"Bless you, no, Mr. O'Brien! He's seventy-five, and with a bad cough too; and to think of him walking a night like last night from this to Kilbarry, with such a load too!"
"Seventy-five--seventy-five!" muttered Jerry. "That's no good."
"Ay, seventy-five, and looked every day of it. I don't think the poor fellow is long for this world."
O'Brien left. A man of seventy-five did not, he thought, bear much on the case. The years were thirty or thirty-five too many.
CHAPTER XXIX.
[DULWICH AGAIN.]
When Jerry O'Brien reached Kilbarry that afternoon, he drove straight to O'Hanlon's office, and briefly recounted to the astonished solicitor what he and Jim Phelan had seen at the Black Rock the day before. O'Hanlon was for a few moments speechless with amazement. When his amazement wore off a little, he found himself bound in on all sides with perplexities. He told himself a hundred times that here was evidence enough to satisfy the most sceptical of judges and juries; and yet he, a mere solicitor, could not make up his mind to believe. O'Brien, Phelan, and himself had seen something they would swear was the figure of a man, and Phelan and himself would swear that what they had seen was in the likeness of that Mike Fahey who had committed suicide years ago by throwing himself into the Puffing Hole while, in respect of a groundless charge, pursued by the police. It was distracting--it was incredible; but it must be believed.
He remembered when he was told at school that if a penny had been put out at five per cent, compound interest in the year 1 A.D., it would then equal in value a mass of gold containing a globe as big as the earth for every second of time since the beginning of the Christian era. At first he had said this astounding statement was not true, but when it was plainly demonstrated that it was even a ridiculous understatement, he did not say it was not true, but he could not believe it, although the figures were irrefutable.
This history of the reappearance of Fahey, or some shade or likeness of him, was now above question. It stood on as firm a basis as testimony could desire, and yet it was naught to him but myth. Many of the greatest truths are unbelievable. This was a little truth, but in its integrity was impenetrable.
The one great consolation was that he, O'Hanlon, need no longer fear his brain was playing him false.