“Yer a liar, ye did,” bellowed Gypo. “Ye suspect me, an’ well I know ye, Bartly Mulholland. D’ye think I don’t know ye an’ all about ye? Ye got a grudge agin me an’ Frankie McPhillip this long time. Don’t I know yer Intelligence Officer for No. 3 Area an’ that yer nosin’ around now——” “Shut up or I’ll plug ye where ye stand,” hissed Connor, ramming the muzzle of his revolver into Gypo’s side. “Don’t ye know there are people listenin’? D’ye want to let the dogs o’ the street know the secrets o’ the Organization that ye swore on yer oath to kape?” He panted and continued in a lower voice still: “Are ye mad or are ye lookin’ to get plugged?” Gypo’s mouth remained open in the act of beginning a word, but he did not utter the word. He half-turned his body in order to look into Connor’s face. He saw it, big, angry, menacing, with the nostrils distended, so that the insides, blackened with coal, were visible. The face was within four inches of Gypo’s face. Connor’s revolver muzzle was pressing into Gypo’s right armpit. Gypo feared neither the face nor the revolver. He stared with wrinkled forehead at Connor, knowing that he could crush him and Mulholland, both together, crush them to death, to a shapeless pulp, by clasping them in his arms. But they were not merely two men, two human beings. They were something more than that. They represented the Revolutionary Organization. They were merely cogs in the wheel of that Organization. That was what he feared, what rendered him powerless. He feared that mysterious, intangible thing, that was all brain and no body. An intelligence without a body. A thing that was full of plans, implacable, reaching out everywhere invisibly, with invisible tentacles like a supernatural monster. A thing that was like a religion, mysterious, occult, devilish. Frankie McPhillip had once told him that they tracked a man to the Argentine Republic, somewhere the other side of the world. Shot him dead in a lodging-house at night too, without saying a word. What d’ye think of that? “All right,” he said at last, “put away yer gat, Tommy. I’ll stay quiet.” A few people had gathered on the far side of the street and were looking on curiously. An immense crowd would have already gathered on ordinary occasions, but there was tension and anxiety in the district that night. Shooting might begin at any minute. It was always so. One death brings another in its train. Each man thought this in his own mind, although nobody breathed a word. It was a kind of silent terror. “Come on, boys,” said Connor, “let’s get away from here. We’re gatherin’ a crowd.” “Come on down to Ryan’s,” whispered Mulholland to Gypo, in his usual lazy, insinuating voice, as if nothing had happened, “Commandant Gallagher is down there. He wants to see ye.” “What does he want with me?” growled Gypo. “I’m not a member o’ the Organization any more. He’s got nothin’ to do with me. I’m not goin’.”