“You’re off your heads!” his wife retorted, from her chair by the fire.
We wrapped up, and 47 led the way through the skylight on to the roof. The ascent was tricky, but no worse than that. One had to mount on the banisters and haul oneself through the skylight, and one day the affair would give way, and the escaping sleuth would be precipitated among the advancing assassins. However, this did not happen this time.
“Don’t show yourself!” 47 ordered, as we shinned up. “People creeping about roofs at night aren’t popular in this city.”
He bent double and crept behind a chimney stack, and waved me to follow. I glanced through the skylight before I went. One could see down half a flight of stairs. From here a man really could put up a show, as he had said.
We were among the chimneys, like birds in a nest. We were in a forest of chimneys, in a mountainous country of roofs. The house was on a hill, the house was tall; we could see everywhere. The night was sharp, and as a consequence the sky was filled with stars. And below, all over the place, were the city lights. The roar of life came faintly up from down there, and here we seemed removed and secure, as if this perch were a rock which the sea of terror could not submerge. Yet, now and again, some drops of spray seemed to outleap the waters and dash against our mouths, as, with headlights which tore great holes in the dark, the Crossley tenders, filled with armed men, raced through the streets, and on their heels rolled armoured cars from which poked the Lewis guns I could not see. We followed these grim processions as they fled. Presently it was as if the city had become a pot, and we up here were intoxicated by the rising vapours.
On 47 it acted as a drug. His tongue was loosened, he became prophetic.
“Can you feel it?” he said, cupping his hand as if it held water. “Can you feel it coming up to us? Of course you can. I mean the terror, the rage, the hate. Can’t you see through the dark to the police on their way? Can’t you see through the houses as if they were glass, to the hunted men? Loyalist and Republican—in all those hearts the same passions—hate, and fortitude, and cruelty, and loyalty to their beliefs, and terror. In this whirlpool of passion can the spiritual endure?”
He peered between the chimneys. His face was a blur; but he began to permeate the atmosphere with the feeling which he left out of his lowered voice.
“Sometimes I think,” I put in, “that in the evolution of man the gods choose certain people to develop by trial certain qualities. Courage, fortitude, idealism—has Ireland been chosen for a year or two as the forcing ground for these?”
“Who knows?” he answered vaguely. “These qualities are being bred here; and treachery and cruelty and hate.”