After many months of the Sinn Fein Terror, the town of Ballybor became a place of shadows and whispers. At night-time men saw shadows, real and unreal, moving and stationary, at every corner of the streets and in every lane; and during the day-time, when men met in the streets, they would only speak in low whispers to each other, and always keeping one eye over their shoulder.
Public opinion withered and died. Sinn Fein had no use for it—men became completely detached, mere spectators of the unchecked and uncondemned orgy of crime; like the younger generation in England, who waste a large part of their lives in picture-houses, gazing at films of vice and crime. And if a man had been murdered in the main street at Ballybor in the middle of the day, not a hand would have been raised to save the victim—the inhabitants would simply have regarded the incident in the light of a film, and then gone home to their dinners.
The oft-heard remark when a policeman has 237been murdered, “that it served him right for joining the R.I.C.,” epitomises the attitude of the majority of the Irish public towards so-called “political murder.” As a rule, an Irishman, on being asked if there was any news in the paper, would reply, “No, only the usual columns of murders and outrages.”
Walter Drake, as his name implies, was descended from an Elizabethan soldier who had settled in the west of Ireland and built a large house about two miles from Ballybor, and here for many generations the Drakes had lived, hunted, and farmed.
Walter Drake had at an early age entered the army through Sandhurst, but retired after six years’ service on the death of his father, and since then had lived at the Manor, spending a large part of his time helping his poorer neighbours in every way in his power: a quiet man of a retiring nature, a popular magistrate, and a good neighbour, but a determined Loyalist. Called up again in August 1914, he had served throughout the war with distinction in his old regiment, to return once more to his home.
Had Drake lived in any civilised country in the world, he would most assuredly have died in his bed when his time came, esteemed by all as a just, kindly, and honourable man; but, as in war, the best seem to be always taken, so it has been in Ireland. His only crimes appear to have been that he continued to act as a magistrate after receiving an order from the I.R.A. to resign his commission of 238the peace, and devoting himself to helping ex-soldiers in the town to get their pensions and trying to get grants of land for such as were worthy. The granting of land to ex-soldiers was bitterly opposed by the Transport union, who wanted every acre for their own landless members. And probably being a personal friend of Blake’s and beloved by the police force, would constitute another crime in the eyes of the I.R.A.
On a certain Monday night the constable on duty at Ballybor Barracks reported that a great light could be seen in the sky, and thought there must be a big fire not far from the town. Going to the top of the barracks, Blake at once saw that a large house must be on fire, and judging from the direction the chances were that it was the Manor. Taking a dozen men in a Crossley, he at once went off there, to find the grand old house burning fiercely, and by the light of the fire he could make out a pathetic group of figures on the tennis-ground in front of the house.
The first person whom Blake met was the old butler, who told a tale now familiar in many parts of Ireland to-day. The household had retired at their usual hour of eleven, after which the butler had carefully closed up the house and gone to the servants’ hall to smoke a pipe before turning in. Soon afterwards he heard a loud knocking at the front door, followed by a volley of shots, some of which must have been fired through the windows, as he could hear the sound of falling glass.
239The old man went and opened the front door, to be met by a ring of rifles, shot-guns, pistols, and electric torches, behind which he could make out the usual mob of masked ruffians. A strange voice then demanded Major Drake; and when the butler told them that the Major had gone to Dublin by the mail that day, a man handed him a letter telling him that in ten minutes’ time they were going to burn the house to the ground, and that he had better warn the inmates if he didn’t want them roasted alive.
The butler at once took the letter to Miss Drake, who read the following pleasant communication addressed to her brother:—
“Major Drake,—Owing to your aggressively anti-Irish attitude, we have received orders to burn your house to the ground. You will be given ten minutes to collect your clothes. By order.—I.R.A.”
The girl hurriedly slipped on a dressing-gown, and went down to the hall to find it full of the brutes sprawling in chairs and smoking. The leader came forward to speak to her, and she begged him to have mercy on her mother, who was old and in feeble health, and who would surely be killed by the shock of having her house burnt and being turned out into the night; and implored the man to take anything he wanted, offering him all the money she had and her mother’s jewellery. For answer the man pulled out his watch, and said that she had exactly ten minutes to get 240her old English mother out of the house, no more and no less.
Seeing that it was useless to argue with the brute, Miss Drake called the butler and her mother’s maid, woke up the old lady, dressed her the best way they could, and as the household passed out through the central hall, they saw men sprinkling the furniture and carpets with petrol. Hardly had they reached the lawn when the men rushed out past them. There was a violent explosion (petrol-tins bursting), and the house seemed to burst into flames in an instant. And here they remained on the tennis-ground, helpless and hopeless, their only crime Loyalty, until Blake found them there, silently crying.
Seeing that the house was gone, that, in fact, it was impossible to save anything, Blake put the Drakes into the Crossley, with the old butler and the servants, and drove them to a hotel in the town.
Drake had been seen motoring through Ballybor to the station on the Monday, and by that evening there was a whisper in the town that something had happened to him, but what the something was the whisper did not mention. During Tuesday rumour lay dormant. On Wednesday, however, rumour awoke and rapidly made up for lost time, and by that evening it was freely whispered throughout the town that Drake had joined the I.R.A.; that he had bolted to Canada to escape from the I.R.A., only to be taken out of the train on his way to Dublin by a flying column of 241gunmen, tried by a court-martial, condemned, and executed; that he had gone to Dublin to join the Auxiliaries; and lastly, that he had gone to London to get married.
On Wednesday morning Miss Drake, whose poor old mother lay in a state of collapse at the hotel, came to Blake in great distress, and implored him to find her brother. She was sure something must have happened to him, as she had wired twice, and then, getting no reply, had wired to the secretary of his club, where he had intended staying, and from whom an answer had just come to say Major Drake had not arrived.
Blake promised to do all he could, and started off at once to the station to make inquiries. Having found out that Drake actually did leave Ballybor by the mail train on Monday, he next sent an urgent cipher message to the authorities in Dublin, hoping they would be able to trace him there. Blake then set out for Knockshinnagh, the next station on the line to Dublin, about a mile from the small town of the same name, and situated in the midst of a vast bog, which stretches towards the foot of the mountains to the east and west, and runs nearly as far as Ballybor. Here, acting on the assumption that the rumour of Drake having left the mail train at this station was correct, Blake carefully interrogated the station-master and the three porters. One and all denied having seen Drake on the day in question—one porter, who had been there years, adding inconsequently that 242he did not even know him by sight, and thereby making Blake sure that he was on the right track at last.
That night Blake again visited the station-master at his house in the station after midnight; and pretending that he knew for certain that Drake had left the train at Knockshinnagh, warned the man of the serious consequences of refusing to give information. 1 A.M. is an unpleasant hour to interview armed men, and thinking that the police were uncomfortably near and the I.R.A. in the dim distance, the station-master made a full confession.
A few minutes before the limited mail arrived at Knockshinnagh on Monday, three armed and masked men had driven up in a Ford car, and directly the train pulled up had made straight for the carriage in which Drake was travelling. At once they seized him, and dragged him, struggling, out of the carriage to the car, and then drove off rapidly in the direction of Ballybor. Before the train pulled out, a stranger in a third-class carriage warned the station-master, in the name of the I.R.A., to give no information to any one. As no further information could be got from the station-master, Blake returned to the barracks, and set out again for Knockshinnagh after breakfast, to endeavour to trace the Ford from there.
The road from Knockshinnagh to Ballybor runs practically the whole way through a vast bog, which is drained by the Owenmore river, 243with a deep fringe of water-meadows on each bank. At intervals side roads connect up the villages on the higher ground near the mountains with the main road.
The police had covered nearly three miles of the road without getting any news of Drake or the Ford, when a sharp-eyed sergeant noticed the narrow tracks of a Ford turning up one of these side roads to the east. The car had turned the corner sharply, leaving a deep track of two wheels in the soft ground on the edge of the road.
Turning down this side road, they proceeded slowly without seeing any further car-tracks until they came to a long low cottage, standing back about fifteen yards from the road. Here they found tracks which showed that the car had pulled up at the door of the cottage, turned, and returned towards the main road.
Leaving his men outside, Blake entered with a sergeant, in time to see the owner bolting out of the back door, only to be caught by the sergeant and brought back. The man said his name was Moran, and protested his loyalty loudly before Blake could ask him a question.
In Ireland if you want information badly, often the best way to obtain it is to bluff your opponent into believing that you already know part of it, leaving him to guess as to how much you know. Blake took this line of attack with Moran, and asked him the names of the four men who had called at his cottage on the previous Monday in a car. But Moran knew the game as well as Blake, and denied 244that any car had been to his house lately, or indeed at any time, whereby Blake knew that the man lied, and had something to conceal.
He then threatened Moran that if he did not tell all he knew he would arrest him and keep him until he did, and at the same time took him outside and pointed out the old tracks of a car in front of the cottage. This had the desired effect, and at long last Blake thought their search was at an end.
Moran, it appeared, was the caretaker of an I.R.A. cemetery, or rather an old disused cemetery, where formerly unbaptised children were buried, and which now was used to bury Volunteers who had “gone to America.” On the Monday in question three armed and masked men had driven up to his house with a prisoner, and after trying him by “court-martial” in the cottage, had taken him to the cemetery, and made Moran help them to dig a grave, while the unfortunate prisoner looked on. They blindfolded and shot him, and finally forced Moran to put the body in the grave and fill it in. They then left.
Though hard pressed, Moran denied any knowledg............