By now Mulligan had recognised Blake’s voice, and knowing well what would happen to him if he fell into the hands of the military, fell on his knees and begged Blake to spare him. Blake at once explained his terms, which the boy eagerly accepted, thankful to get off at any price, though not counting the cost and danger of what he was doing.
Blake’s terms were that Mulligan should give him information well beforehand of every contemplated outrage in the district, and, in return, promised him, on behalf of the British Government, a free pardon, £500, and a passage for himself and Bridgie to any country he wished to go to, but not until the Sinn Fein movement was crushed in the district.
As it happened, only the evening before, Bridgie had told Patsey that she could not stand the boycott any longer, and that if he could not take her away to America at once she would marry Mike Connelly; hence the promise of the £500 seemed to poor Patsey like a gift from heaven.
It was arranged, in order that no suspicion should be drawn down on him, that Mulligan should leave his letter at night-time when going to meet Bridgie O’Hara under a certain large stone a few feet from where they were, near the point where the track and road met. As there was nothing more to settle, Blake told Mulligan to go home at once, while he and the constable made their way back to the barracks, and the following day Blake returned to Ballybor.
At this time Blake found that several of his men showed a strong disinclination to leave the barracks, and remembering how hard it used to be sometimes during the war to get men who had been stuck in trenches for months to go “over the top,” he decided to organise strong daylight patrols so that each man should leave his barracks for a certain number of hours every day. In addition to patrols round Ballybor, he sent out a strong patrol on certain days to work its way across country—always by a different route—to Grouse Lodge Barracks, where the patrol spent the night, returning to Ballybor across country the following day.
Taking advantage of mistakes made in other parts of the country, he sent no patrols on the main routes, but made them all go across country, only using the roads for short distances when they were open, and when it was practically impossible to be ambushed.
For some time there came no information from Mulligan, and when at last a note was brought from him from Grouse Lodge, it only contained the laconic news that the price for shooting a policeman had gone up from £60 to £100; and though no further message came from Mulligan for another ten days, as no outrages had been committed during this time, Blake had no reason to think that he was not fulfilling his part of the bargain.
Early one morning a bicycle patrol arrived at Ballybor Barracks from Grouse Lodge, and the constable who had been with Blake the night he met Mulligan handed him a note to the effect that two car-loads of arms were to arrive in the Cloonalla district that night for the purpose of an attack on Grouse Lodge Barracks the following night. Mulligan gave the route the cars would take, but did not state at what hour they might be expected.
On looking at an Ordnance map, Blake noticed that the cars would have to pass through a small wood, and that the road took a sharp bend where it entered the wood. Taking a leaf out of the Sinn Feiners’ book, he determined to ambush the cars at the bend, and to try and seize cars and arms.
The difficulty was to know what to do with the cars once they had gained possession of them. The Volunteers would no doubt collect in the Cloonalla district to take over the arms, hence it would be dangerous to attempt to take them to Grouse Lodge Barracks, which was much the nearer barrack to the proposed scene of the ambush; so in the end he settled, if he came off victorious, to take the cars by byroads to Ballybor and risk being attacked in the town at night. A few days before this Blake had received his first batch of “Black and Tans,” bringing his force up to a respectable number, so felt quite justified in making the attempt.