“Very well,” said Gallagher, “return to your post. Peter Mulligan, you can go now. You will be taken home in the car that brought you here and we’ll see you right for any inconvenience that was caused to you.” He walked over to the judges and whispered something hurriedly. They all nodded and put their hands in their pockets. “One moment, Mulligan,” he called. They all gave him money. He added some from his own pocket. He came over to Mulligan and handed him a fistful of silver. “For the present this might help you. I’ll see what can be done for you later on. I’ll bring your case up before the Relief Committee. Good-night, Comrade.” Mulligan took the money with bowed head. He got up and moved to the door hurriedly without saying a word, with his hat crushed in his two hands and his overcoat flapping behind him. He disappeared out the door, head first, stooping, hauling his two flat feet after him as if he were dragging them against their will. Then, with a hard, biting cough he disappeared. The sentries stood again across the door. Gallagher walked slowly back to his table. He sat down. There was a deadly silence. The silence lasted only about twelve seconds. During this pause Gallagher took out a notebook and turned over the pages, while Mulholland bent over his shoulder whispering something, and the three judges murmured with their heads close together. But to Gypo these twelve seconds were as long as twelve years to a man stricken with a painful and incurable disease. A succession of terrors flitted through his mind. They were not ideas or thoughts, but almost tangible terrors that seemed to materialize in his brain as the result of the reasoning of some foreign being. His cunning and his assurance were gripped suddenly by that amazing foreigner and hurled out of him, clean out of him into oblivion, like two bullets fired through the air. Ha! They were hurled out of him by the amazing fact of Mulligan’s disappearance, free, with money in his pocket given to him by Gallagher. They had given him money. They had called him comrade. They had promised to bring his case up before the Relief Committee. They sent him away free. He had gone. . . . Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What was the meaning of it?