No Defense | Page 8

if they know how wide your travel is, how many people you see; and if they know, how did they come to know? There's spies all over the place. How do I know but the man who's just left this room isn't a spy, isn't the enemy of all of us here?"
"I'd suspect Michael Clones," remarked Dyck, "just as soon as Mulvaney."
"Michael Clones," said his father, and he turned to Captain Ivy, "Michael Clones I'd trust as I'd trust His blessed Majesty, George III. He's a rare scamp, is Michael Clones! He's no thicker than a cardboard, but he draws the pain out of your hurt like a mustard plaster. A man of better sense and greater roguery I've never met. You must see him, Captain Ivy. He's only about twelve years older than my son, but, like my son, there's no holding him, there's no control of him that's any good. He does what he wants to do in his own way--talks when he wants to talk, fights when he wants to fight. He's a man of men, is Michael Clones."
At that moment the door opened and the butler entered, followed by a tall, thin, Don Quixote sort of figure.
"His excellency," said Mulvaney, with a look slightly malevolent, for the visitor had refused his name. Then he turned and left the room.
At Mulvaney's words, an ironical smile crossed the face of the newcomer. Then he advanced to Miles Calhoun. Before speaking, however, he glanced sharply at Captain Ivy, threw an inquisitive look at Dyck, and said:
"I seem to have hurt the feelings of your butler, sir, but that cannot be helped. I have come from the Attorney-General. My name is Leonard Mallow--I'm the eldest son of Lord Mallow. I've been doing business in Limerick, and I bring a message from the Attorney-General to ask you to attend his office at the earliest moment."
Dyck Calhoun, noting his glance at a bottle of port, poured out a glass of the good wine and handed it over, saying:
"It'll taste better to you because you've been travelling hard, but it's good wine anyhow. It's been in the cellar for forty years, and that's something in a land like this."
Mallow accepted the glass of port, raised it with a little gesture of respect, and said:
"Long life to the King, and cursed be his enemies!" So saying he flung the wine down his throat--which seemed to gulp it like a well--wiped his lips with a handkerchief, and turned to Miles Calhoun again.
"Yes, it's good wine," he said; "as good as you'd get in the cellars of the Viceroy. I've seen strange things as I came. I've seen lights on the hills, and drunken rioters in the roads and behind hedges, and once a shot was fired at me; but here I am, safe and sound, carrying out my orders. What time will you start?" he added.
He took it for granted that the summons did not admit of rejection, and he was right. The document contained these words:
Trouble is brewing; indeed, it is at hand. Come, please, at once to Dublin, and give the Lord-Lieutenant and the Government a report upon your district. We do not hear altogether well of it, but no one has the knowledge you possess. In the name of His Majesty you are to present yourself at once at these offices in Dublin, and be assured that the Lord-Lieutenant will give you warm welcome through me. Your own loyalty gives much satisfaction here. I am, sir, Your obedient servant, JOHN MCNOWELL.
"You have confidence in the people's loyalty here?" asked Mallow.
"As great as in my own," answered Dyck cheerily. "Well, you ought to know what that is. At the same time, I've heard you're a friend of one or two dark spirits in the land."
"I hold no friendships that would do hurt to my country," answered Dyck sharply.
Mallow smiled satirically. "As we're starting at daylight, I suppose, I think I'll go to bed, if it may be you can put me up."
"Oh, Lord, yes! We can put you up, Mr. Mallow," said the old man. "You shall have as good a bed as you can find outside the Viceregal Lodge--a fourposter, wide and long. It's been slept in by many a man of place and power. But, Mr. Mallow, you haven't said you've had no dinner, and you'll not be going to bed in this house without your food. Did you shoot anything to-day, Dyck?" he asked his son.
"I didn't bring home a feather. There were no birds to-day, but there are the ducks I shot yesterday, and the quail."
"Oh, yes," said his father, "and there's the little roast pig, too. This is a day when we celebrate the anniversary of Irish power and life."
"What's that?" asked Mallow.
"That's the battle of the Boyne,"