Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  Mr. Macmurdo, the surgeon, and Mr. Cotton, the Ordinary of Newgate, had both shown Tom the kindest attentions; he could see, however, that each regarded him as a man only too justly sentenced to death. The surgeon offered to use his influence in the matter of a separate cell at nights. Tom would not hear of it.

  “No, no,” said he; “it would be a poor kindness, though I thank you with all my heart for the thought. The greatest ruffian in the gaol would be a better friend to me than my own reflections. Ah! I see what you think!” cried Tom, as a queer light glimmered in the surgeon’s eyes. “Well, I have done protesting my innocence; but don’t let them leave me by myself, that’s all I ask.”

  Mr. Cotton entered into spiritual matters, to which Tom listened courteously, though chiefly out of loving respect for his dear father’s memory: for where was the God who would permit an innocent man to suffer death for another’s crime? When, however, the good chaplain closed his books, he referred discreetly, as he rose, to certain efforts already being made to obtain a reprieve, adding that he would himself do what he could to further them, as a matter of course “Why should you, sir,” asked Tom, deferentially, “when you are quite convinced of my guilt?”

  The chaplain coloured.

  “I never said I was convinced,” he cried. “It is no part of my duty to be convinced in such matters either way. No, my poor fellow, your guilt or your innocence is a matter between your own heart and God Almighty. I, His servant, am only concerned with your immortal soul, and the longer you live the more time will be yours for repentance — of all your sins — and the greater your chances of immortal life. But build upon nothing of the kind.” And with a parting exhortation the Ordinary went his way.

  Bassett was the last visitor. He was in a tremendous hurry. The petition was already receiving support and signatures on every hand; the newspapers were full of it. And he who had furnished the sinews of defence was now working heart and soul for the respite, for which there was still every reason to hope; so said Bassett in a breath, and was gone next minute.

  It was the last piece of news that heartened Tom most: the news that the Noble Unknown believed in him still, against judge and jury, and was still heroically striving to save his miserable life. Who could he be? Some friend of Claire’s? The thought came for the first time; it never came again. Claire was with the judge, the jury, and the world: she had not written him one word.

  Tom was now in prison dress, a gaunt, dread figure; but they had let him keep a slip of paper that he had often taken out of a pocket in his own clothes, to pore over and to dream upon. He produced it now. It was the slip of paper Daintree had handed down to him during the proceedings at Marylebone, and he had never seen the writer’s face. But he had made a face unto himself; had built up a character from those few scribbled words; and both face and character were the sweetest, the kindest and the best that had existed upon earth during the last eighteen hundred years.

  So, when his last visitor had departed, the condemned man was not ashamed to kiss that flurried scrawl with his lips, nor afterwards to find it smudged with his ‘ tears.

  Those were the days when the capital convict was first found guilty, next brought up for sentence, and next “reported to the King.” The two latter functions rested with the Recorder of London; the last having its origin in the number of offences for which a man might be condemned to death without the least risk of being executed. The Recorder would wait upon his Majesty in Council, and make his report of the prisoners lying in Newgate under sentence of death; whereupon the King would be graciously pleased to respite (say) all but the wilful murderers. The amended report was straightway despatched to the prison, and his final fate broken to each man without a moment’s unnecessary delay.

  It was the 18th of May and a Thursday night near the stroke of twelve. All was silent in the condemned cells, for even Creasey’s voluble tongue had ceased to wag, and Tom lay thinking on his bed. His companion was a trashy hound, ever cursing God or entreating Him with shrieks and tears: unburdening his sordid soul to Tom half the night, venting covert spite and enmity upon him day after day. To-night he had been alternately protesting his innocence, abusing his dead wife, and mocking heaven and hell by the hour together.

  Tom lay awaiting the reaction which would follow as surely as the morning, and to-night it was before its time. The silence had been dead indeed, but not long so, when the creature leapt from his pallet with a scream. Next instant he was kneeling by its neighbour, fawning over Tom with trembling arms and twitching fingers.

  “I done it! I done it!” he whispered hoarsely. “There — I had to tell somebody, and I have! I’d got to tell or burst. I feel better now.... No, no!” he was yelling next moment. “What have I said? I was joking, you flat — joking, I tell yer! Ha, ha, ha! It’s you that done yours; I never done mine at all!”

  And he was strutting up and down the cell, trembling from head to foot, and laughing horribly through his chattering teeth.

  But a worse sound yet cut his laughter short: it was the sound of voices and the rattling of keys.

  Creasey inclined his bullet head one moment, then stumbled to the door, and fell heavily upon his knees.

  “The Report!” he quavered. “Erichsen — the Report! It’s come — it’s come!”

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE ROYAL MERCY

  THE condemned youths heard the next cell entered, and their comrade Carter roused from his bed. A key then grated in their own door, it was flung open, and there were Mr. Cope, the Governor, and a bevy of turnkeys in the passage.

  “Out with it!” gasped Creasey, on his knees. “I’m respited, ain’t I? I never done it, sir. I never did! The King wouldn’t hang an innocent man?”

  “Get up and dress yourself,” was the reply. “You will hear the Report upstairs, all of you together. You, too, Erichsen! Slip on your things.”

  Tom obeyed, and then lent a hand to Creasey, who hardly knew his small-clothes from his jacket, and clung to Tom as a child to its nurse.

  “I’m innocent,” he kept mumbling. “They’ll be the murderers if they let me swing. Didn’t I tell you I was innocent, Erichsen? Haven’t I said so all along? Oh, my Gawd, if they let me swing!”

  “They won’t,” whispered Tom; “but if they did, why, we’ve got to die some time; it’s an easy death, and there’s an end of it.”

  “But I don’t want to die! — I dursn’t die! I don’t deserve to die — don’t I keep telling yer I never done it?” And the abject thing clung blubbering to Tom’s arm, as the turnkey who was waiting at the door conducted the pair upstairs.

  The upper day-room, or Cell Ward, as it was indifferently termed, was but poorly lighted with candles, whose sepulchral rays added a pallor even to the white faces of those dragged from their beds to hear their doom. The number of the latter being now complete, all fourteen were ordered to kneel, and Tom found himself between Creasey and Carter, at one end of the line. Creasey still clung to his arm. Carter knelt like a rock, with his great fingers clutched in front of him, and heavy drops falling on them from his bended brow. This was all Tom saw before the Ordinary entered in his gown and halted before him first.

  “Mr. Erichsen,” said he, with a compassionate tremor, “the Recorder has this evening made his report to the King. I am very sorry to have to inform you that it is unfavourable.”

  Tom inclined his head. He had cherished no hopes.

  The Ordinary approached Carter.

  “I am sorry to tell you it is all against you also,” he continued. “As for you, Creasey,” and the latter tightened his grip on Tom’s arm, “I am happy to inform you that your life is spared; and I am very happy to inform all the others that by the Royal mercy their lives are spared.”

  Creasey withdrew his hand from Tom’s arm, and edged further away on his knees. A deep sigh rose from a dozen breasts; then, as the chaplain was about to offer up a prayer, there came a sudden crash at Tom’s side, and the wretched Carter was floundering on the floor
in convulsions. The rest were hurried back to their cells, and Creasey executed a breakdown while Tom quietly undressed.

  “But that’s all right!” cried the former, stopping suddenly. “It’s no more’n I expected, ‘cause, you see, I’m an innocent man, an’ alius was; that’s why you never caught me showing the white, Erichsen, though once or twice you thought you did. Jiggered if you wouldn’t believe any think, a mug like you! Why, I used to bilk you every blooming night for fun! Not but what I’m sorry it’s all up with you, old man; though it’s a nice an’ comfy death, you told me so yourself, and you know we’ve all got to die some day! Besides, you done yours — no denying it — but I never done mine at all; so it’s fair an’ square enough, you must admit!”

  The little cur was snoring in ten minutes. He was removed to the Transport side next morning. And Tom, left in solitude, would have given some days of the twelve remaining to have had him back.

  The execution was fixed for the thirtieth. He would never see another June.

  Bassett came from day to day with news of the petition; it was being signed, but not as freely as at first. Bassett’s disappointment was patent to the condemned man. The smart young fellow was in fact beginning to weary of his up-hill work, and to think about the bill.

  So next day Tom asked Bassett whether the Noble Unknown had also abandoned hope and effort.

  “Not he,” said Bassett in a half-disgusted tone. “He is moving heaven and earth; seeking private interviews with the Home Secretary, if not with the King himself. He’s quite capable of it. A wonderful man when he gets an idea into his head!”

  “But what put this idea into his head?”

  “Heaven knows!”

  Tom looked the attorney through and through, and asked another question. “Did you tell him how much I should like to see him before I die — to thank him?”

  “I did; but he is too busy working for you; he said that would do you more good.”

  “I see,” said Tom, sadly; “another Culliford! Then why is he doing it? Culliford was paid; he paid him; but why, again? See here, you Bassett; both you and he disbelieve in me — I know it now — but you are tired of your job, and he is not. Why not? I believe you know! Then tell me, and let us part friends once and for all; you need bother your head no more about me, only tell me what you must know.”

  “I know nothing.”

  “Then what you suspect.”

  Bassett considered; had his private conviction (that there was a woman in it) on the tip of his tongue; but ultimately shook his shrewd, cool head. There was nothing to be gained by speaking out; a dying man’s gratitude was nothing; and there might be something to be lost. At any rate the safe side was the wise side with that bill not even properly drawn up. So Tom and his solicitor parted coldly for the last time; and Tom tore up that slip of writing which had been handed to him at Marylebone, but relented next moment, and treasured the torn pieces till the end.

  And now at last his gallant spirit surrendered itself to the apathy of sheer despair; and the physical collapse which supervened was almost as complete as that of the brave but broken heart. A sudden outbreak of morbid appearances brought the surgeon in hot haste to clean the foul tongue, to regulate the irregular pulse, moisten the parched skin, and in a word, to keep his man well enough to die on the following Tuesday. The good Macmurdo would as lief have given him a draught of deadly poison, but such humanity would have sent himself to the gallows instead. So the surgeon did his best for the poor doomed body; and the chaplain did his best for an immortal soul still filled with bitter rebellion and rage; but this physician was less successful, though not less kind — praying in his chamber for the poor impenitent, but yet doing what in him lay to further such efforts as were still being made for a reprieve. Even on the last Sunday, when the stern divine furnished that incredible barbarism, the condemned sermon, the humane gentleman was upon the other tack, and in almost hourly communication with Daintree himself.

  Tom could not guess at that. The last to enter, the first to leave the crowded chapel, he did so with the sense of his indignity heavier upon him than at either Marylebone or the Old Bailey. The very chapel had been filled with sight-seers — and he the sight! He had recognised the noble earl who had come to spy upon him before the trial, and with him ladies. And to cap all, the Ordinary had mentioned him by name in the sermon, taking the Sixth Commandment for his text, and directly addressing Tom from the pulpit. The outrage was unforgivable. When Mr. Cotton came to his cell soon after, the convict flatly refused ever to listen to him again.

  “You have insulted me before men,” he cried. “You need plead for me no more before God!”

  “But consider who you are — what you were,” protested the reverend gentleman. “A clergyman’s son, your poor father—”

  “Not one word of him!” said Tom. “He would never have spoken as you spoke! There, sir, do not force me to say more; you have been kind to me in your own way; but the greatest kindness now is to leave me in peace until the end.”

  Next day he asked for pens and paper, and spent the entire afternoon upon one letter. Turnkeys, who came continually to see how he was bearing his last hours on earth, found him always writing, writing, writing, with the tears streaming down his face, and yet the happiest look that they had seen in it yet. The turnkeys were practical experienced men. They never doubted that what Erichsen was writing was his full confession of the crime for which he was to suffer in the morning. So one brought another to spy upon him in the act of historic composition. And still he wrote; and still he wrote.

  He was done before dark, and ate his supper as he had eaten nothing for days. He seemed a happier man — that was only natural to the turnkey mind. And yet the sealed packet set in front of him on the table was not yet addressed, and when the Governor, paying him a visit in the evening, said slyly, “Is this for me?” Tom answered with quite a laugh that it was not. It was for a friend, and the last act of his unpinioned hands should be to add the address.

  Later in the evening a packet was brought to Tom. It was addressed “Mr. Thos. Errixon, eskwire, Condemmed sells.” Tom was for tearing it up unread, when the turnkey acting postman interposed.

  “Don’t do that,” said he. “It’s from the chap who shared this cell with you, and he was very particular that you should get it safe. He says he owes you an apology or summut, and here it is, with his last parting love.”

  “All right,” said Tom; “you may thank him, and wish him luck, and say I’ve nothing to forgive, but I’ll read what he says with pleasure.” And he thought he would do so towards midnight, for they had mercifully left him his candle.

  To his surprise, however, there was no letter at all, but one huge printed sheet, whence (when it was unfolded and spread out upon the table) his own name in a gigantic headline seemed to leap up and lash Erichsen across the face. The headlines ran —

  LIFE, TRIAL AND AWFUL

  EXECUTION OF THOMAS ERICHSEN, THE HAMPSTEAD MURDERER.

  Below, there was a grotesque block, in which a colossal figure, white-capped and ready noosed, surmounted a miniature Felon’s Gate, with a Liliputian crowd in the foreground. Left and right of the picture figured a set of verses; the letterpress beneath was prose.

  The former began —

  VERSES

  My deeds to you I now will mention,

  Overcome with grief and shame;

  Pray one moment give attention —

  Thomas Erichsen is my name.

  Reared and trained by reverend parents,

  Who checked me if I done amiss;

  Educated in their religion,

  They little thought I’d come to this.

  There were eight such stanzas, with a chorus to match, but Tom got no further than the above. He had seen such “broadsides” before. So they were ready printed for next morning’s use! He cast his eye below and read the headings: “The Murder and the Trial,”

  “The Verdict,”

  “The Judge’s Addres
s,”

  “The Execution” —

  The Execution! He had not realised the meaning of the word in the first staring headlines. Now he did. So they wrote of the execution before it was accomplished, did they? What if it never were accomplished? Yet here was a circumstantial account ready-made in advance. “Long before daylight this morning crowds assembled in front of the gaol at Newgate, to witness the awful yet just extreamities of the law carried out on the poor unfortunate young man—” and so forth. Printing, spelling and facts were on a par. “His behaviour in prison has been that of a gentleman and Christian, and when the shirriff arrived at six o’clock this morning, they found him in earnest prayer, with the rev chaplain, and as the time drew nearer, he was observed to weep a little—”

  “Was he, by God!” cried Tom, through his teeth. He crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it across the cell; then looked well at door and window before putting out his candle and sitting down on his bed to think.

  A full May moon shot a vivid beam through the sunken eye of the cell, and it struck the wall in a chequered square that hung like a picture low down over Tom’s pallet. He jumped into bed and lay very still as steps approached and a head was thrust in to see how he was passing the time. He had to thank his excellent behaviour ever since his first night in Newgate for so much privacy on this his last. He meant to take advantage of it now, for a cold, hard rage possessed him, with a fixed determination to cheat the gallows yet. As good as executed, was he? So accounts of the execution were in type already before the event? He could falsify these, at least; and, so far from cursing the creature that had put them in his way, Tom was grateful to him for an idea which would never have occurred to him otherwise. Prostration had left him indifferent, if not resigned, and he had Creasey to thank for the heating of every drop of blood and for the stiffening of every nerve and muscle in his body. And yet he was cool; by coolness only could he achieve his end; even so, the way was not obvious. Suicide? That was his first idea. He had the means — his braces — his prison bars. But no! If hang he must, better to step out and die as a man than as a rat in its hole. Escape? It was not possible; if only it were!