MRS1 The Under Dogs (5 page)

Another silence while her lashes lay on her cheeks. Then, apparently, she made up her mind. With a toss of her bobbed head she said in a louder, harsher tone. "I don't get it, kid. I don't get it at all. I don't know why the hell anybody should write to Mme. Storey about me. I've got nothing to complain of."

I was deeply disappointed. When Melanie became profane, you felt that you had lost her. But I wasn't going to give up yet. "You asked her to help you," I said. "She wishes to help you. Are you going to turn it down."

"You will have it that I wrote to her. Excuse me, but you seem bugs to me on the subject, sister," said Melanie.

"Well, say that you didn't write to her then," said I. "She has interested herself in you for any reason that you like. She had me watch your trial for her, and she sent me here to talk to you."

"And after you told her the way I carried on at the trial was she still interested?" demanded Melanie.

"More than ever," I said.

An extraordinary expression passed over the girl's face. You could actually see the two elements of her nature struggling there. She sneered—and her eyes seemed to be about to fill with tears. "Huh! she must be a funny one!" she said.

I waited.

"And what did you think of me yourself?" she demanded.

"You made me think of when I was a child, and got in bad."

She flashed a look at me—a soft look, instantly hidden, and I was astonished to hear her laugh softly. Just one note. "That's not a bad way to put it," she said. Then immediately, in a tone of agony: "Oh, my God!"

I was very close to her then. I almost held my breath for fear of saying the wrong thing.

But the decision went against me. "No!" she cried with a violent shake of the black mane. Her face turned hard again. "What can Madame Storey do for me?" she demanded. "Can she get me out of here?"

I could make no answer to that.

Melanie went on in the old sneering, boastful vein: "Tell Madame Storey I thank you for her interest in me, but I can't use it in my biz. I'm a crook, and I'll herd with my own kind. I ask no favours of nobody. I stand on my own bottom, and take what comes as it comes. Nobody ever heard me whine for mercy!"

There was not so much hurt in it this time, and presently she broke off to ask me with eager curiosity. "What's she like, on the level. I suppose all that I read in the papers was just publicity stuff."

"We don't employ a press agent," I said.

"How old is she?"

"I don't know," I said frankly. "Young."

"Is she as good a looker as they make out?"

"You must have seen her photographs."

"Oh, I thought they were touched up."

"She's better looking than any of her photographs."

"And you're her private secretary!" said Melanie, with a wondering air. "Do you mean you're in on everything that happens in that office? All the big cases, and everything?"

"There is nobody so close to her as me."

"A-ah!" said Melanie truculently, "you can't tell me that anybody like that, so rich and high up and famous, come 'close' to common people like you and me. Now I know you're lying."

This was just to lead me on, of course. I said: "She puts it all over what you call 'high-up' people, with a manner that is higher than their own. When we're alone together we're just like pals. We laugh and joke together. She treats me like her sister.... I wish I could tell you better! She has the kindest heart in the world. She would be just the same to you."

As I struggled to convey my feelings about my mistress the tears came into my eyes, and I swear, as she listened, Melanie's black eyes became filmy, too. Forgetting her pose, she said simply: "She has always fascinated me. I have read every word about her that I could get hold of. I felt in a way that she was like me, though of course she's made something of herself. She's on the right side of the fence and I'm on the wrong side."

"Why, that's funny," said I. "She said almost the same thing."

The girl looked at me with a burning curiosity.

"When I described the trial to her," I explained, "she said that had she been in the same circumstances, she would have acted the way you did."

"No! Did she say that?" breathed Melanie, great-eyed. "Think of that!"

I thought I had won her. "What message am I to take her from you?" I asked.

The question recalled her to herself with a painful start. "Message!" she said. "Don't give her any of that cheap line I handed you a while back. That's my regular line of tripe. I beat myself like an empty drum and that comes out.... Tell her I ... Tell her ... What message can I send to a woman like that? ... Tell her if she feels friendly; if she wants to do something for me, she must drop me, see? There can be nothing between us. This is the straight goods, sister. I ask her as a favour to let me go. If she makes any other attempt to get in touch with me it will destroy us both!"

She went on in a lower voice—there could be no doubt of her earnestness: "Tell her ... tell her we are just like ships that pass in the night. We make friendly signals to each other and keep on our way.... I think she'll get that..."

"But I can't tell her just that without..." I began.

Melanie flew into a temper. Her eyes were full of tears. "Oh, for God's sake, are you dumb?" she cried. "Can't you understand English. I told you it was on the level. Do you think I'm telling you all this just for fun? You tell her just that, and nothing more."

"Can't you explain?" I begged her.

Her only answer was to throw back her head and loudly start singing a highly indecorous parody of a popular song. The ward-nurse came in, and angrily ordered her to be silent. Melanie answered her back pertly, and they embarked on a regular jawing-match, in which the nurse was unwise, for Melanie was far more adept at that sort of thing than she was. I went outside, sad at heart, for I felt that I had failed in my mission.

Shortly afterwards the regular night-nurse came on duty and I left.

When I came on in the morning, the patients told me that Melanie had been hitting up a racket all night. The head-nurse had complained to the authorities, and she had already been transferred back to her cell. This cut off any further chance of my seeing her.

But I had to go on working in that depressing place. I took care to make such breaks in the course of the day, that it seemed perfectly natural to patients and nurses when the head-nurse told me when I knocked off at night that I needn't come back again. I got back to New York at midnight.

Next morning I opened up the offices, which had been closed during my two days' absence, as Mme. Storey had no way of protecting herself from cranks and bores when I was away. I made my report to my mistress in her room, just as I have set it down here, ending it by saying with a good deal of bitterness: "And so I have failed."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," drawled Mme. Storey, teasingly. "You have planted a seed in the girl's mind. Let it sprout."

"But what further move can we make?"

She did not answer right away. Half turned around in her chair, she was gazing out of the window at the little green park. At last she said: "I believe that Melanie's friends are already planning to get her out of prison. That would be the bit of good news she received. It explains her miraculous recovery.... Nearly everything she said to you suggests she had that thought in mind. As when she said: 'Can Madame Storey get me out of here?' And you were obliged to be silent....

"It explains her curious hesitancies and contradiction. She has thirteen years to serve, as she could hardly count on anything off for good conduct. Thirteen years in the life of a girl who loves life! it is everything. In her soul she may hate her former life and its associates, but sooner than face that thirteen years she chooses to stick to them. That is very natural.... Now you see why she implores us to drop her. Any further move we made in her direction might queer her chance of escape.... Well, let them get her out if they can. After that we'll see...."

A few days after this Mme. Storey came in fresh and beaming from her morning's walk down to the office. There was a particular shine of amusement in her eye, "Bella, have you read the papers?" she asked.

"I only skimmed over the headlines," I said.

"This isn't front page stuff," she said, "but it has a special interest for us."

She laid a paper on my desk, folded in such a manner that my eyes immediately fell on the head:

"So you were right," I said solemnly. "You are always right."

With a laugh, she went into her room, leaving me to read the story. I kept the clipping, and I will reproduce it here; omitting only the part dealing with the girl's history, which you are already familiar with.

"Yesterday morning, when breakfast was carried to the prisoners in solitary confinement, the cell of Melanie Soupert was discovered to be empty. She had sawed her way out during the night. On the theory, perhaps, that women are not so strong as men, the cell fronts at Woburn are not constructed of iron bars, but of an iron lattice work, with strips half an inch wide, and three-eighths of an inch thick. These are, of course, much easier to saw through than bars, and an enterprising prisoner occasionally succeeds in making her way out, but only to find herself in the well-guarded corridor, no nearer freedom than she was before.

"But there was no sign of the Soupert girl in the corridor. For awhile the manner of her escape was a complete mystery. At the end of the corridor there is a steel gate which is locked at nightfall, and cannot be opened for any purpose without setting off an alarm bell. This gate was found intact in the morning, and the apparatus for ringing the bell was in order. Even if she had got through this gate, which leads into the rotunda of the main cell-block, she had still to go through the main gate to the cell-block, where there are never less than four guards on duty, and others within call.

"The solitary prisoners are confined in a row of small cells on the lowest tier of the north-east wing. No prisoner in solitary confinement has ever before been successful in escaping, it is said. The corridor is lined with a row of windows over thirty feet high, which give light to all four tiers of cells. These windows have iron bars running up and down inside them. It was finally discovered that the bars at the top of one of the windows had been pressed apart sufficiently to permit of the passage of a human body.

"She had unerringly put her finger on the one weak spot of the prison defences; for the tops of the windows are rounded in order to conform to the architectural design of the prison, and the ends of the bars, therefore, are not sunk into the stone as is customary. The bars end an inch or two short of the stone window-frame.

"This leaves a row of free ends of varying lengths. The two middle ends being the longest, provided the most leverage. These she had pressed apart.

"Climbing to the top of the window had offered no special difficulty, because of the numerous cross-bars. Stuck between the bent bars they found the girl's lever, a stout piece of iron some three feet long. After having squeezed through, she had climbed down the outside of the bars, and slipped through a raised sash at the bottom of the window. The sill was only some ten or twelve feet above the ground. She was then in the prison yard, with a twenty-two foot wall between her and freedom.

"At this point the investigators were faced by a greater mystery than ever, for it was discovered that the strongest keeper in the prison was unable at the same time to balance himself up there, and press the bent bars back into place with the girl's lever. How, then, could a woman do it unaided? There were many other unexplained points; how had she procured that bulky lever, as well as the array of specially designed saw-blades, the package of lamp-black, and the oil-can that were found hidden in her cell amongst her meagre effects? Above all, how had she succeeded in getting over the wall?

"Later in the day, after the news had been telephoned to the surrounding villages, the mystery was partly cleared up by William Harper, a blacksmith of Wellandville, who said that he had sold such an iron bar to two men at eight o'clock the night before. Upon being brought to the prison, Harper unhesitatingly identified the bar. The two men drove up to his house, which adjoined his shop, in a Ford car with a semi-truck body, he said. The body was loaded with ladders, coils of wire, axes and other tools, and the men represented themselves as linemen, who had received an emergency call. They explained that they needed a short lever, and he let them have it, thinking no harm.

"In view of this statement, it is clear that Melanie Soupert was rescued by two men who went over the wall from the outside, climbed up the outside of the bars, and pressed them open to let the girl out. Then the three of them went back over the wall to the waiting car. Woburn prison stands in a somewhat out-of-the-way situation at the foot of the Windon Hills. The nearest village is a mile away, and, apart from the prison establishment, there are no buildings in the immediate vicinity.

"Yesterday afternoon word came from the city of Kingston, sixty miles from the prison, that the Ford car with all its paraphernalia had been found abandoned in the streets at daybreak yesterday morning. The licence tags had been removed.

"Many questions are raised by the escape. Melanie must have had a perfect understanding with her rescuers; how could this have been reached, when she was held
uncommunicado
; forbidden to receive visits or letters? It is true she spent one day in the Infirmary, but it is not thought she could have got anything there, since she could not have known beforehand that she would be sent there. It so happens that there was a probationary nurse working in the infirmary who has since been discharged. As a matter of precaution, a search is being made for this woman.

"People are asking how about the guards on the walls? There are eight little watch houses in the circuit of the walls, and in each an armed guard is supposed to be stationed at all times. It may be that the watch on the walls has become a perfunctory matter, since escapes in this bold manner from a woman's prison almost never occur. But the Warden claims that this is not so. He admits that one or more of the guards must have been extraordinarily careless—or worse.