Seeing that it was useless to go on with the farce, Blake ordered the auctioneer to return to the car. At once the crowd broke with an angry roar, and made an ugly rush towards the road, but a volley of blank in the air quickly stopped them, and they turned to scatter in the opposite direction, while the police party returned to Ballybor.
That night, when she went to bed in the lodging-house, Bridget locked her door and piled all the furniture she could against it. About 2 A.M. some one knocked loudly at her door and bade her open, but she lay still and gave no answer. She could then hear the raiders entering the other rooms of the house, and the screams of inmates, followed by the curses of the raiders.
The girl lay shaking in bed, knowing that it was only a question of time before they came again, and when they did it gave her almost a sense of relief. This time they did not knock, and she could hear whispering, followed by a man wearing rubber soles running down the passage, and then a crash as he hurled himself against her door.
The door was rotten and gave, but the furniture still held it up, and the other men then put their shoulders against it, and finally it gave way altogether, and the whole lot pitched into her room in a heap on the floor.
As Bridget screamed, the men flashed their electric torches on to her, and by the light she could see that they all wore painted white masks, which completely covered their faces except the eyes and mouth. One great brute then seized her by the hair, and dragged her screaming down the stairs and into the street, where the others held her while the big man shaved her hair off with a razor. They then lashed her wrists and ankles, gagged her, and flung her in her nightdress into a waiting Ford, which disappeared into the night.
A police patrol, guided by the screams, arrived on the scene just as the Ford was disappearing in the direction of Castleport. Sending a constable back to the barracks for a car and more men, the sergeant in charge searched the lodging-house, only to raise a fresh alarm among the terrified inmates, most of whom were under their beds.
In a few minutes the car arrived, and the police raced off after the Ford as fast as the Crossley would travel.
For some time the police had had a strong suspicion that a creamery about half-way between Ballybor and Castleport had been frequently used by the I.R.A. as a detention prison, and as they drew near the place they saw lights disappear from the windows.
After surrounding the building, the sergeant knocked at the door and received no answer. Being afraid to delay lest they might be attacked, he told his men to take one of the two thick iron-bound planks carried under the body of the Crossley, and used for crossing trenches on the roads, and to use it as a battering-ram on the door. At the second blow the door splintered, and a third made a hole large enough for the police to pass in.
The sergeant now advanced into the building, revolver in one hand and torch in the other, and had nearly reached the back when shots and shouts were heard, and at the same time he saw a man disappearing through a door ahead of him and fired.