He walked straight across the pavement into a public-house. He kicked the swing door open with his foot, without taking his hands out of his pockets, just as he had entered the police-station. He put a pound note on the counter with a slap of his palm and uttered the one word: “Pint.” He stared at the counter until the drink was served. He put the measure to his head, opened his throat and swallowed the contents at one draught. He uttered a deep sigh and handed the empty glass to the barman. He nodded. When he received another pint and his change, he walked over to the corner and sat down. Now he definitely set out to form a plan of action. It had been a habit with McPhillip and himself. Whenever they had done any “stunt,” they immediately went into a public-house, got drinks and set about forming plans for an alibi. “Never bother about yer ‘getaway’ until yer job is done,” used to be a motto of McPhillip’s. Suddenly Gypo realized what a clever fellow McPhillip must really have been. He used to make plans so easily. They jumped to his mind one after the other, like lightning. Gypo had never given any thought to the matter of plans. He often used to say to McPhillip with a queer glassy look in his eyes: “Mac, you bite the easy side o’ the cheese. I got to do all the rough work an’ you do all the thinkin’. Strikes me you get away with it easy, mate.” Now, for the first time, he realized the difficulty of making a plan without McPhillip. When he had to think it out for himself it appeared to be devilish work. His brain got all in a tangle and he could make a beginning nowhere. He gathered himself together several times, with set lips and stiffened back, like a horse stiffening for a great tug at an immense weight, but it was no use. He could not overcome the weight that seemed to fall on his brain every time his sensibilities approached it, probing tentatively for information. Sitting on a deal bench at the rear of the bar, with his legs crossed and his pint of porter in his right hand, held in front of him, with his elbow resting on his knee and the froth of the porter dripping from the glass slowly on to the tip of his raised boot, he stared at the ground, in an agony of complicated thought. His little tattered brown hat, perched on the top of his skull, looked like a magic charm, endowed with reason and knowledge, mounting guard over his stupid strength. He had not even cleared his brain for a beginning with this devilish work of making a plan when he was interrupted by the arrival of Katie Fox. She had sat down beside him before he knew she was there. He was so immersed in his struggles that she nudged him and spoke before he was aware of her presence. “How’s things, Gypo?” she cried in her hard thin voice, as she nudged him in the ribs. “Are ye flush enough to give us a wet?”