Having arranged with a company of Auxiliaries stationed in Annagh to co-operate with him, Blake left the barracks with two Crossley loads of police and a Ford an hour before dawn one morning, and as the day broke the Auxiliaries and police started to close in a cordon on the village and outlying farms where they suspected the arms were hidden.
The first signs of life were two women running across a bog, and when followed one of them was seen by Blake with his glasses to throw a still into a bog-hole, while the other one took two large jars from under her shawl and smashed them together into pieces. The women were quickly rounded up, and on being taken to the nearest house, the police found six fully-dressed men well tucked up in two beds, and the remains of a huge fire in the kitchen, while the whole house reeked of poteen—good circumstantial evidence that the party of eight had spent the night running a still.
After a long and fruitless search for arms, Blake found himself close to Murrisk Abbey; so, after sending the Auxiliaries back to Annagh, he went to pay the mac Nessa a visit.
The old man was delighted to see him, and insisted that he should stay to dinner, and the police should have drink and food.
Blake and the mac Nessa dined alone, and over the port the old man started to tell Blake tales of his youth. After his second glass and the long day in the cold, Blake began to feel drowsy, and his thoughts wandered to Drake and the grave in the bog cemetery, only to wake up with a start, hearing the old man say something about a grave, followed by, “Is yer honour satisfied now?”
Apologising for his deafness, he asked the mac Nessa to begin again, and the old man told a rambling story of a butler of his young days called Faherty, whose chief recreation was shooting rabbits in the park during the summer evenings. Close to the park lived a pompous retired shopkeeper called Malone, who had a very fine red setter, which was always wandering in the park, like Faherty, after rabbits.
On several occasions Faherty and Malone had had words over the setter, and the climax was reached when Malone arrived at the Abbey one evening, purple with rage, and insisting on seeing the mac Nessa, burst into his study, accused Faherty of having shot his setter, and added that he knew that the dog was buried in a shrubbery at the back of the house. The mac Nessa at once called for Faherty; the three proceeded straight to the shrubbery with a spade, and Faherty was made to open the grave which they found there. After digging down a short way he came on the body of a cur dog, to Malone’s great astonishment and disappointment, and Faherty asked in a voice of triumph, “Is yer honour satisfied now?”
After Malone had gone home, the mac Nessa asked Faherty for an explanation, and the butler told his master how he had shot Malone’s setter by mistake in the dusk, and then buried him in the shrubbery. The following day he heard that Malone suspected him, and had heard of the funeral in the shrubbery, so the next night he shot a cur dog, and buried him on top of the setter.
On the way back to the barracks Blake could not help thinking of the similarity of the remarks of Faherty and Brogan when the bodies of the cur dog and the dark peasant were dug up, and that night he dreamt that he was opening an endless row of graves, and never knew whether he would dig up a cur dog or a dark peasant, and all the time he was hoping to find Drake’s body. At last he came to a grave where he was positive he would find Drake, and started to dig like mad, only to wake up and find his own red setter on his bed.
Blake now determined to renew his efforts to find Drake. He ordered the Head Constable to round up the same six Volunteers, and as soon as this was done set off once more for the bog cemetery. Making their way to Moran’s house, they learnt from his wife that the previous evening her husband had been removed by masked men with shovel hats and wearing black mackintoshes. The wife, noticing the black mackintoshes, accused the police.