Chapter 7

buy nets and good boats, and buying the various saws which are necessary to the making of planks. This no doubt gives me some hold over Crossan, but not enough to enable me to dismiss him as I might a cook. Besides, I do not want to dismiss Crossan. He is managing these different enterprises in such a way that they earn fair interest on the capital I put into them.

"I've been looking into things a bit, Excellency," said Godfrey.

I quite believed that. The deputation of carters said the same thing in other words.

"And you'll find yourself in an awkward place one of these days if that fellow Crossan is allowed to go on as he's going."

"I hope you're not going to drag up that dispute about the carters, Godfrey. I'm sick of it."

The dispute about the carters is really an unpleasant business. As originally organized there were eight Protestant carters and four Roman Catholics. A year ago Crossan dismissed the four Roman Catholic carters, and one of the Protestants who was suspected of religious indifference. Their places were filled by five Orangemen of the most determined kind. Now the profits of this carting business are considerable. The five men who were dismissed appealed to Godfrey. Godfrey laid their case before me. I gathered that Godfrey had a high opinion of the outcasts who always spoke to him with the respect due to his position. He had a low opinion of the five interlopers who were men of rude speech and democratic independence of manner. I was foolish enough to speak to Crossan about the matter. He met me with a blunt assertion that it was impossible to trust what he called "Papishes." There, as a lover of peace rather than justice, I wanted to let the matter rest; but Godfrey took up the subject again and again in the course of the following year. He persisted, not out of any love for justice though this once he was on the side of justice, but simply out of hatred of Crossan.

"It's not only the dismissal of those carters," said Godfrey. "There's a great deal more behind that. There's something going on which I don't understand."

"If you don't understand it," I said, "you can't expect me to."

"Look here, Excellency, you remember the time that yacht of Conroy's, the _Finola_, was in here?"

"Of course I do. You went and left my cards on Bob Power."

"I'm very sorry now that I did. There's something fishy about that yacht. What was she doing on the night she was here?"

"Coaling," I said; "I don't see why I should dismiss Crossan because Conroy's yacht came in here for coal."

"She wasn't coaling," said Godfrey.

I knew that, of course; so I said nothing, but left Godfrey to develope his grievance whatever it was.

"Ever since that night," said Godfrey, "there has been something or other going on in the yard behind the stores. Those carters are in it, whatever it is, and a lot more men, fishermen and young farmers. They're up there every night."

"Probably dancing," I said.

"Much more likely to be drinking."

"I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense, Godfrey. You know perfectly well that the store has not got a licence, and there's no drink sold there. Besides Crossan is a fanatical teetotaller."

"That wouldn't stop him," said Godfrey, "if he could sell the stuff cheap and make money on it; if"--here he sank his voice--"if it hadn't paid duty."

Now Crossan is one of those Christians who has added to the original Ten Commandments a Mohammedan prohibition of alcohol in any form. Godfrey, I have no doubt, would break any of the commandments which he recognized, if he saw his way to making a small profit on the sin. But I did not think that even a 25 per cent. dividend would tempt Crossan to disregard his self-imposed prohibition of alcohol.

"That's all nonsense," I said. "In the first place the _Finola_ didn't come in here to land a cargo of smuggled goods."

"Then what did she come for?"

I did not know, so I ignored Godfrey's question.

"And in the second place Crossan wouldn't debauch the whole place by making the men drunk night after night on smuggled spirits. Why, only three weeks ago he spoke to me seriously about the glass of claret I drink at dinner. He did it quite respectfully and entirely for my good. I respected him for it."

"He's up to some mischief," said Godfrey, sulkily, "and it won't be too pleasant for you, Excellency, when the Inland Revenue people find out, and you are let in for a prosecution. I tell you that every night for the last week men have been going up to that store after dark, twenty or thirty of them, truculent, disrespectful blackguards out of the Orange Lodge. I've watched them."

"Did you watch them coming out again?"

"I did, twice," said Godfrey. "They didn't go home till nearly one o'clock in the morning. I couldn't stop up every night, so I only saw them twice."

"Well," I said, "were they drunk?"

"No," said Godfrey, unwillingly, "they were not. They walked quite straight."

"That explodes your theory then. If they had been drinking smuggled spirits for hours and hours, they would have been drunk."

"They were at some mischief," said Godfrey.

"They were probably getting up a concert," I said.

"No, they weren't, for--"

"Look here, Godfrey," I said, "I've listened to you pretty patiently for a long time; but I really cannot spare you the whole morning. If you have anything to do I wish you'd go and do it. If you haven't you'd better go to bed and sleep off your absurd suspicions."

One has to speak very plainly to Godfrey. Hints are simply wasted on him. Even after my last remark he hesitated for a moment. Then he turned and went.

I felt in the mood to write a short story which I have had in my mind for some time. I very often write short stories; but have never yet got an editor who cares to print any of them. The one I had in my mind when Godfrey left me was, however, likely to be particularly good. It was to be the autobiography of a murderer; not an ordinary murderer who slays through desire of gain or in obedience to an inborn criminal instinct. My murderer was to be a highly respectable, God-fearing man, a useful citizen, a good father, a man of blameless life and almost blameless thoughts, generous, high-principled, beloved. He was to slay his victim with one of the fire-irons on his hearth. The murderous impulse was to take possession of him quite suddenly but with absolutely irresistible force. He was to kill a man who had been boring him for hours. My intention was to write the story in such a way as to win public sympathy for my murderer and to make every one feel that the dead man deserved his fate. I meant to model the dead man on my nephew Godfrey.

I still think that a very good short story might be written along those lines, but I doubt whether I shall ever write it. I wrote about two thousand words that morning before I was interrupted by the luncheon gong. I was unable to go on writing after luncheon because the conversation I had with Marion distracted my mind and turned my thoughts to another subject.

"Father," she said, "do you think that Mr. Power could really have been smuggling things in that yacht?"

"No," I said; "he couldn't possibly."

"It's very queer," said Marion.

"What's queer?"

"Oh, nothing. Only this morning Rose had a new gold brooch, quite a handsome one."

Rose is Marion's maid, a pleasant and I believe efficient girl of agreeable appearance.

"Even if Mr. Power was smuggling," I said, "it's exceedingly unlikely that he'd bring in a cargo of gold brooches to give to the servants in the district."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Marion. "In fact Rose told me that her young man gave her the brooch. He's a very nice, steady young fellow with a freckly face and he drives one of the carts for Crossan."

He must, I suspect, be the same young man who accused Godfrey of being a spy. If so he is evidently a judge of character, and his selection of Rose as a sweet-heart is a high compliment to her.

"He promised her a gold bracelet next week," said Marion, "and Rose is very mysterious about where he gets the money."

"As long as he doesn't steal it from me," I said, "I don't care where he gets it."

"It's very queer all the same. Rose says that a lot of the young men in the village have heaps of money lately, and I thought it might have something to do with smuggling."

This is what distracted my mind from the story of the man who murdered Godfrey. I could not help wondering where Rose's young man and the others got their money. They were, I assumed, the same young men who frequented the co-operation store during the midnight hours. It was, of course, possible that they might earn the money there by some form of honest labour. But I could not imagine that Crossan had started one of those ridiculous industries by means of which Government Boards and philanthropic ladies think they will add to the wealth of the Irish peasants. Besides, even if Crossan had suddenly developed symptoms of kindly idiocy, neither wood-carving or lace-making could possibly have made Rose's freckly faced young man rich enough to buy a gold brooch. The thing puzzled me nearly as much as did the _Finola's_ midnight activity.