“All right then,” said Gallagher, “don’t worry yourself. We have to get to the bottom of this business, so we’ll just set to work, the two of us, and maybe we can piece the whole thing together. Now the best thing we can do is to begin at the end and go backwards. We’ll work backwards until we come to the point where you lost that man you saw tracking Frankie McPhillip out of the Dunboy Lodging House. In that case we’ll begin with where you were before you came in here. Bartly Mulholland tells us that you were at Aunt Betty’s, with a woman called Connemara Maggie. You must have been with her, because Bartly saw you with his own eyes giving her two pound notes. There were three empty whisky bottles in the room. They had been bought by you, I suppose. Well? A man is entitled to drink his own whisky that he has bought with his _own_ money, I suppose. That has got nothing to do with our business, has it Gypo? None whatsoever. We merely want to trace that man that tracked Francis Joseph McPhillip out of the Dunboy Lodging House. Well! What do we find next? A friend of yours called Katie Fox, once upon a time a comrade of ours, they are all to the front in this business, all those people that were once comrades of ours, she told Bartly Mulholland that you gave three pounds to an English woman at Aunt Betty’s and two pounds to Aunt Betty to pay a debt for this woman. You wanted to send her back to London. A kind of Barnardo’s Home or something, this Aunt Betty’s, for stray women. Well, of course, that again has nothing to do with us. A man is entitled to do what he likes with his _own_ money. But. . . . Good Lord, Gypo,” he cried, striking the table and bursting out into a strange hilarious laugh, “you were having a time of it. Where did you get all the money? Ha! Now don’t get excited. I know it’s no business of mine. But if you’re going to be taken back into the Organization . . . Well! There are ugly rumours flying about. . . . You know the way silly rumours fly around Dublin. It’s awful. But the fact is, that people are talking about sailors, American sailors, being robbed at the back of Cassidy’s public-house. It’s only a rumour, of course, and again, that friend of yours, Katie Fox—shall we call her one of our ex-comrades?—she is responsible for the rumour, according to Bartly Mulholland. Of course, it’s obviously originated with her. She has very probably invented that story out of spite, simply because you went with the other girl. Or . . . Tell me, is there any truth in it, Gypo? I mean in the rumour of your having robbed a sailor?”