Dáil Sketch/Frank McNally: It looked like the peace process was taking yet another bad turn when Sinn Féin failed to show up for Leaders' Questions.
As the Taoiseach faced his twice-weekly grilling by the Opposition, the benches normally occupied by the republicans were emptier than a cleaned-out bank vault.
Observers feared that, having decided not to interpret any more IRA statements, Sinn Féin had also resigned from the (perhaps greater) challenge of interpreting Bertie Ahern.
In their absence, Labour's Pat Rabbitte continued the struggle, asking Mr Ahern to clarify "conflicting signals" from the Government in its dealings with the republican movement.
But far from clearing up the confusion, the Taoiseach was soon delivering one of those strange elliptical replies, in a barely audible voice, that has members of the press gallery straining their ears and then staring at each other in pained incomprehension.
You know at these times that Mr Ahern is probably having a coherent thought, but it's as if his voice is only relaying the selected highlights.
He started, promisingly enough, by warning that the peace process could not "go back into a cul de sac" even though some might like that.
Then he spoke about certain people crying "wolf", and we were struggling to stay with him.
Did he say "wolf" or "woof?" reporters asked each other.
But even as we were asking, the Taoiseach murmured something about a "hostage", and we'd lost the trail completely.
"I thought he said 'ostrich'," one reporter ventured afterwards.
It was a potentially fraught scenario: an ostrich trapped up a cul de sac with a wolf. You certainly wouldn't need P O'Neill to underline the seriousness of such a situation.
So it was with some relief that we later consulted the official transcript and found the Taoiseach recorded as having said: "People like being in the cul de sac."
Then they all shout "wolf", "hostage", "victim" and so on. "That is not helpful."
Unfortunately, we still had no idea what it meant, and it was hard to argue with the wisdom of Sinn Féin's abstentionist, anti-interpretationist strategy.
In fact, before Leaders' Questions finished, the party did make a brief appearance in the form of Arthur Morgan and Caoimhghin Ó Caolain.
And before he finished answering Pat Rabbitte, Mr Ahern did briefly make sense.
He said that the impending report from the Independent Monitoring Commission would "if anything go further" than anyone yet had in pinning the bank job on the IRA.
Then, in a grave but this time audible voice, he confirmed that the release of the McCabe killers was "off the table", and added: "I don't see it coming back on the table for that matter."