“And you had the Hammond papers all the time you were in England and Ireland?” Routledge inquired.
“Of course. I had only a few weeks in Europe before I was called back to the Bhurpal skirmish-stuff. You had stayed in India——”
“But when and where did you get the papers to the Russian spies, Jerry?”
“In Bhurpal—as that affair opened. It was weeks before I met you that night of the gathering when the two British forces came together. I stopped at the Rest House in Sarjilid, on the way by train from Calcutta to the front. It was there I heard a Russian sentence from an alleged Parsee. I was onto the spy in a moment, but first I want to tell you why I turned over the papers to him. First, rather, I want a drink of whiskey. I’m talking thick and fast, and it burns out the energy.”
Routledge served him. “Why you gave Cantrell’s papers to the first Russian spy you met in India is what I want to know,” he said carelessly.
“Listen, then. The idea came to me before I went out to India on that Bhurpalese mix-up. I told you that Noreen and I took a little trip to Ireland. I shouldn’t have gone back to Tyrone—where her mother bloomed—where I was a boy. I shouldn’t have gone back!”
The old man’s voice trembled, but he did not lose his point.
“As it was, my son, the thoughts of Noreen’s mother and Ireland were burning too deep in memory.... But we went back. The sun was going down on the little town. It was dirty, shrunken, decayed—that old stone city—and the blithest place a youth ever met a maiden, or passed his boyhood.... Ah, the mothers and youths and maidens and the memories of old Tyrone always sung in my heart—when I could forget England!”
Routledge lit a cigarette over the lamp and handed it to Cardinegh without speaking. Jerry did not continue for a moment. Then followed the impression his birthplace made upon him—the veteran with his daughter:
“I can’t forget our last look—the old town, shrunken and silent in the midst of her quarries. I heard the muttering in the doorways, as we have heard it in India. The best blood had gone to America; the knitting-works were shut down—the remnant starving. It was like India in plague and famine, but I could have borne that.... It was the next morning when I saw the British garrison quartered upon the town——”