47 said quietly, “Those fellows you see aren’t the old secret service. They’ve been got together to meet this emergency.”
He proceeded to wind up. He was not a talkative fellow; but he could be communicative when he liked. I have no doubt I was the only audience he had had for many a day.
“A secret service isn’t built up in a day. An agent should be chosen after long, long observation. After courage—more important than courage, really—your man should possess the power of holding his tongue.
“Our service has always been limited, and it was a good deal chopped up in the war. Then we were faced with this business. We had to be reinforced holus bolus. The men had to be trustworthy, and the authorities decided to enrol ex-army officers. I dare say this was as good a choice as any other. But it has its drawbacks. We work in all strata of society, and we should belong to all classes of society. The military man is limited. He is likely to be loyal and courageous; but his caste prejudices are his ruin. He calls his enemies Shinners, and smiles at their efforts.”
47 stopped, looked round suddenly and said, “Have you seen our mutual friend since you came over?”
“Not once,” I told him.
“I have passed him a couple of times. A fellow I know told me he bewitches them at the Castle of an evening with his piano. Well, he told me once that when he was working in Germany during the war, before putting a foot over the frontier he turned over what he would be, and he decided to be a farmer. Accordingly, hour after hour, he practised a farmer’s slouch. He sat down and invented his farm. Hour after hour he lived in imagination on that place, until he saw it so clearly that he could walk over every inch of it, discuss every foot of it, and he said he had only to close his eyes to see it all again—the chestnut mare with the wall eye, the duck with rheumatics. He tried to sell the place to me.”
“Did you buy?”
“He knew his job; but what is happening now is pathetic. These ready-made sleuths, who are the best-dressed men in Dublin, have been arriving in batches. Men with eyeglasses appear suddenly to sell bootblacking. Men in spats turn up to explain they hold an agency in condensed milk. These people fill the lounges of the best hotels, drink together, and talk confidently together.”
“And,” said I, breaking in, “the barmaids ogling them explore their inmost souls, and the waiters bearing them cocktails pass on to Sinn Fein headquarters the pearls that drop from their lips.”