England’s way of protecting small nations. Monstrous! Now, I’ll not keep you any longer. You won’t forget the saucepan?”
She trotted out of the room.
CHAPTER XX
TO DUBLIN CASTLE
Mrs. O’Grady’s forebodings were to prove themselves only too true. The fatal evening came at the end of an April day when the Crown Forces made a great haul of propaganda in Molesworth Street. Rumour had it they had penetrated into a basement and found there the temporary offices of the Irish Bulletin, the official organ of Sinn Fein. Six typewriters and two tons of literature to do with propaganda were borne off in triumph to the Castle. Rumour also had it that Darrel Figgis had incriminated himself to his beard. A neighbour received word over the telephone that Figgis’s flat had been raided, his typewriter smashed, the bindings of some of his books destroyed. Figgis had gone on the run, and warning came to us to get anything seditious out of the house, as it was likely to be raided for him at any time. By five in the evening Mrs. Desmond Fitzgerald had got all her stuff away, a man carrying it off in a sack through the streets.
There was more of winter than spring these days, as one knew as soon as it got dark. We were sitting after dinner as close up to the fire as we could get when at our sitting-room door came the knock which we knew better than Poe ever knew the knock of his raven.
“Come in,” I said, and stood bowing by the sofa.
The door opened, and Mrs. Slaney entered. “I thought you might like this morning’s paper,” she said, smiling from one to the other of us.
She joined us on the sofa, and took one of my cigarettes. Silence reigned until she had had a puff or two, and then she broke it.
“It is perfectly monstrous what those brutes did this morning to Mr. Figgis. They have raided his flat four times to-day. They wantonly destroyed his typewriter, and I hear they have damaged the backs of a number of his books. He has such a choice library. A most cultured, refined man.”