Shortly afterwards a public inquiry was held, and it was clearly proved that every policeman in the town could be satisfactorily accounted for during the night of the murder, and, moreover, that every round of rifle and revolver ammunition could also be accounted for. However, this did not suit the Sinn Feiners, and a verdict of “guilty” was brought in against the authorities, though there can be no possible doubt in any unbiassed mind that the Mayor of Esker was murdered either by, or by the orders of, the Inner Circle. When he went home, after his interview with the G.O.C., the natural assumption was that he had been giving information, and the Inner Circle determined that he should give no more. Whether they knew that he was to be arrested and deported at 4 A.M., and deliberately forestalled the arrest, or whether they merely knew that he was at headquarters, and were waiting to murder him on the first favourable opportunity, is not clear, and does not affect the question of the guilt of the murder. XII. A BRUTAL MURDER. The childlike trust which so many Englishmen have in their institutions is a source of never-ending wonder to Irishmen, more especially the Englishman’s blind faith in the integrity of the Post Office in both countries. Long after Sinn Fein had made the Irish Post Office its chief source of information, the Government and public continued happily and blindly to confide their confidential correspondence to the tender mercies of the King’s enemies, and at the same time expressed their bewildered astonishment at the uncanny amount of information that the Sinn Fein Secret Service was able to obtain. It is highly doubtful if Blake would ever have even thought of obtaining information from the mail bags, if a young subaltern, who commanded a platoon of the Blankshires temporarily stationed in the Ballybor Police Barracks, had not made the suggestion one night at dinner, and had even offered to carry out the operation himself if Blake had any official qualms. At first Blake refused, knowing that the authorities did not approve of tampering with the public’s private letters; but being desperately hard up for certain information he gave in, and it was arranged that Jones, the subaltern, should carry out the search. A cross-country letter in the west of Ireland will often take nowadays any time from three to five days to arrive at a town only twenty miles away, and of the chief reasons of this delay one is that the mails often lie for twelve to twenty-four hours in a head post office before being sent out to rural sub-offices for distribution, or in a railway van at some junction awaiting a connection. This was well known to Blake, who had often to complain of delay in delivery of official letters, and also of letters from the “Castle” being frequently opened in the post.