Looking up, Macdermott saw the face of a kindly old woman looking down at him from the first-floor window of the high house behind him. Certainly, he admitted, he could not see, and he would rather like to. He entered the hospitable open door, which led into a shop, and ascended a flight of stone steps.
On the top step, in the darkness of a narrow passage, a chloroformed towel was flung and held tight over his head and face, and he was borne to the ground.
[30]
Thus this young Irishman's strong religious convictions, which did him credit, betrayed him to his doom. But, incomprehensibly, doom in the sense (whatever sense that was) in which it had overtaken his fellow-delegates, was after all averted. He did not disappear into silence as they had. On the contrary, the kindly old woman who had rushed from the front window and bent over him as he lay unconscious on the stair-head, saw him presently open his eyes and stir, and heard the faint, bewildered murmur of “to hell with the Pope,” which is what Orangemen say mechanically when they come to, as others may say, “Where am I?”
Very soon he sat up, dizzily.
“I was chloroformed,” he said, “by some damned Republican. Where is the chap? Don't let him make off.”
But he was informed that this person had already disappeared. When the old lady of the house, hearing him fall, had come out and found him, there had been no trace of either his assaulter or of the chloroformed towel. The kindly old lady was almost inclined to think that monsieur must have fainted, and fancied the Republican, the chloroform, and the attack.
Fergus Macdermott, who never either fainted or fancied, assured her that this was by no means the case.
“It's part, no doubt,” he said, “of this Sinn Fein plot against delegates. Why they didn't put it through in my case I can't say. I suppose they heard you coming.... But what on earth did they mean to do with me? Now, madame, we must promptly descend and make inquiries as to who was seen to leave your front door just now. There is no time to be lost.... Only I feel so infernally giddy....”