He smiled. “Not as bad as that. I don’t suppose they give much away apart from themselves; but wherever there is a decent lounge they can be found gobbling like turkeys in a farmyard—turkeys that have not heard of a Christmas dinner. I have seen one of those peaceful commercial travellers drop an automatic pistol in the lounge of the Shelbourne Hotel, and I slunk into the lift in horror. I have seen a commercial traveller in spats leaning over a bar talking to a dimpled barmaid, while a gentleman at his elbow, in a shabby black velour hat and a dirty trench coat, took down his particulars. Even my ‘cousin,’ who has many of the best qualities of an agent, the keenness, the tirelessness, and so on, is attacked with this autumn madness, and any of these evenings if you care to hang outside his house, you will see a Government car rattle and bang up to the door, you will see half a dozen sleuths file up into his house, and presently they will come down again with him. These merry gentlemen get into the car and rattle away on some raiding expedition. And, of course, in the shadows on the other pavement, is a gentleman in a black velour hat and a dirty trench coat.”
“Do you think some of them are going to be done in soon?”
47 shrugged his shoulders. “Most of these chaps are doomed by the Castle people to a double life. By day they pass as peaceable citizens. At night they disappear into the Castle, rig themselves out in military clothes, and turn out again to raid and arrest. By Gad! they work for their living all right! There’s a legend that Sinn Fein agents watch the Castle gates all day to get descriptions of all who go regularly in and out. There are spies inside the Castle too, and officials in high places in whom the Sinn Fein rot has set as a fungus attacks a tree.”
“You’re fed up,” I said.
“A bit. I’m a bit fed up. It’s a nervy game. We’re getting in a lot of stuff; but we’re up against a pretty big thing. Half the nation are ready to help the Sinn Fein intelligence. The joke is the women one meets never cease singing the praises of their own intelligence people, and in the same breath they damn us for spies.”
“What’s the opposite show like?”
“They’re not better than us—I don’t think they’re as good; but they have the pull of working in their own country and having the backing of three parts of the nation. They all look the same; but most of our fellows are another caste.”
“You’d think your chaps would get no information. People would know them and tell them nothing.”
“It’s not easy to get hold of good stuff; but man suffers from the inability to keep his secrets. People with a little bit of news burst to tell it, and sometimes the least thing is worth a lot. It may be the link that was wanted to complete the chain.”
47 broke a leafless twig off a bush and began bending it in his fingers.