The Victorian Villains Megapack (41 page)

“Yes, yes; I see where you come in right enough,” interrupted Pringle. “But what about me?”

“No fear, I tells yer strite. When yer goes up again, if the split ain’t found out ’is mistake an goes ter say anythink ’gainst yer respectability, jest you sing out loud an’ say it’s all a bit o’ bogie—see? Then the split’ll see it’s not me, an’ ’e’ll ave ter own up, an’ p’raps the beak’ll be that concerned for yer character bein’ took away that he’ll—”

“Halt!”

Pringle, in amused wonderment at the cleverness of an idea founded, like all true efforts of genius, on very simple premises, walked into the man ahead of him, who had stopped at the word of command. Those in the inner circle were being moved into the outermost one, and there the whole gathering was packed close and faced inwards.

Measured footsteps were now audible; but when the leaders of this new contingent came in view it was clear that whatever else they might be they were certainly not a fresh batch of prisoners. For one thing, they wore no badges; moreover, they conversed freely as they drew near. Well set-up, and with a carriage only to be acquired by drilling, they displayed a trademark in their boots of a uniform type of stoutness.

‘”Tecs, the swabs!” was the quite superfluous remark of Pringle’s neighbour. Along the line they passed, scanning each man’s features, now exchanging a whispered comment, and anon making an entry in their pocket-books. Pringle himself was passed by indifferently, but it was quite otherwise with the wearer of badge “B.3.6”. He, evidently a born actor, underwent the scrutiny with an air of profound indifference, which he managed to sustain even when one of the police returned for a second look at his familiar features.

“Forward!”

As the recognisers left the yard the prisoners were sorted out again, and resumed their march round the paved circles.

“That’s a bit of all right, guv’nor!” And Pringle’s new friend chuckled as he spoke. “Haw, haw! See that split come ter ’ave another look at me? Strite, I nearly busted myself tryin’ not ter laugh right out! Shouldn’t I like ter see the bloke’s face when yer goes up—oh, daisies! Yer never bin copped afore?”

“No. Is there any chance of getting out?”

“What—doin’ a bolt? Bless yer innercent young ’art, not from a stir like this! Yer might get up a mutiny, p’raps,” he reflected, “so’s yer could knock the screws (warders) out. But ’ow are yer ter do that when yer never gets a chance ter ’ave a jaw with more than one at a time? There’s the farm now,” indicating an adjacent building with a jerk of the head.

“The what?”

‘”Orspital. If yer feel down on yer luck yer might try ter fetch it, p’raps. But it’s no catch ’ere where yer’ve no work and grups yerself if yer like. Now, when yer’ve got a stretch the farm’s clahssy.”

Again the bell rang, and the spaces grew wider as the prisoners were marched off by degrees. On the stairs, as they went in, Pringle and his new friend exchanged badges, and the old prisoner, with a muttered “Good luck”, passed to his own side of the gaol and was seen no more.

* * * *

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 dark 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.