Pay the Devil - Jack Higgins [37]
There was a slight awkward pause as the Rogans looked at each other and Big Shaun shrugged. “Fair enough, Colonel. You’ve done a good job. Name your fee.”
Clay reached for his saddlebags and took out the package. “When a man has carried something as far as I’ve carried this, I think he’s entitled to know what’s inside.”
Shaun Rogan’s eyes widened in surprise and then his mouth opened and he laughed heartily. “And by God you shall have your wish, Colonel. I think you’ve earned it. Open it up, Kevin.”
The package had been wrapped in canvas, sewn along the edges and sealed with red wax. Kevin produced a clasp knife and sliced open the stitches. Clay took his time over lighting one of his cheroots and waited.
There was an inner waterproof covering of oiled silk which had also been stitched into place, and when this was removed, a wooden box stood revealed. Kevin turned it upside down and packets of banknotes cascaded onto the table.
The Rogan boys grabbed for a packet each and examined them, talking excitedly. Clay turned to their father, a frown on his face. “But I don’t understand.”
Kevin tossed a packet across to him. “Have a look at those and you soon will.”
The notes were crisp and freshly printed five-dollar bills, issued in the name of the Irish Republic and signed by John Mahoney. He looked up and saw that the others were regarding him intently. “But there is no Irish Republic.”
“There soon will be,” Kevin Rogan said harshly. “There are thousands of members of the Brotherhood here and in America. In a few months, we will be ready to strike, and when we do, Ireland will be free again.”
“Presumably you’re referring to this Fenian Brotherhood I heard so much about in Galway?”
Shaun Rogan nodded. “This time we mean business. We want freedom and we want it now.”
“But where do the banknotes come in?”
Kevin picked one up and read from it. “Redeemable six months after the acknowledgement of the independence of the Irish Republic.” He grinned. “It’s a neat way of raising funds, Colonel, you must agree. In return for their loans, our supporters are issued with banknotes. The money helps to free their country, and afterward, it’s returned to them.”
Clay nodded slowly. “The man who thought of the idea had a brain, I’ll grant you that.” He turned to Big Shaun. “I was talking to Sir George Hamilton earlier this evening. He believes it to be economically impossible for Ireland to be independent, that she needs the protection of England.”
“Protection, is it?” Kevin cried bitterly. “If what they give us is called protection, God help us when we’re dead.”
His father laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Hold your tongue. The colonel isn’t aware of the facts.” He turned to Clay, eyes completely calm in the great bearded face, so that he resembled some Old Testament prophet. “In Ireland we all live off the land, Colonel. All of us, tenant and landlord alike.”
“Having seen the living conditions of some tenants,” Clay told him, “I can appreciate they have good cause for discontent.”
“The landowners are mostly English or Irish Protestants, which amounts to the same thing in the end,” Rogan went on. “In the main, they depend upon rents for their income. That means a landowner has only two ways in which he can increase the return on his investment. The first is to raise the tenant’s rent. The second is to try large-scale ranching of sheep or cattle.”
“Which means evicting his tenants?” Clay said.
Big Shaun nodded grimly. “That’s about the size of it, Colonel.”
“But surely there must be laws to protect people from unjust treatment?”
Kevin Rogan laughed harshly, and his father went on, “In practice, tenants are utterly at the mercy of their landlords. They have to pay excessive rents which leave them nothing but a bare subsistence. They have to carry out improvements which in England are undertaken by the landlord, and submit to see their rents being raised because of their own improvements.”
“But there must be some legal way of fighting against such conditions,” Clay said. “What about politics?