There was a silence. Then Westmore looked at his watch.
“We ought to hustle,” he remarked. “I’ll get on some knickers and stick a couple of guns in my pocket. You’d better telephone to the garage.”
As they hastened up the stairs together, Barres said: “Have I time for a word with Dulcie?”
“That’s up to you. I’m not going to say anything to Thessa. I wouldn’t care to miss this affair. If we arrived too late and they had already dynamited the Welland Canal, we’d never forgive ourselves.”
Barres ran for his room.
They were dressed, armed and driving out of the Foreland Farms gates inside of ten minutes. Barres 394 had the wheel; Westmore sat beside him shoving new clips into two automatics and dividing the remaining boxes of ammunition.
“The crazy devils,” he said to Barres, raising his voice to make himself heard. “Blow up the Canal, will they! What’s the matter with these Irishmen! The rest are not like ’em. Look at the Flanders fighting, Garry! Look at the magnificent record of the Irish regiments! Why don’t our Irish play the game?”
“It’s their blind hatred of England,” shouted Barres, in his ear. “They’re monomaniacs. They can’t see anything else—can’t see what they’re doing to civilisation—cutting the very throat of Liberty every time they jab at England. What’s the use? You can’t talk to them. They’re lunatics. But when they start things over here they’ve got to be put into straitjackets.”
“They are lunatics,” repeated Westmore. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t risk the wholesale murder of women and children. That is a purely German peculiarity; it’s what the normal boche delights in. But the Irish are white men. And it’s only when they’re crazy they’d try a thing like this.”