“Indeed, and he was, sir.” Mrs. O’Grady stopped as she spoke, and tweeked a chair cover straight. “It shook him.”
“They do be terrible times. Sure, but we’re used to terrible times in Ireland. It was the same when I was a girl, and before I was a girl. Why, my grandfather was murdered out there on the Wicklow Hills. There was terrible times then. It’s me mother I’ve heard tell of them over and over again. Never trust the English, she said, and I never have, no, not the length of me arm, nor my children either. Ah, well you don’t have to go streeling the streets for news in Ireland.” There was a tap at the door, which made us all jump, and the next minute Mrs. Slaney bustled into the room.
“Mrs. O’Grady, I’ve called you three times, what are you doing?”
“I’m after taking the orders for dinner.”
“You won’t mind if I take Mrs. O’Grady away, I’m sure,” she said. “You’re going out, I see. Are you going near the Electric Light Company’s offices? It would save me a trip. No? Grafton Street? Now, I wonder if you would buy me a sixpenny saucepan at Woolworth’s. Mrs. O’Grady burnt my little cocoa saucepan last night.”
She hurried from the room, Mrs. O’Grady going before her.
“Well,” said Himself, “I thought you were going to refuse any more errands?”
“Excuse me coming in again. Father Murphy is coming to-night. He has just come back from Cork, and has met a priest who came from the place where Father Griffin was murdered. I have asked him to meet a woman who is interested in the Peace with Ireland League. I’d like you to come to-night, too, you might find it interesting. The Peace with Ireland League is going to do wonderful work. Lady Bange brought out a splendid pamphlet. Just plain facts; but the Government suppressed it. That’s freedom and justice. That’s England’s way of protecting small nations. Monstrous! Now, I’ll not keep you any longer. You won’t forget the saucepan?”
Mrs. O’Grady’s forebodings were to prove themselves only too true. The fatal evening came at the end of an April day when the Crown Forces made a great haul of propaganda in Molesworth Street. Rumour had it they had penetrated into a basement and found there the temporary offices of the _Irish Bulletin_, the official organ of Sinn Fein. Six typewriters and two tons of literature to do with propaganda were borne off in triumph to the Castle. Rumour also had it that Darrel Figgis had incriminated himself to his beard. A neighbour received word over the telephone that Figgis’s flat had been raided, his typewriter smashed, the bindings of some of his books destroyed. Figgis had gone on the run, and warning came to us to get anything seditious out of the house, as it was likely to be raided for him at any time. By five in the evening Mrs. Desmond Fitzgerald had got all her stuff away, a man carrying it off in a sack through the streets.