“There may be fifty ways and there may be more; but I’d be glad if you’d tell me which of them is any use when there’s a young police constable sitting on the side of the quay that hasn’t lifted his eye off the boat since five o’clock this morning?”
“There is. The sergeant was up at the big house late last night. I saw him go myself. What they said to him I don’t know, but he had the constable out sitting opposite the boat since five this morning the way nobody’d go near her.”
“Peter Walsh,” said Sweeny, and this time he spoke in a subdued and serious tone, “let you go in through the kitchen and ask herself to give you the bottle of whisky that’s standing on the shelf under the bar. When you have it, come up here for I want to speak to you.”
“Peter Walsh did as he was told. When he reached the bedroom he found Sweeny sitting on a chair with a deep frown on his face. He was thinking profoundly. Without speaking he held out his hand. Peter gave him the whisky. He swallowed two large gulps, drinking from the bottle. Then he set it down on the floor beside him. Peter waited. Sweeny’s eyes, narrowed to mere slits, were fixed on a portrait of a plump ecclesiastic which hung in a handsome gold frame over the chimney piece. His hands strayed towards the whisky bottle again. He took another gulp. Then, looking round at his visitor, he spoke.
“Listen to me now, Peter Walsh. Is there any wind?”
“There is surely, a nice breeze from the east and there’s a look about it that I wouldn’t be surprised if it went to the southeast before full tide.”
“There’s no wind to upset any boat that’s handled right. And you know well, Mr. Sweeny, that the master can steer a boat as well as any man about the bay.”
“Is there wind so that a boat might be upset if so be there happened to be some kind of mistake and her jibing?”
“There will be that much wind,” said Peter Walsh, “at the top of the tide. But what’s the use? Don’t I tell you, and don’t you know yourself that the master isn’t one to be making mistakes in a boat?”
“How would it be now if you was in her, you and the strange gentleman, and the master on shore, and you steering? Would she upset then, do you think?”
“Nigh hand to one of the islands,” said Sweeny, “in about four foot of water or maybe less. I’d be sorry if anything would happen the gentleman.”