Chapter Twenty Eight
Down Twenty Three Steps
All but lost to sight in the patchwork of deep shadows cast by the imposing rear facade of the huge building, the narrow flight of dirty, worn stone steps led downwards to a small dank area and stopped in front of a long-disused door that once provided a means of access into the dimly lit rabbit warren of cellars and store rooms which lay beneath the majestic bulk of the Shelbourne Hotel.
About the exact time that a beautiful, dark haired young woman entered beneath the ornate, grandiose front entrance of the hotel, where shortly she expected to meet with her fiancé and two sisters, a man dressed in the smart uniform of a porter of the Shelbourne Hotel set down a heavy canvas knap sack at the foot of the flight of steps at the rear of the very same building. Indeed, but a matter of minutes earlier the paths of the young, dark haired woman and the neophyte hotel porter had all but crossed. However, even if they had done so, it is unlikely that either would have paid much attention to the other, each being so pre-occupied with their own affairs.
Glancing cautiously and furtively above him into the square of daylight, satisfied that there was indeed no-one about to see what it was he did next, the man extracted a small key from out of one of the pockets of his porter's jacket and then carefully inserted it into the rusty keyhole of the cobwebbed door in front of him. The new key, copied from the original obtained for him by Frank Brennan in lieu of payment for services rendered, had been cut for Donnelly by an equally obliging locksmith, sympathetic to the cause, who kept a small shop just off Railway Street not far from the Hynes Public House.
It was providential, thought Donnelly that he and Brennan were of almost the same height and build, let alone of much the same colouring too. Wearing the uniform of a porter of the hotel, at a discrete distance, and certainly down here in the shadows, let alone in the dimly lit passages below the Shelbourne, he would easily pass for Brennan. As for the owner of the aforesaid uniform he was now wearing, from past experience, Donnelly knew only too well that Frank Brennan was inclined to be somewhat indiscrete, to become morose, somewhat self-pitying, and rather too talkative when in liquor. So therefore, so as to forestall Brennan making any injudicious comments, that same morning Donnelly had asked a couple of his new found pals in the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army to take the necessary steps to ensure this did not happen. Not that he wanted Brennan harmed in any way. Donnelly was very clear about that.
Happy to oblige their recently recruited explosives' expert, Donnelly was informed that Brennan would come to no harm in their hands, that he would be taken to a safe house, and kept there incommunicado, until after the attack on the rozzers near the Shelbourne Hotel had been successfully concluded.
Having had an absolute skinful the previous night, Brennan was still fast asleep in bed when the men from the IRA came calling; in fact, he probably never really knew what happened. Easily overpowered, tightly gagged and bound, wearing nothing but his underwear, he was taken from Donnelly's lodgings just off Talbot Street down the back staircase of the building and out into a small yard where a motor, its engine already running, stood waiting,
Unfortunately, sadly, sometimes, circumstances dictate that a promise made on the spur of the moment cannot be kept; although, perhaps, on this occasion, there never was any real intention that it ever be kept in the first place. For after his enforced removal from Donnelly's lodgings, thereafter, Brennan was never seen again in Dublin, or indeed anywhere else for that matter.
What ultimately became of Frank Brennan, Donnelly himself was destined never to find out. It is possible that the headless corpse of a naked man found entangled in the fishing nets of a trawler off Howth Head some months later may well have been Brennan, but the body was never identified. After all, there was precious little chance of that. Evidently the corpse had been in the sea for some considerable time, was headless, naked, with no personal effects whatsoever, and, it was obvious that at some stage it had suffered a close encounter with the revolving propellers of passing ship. Eventually, after a perfunctory post mortem, the pathetic remains were given a pauper's funeral and buried in an unmarked grave in the quiet churchyard of the ruined abbey of St. Mary's at Howth overlooking the cold, grey waters from whence they had been but recently recovered.
Once he had unlocked the door, Donnelly turned the knob only to find to his horror that the door itself refused to budge. For one awful moment, he feared that Brennan had forgotten to drop the bolts the previous night, cursed him silently, but then seeing how tightly the door fitted in its frame, he realised that it was swollen with damp. Putting his shoulder close against the paint flaked wood, Donnelly shoved hard several times, until at last he felt the door begin to move. One final push should do it he thought, pausing in his endeavours, waiting his moment, until the heavy rumblings of a motor lorry leaving the yard above him conveniently masked the sound of any splintering woodwork, and then pushed with all his might.
The door swung inwards on its hinges to reveal a dimly lit stone flagged passage, that disappeared off into the gathering gloom, and which smelt damp and musty, mixed with the unmistakeable smell of coal gas. Shouldering his laden knapsack, pulling the door to behind him, Donnelly set off down the passage, in the general direction of the front of the building.
He moved deeper into the bowels of the hotel. So far so good he thought.
But, unfortunately, appearances can often be deceptive.
In the cloying darkness of the subterranean passage beneath the Shelbourne Hotel, deep within his canvas knap sack, lacking their customary protective paraffin coated packets, beads of sweat were already beginning to form on several of the dozen or so sticks of gelignite. During the war, over in England, potassium nitrate used in the manufacture of explosives had become increasingly scarce, and owing to the shortage of this chemical being readily obtainable, some of the gelignite then produced contained sodium nitrate instead, which absorbed moisture much more quickly. Of course, this fact would not have been apparent to those members of the Dublin Brigade who had engineered the raid on the quarry's explosive store just outside the city. Nor would they have paid any attention to the fact that at the time of the raid the explosives which were stolen, had already been neatly separated into two distinct piles, with that made up of the gelignite sticks containing sodium nitrate awaiting careful disposal by means of a controlled explosion, After all, to the untrained eye, one stick of gelignite looked remarkably much like any other.
But the dangers so described would have been only too obvious to a man used to handling explosives like Donnelly. And the fast deteriorating state of some of the explosives he was now carrying on his back would have been obvious, self evident in fact, if only he had bothered to check the contents of his knapsack rather more thoroughly than he did. But not wishing to seem to be suspicious or untrusting of his new acquaintances, he had merely nodded, given what they provided for him no more than a cursory glance, which in the circumstances was quite deplorable.
With his military background and extensive training, as well as having witnessed several needless deaths over in France caused by the careless handling of both detonators and explosives, a man like Jerry Donnelly really ought to have known better.