“Jesus, Mary and Joseph protect me,” Mary began to murmur rapidly to
herself. She shut her eyes and tried to think of Heaven. Her mind had
suddenly become void of all sense of knowledge and emotion. She felt
an intense cold in every pore of her flesh. As she rambled through the
prayer over and over again with her lips, a ridiculous rigmarole of a
song went through her mind with a tintillating sound, about, “Piping
Tim of Galway.”
He sat down beside her on the form, bent towards her and kissed her
coldly on the forehead. His cold lips remained on her forehead for
three seconds. Then he sighed and got to his feet again. He must keep
in movement. He must keep talking. He could not stop his brain from
thinking at an enormous rate and the only way to relieve the
congestion was by talking aloud. The formation and enunciation of the
words deflected a fraction of the brain forces and liquidated them.
Faster, faster, wilder, wilder he must talk, to keep pace with the
tremendous speed of his heated brain.
“Where is he now?” he whispered with a kind of cackle in his throat
that was like a laugh. “Where is he now? Why can’t we see with the
mind, long distances? How very stupid I am after all in spite of my
philosophy. He might be in the police station at this very moment,
with a big, fat sergeant taking down his statement.” He shuddered and
bit his lip. “Good Lord Mary! If you only knew what a statement he
could make. Ha! ha! He and Francis are the only two men in the
Organization who could tell anything worth while. And Francis is
dead.”
He paused. Mary bit her teeth, dispelled the tintillating rigmarole of
a song and began another prayer, one to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
“Ye see, Gypo was so useful. There were things he could do that no
other man could do. Not so much by his immense strength, as on account
of his particular mental qualities. It’s easy to get as strong a man,
but a mind like that is hard to find. I doubt if there is another. He
was priceless. Damn him. He’s a superhuman monster. Why did I say
_was_ before? He is. _He is._ That’s the worst of it. I wish he . . .
The government would give a million pounds for that statement. Good
Lord! I never thought Gypo could turn informer. It must have been a
mistake. I couldn’t be wrong about him. Some mistake. Sure. He isn’t
the type. Sure. I swear he isn’t. How could he be? He responds to me
like, like a needle to a magnet. Then how did he inform? On his own
pal too! That’s the strange thing about it. I’ve been studying him for
eight years and he never showed any signs of personal initiative.
Never once. I shouldn’t have dropped him for six months. But of course
I had to keep up respect for the rules of the Organization. Good
Lord!” he cried pathetically, looking at the ceiling and wringing his
hands almost in despair, “I’m alone with nobody to help me. Mary,
there’s nobody to give me advice. Why did nobody warn me against
expelling Gypo? What?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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