An Irish Republican Army plot goes horribly wrong when its leader, Johnny Murtah, kills an innocent man and is himself gravely wounded. As the police close in on Johnny, his compatriots must make a daring bid to rescue him. But they are not the only ones in pursuit: an impoverished artist, a saintly priest, a sleazy informer, and a beautiful young woman all have their own reasons to be desperate to find him. Meanwhile Johnny wanders the streets injured and alone, trapped in a delirious nightmare, surrounded on all sides by betrayal and faced with the realization that he may die that night with the stain of murder on his soul. As the action unfolds over eight hours of a cold Belfast night, the suspense builds towards an explosive conclusion.
Both a critical success and a bestseller, F. L. Green's masterful thriller Odd Man Out (1945) is best known today as the basis for the classic 1947 film adaptation directed by Carol Reed and starring James Mason. This edition, the first in over 30 years, features a new introduction by Adrian McKinty.
'A spellbinder . . . takes hold before the first shot is fired' - New York Times
'Rarely does a tale about pursuers and pursued reach the intensity of fear, uncertainty and apprehension' - New York World-Telegram
'Of unusual interest and distinction . . . very moving . . . produces effects of high and painful excitement' - Spectator
PART I: THE RAID
I
The mill stood in a narrow side-street in the heart of a district characterized by squalor and the numerous streets of a similar sort, as well as by the number of houses crammed in those streets and the multitude of human beings herded in those drab dwellings. It was the third largest linen factory in the world, and it rose like the awful, sheer wall of a canyon along the entire length of one side of the street. Towering above the houses opposite, it confronted the rays of afternoon sunlight which shone in reflection from its upper windows and which gave a rosy hue to the brickwork. That pink blush seemed to pour down the walls and permeate the air between the mill and the row of tiny houses on the opposite side of the street. It was the reflected glory of a sinking sun on a November afternoon, and for a little while it gave a splendid light to that place of murk.
Shortly before half-past three, when it was the habit of the Cashier to pass a considerable sum of money to the Wages Clerk, a saloon car entered the deserted street and halted at the kerb below the wide flight of steps leading to the mill’s entrance.
Four men were in the car. They were of about twenty-eight or thirty years and were dressed smartly in the style of managers of departments. Three of them alighted slowly; the two who had occupied the rear seats waiting for the third man who had sat beside the driver. All three crossed the pavement and ascended the steps, their cheerful conversation sounding pleasantly on the quiet air of the street and ending abruptly when the heavy door swung to behind them.
The man who remained at the wheel listened anxiously to the steady beat of the car’s engine, which was running softly. The car had been stolen earlier in the afternoon; and although he was expert in the handling of vehicles, he had not yet tested the capabilities of this one or discovered its possible faults. He glanced over his shoulder to make certain that the doors were open, after which he peered along the length of the street behind and ahead of him. Except for two women in shawls passing in the distance, and three small children playing on a doorstep at the far end of the street, the place was deserted. He asked himself fearfully how long it would remain so; and he waited with increasing impatience for his comrades to return.
When he had been assigned his part in this raid, he was pleased that he was ordered to drive the car, for he had driven cars on two expeditions similar to this one. Both had been successful. Planned cunningly after weeks of observation, they had yielded much plunder; and thereafter he had remembered only the swift journey from peril to safety and the considerable sum of money which he and his associates had stolen. But now, waiting in the car, his nervous thoughts remembered former occasions when he had sat like this; and some strange remnant of the hideous tension of those moments returned and attached itself to him like a recurrent malady which he suffered.
Anxiety grew again in him, as before, and found a weakness in his nerves. The anxiety was like a pain which increased to such a degree that he knew he could endure it only for a little while longer. His heart began to beat thunderously from fear that he would be unable to sustain that pain. Time swelled around him, slowly, heavily. His senses became unbearably acute, registering sounds, odours, and the taste of the cold air and the smell of petrol and oil fumes and the metalwork and upholstery of the car, assembling all these impressions into a hard mass that weighed intolerably upon his mind and weakened him. And although he knew that he would recover from this weakness at the moment when his companions appeared again at the door of the mill, he knew, too, that if they did not come soon something in his mind would fracture and admit impulsive, hysterical factors which were already advancing from indefinable sources in his spirit.
He glanced fearfully towards the mill’s big entrance and wondered impatiently what was happening. His breath fluttered in and out of his dry, parted lips. His hands on the wheel were clammy and weak. And he remembered that this had been his experience on two previous occasions.
A sense of horror and despair welled like a spasm of sickness in him. His abdomen suddenly contracted as though a blow had struck it. And at that moment it seemed to him that a dread, indescribable factor had entered the affair and ruined it.
II
The man who had sat beside him was the Chief of the militant Revolutionary Organization to which the others belonged. He was twenty-nine. His name was Aloysius John Murtah. He was known throughout the land as Johnny.
Fourteen months previously, he had been arrested by the police in Belfast whilst organizing the establishment of arms and explosives in secret dumps within the city boundaries. For years prior to that he had led an outlawed existence. Brought to trial for his activities as a member of the Organization, he was given a sentence of seventeen years penal servitude, four months of which he had served before making a daring escape and going into hiding. A large reward had been offered for information which would result in his capture, and an intensive search had been made for him. All without success.
Actually, he was living less than two miles from the city’s heart. The net which was to ensnare him was cast far beyond the city, across bog and mountain, border and sea, as though he were a legendary hero able to traverse vast distances without being recognized. He was living all the time in the home of a sympathizer; and in that tiny dwelling he planned this robbery in order to obtain funds for the Organization.
Except for an hour late on a June evening, and one wild afternoon in September when he had taken a walk along the mountains surrounding the city, this was the first occasion on which he had ventured far into the city itself. He had anticipated this excursion. His body and soul had longed for this activity. Yet during this rapid journey to the mill, he was silent and very troubled; for his senses which had been confined for so long by the walls of the little house in which he had hidden himself were unaccustomed to the width and space which now expanded around him in great ripples of light and colour, movement and noise. Something in him flinched from contact with it all. And his body was weak from months of physical inactivity. And his will could not conquer the subtle influences of that long period of hiding during which his spirit had been nurtured more by idealistic dreams than by the vast actuality of life which now rose on all sides and showed its immense face to him.
His weakness increased. He could not find the old confidence, the former strength of his fine body, the old belief in it. Something in him was impaired. Nevertheless, he went on trying to resurrect it, although at the moment when he left the car and walked round to join his companions on the pavement and begin the hearty conversation which was part of their ruse, he felt a new and terrible weakness encompass him, as though he were no longer attached to the wide reality of life but belonged only to the tiny, silent room in which he had been concealed for so long.
When he and his companions entered the spacious hall of the mill, the moment towards which his plans had been projected for the past seven months suddenly enveloped him. And it was like the onrush of something tangible which overwhelmed him. Not only had it the smell of the cold stone floors and walls, and the warm air which gushed from the offices, but the sounds of the pulsating machinery as well, as they echoed and thudded from other floors. It tasted cold, then warm in a sickly deluge.
A fussy, frowning little man holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and fingering a watch chain across his waistcoat with the other, was standing near the corridor leading to the Cashier’s office. He was addressing in sharp tones a young man who was listening with a deferential, abashed air. He stopped speaking when Johnny and his comrades hurried past; and fastening a stern, pompous stare on them, he waited with that exasperating air of interrogation cultivated by factory executives of senior rank. His stiff, mean little face horrified Johnny, for its expression was that of the mill’s life which was about to be attacked, as well as the face of reality which thundered and frowned and threatened Johnny at that moment.
It had a strange effect. It focussed in itself all the impressions which Johnny’s mind had felt since he had alighted from the car. It became like the fantastic, awful face of a nightmare. He struggled to forget it, to ignore it, to erase it from his sensibilities as he advanced with his two companions. But it remained.
The actions which he and the others took had been planned and decided months before. They were exact. But they did not produce the result which had been expected. It was like trying to fashion a dream from the substance of another dream. It would not develop. The three men hurried along a corridor and burst their way swiftly into a large office where they pointed revolvers at the clerks who were working there. But instead of rising abruptly and standing apart along one wall, as Johnny and the others told them to do, the clerks gaped at the intruders and flushed and then went pale and looked at one another, and turned to the strangers and started to utter curious exclamations and make idiotic little gestures. Then all at once two of them sped from the office by a rear door. The door slammed behind them. Another clerk shuddered back behind a cupboard.
At once, the three raiders went through the counter and hustled the clerks into a little group in a corner. The clerks stared at them with the eyes of men confronted by something which they could not quite believe was real. One of the armed men kept them in the corner while the other intruders crossed to the safe.
Johnny saw the safe door standing open slightly, with a bunch of keys dangling from the lock. He drew it wide open and saw stacks of notes and bags of silver coin. Now the dream became actuality for the few seconds during which he snatched the notes and little bags and thrust them into the canvas sacks which his companion held ready for him. Once, he glanced at the third man who was standing before the clerks and pointing his revolver at them. Johnny saw the big office and the little storeroom into which the two terrified clerks had rushed, and the furniture, and the windows through which the pink flush of departing day shone.
‘Yes,’ he thought, as one dimly recognizes a familiar figure in a dream, ‘that is Murphy, and he is holding them in the corner. But this is a strange thing I am doing . . . in this office . . . in here . . . and that dreadful little face. . . .’ And momentarily he felt again the loss of some vital, indefinable power in himself.
He continued to thrust the money into the three canvas sacks. He experienced neither fear nor tension as he continued; but he could not understand why that was so.
‘It is like a dream . . . like the things happening in a dream,’ he thought.
Then he remembered that for months he had let his mind dwell upon this raid and all the details of it. And the only factor which he had not calculated was his peculiar weakness and the odd effect upon him of the frowning little executive in the hall.
‘It is all in,’ he muttered, turning from the safe.
He took one of the sacks, while his companion gathered the others and handed one of them to Murphy who was backing away from the clerks in the corner. All three came together at the door which, at that moment, opened quickly behind them.
A typist entered. She halted a little way inside the office and stood gaping around. Her lips parted suddenly and she frowned. Before she could scream, Johnny and the others pushed past her into the corridor and hurried towards the hall. They put away their revolvers in the straps below their jackets, still holding their hands upon them in readiness. As they walked, their feet made sounds which echoed in the vaulted corridor.
Johnny hesitated when they reached the hall. His hands and legs were touched by an insidious weakness, like the limp, light feeling which possesses the body in a dream. The others were at the door, and he hastened towards them because a curious sense of detachment was beginning to envelop him. He overtook them and passed through the heavy swing door with them. They were excited and in a hurry. They were in front of him and already at the top of the flight of steps when he halted again.
As soon as he emerged from the building, and at the instant when he saw the saloon car and the tense expression on the driver’s face, some vast, impalpable force rose from the daylight, the houses opposite the mill, the pavements, the roar of traffic in the city, and struck his mind.
It was the actual impacting with the dream which he had re-enacted in the Cashier’s office. It dazed him. He halted. To descend the steps would be like attempting to plunge into a turbulent ocean. Already, his two companions were half-way down the steps. He tried to follow them, but at that instant he heard an outburst of voices behind him. He turned and saw two men. The foremost was a robust, resolute individual whose face had an angry, ferocious expression. He shouted something as he pushed open the door and came out brandishing a revolver. Behind him came a lithe little fellow in a grey suit, and he, too, had an expression of anger and violence on his face. Both men rushed at Johnny and seized him, and for a moment the three of them made a panting, scuffling mass.
‘It is a dream!’ Johnny thought, struggling to throw them off. He felt neither fear nor surprise; and because of this strange fact he was bewildered.
‘It is like a dream . . .’ he thought, again.
He dropped the canvas bag and tried to mass all his strength in his efforts to release himself from his opponents. In the unconscious movement of defence, he drew his revolver. He heard other voices behind him. Suddenly, he found himself prone on the top step, and he could not understand where he was or what was happening to him. The men struck him, but the blows were like those in a dream and did not hurt him. Even when there was an explosion and a flash and his hand which gripped his revolver was jerked violently, he still did not realize what had happened. His body rolled down the steps. The Cashier’s big body made a huge, warm, immobile weight on him until he thrust it away. Now there were loud shouts sounding so close to his ears that he jerked his head aside to escape them. There was another explosion and another flash which momentarily blinded him. He felt pain begin in his left hand and travel like a flame scorching his arm and his body. He screamed because he was afraid and hurt and terrified that the flame would fold on him again. Hands grabbed him and lifted him. He struggled to release himself from them because he imagined that they were those of the two pursuers. As he struggled, the noise of the city, and the pinkish light of the afternoon wheeled across his senses and dazed him. Voices shouted to him, and he recognized them.
‘It is Murphy and Nolan!’ he thought.
Then he remembered the whole of the dream: how he and the other officers of the Organization had planned to raid this mill, and how the junior officers and members of the Organization, together with women supporters, had spent months obtaining precise information about the offices, the employees in the Cashier’s department, the time of collection of the money from the bank and its delivery from one department to another, and so on. And he remembered, as well, how the senior officers of the Organization had planned to steal a car and drive to the mill and there alight and enter the premises.
‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘we decided . . .’
But he could not be certain that it had all happened. Had he dreamed it? Or had it all actually happened? And what was he doing here? Why were there voices shouting at him? Hadn’t he been sentenced to seventeen years penal servitude? Then what was this hard ground . . . and whose voices . . . and whose arms? . . .
He scrambled to his feet, swaying. Hands grabbed at him and rushed him towards the car, and voices screamed at him to get in for Christ’s sake, and other voices shouted that the fellow was killed . . . was killed . . . the fellow was . . . hurry for Christ’s sake there is an alarm . . . can’t you . . . can’t you . . . Christ, he is hurt he is . . . well, drag him in . . . drag him in. . . .
‘It is the dream,’ he thought, ‘it is awful.’
He saw his companions scramble into the car.
‘Come on, come on!’ they panted, leaning out and grabbing him.
‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘now I must get into the car. . . .’
Then again he remembered the dream which he had yielded to for so many weeks, and which had recurred again.
‘Yes, it is what I dreamed,’ he told himself. ‘After we have made the haul from the safe, we are to drive back to the place I was hiding in. But . . . something has happened. . . .’
He put out his arms to grip the car and get in. Again the fierce pain swept through his left hand and arm. He shrieked with agony, and stumbled, gasping and blinking and staring about him like someone recently wakened from a nightmare.
One of his companions got out of the car and dragged him to the running-board. Johnny saw contorted faces and heard wild shouts.
‘They are inside the car. . . .’
It had started. Already it was travelling at great speed and bumping over the cobbles. It turned the corner at such a pace and so sharply that it rose on the pavement. He swayed. He made efforts to get inside the car, but the pain scorched him again, while the wind rushing past him burst like a flood upon his bare head.
‘What is it . . . what is happening . . . ?’ he thought.
Everything wheeled in a swift curve which confused his senses. He closed his eyes. His body was struck violently with such force that the breath was driven from him. He opened his mouth and struggled to breathe, whereupon he tasted dust and smelled the cold stones of the roadway. He lay quite still, panting, looking up at a vast expanse of pink sky.
‘Morning . . .’ he thought. ‘This is the hard bed, and I am waking from a dream I have had.’
He sat up. Looking about him, he saw houses and some women clustered together and all watching him. He felt afraid.
‘Something has happened to me!’ he exclaimed. ‘There was the car . . . and Pat and Murphy and Nolan . . . and . . .’
Huge visions stormed through his mind. Shooting, screams, faces contorted by fear, two men pursuing him. He got to his feet and stumbled across the road and leaned against a wall. The women were still watching him. And others were running towards them and making a little crowd and chattering and shouting incoherently at him.
‘I was dreaming . . .’ he thought.
Because he was confused and afraid, he hurried along the street. Cunning guided him, tracing a way for him. He turned the corner and saw a short, empty street ahead of him. He went on as fast as his weak limbs could carry him; and when he had traversed it, he sped down others, striking deeper into the heart of that bleak locality until he saw ahead of him a little row of air-raid shelters. Some of them had wooden doors that were closed. Others were open, with the doors leaning back. He hesitated. He felt shocked and confused and in great pain. Glancing wildly around him, he saw that the street was empty. He lurched quickly into one of the shelters, stumbling against the door which, presently, he dragged upright after him with his sound hand and set in place.
Only a thin light from departing daylight remained inside. He stood quite still, breathing painfully. Now dream and actuality were irretrievably mingled together in his consciousness. Nevertheless, he distinguished certain features of the normal world: the damp, fusty smell of the inactive air of the shelter; the glimmer of daylight; the sounds from the city. And they were like thin strands which his senses groped to retain. He sat down, lowering his bruised body, trying to resurrect reason and comprehension upon the slender threads which his senses clutched to themselves. He kept his eyes wide open and did not yield to the dreadful weariness which brimmed from his body. He tried to struggle through the mists of dream. Pain began again in his left arm. Looking down at the hand, he saw that from the fingertip of the third finger to the wrist there was a raw line through which the bones and ligaments showed. And higher up his arm, the overcoat was soaked and discoloured with blood.
‘Then I am wounded!’ he exclaimed.
He remembered that part of the dream where he had scuffled with the two pursuers and rolled down the steps and felt the ponderous, lifeless weight of that big body upon him, as well as the subsequent moment when his companions in the car had screamed that the fellow was killed, was killed.
Most vividly and terribly it all recurred to him, finding within his mind its source from which it rose anew to remark that he was wounded, that it had all happened in reality, the robbery, the scuffle, the killing . . .
His eyes closed and he fell limply to one side. He had fainted.
Release Date: January 31, 1947
Release Time: 116 minutes
Director: Carol Reed
Cast:
James Mason as Johnny McQueen
Kathleen Ryan as Kathleen Sullivan
Robert Newton as Lukey, the artist
Cyril Cusack as Pat
F. J. McCormick as Shell
William Hartnell as Fencie the barman
Fay Compton as Rosie
Denis O'Dea as Inspector
W. G. Fay as Father Tom
Maureen Delaney as Theresa O’Brien
Elwyn Brook-Jones as Tober
Robert Beatty as Dennis
Dan O'Herlihy as Nolan
Kitty Kirwan as Grannie
Beryl Measor as Maudie
Roy Irving as Murphy
Joseph Tomelty as ‘Gin’ Jimmy, the cabbie
Awards:
1947 Academy Awards
Best Film Editing - Fergus McDonell - Nominated
1948 BAFTAs
Best British Picture - Won
