Free The Squad by T. Ryle Dwyer Page B

noticed Hurley in the area on other nights, and on the night that Wharton was shot, he said he saw Hurley run from Cuffe Street into Harcourt Street and fire a shot as two tall men were crossing the street. One was struck and staggered.
    Nine days later Bachelor pointed out Hurley to Detective Sergeant Johnny Barton, ‘I can swear he is the man,’ Bachelor said. Barton arrested Hurley, who put up no resistance. When Barton and a colleague searched him, they found nothing more lethal than a couple of ballads. Among the newspapers that he used to sell were The Irish Volunteer and The United Irishman .
    Bachelor testified that he chased the gunman down Cuffe Street and Wexford Street in the direction of Camden Street but that his progress was obstructed and he lost him. Olive Warring ton testified that she was standing on the corner talking to a friend when she heard the shot and saw two men running down Cuffe Street being pursued by Bachelor, but she could not describe the men running away.
    A policeman on point duty testified that Hurley normally sold newspapers at the corner between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. At the time of the shooting on the evening in question Hurley’s defence contended that he was in Little’s Bar at the corner of Harcourt Street having a drink. Patrick Clitheroe, another newspaper seller, testified that he was with Hurley in the bar when a newsboy, John Ratigan, rushed in and told them about the shooting. Ratigan confirmed that he told them in the public house.
    But this was a military court and they were just newspaper vendors contradicting the word of a former officer who was presumed to be a gentleman. Hurley was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in jail. Had Wharton died, he would probably have been executed. According to Paddy O’Daly, Hurley was released after the truce but was killed during the civil war while helping a wounded soldier into Jervis Street hospital.
    The more the notoriety of Collins grew, the more willing some people were to work for him, and the fact that he was president of the supreme council of the IRB probably helped in recruiting spies. A person in his position in a secret society was someone they could trust.
    He continued to make new contacts. Kavanagh and Broy introduced him to a new detective, James McNamara, who was administrative assistant to the assistant police commissioner in Dublin Castle.
    Tadgh Kennedy, the intelligence officer in Kerry, was on friendly terms in Tralee with another future contact, the Special Crimes Sergeant Thomas O’Rourke, who confided in Kennedy that he was anxious to channel information to the republican leadership. ‘I hadn’t such experience of intelligence at the time and I was scared to have much to do with the RIC,’ Kennedy explained. He therefore consulted Michael Collins, who told him to ask O’Rourke to furnish a copy of the key to the RIC code.
    ‘I asked him for the key,’ Kennedy added, ‘and he delivered it to myself. I sent it to Mick Collins and henceforth I was able to supply it to Headquarters every month and after each change where the RIC suspected we had got it. Mick told me afterwards that it was the first time he was able to procure the key regularly and it laid the foundation of the elaborate scheme of intelligence in the post offices.’
    In September Collins learned that a Sergeant Jerry Maher of the RIC in Naas might be sympathetic. When an emissary asked Maher about working for Collins, his eyes immediately lit up. ‘You’re the man I’ve been waiting for,’ Maher replied.
    He was working as a clerk for the county inspector, Kerry Leyne Supple of the RIC, and he was able to pilfer the code that was confined to county inspectors. He also recruited the district inspector’s clerk, Constable Patrick Casey, who became another source of the code being supplied by O’Rourke. At times Collins would have dispatches decoded and circulated to brigade intelligence officers before some of the county inspectors