“So what are you grinning for? And why did you thank that sloppy baggage?”
“Because that lawyer’s got ears as long as Watling Street—and I’d like him to think I’m pleased!”
The old man chuckled. No matter what the cause, he enjoyed folk being misled.
“He thought he’d have me for ’is dinner,” went on Smith, his face darkening with contempt. “He thought I was that easy. Oh! That crafty lawyer, him!”
The old man grinned. He liked to hear of scoundrelly behavior. Very satisfying he found it.
“And his friends in brown! Wish I’d seen their faces! Wish I’d seen his face when they told him what luck they’d had!”
The old man agreed. He’d liked to have seen such a multiplication of dismay. He enjoyed dismay.
“And picture his oily face now—when ’e hears simple little Smith has just thanked Meg ’eartily! ‘Tom Billing,’ he’ll say to himself, ‘you got to help that lad. It stands to reason he’s got the document already. Else why did he thank that sloppy baggage?’ Oh yes! Picture ’is face!”
The old man pictured it and seemed to enjoy that most of all. The two of them—the old man not much bigger than Smith—sat grinning at each other across the mournful fireplace like a pair of goblin fire-dogs.
“Won’t be long now,” said the old man, jerking his head towards the ventilator; and Smith felt an odd pang of regret—even shame—that he’d be escaping and the old man would not. But the old man didn’t seem to mind. Indeed, he seemed quite gay at the thought for, though there were many things he liked much better, he was quite partial to the idea of the occasional little bird flying off.
Not that there was any remarkable sympathy between these two strongly differing prisoners, or even any mysterious bond of friendship. There was nothing in common between them save the fireplace, and even there each maintained his own side and scowled pretty formidably if there was any encroachment by the other.
“What d’you want? A whole bleeding park?” the offended one would mutter; and the trespasser would sniff and move back again. Then there’d be silence between them for several minutes while they watched the fierce and dingy residents of the Stone Hall going about their endless, purposeless business.
God knows what the old man thought as he gazed at his eternal neighbors to whom each day was as a year (with but a single season) and yesterday was a thousand years gone and of no more account. He must have had some thoughts—for every man has thoughts, be they never so dark—but maybe they were too awkward for words, like the prints left by a bird in the sky.
Even Smith’s thoughts were vague and shifting. The anticipation of escaping gave him both a superior feeling towards those who could not—and a queer affection. His time among them, he was firmly convinced, could now be counted in hours.
Then something happened on the Monday evening that frightened the wits out of him and filled those last hours with commotion and dread.
“Visitor!” croaked the old man, sharpishly. “Look lively! Visitor!”
Smith looked up—and was at once struck with astonishment and apprehension. The visitor was Miss Mansfield!
A terrible feeling that Mr. Billing had confided the plan to Miss Mansfield and she, in a righteous rage, had come to wreck it, chilled his heart. He could conceive of no other reason. His eyes glittered desperately.
“Smith!” cried Miss Mansfield, throwing back her hood and staring about her in horror and shame. “You’ve grown vastly dirty again!”
“Mister Jones won’t mind—”
“Who’s he?”
“The ’angman!”
Impulsively, Miss Mansfield knelt down and stretched out her arms (careless of her cloak, whose yellow lining flashed out, abrupt as a flower), and took Smith’s shoulders.
“Keep off! Keep off!” he cried fearfully—with black memories of his last day in Vine Street and a feeling that Miss Mansfield was come on a worse errand than to tell him he was dirty. This feeling was exceedingly strong and set up a shivering through all his thin body.
Miss Mansfield scowled ferociously, and tried to blink away her tears. She turned to the old man who was watching with abiding interest.
“I—I would help him—”
“He don’t need your help, ma’am.”
“What d’you want with me? Keep off! Leave me alone! I hate you!” almost screeched Smith in his fright.
The pain that he was inflicting was out of all proportion to his small size. His revenge on the Saint of Vine Street—did he but know it—was complete indeed. The lady’s face had so distraught and tormented an aspect that even the sneering watchers were struck by it. Though she’d come to the jail to tell Smith something, she could not overcome her own distress sufficiently to say more than: “Smith . . . child . . . I—I would help . . . Don’t hate us, I beg of you! Smith—Smith—”
But Smith glared and glared, morbidly convinced that the mad daughter of the mad father was come as harbinger of doom.
Which, in a way, she was. Suddenly there was a disturbance at the other end of the hall. Turnkeys were shouting; the seething, irritable crowd was being pushed and chivied. It moved this way and that, till at last it parted and fell away somewhat savagely from a tremendous figure who’d been caught in its midst, despite the turnkeys who’d been beating at the felons and debtors and shouting:
“Blind man! Blind man! Make way—”
It was Mr. Mansfield, blind as night, helplessly upright, his black spectacles in the great gloom looking more than ever like deep holes in his head. The turnkeys pushed obstructions from his path and led him, with many an important scowl at the resentful crowd, towards the fireplace.
Miss Mansfield looked alarmed and angry. She’d left her father in the carriage; bade him not come in, said she’d accomplish all without interference or help . . . So why had he come, with that strange, desperate look about his mouth that disturbed her violently?
“Daughter—”
“Yes, sir—”
The blind man nodded and seemed to stare at the wall, as if, even to his useless eyes, the horror, darkness, degradation and shame of the Stone Hall was a sight not to be endured.
“Is—he—here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Smith,” said Mr. Mansfield, quietly. “Do you know what this is?”
He thrust his hand into his coat and drew out—the document!
A sound between a scream and a groan told Mr. Mansfield that Smith knew.
“Meg told us,” murmured Miss Mansfield. “In tears, she came—poor soul! She was at her wits’ end, and said it was the only thing that would save you . . .”
“Do you know what it is, Smith?”
“No! No! Never seen it before!”
“Look again. Look closely. Look hard.”
Helplessly, Smith looked. Yellower and more stained than he remembered—smaller, even—but it was the document. Now he could read on the outside: To Mr. Lennard. Billing and Lennard of Curtis Court, Godliman Street.
Frantically his eyes strove to pierce the fold in the paper and read what was within, but in vain. He had a mad idea of snatching it. But where could he fly? Up the chimney?
“Never—seen—it—before!” he repeated, but his voice was harsh and unequal.
Mr. Mansfield put the paper away and Smith’s eyes followed it, into the vital pocket where all was black as night.
“Mister Lennard is at Prickler’s Hill. I’m taking this document to him, Smith.”
“W-what’s in it, then?”
“I—I do not know. It is for Mister Lennard. A dead man’s wish, Smith. Binding. No arguing with it. It shall be delivered. Tomorrow.”
“And let’s hope and pray, Smith,” said Miss Mansfield, still kneeling, “that it will indeed save you—”
“Tomorrow,” went on Mr. Mansfield, “Mister Billing will apply for an adjournment of your trial. I have asked him—”
“Then he knows?” This was meant for a whisper, but it came out very
near a scream.
“He knows no more than I’ve told him. Why should he? This is Mister Lennard’s affair—”
“He knows—he knows!” moaned Smith, now in blackest despair, for it seemed to him that the evil document was coming full circle. He knew for certain that blind Mr. Mansfield was as marked and doomed a soul as had been Mr. Field.
All Smith’s hatred and feelings of revenge sank abruptly in a sea of pity. The two men in brown would waylay the magistrate and murder him. And so at last they’d have what they’d been paid to get; and maybe Mr. Black would thank them in his soft voice . . . In his mind’s eye Smith could already see the look on Mr. Mansfield’s face as his soul left his body; and it was the selfsame look he’d seen in Curtis Court.
“You blind old fool!” he wept furiously. “They’ll kill you! You old madman! Blind, blind, blind right through you are!”
But Mr. Mansfield and his daughter were already moving, and the turnkeys were clearing their path. Men stared at the blind Justice hostilely, shook their fists at him, made threatening faces—and sometimes jeered. Someone managed to push his foot out so that the blind man staggered and nearly fell; but his daughter gripped hold on his arm and steadied him—in body, if not in spirit.
When they were gone, Smith looked dismally about for a certain fish-eyed jailer who, he had reason to believe, was the one who retailed everything to Mr. Billing and had most likely been paid to unlock the grating. His heart quickened. The man was nowhere to be seen. He had not been present. Was it still possible, then, that the escape would go forward? That the jailer would do what he’d been paid for without further reference to his employer? Or had Mr. Billing, knowing what he knew, already summoned him and grimly shaken his head? Scarce eighteen hours remained . . .
13
IT WAS A STRANGE NIGHT, much given over to restlessness and rumors about Dick Mulrone. Rumors that he’d nubbed himself to cheat Mr. Jones; rumors that he’d been reprieved and was dead drunk on that score; rumors that he’d changed clothes with a visitor and gone out as the Duchess of Newcastle; rumors that twenty of his roistering friends had broke in, armed with pistols, muskets and poniards, to whisk him back to the freedom of Hounslow Heath where coaches lumbered in their dozens, overripe for the plucking . . .
Then, between midnight and dawn, the easy voice of Mr. Jones, the hangman, put a stop to it all:
“On the last day of counting
My true love sent to me:
Twelve jurors juggling,
Eleven clerks a-counting
Ten friends a-failing,
Nine dead men . . .
Eight widows weeping,
Seven judges judging,
Six drummers drumming,
Five yards of rope . . .
Four sextons digging,
Three parsons praying,
Two horses drawing—
And a felon in an elm tree.”
“That’s my boy!” mumbled the old man—and leaned over to dig his companion in the ribs. But Smith had at last gone to sleep, so the old man desisted and rocked himself to and fro, humming the tune of the Tyburn Carol as softly as a lullaby, and gently clinking his fetters in time, so that the tune and the jingling might have sounded like Christmas harness in a dreaming ear.
At a quarter to six—or thereabouts—the old man shook Smith and bade him be gone.
The Stone Hall was dark and quiet, still—as a consequence of the disturbed night. Probably no one was awake save the old man and the furtive boy.
“Up on me back!” breathed the old man and knelt so’s Smith might mount on that bony eminence to reach the grating.
“What if it ain’t unlocked?” whispered Smith, full of last minute dreads and alarms.
“It’s been done?”
“When?”
“While you slept. I heard. I saw. Come, now—up! Up! Up!”
Smith paused. “D’you think you could come too?”
“Don’t want to. This is me home. Got company.”
Smith nodded. He shook the old man’s hand.
“I’ll not be seeing you more—”
“I hopes not! Up you go!”
Smith hoisted himself onto the old man’s back, which was as hard and steady as a rock.
“Hope you gets a gentleman for the fireplace what suits—”
“That’s my affair!”
“No offense—”
“None took. In you go, you scabby little sparrow!”
Smith had opened the grating. The air within was thick and damp and laden with evil smells. For a moment he thought the vent was too narrow even for him. Then he pushed with his feet against the old man’s back and felt, first his shoulders, then his arms, elbows and hips scrape the rough stone walls.
“You’re in!” he heard the old man whisper. “Best of luck—and watch out for—”
Smith never heard what he was to watch out for, as all sound behind him was lost in the eerie sighing of the prison’s secret lungs.
This sighing was as regular as breathing itself—and a thousand times more foul for, high up on the roof, the windmill was motionless, under a muffling blockage of snow.
A hundred and fifty feet of rough, uncanny darkness, divided into three steep channels, lay between Smith and the last great shaft. At the juncture of each of these channels, once jagged but now smooth and somewhat slippery apertures were let in; these led to other parts of the jail and furnished Smith with foot- and fingerholds to heave himself round each sharp bend and continue his upward burrowing. That he was moving upward, he knew chiefly by the direction of his own sweat which ran continually into his eyes . . . not that those organs were of much use, for the darkness was formidable and absolute.
“So what was I to watch out for?” he muttered, ironically. “Black rats? Black cats?”
The sound of his own voice cheered him . . . and henceforward he mocked his trembling spirits aloud: with a curious effect of which he had no knowledge. His mumbling, muttering tones traveled weirdly through devious passages and stony veins till they were wafted into the deepest and most dreadful parts of the jail.
A man in the Press-Room—on whom were weights past bearing—heard faintly:
“Come on, now, me boy! Give in? Not you, me sweeting! What’s a bruised belly between friends? On with you! Up with you—to the waiting heavens!”
But other jailbirds in their remote cages heard, maybe, nothing so apt and heartening. Curses and abuse of the prison’s scope and architecture came out of the various gratings—as if Newgate were alive to its own wretchedness and was at last complaining aloud. Then (in the King’s Bench Ward), “Be off with you! You fat, wicked ’orror! What are you waiting for? Dinner? Be off or I’ll bite your ’orrible ’ead off!”
Smith and a rat. He’d met it by a nest of vents, its eyes gleaming in some vague, wandering light. It had come from a deeper channel and now stopped, amazed to watch what it took to be a grand relation, passing bulkily by.
“Upways, downways, in me lady’s chamber! Which way now? Lost! ‘Up,’ he said. But which way’s up? Where’s the sky? Which of these dismal ways is the one to ’eaven? Come, me old friend! Try this fair stinker! Feet first—as they says in the trade!”
This, heard in My Lady’s Hold, caused much terror and consternation; but farther on the wandering voice (believed by some to be that of a stoned-up ghost) was not so gay. It complained horribly of bruises and swellings got from scrapes and pressures against the ragged, bulging walls. It complained of having taken a wrong turn and finding itself, baffled and helpless, staring through bars into a cage more desolate than the one that had been left. It seemed to be losing heart under the strain of an intolerable journey. So miserable did the voice become at this point, that those who heard it were moved almost to tears by a plight they had no notion of, and whispered: “Whatever you are—wherever you are—for God’s sake cheer up—and the best of luck!”
Maybe this had reached its mark? At all events, nothing more was heard of the t
raveling voice, and the iron-barred vents were as silent as the grave.
What had happened? Smith had come into the last great shaft: the broad-ribbed, secret gullet that led to the windmill and the sky.
Bruised and much fouled from his journeying, he crouched in the last bend and stared triumphantly up. Fifteen feet above him hung the motionless vanes of the windmill, folded in snow. Beyond was the sky: gray and weighty and still dispensing its flakes which flickered down and down and down—even kissing Smith’s upturned face.
A tremendous moment. Not even the Dean of St. Paul’s had as fine a view to heaven, nor a more heartfelt gaze at the sky. Smith began to climb . . .
He stopped. There was an oddness about the lip of the shaft. A ragged irregularity, which seemed to be growing subtly. Two swellings . . .
A sudden gust of wind whipped a veil of snow across his vision; then it was gone and the two swellings were most marked.
What were they? Heads. Two men. A pair of hands reached down. Fingers twitched and beckoned . . .
In the sudden and terrible agony of his betrayal, Smith screamed aloud! Looking down upon him, waiting for him, grinning at him, were the two men in brown!
There came a second gust of wind, which performed a curious office. Or it might have been the effect of the amazed and horrified child’s scream . . . for sudden noises of a certain pitch sometimes have the power of a giant’s hand.
A quantity of snow shook and fell from the mechanism of the windmill, which now began to turn and draw up the air into the shaft, thus setting into motion all the stagnant, thick and heavy vapors that lay in the deep, stone veins of the jail. Up they came, blundering into the churning mill.
But this was not all. A second, more fearful circumstance attended. An uproar—as if the lid of Hell itself had been lifted—filled the shaft and shrieked and jabbered to the sky!
Together with the air, there had been sucked up from the gratings—through every portage and vent—the furious and savage voices of the jail’s inhabitants. Groans from the Press-Room, curses from the Stone Hall, hard, high laughter from the Master Debtors, and shrieks and wild whisperings from holds and wards and cells unknown—all mingled together in a chorus of truly monstrous scope and dimensions.
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