Читать книгу Ireland in Travail онлайн

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“What else did you glean?” I urged.

“That these gardens were much used by the Sinn Feiners. My ‘cousin’ pointed out a man loitering on a little switchback path over there near the waterfall. He warned me most of us were shadowed now and again, but in most cases it was clumsily done. He warned me Sinn Fein was everywhere, that one could trust nobody, that the rot was even in the army and the police. The question was dividing fathers against sons, and husbands against wives. He urged me to believe in nobody who was not of the brotherhood: he need not have worried on that score.

“I was told to look out for men and women sitting together on the park benches—the man dictating, the woman taking shorthand notes. That’s how they often dictate their dispatches.

“My ‘cousin’ went on to say that after dark motor cyclists carried the Sinn Fein dispatches through the empty streets. One passed his house at great speed at a certain hour every evening, almost to the minute. He meant to get him.

“He told me, as I had guessed, that the bars were the great places for passing information. Important meetings were held in the houses of trusted people and in the private rooms of hotels with good escapes.