Then he cast a glance all round the room and came back again to Gypo. Mulholland and Connor watched him all the time with that loving interest with which a crowd watches the movements of a champion boxer who is walking around the ring in his dressing-gown, preparatory to a big fight. They smiled when Gallagher laughed. They stopped smiling when he stopped laughing. Gypo, on the other hand, watched Gallagher’s movements angrily. He felt a desire to pounce on him and crush him to death before he could do any harm. Then Gallagher came up to him and caught him by the right shoulder in a friendly and confidential manner. “Listen Gypo,” he said. “You’ve got a grudge against me no doubt for getting you expelled from the Organization, but you have nobody to blame but yourself. I sent ye down, on the orders of the Executive Committee, you and Frank McPhillip, to look after the defence work of the strikers. What orders did I give the two of you? Can you remember? Well, I’ll remind you. _To keep off the booze and not to use the lead unless you were attacked._ But what did you do? The very first thing, the two of you got hold of two women. That, of course, must have been Frankie’s work because I don’t suppose you were ever a great magnet among the women. Women were Frankie’s weak spot, damn it. But anyhow, it doesn’t matter very much which of you started the hunt. You tasted the honey as well as he did it, as far as was reported to me. The two of you got drunk at M—— in company with these two women. You got so mad drunk that McPhillip went to shoot up the town. You might have assisted him in that pastime, but your time was occupied trying to pull a lamp-post up by the roots in Oliver Plunket Street, for a bet of a gallon of stout. In the very middle of your entertainment, McPhillip met the secretary of the Farmers’ Union and shot him dead. That made you get over your drunkenness damn quick, didn’t it? The two of you bolted without making any attempt to cover your tracks. You ran like two hares. You came into Dublin with a red herring of a story about an attack and what not. It was a tall yarn. Well? D’ye know what I’m going to tell you, Gypo?” He paused dramatically and looked Gypo closely in the eyes. Gypo never moved a muscle in his face. He grunted interrogatively from somewhere deep down in his chest. Gallagher continued very slowly: “I’m going to tell you this much, Gypo. Only for me, you wouldn’t have got away with it as easily as you did that time. There were others who wanted to give you this, for disobeying orders.”