Once again Blake met Mulligan at night, and arranged with him to call a meeting of the ringleaders the following Sunday at early Mass outside a wayside chapel in the Cloonalla district, when he proposed to arrest them, and promised Mulligan he would be separated from the others at once and conveyed to England on a destroyer. At first Mulligan refused, being now demented with the fear of assassination, but when promised the payment of the £500 on his arrival in England, he consented.
Blake arranged that on the following Sunday morning as many men as could be spared should be sent from Grouse Lodge and Ballybor Barracks to meet near the Cloonalla chapel at the same time, when he hoped to surround the crowd and make the arrests without any difficulty.
On a typical soft Irish morning Blake and his men set out early from Ballybor Barracks on their drive to the chapel, full of hope that the day’s work would clinch his victory, and that then he would apply for leave, as the strain of the last few months was beginning to tell on him, and he needed a rest badly.
When the Crossley was within half a mile of the chapel and still out of view from there, Blake stopped the car, got out his men, and proceeded to surround the chapel, while Blake himself advanced alone towards the chapel gates. When he drew near he could see that the road in front of the gates was a mass of country people, who did not move until Blake got close to them, when they divided, forming a lane towards the gates.
And to his last day Blake will never forget the sight which met his eyes as he advanced through the people in a deathly silence. Lashed to one of the pillars of the chapel gates was the body of the unfortunate Patsey Mulligan with two bullet-holes through his forehead, and pinned on his chest a sheet of white paper bearing the single word Traitor, while at his feet lay poor Bridgie O’Hara, her body heaving with sobs, and her long dark hair, which had been cut off, lying on the ground beside her.
II.
ON THE RUN.
Paddy Flanagan stood in the doorway of his small shop in the main street of the mean and dirty little village of Ballyfrack, watching the rain coming down in torrents, while he listened with one ear to his wife arguing with a countrywoman in the shop behind him over the price of eggs, and with his other ear for the high-pitched sound of a powerful car.
Presently the woman in the shop, having sold her eggs and bought provisions, wrapped her shawl over her head and started to make her way home. As Paddy moved aside to let the woman out, his ear caught the dreaded sound he was expecting, growing louder every second, and culminating in a shower-bath of mud as two Crossley tenders, full of Auxiliary Cadets, dashed past the shop and disappeared as suddenly as they had come.
Hardly had the noise of the engines died away than Paddy’s quick ear caught the sound of cars approaching again, and two Ford cars—the first carrying a huge coffin and the second apparently mourners—drew up at the small hotel almost opposite Paddy’s shop.
Some two years previously Flanagan had become a rabid Sinn Feiner—he had previously been as rabid a Nationalist—with a keen eye to business. For a long time it looked as though Sinn Fein was the only horse in the race, and the dream of an Irish Republic seemed more than likely to become a reality; lately, however, the British Government had been sitting up and taking a quite unnecessary interest in Ireland.