* * * *
Back in the solitude of his cell Pringle found plentiful matter for thought. The events of the morning had enlarged his mental horizon, and roused fresh hopes of escaping the fate that menaced him. As his long legs measured the cell—one, two, three, four, round again at the door—so lightened was his heart that he once caught himself in the act of whistling softly, while the hours flew by unnoticed.
He swallowed his dinner almost without tasting it, and the clatter of supper tins was all that reminded him that he had eaten nothing for five hours. He was not conscious of much appetite; after all, haricot beans are filling, and a meal more substantial than the pint of tea and brown loaf might have been thrown away upon him. With supper the gas had been kindled, and as he sat and munched his bread at the little table, the badge suspended on the bracket shown golden in the light.
Since morning he had endowed it with a special interest—indeed, it largely inspired the thoughts which now cheered him True, it was not a talisman at whose approach the prison doors would open wide, but it had taught him the important fact that the prisoners were known less by their faces than by the numbers of their cells.
Escape seemed less and less remote, when a plan, bold and hazardous in its idea, crystallised from out the crude mass of projects with which his brain seethed. This was the plan—he would lag behind after service in chapel the next morning, conceal himself in a warder’s pew, and lie in wait for the first official who might enter the chapel—such a one, in the graphic phrase of his disreputable friend, he would “knock out”, and, seizing his keys and uniform, would explore the building. It would be too daring to attempt the passage of the gate, but it would be hard luck indeed if he discovered no ladder or other means of scaling the wall.
Such was his scheme in outline. He was keenly alive to its faultiness in detail; much, far too much, was left to chance—a slovenliness he had ever recoiled from. He felt that even the possession of the uniform would only give him the shortest time in which to work; and, while he risked the challenge of any casual warder who might detect his unfamiliar face, his ignorance of the way about would inevitably betray him before long. But his case could hardly be more desperate than at present; and, confident that if only he could hide himself in the chapel the first step to freedom would be gained, he lay down to rest in happier mood than had been his for two days past.
* * * *
At the first stroke of the morning bell Pringle was on his feet, every nerve in tension, his brain thrilling with the one idea. In his morning freshness and vigour, and after a singularly dreamless sleep, all difficulties vanished as he recalled them, and even before the breakfast hour his impatient ear had already imagined the bell for chapel. When it did begin, and long before the warder was anywhere near his cell, Pringle was standing ready with his badge displayed and the little volumes in his hands. The moment the door opened he was over the threshold; he had walked a yard or two on while the keys still rattled at the next cell; the man in front of him appeared to crawl, and the way seemed miles long.
In his impatience he had taken a different place in the procession as compared with yesterday, and when at length he reached the haven and made for his old seat at the end of the bench against the wall he was promptly turned into the row in front of it. His first alarm that his plans were at the very outset frustrated gave way to delight as he found himself within a few inches only of the warder’s pew without so much as a bench intervening, and, lest his thoughts might be palpable on his face, he feared to look up, but gazed intently on his open book.
The service dragged on and the chaplain’s voice sounded drowsier than ever as he intoned the prayers, but the closing hymn was given out at last, and Pringle seized a welcome distraction by singing with a feverish energy which surprised himself. A pause, and then, while the organist resumed the air of the hymn, the prisoners rose, bench after bench, and filed out.
The warder had passed from the pew towards the central aisle; he was watching his men out with face averted from Pringle. Now was the supreme moment. As his neighbours rose and turned their backs upon him, Pringle, with a rapid glance around, sidled down into the warder’s pew and crouched along the bottom Deftly as he had slid into the confined space, the manoeuvre was not without incident—his collar burst upon the swelling muscles of his neck, and the stud with fiendish agility bounced to the floor, while quaking he listened to the rattle which should betray him. Seconds as long as minutes, minutes which seemed hours passed, and still the feet tramped endlessly along the floor. But now the organ ceased. Hesitating shuffles told the passing of some decrepit prisoner, last of the band, there was a jingling of keys, some coarse-worded remarks, a laugh, the snapping of a lock, and then—silence.
Pringle listened; he could hear nothing but the beating of his own heart. Slowly he raised himself above the edge of the desk and met the gaze of a burly man in a frogged tunic, who watched him with an amused expression upon his large round face.
“Lost anything?” inquired the big man with an air of interest.
“Yes, my liberty,” Pringle was about to say bitterly, but, checking himself in time, he only replied, “My collar stud.”
“Found it?”
For answer Pringle displayed it in his fingers, and then restored the accuracy of his collar and tie.
“Come this way,” said the befrogged one, unlocking the door, and Pringle accepted the invitation meekly.
Resistance would have been folly, and even had he been able to take his captor unawares, the possible outcome of a struggle with so heavy a man was by no means encouraging.
As the key turned upon Pringle and he found himself once more in the cell which he had left so hopefully but a short half-hour ago, he dropped despondently upon the stool, heedless of the exercise he was losing, incurious when in the course of the morning a youngish man in mufti entered the cell with the inquiry:
“Is your name Stammers?”
“Yes,” Pringle wearily replied.
“You came in the night before last, I think? Did you complain of anything then?”
“Oh, no! Neither do I now.”
Pringle began to feel a little more interested in his visitor, whom he recognised as the doctor who had examined him on his arrival at the prison.
“May I ask why you have come to see me?”
“I understand you are reported for a breach of discipline, and I have come to examine and certify you for punishment,” was the somewhat officially dry answer.
“Indeed! I am unaware of having done anything particularly outrageous, but I suppose I shall be told?”
“Oh, yes; you’ll be brought before the governor presently. Let me look at your tongue… Now just undo your waistcoat—and your shirt—a minute… Thanks, that will do.”
The doctor’s footsteps had died away along the gallery before Pringle quite realized that he had gone. So this was the result of his failure. He wondered what form the punishment would take. Well, he had tried and failed, and since nothing succeeds like success, so nothing would fail like failure, he supposed.
“Put on yer badge an’ come along o’ me.”
It was the Irish warder speaking a few minutes later, and Pringle followed to his doom. At the end of the gallery they did not go up, as to chapel, nor down to the basement, as for exercise, but down one flight only to a clear space formed by the junction of the various blocks of the prison, which starred in half a dozen radiations to as many points of the compass.
As his eye travelled down the series of vistas with tier above tier of galleries running throughout and here and there a flying cross-bridge, Pringle noted with dismay the uniformed figures at every turn, and the force of his fellow-prisoner’s remark as to the folly of a single-handed attempt to escape was brutally obvious.
He was roused by a touch on the shoulder. The Irish warder led him by the arm through an arched doorway along a dar
k passage, and thence into a large room with “Visiting Magistrates” painted on the door. Although certainly spacious, the greater part of the room was occupied by a species of cage, somewhat similar to that in which Pringle had been penned at the police court. Opening a gate therein the warder motioned him to enter and then drew himself up in stiff military pose at the side. Half-way down the table an elderly gentleman in morning dress, and wearing a closely-cropped grey beard, sat reading a number of documents; beside him, the ponderous official who had shared Pringle’s adventure in the chapel.
“Is this the man, chief warder?” inquired the gentleman. The chief warder testified to Pringle’s identity, and “What is your name?” he continued.
“Give your name to the governor, now!” prompted the Irishman, as Pringle hesitated in renewed forgetfulness of his alias.
“Augustus Stammers, isn’t it?” suggested the chief warder impatiently.
“Yes.”
“You are remanded, I see,” the governor observed, reading from a sheet of blue foolscap, “charged with unlawfully and knowingly uttering a piece of false and counterfeit coin resembling a florin.”
Pringle bowed, wondering what was coming next.
“You are reported to me, Stammers,” continued the governor, “for having concealed yourself in the chapel after divine service, apparently with the intention of escaping. The chief warder states that he watched you from the gallery hide yourself in one of the officer’s pews. What have you to say?”
“I can only say what I said to the chief warder. My collar stud burst while I was singing, and I lost it for ever so long. When I did find it in the warder’s pew the chapel was empty.”
“But were you looking for it when you hid yourself so carefully? And why did you wait for the warder to turn his back before you looked in the pew?”
“I only discovered it as we were about to leave the chapel. Even if I had tried to escape, I don’t see the logic of reproving a man for obeying a natural instinct.”
“I have no time to argue the point,” the governor decided, “but I may tell you, if you are unaware of it, that it is an offence, punishable by statute, to escape from lawful custody. The magistrate has remanded you here, and here you must remain until he requires your presence at”—he picked up the foolscap sheet and glanced over it—“at the end of five more days. Your explanation is not altogether satisfactory, and I must caution you as to your future conduct. And let me advise you not to sing quite so loudly in chapel. Take him away.”
“Outside!”
Stepping out of the cage Pringle was escorted back to the cell, congratulating himself on the light in which he had managed to present the affair. Still, he felt that his future movements were embarrassed; plausible as was the tale, the governor had made no attempt to conceal his suspicions, and Pringle inclined to think he was the object of a special surveillance when half a dozen times in the course of the afternoon he detected an eye at the spy-hole in the cell door. It was clear that he could do nothing further in his present position. He recalled the advice given him yesterday, and determined to “fetch the farm”. There only could he break fresh ground; over there he might think of some new plan—perhaps concert it with another prisoner. Anyhow, he could not be worse off.
But here another difficulty arose. He was in good, even robust, health; and the doctor, having overhauled him twice recently, could hardly be imposed upon by any train of symptoms, be they never so harrowing in the recital.
Suddenly he recalled a statement from one of those true stories of prison life, always written by falsely-accused men—the number of innocent people who get sent to prison is really appalling!
It was on the extent to which soap-pills have been made to serve the purpose of the malingerer. Now the minute slab upon his shelf had always been repellent in external application, but for inward consumption—he hurriedly averted his gaze! But this was no time for fastidiousness; so, choosing the moment just after one of the periodical inspections of the warder, he hurriedly picked a corner from the stodgy cube, and, rolling it into a bolus, swallowed it with the help of repeated gulps of water. As a natural consequence, his appetite was not increased; and when supper arrived later on he contented himself with just sipping the tea, ignoring the brown loaf.
Sleep was long in coming to him that night; he knew that he was entering upon an almost hopeless enterprise, and his natural anxiety but enhanced the dyspeptic results of the strong alkali. Toward morning he dropped off; but when the bell rang at six there was little need for him to allege any symptoms of the malaise which was obvious in his pallor and his languid disinclination to rise.
“Ye’d better let me putt yer name down for the docthor, Stammers,” was the not unkindly observation of the Irish warder as he collected. Pringle merely acquiesced with a nod, and when the chapel bell rang his cell door remained unopened.
“Worrying about anything?” suggested the doctor, as he entered the cell about an hour afterwards.
“Yes, I do feel rather depressed,” the patient admitted.
A truthful narrative of the soap disease, amply corroborated by the medical examination, had the utmost effect which Pringle had dared to hope; and when, shortly after the doctor’s visit, he was called out of the cell and bidden to leave his badge behind he was conscious of an exaltation of spirits giving an elasticity to his step which he was careful to conceal.
Along the passage, through a big oaken door, and then by a flight of steps they reached the paved courtyard. Right ahead of them the massive nail-studded gates were just visible through the inner ones which had clanged so dismally in Pringle’s ears just three nights back.
“Fair truth, mate, ’ave I got the ’orrors. Tell us strite, d’yer see ’em?”
In a whisper another and tremulous candidate for “the farm” pointed to the images of a pair of heraldic griffins which guarded the door; the sweat stood in great drops upon his face as he regarded the emblems of civic authority, and Pringle endeavoured to assure him of their reality until checked by a stern “Silence there!”
“Turn to the left,” commanded the warder, who walked in the rear as with a flock of sheep.
From some distant part of the prison a jumbled score of men and women were trooping toward the gate. They were the friends of prisoners returning to the outside world after the brief daily visit allowed by the regulations, and as their paths converged towards the centre of the yard the free and the captive examined one another with equal interest.
“Ough!”… “Pore feller!”… “’Old ’im up!”… “Git some water, do!”
The tremulous man had fallen to the ground with bloated, frothing features, his limbs wrenching and jerking convulsively. For a moment the two groups were intermingled, and then a little knot of four detached itself and staggered across the yard. A visitor, rushing from his place, had compassionately lifted the sufferer from the ground, and, with the warder and two assisting prisoners, disappeared through the hospital entrance.
In surly haste the visitors were again marshalled, and a warder beckoned Pringle to a place among them For a brief second he hesitated. Surely the mistake would be at once discovered. Should he risk the forlorn chance? Was there time? He looked over to the hospital, but the Samaritan had not reappeared.
“Come on, will yer? Don’t stand gaping there!” snarled the warder.
The head of the procession had already reached the inner gate; Pringle ran towards it, and was the last to enter the vestibule. Crash! He was on the right side of the iron gate when it closed this time.
“How many?” bawled the warder in the yard.
Deliberately the man counted them, and Pringle palpitated like a steam-hammer. Would he never finish? What a swathe of red-tape! At last! The wicket opened, another second—No, a woman squeezed in front of him; he must not seem too eager. Now! He gave a sob of relief.
In the approach a man h
olding a bundle of documents was discharging a cab. Pringle was inside it with a bound.
“Law Courts!” he gasped through the trap. “Half a sovereign if you do it quickly!”
A whistle blew shrilly as they passed the carriage gates. Swish—swish! went the whip. How the cab rocked! There was a shout behind. The policeman on point duty walked over from the opposite corner, but as the excited warders met him half-way across the road, the cab was already dwindling in the distance.
HOW DON Q. STOOD AT BAY, by K. and Hesketh Prichard
Winter was breaking. The plains were already gay with flowers, and even in the colder heights of the sierras warm hours at midday reminded Garth Lalor that time was passing; and still Don Q. continued to evade his hints of a desire to return to England. The affair of the death of General Don Basilio remained less of a mystery than Lalor had at first hoped and believed that it might remain. Don Q. was far too keen a man of business to allow the matter to sink into oblivion. He knew that the dealing out of justice in his own peculiar, high-handed manner to so powerful a Carlist conspirator would add brilliancy to his prestige, besides giving irrefrangible proof of the might of his arm.
Lalor, who, you will remember, accompanied the brigand on his eccentric tour of justice, had in consequence been forced to seek refuge once more in the mountains, although the ransom assessed upon him had been remitted by Don Q.
During the last couple of weeks Lalor had noticed that his host of the sierras was plunged in a mood of melancholy, shot and illuminated by flashes of cold rage. Don Q. was not a man to be questioned, and Lalor waited for enlightenment.
One morning as Lalor sat on the terrace sunning himself in the brilliant air of the sierras, Don Q. joined him. Chilly as usual, the Chief, wrapped in his cloak, his sombrero pulled low over his brows, sat for a few moments in silence; then he disengaged one meager hand and pointing downward at the men gathered in groups in the valley below, he told a story in his sibilant voice.
The Victorian Villains Megapack Page 37