“‘What is that noise?’ I asked the warder who was with me.
“‘Prisoners seeing their friends,’ he answered. ‘Like to have a look at them, sir?’
“He unlocked a small door and, as he threw it open, the distant, muffled sound swelled into a deafening roar. I passed through the door and found myself in a narrow alley at one end of which a warder was sitting. The sides of the alley were formed by two immense cages with stout wire bars, one for the prisoners and the other for the visitors; and each cage was lined with faces and hands, all in incessant movement, the faces mouthing and grimacing, and the hands clawing restlessly at the bars. The uproar was so terrific that no single voice could be distinguished, though every one present was shouting his loudest to make himself heard above the universal din. The result was a very strange and horrid illusion, for it seemed as if no one was speaking at all, but that the noise came from outside, and that each one of the faces—low, vicious faces, mostly—was silently grimacing and gibbering, snapping its jaws and glaring furiously at the occupants of the opposite cage. It was a frightful spectacle. I could think of nothing but the monkey-house at the Zoo. It seemed as if one ought to walk up the alley and offer nuts and pieces of paper to be torn to pieces.”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Miss Gibson. “And do you mean to say that we shall be turned loose into one of these cages with a herd of other visitors?”
“No. You are not turned loose anywhere in a prison. The arrangement is this: each cage is divided by partitions into a number of small boxes or apartments, which are numbered. The prisoner is locked in one box and his visitor in the corresponding box opposite. They are thus confronted, with the width of the alley between them; they can see one another and talk but cannot pass any forbidden articles across—a very necessary precaution, I need hardly say.”
“Yes, I suppose it is necessary, but it is horrible for decent people. Surely they ought to be able to discriminate.”
“Why not give it up and let me take a message to Reuben? He would understand and be thankful to me for dissuading you.”
“No, no,” she said quickly; “the more repulsive it is the greater the necessity for me to go. He must not be allowed to think that a trifling inconvenience or indignity is enough to scare his friends away. What building is that ahead?”
We had just swung round from Caledonian Road into a quiet and prosperous-looking suburban street, at the end of which rose the tower of a castellated building.
“That is the prison,” I replied. “We are looking at it from the most advantageous point of view; seen from the back, and especially from the inside, it is a good deal less attractive.”
Nothing more was said until the cab drove into the courtyard and set us down outside the great front gates. Having directed the cabman to wait for us, I rang the bell and we were speedily admitted through a wicket (which was immediately closed and locked) into a covered court closed in by a second gate, through the bars of which we could see across an inner courtyard to the actual entrance to the prison. Here, while the necessary formalities were gone through, we found ourselves part of a numerous and very motley company, for a considerable assemblage of the prisoners’ friends was awaiting the moment of admission. I noticed that my companion was observing our fellow-visitors with a kind of horrified curiosity, which she strove, however, and not unsuccessfully, to conceal; and certainly the appearance of the majority furnished eloquent testimony to the failure of crime as a means of worldly advancement. Their present position was productive of very varied emotions; some were silent and evidently stricken with grief; a larger number were voluble and excited, while a considerable proportion were quite cheerful and even inclined to be facetious.
At length the great iron gate was unlocked and our party taken in charge by a warder, who conducted us to that part of the building known as “the wing”; and, in the course of our progress, I could not help observing the profound impression made upon my companion by the circumstance that every door had to be unlocked to admit us and was locked again as soon as we had passed through.
“It seems to me,” I said, as we neared our destination, “that you had better let me see Reuben first; I have not much to say to him and shall not keep you waiting long.”
“Why do you think so?” she asked, with a shade of suspicion.
“Well,” I answered, “I think you may be a little upset by the interview, and I should like to see you into your cab as soon as possible afterwards.”
“Yes,” she said; “perhaps you are right, and it is kind of you to be so thoughtful on my account.”
A minute later, accordingly, I found myself shut into a narrow box, like one of those which considerate pawnbrokers provide for their more diffident clients, and in a similar, but more intense, degree, pervaded by a subtle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled garments, and the general appearance—taken in at a glance as I entered—was such as to cause me to thrust my hands into my pockets and studiously avoid contact with any part of the structure but the floor. The end of the box opposite the door was closed in by a strong grating of wire—excepting the lower three feet, which was of wood—and looking through this, I perceived, behind a second grating, Reuben Hornby, standing in a similar attitude to my own. He was dressed in his usual clothes and with his customary neatness, but his face was unshaven and he wore, suspended from a button-hole, a circular label bearing the characters “B.31”; and these two changes in his exterior carried with them a suggestiveness as subtle as it was unpleasant, making me more than ever regretful that Miss Gibson had insisted on coming.
“It is exceedingly good of you, Dr. Jervis, to come and see me,” he said heartily, making himself heard quite easily, to my surprise, above the hubbub of the adjoining boxes; “but I didn’t expect you here. I was told I could see my legal advisers in the solicitor’s box.”
“So you could,” I answered. “But I came here by choice because I have brought Miss Gibson with me.”
“I am sorry for that,” he rejoined, with evident disapproval; “she oughtn’t to have come among these riff-raff.”
“I told her so, and that you wouldn’t like it, but she insisted.”
“I know,” said Reuben. “That’s the worst of women—they will make a beastly fuss and sacrifice themselves when nobody wants them to. But I mustn’t be ungrateful; she means it kindly, and she’s a deuced good sort, is Juliet.”
“She is indeed,” I exclaimed, not a little disgusted at his cool, unappreciative tone; “a most noble-hearted girl, and her devotion to you is positively heroic.”
The faintest suspicion of a smile appeared on the face seen through the double grating; on which I felt that I could have pulled his nose with pleasure—only that a pair of tongs of special construction would have been required for the purpose.
“Yes,” he answered calmly, “we have always been very good friends.”
A rejoinder of the most extreme acidity was on my lips. Damn the fellow! What did he mean by speaking in that supercilious tone of the loveliest and sweetest woman in the world? But, after all, one cannot trample on a poor devil locked up in a jail on a false charge, no matter how great may be the provocation. I drew a deep breath, and, having recovered myself, outwardly at least, said—
“I hope you don’t find the conditions here too intolerable?”
“Oh, no,” he answered. “It’s beastly unpleasant, of course, but it might easily be worse. I don’t mind if it’s only for a week or two; and I am really encouraged by what Dr. Thorndyke said. I hope he wasn’t being merely soothing.”
“You may take it that he was not. What he said, I am sure he meant. Of course, you know I am not in his confidence—nobody is—but I gather that he is satisfied with the defence he is preparing.”
“If he is satisfied, I am,” said Reuben, “and, in any case, I shall owe him an immense debt of gratitude for having stood by me and believed in me when all
the world—except my aunt and Juliet—had condemned me.”
He then went on to give me a few particulars of his prison life, and when he had chatted for a quarter of an hour or so, I took my leave to make way for Miss Gibson.
Her interview with him was not as long as I had expected, though, to be sure, the conditions were not very favourable either for the exchange of confidences or for utterances of a sentimental character. The consciousness that one’s conversation could be overheard by the occupants of adjacent boxes destroyed all sense of privacy, to say nothing of the disturbing influence of the warder in the alley-way.
When she rejoined me, her manner was abstracted and very depressed, a circumstance that gave me considerable food for reflection as we made our way in silence towards the main entrance. Had she found Reuben as cool and matter-of-fact as I had? He was assuredly a very calm and self-possessed lover, and it was conceivable that his reception of the girl, strung up, as she was, to an acute pitch of emotion, might have been somewhat in the nature of an anticlimax. And then, was it possible that the feeling was on her side only? Could it be that the priceless pearl of her love was cast before—I was tempted to use the colloquial singular and call him an “unappreciative swine!” The thing was almost unthinkable to me, and yet I was tempted to dwell upon it; for when a man is in love—and I could no longer disguise my condition from myself—he is inclined to be humble and to gather up thankfully the treasure that is rejected of another.
I was brought up short in these reflections by the clank of the lock in the great iron gate. We entered together the gloomy vestibule, and a moment later were let out through the wicket into the courtyard; and as the lock clicked behind us, we gave a simultaneous sigh of relief to find ourselves outside the precincts of the prison, beyond the domain of bolts and bars.
I had settled Miss Gibson in the cab and given her address to the driver, when I noticed her looking at me, as I thought, somewhat wistfully.
“Can’t I put you down somewhere?” she said, in response to a half-questioning glance from me.
I seized the opportunity with thankfulness and replied—
“You might set me down at King’s Cross if it is not delaying you;” and giving the word to the cabman, I took my place by her side as the cab started and a black-painted prison van turned into the courtyard with its freight of squalid misery.
“I don’t think Reuben was very pleased to see me,” Miss Gibson remarked presently, “but I shall come again all the same. It is a duty I owe both to him and to myself.”
I felt that I ought to endeavour to dissuade her, but the reflection that her visits must almost of necessity involve my companionship, enfeebled my will. I was fast approaching a state of infatuation.
“I was so thankful,” she continued, “that you prepared me. It was a horrible experience to see the poor fellow caged like a wild beast, with that dreadful label hanging from his coat; but it would have been overwhelming if I had not known what to expect.”
As we proceeded, her spirits revived somewhat, a circumstance that she graciously ascribed to the enlivening influence of my society; and I then told her of the mishap that had befallen my colleague.
“What a terrible thing!” she exclaimed, with evidently unaffected concern. “It is the merest chance that he was not killed on the spot. Is he much hurt? And would he mind, do you think, if I called to inquire after him?”
I said that I was sure he would be delighted (being, as a matter of fact, entirely indifferent as to his sentiments on the subject in my delight at the proposal), and when I stepped down from the cab at King’s Cross to pursue my way homewards, there already opened out before me the prospect of the renewal of this bitter-sweet and all too dangerous companionship on the morrow.
CHAPTER X
POLTON IS MYSTIFIED
A couple of days sufficed to prove that Thorndyke’s mishap was not to be productive of any permanent ill consequences; his wounds progressed favourably and he was able to resume his ordinary avocations.
Miss Gibson’s visit—but why should I speak of her in these formal terms? To me, when I thought of her, which I did only too often, she was Juliet, with perhaps an adjective thrown in; and as Juliet I shall henceforth speak of her (but without the adjective) in this narrative, wherein nothing has been kept back from the reader—Juliet’s visit, then, had been a great success, for my colleague was really pleased by the attention, and displayed a quiet geniality that filled our visitor with delight.
He talked a good deal of Reuben, and I could see that he was endeavouring to settle in his own mind the vexed question of her relations with and sentiments towards our unfortunate client; but what conclusions he arrived at I was unable to discover, for he was by no means communicative after she had left. Nor was there any repetition of the visit—greatly to my regret—since, as I have said, he was able, in a day or two, to resume his ordinary mode of life.
The first evidence I had of his renewed activity appeared when I returned to the chambers at about eleven o’clock in the morning, to find Polton hovering dejectedly about the sitting-room, apparently perpetrating as near an approach to a “spring clean” as could be permitted in a bachelor establishment.
“Hallo, Polton!” I exclaimed, “have you contrived to tear yourself away from the laboratory for an hour or two?”
“No, sir,” he answered gloomily. “The laboratory has torn itself away from me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The Doctor has shut himself in and locked the door, and he says I am not to disturb him. It will be a cold lunch today.”
“What is he doing in there?” I inquired.
“Ah!” said Polton, “that’s just what I should like to know. I’m fair eaten up with curiosity. He is making some experiments in connection with some of his cases, and when the Doctor locks himself in to make experiments, something interesting generally follows. I should like to know what it is this time.”
“I suppose there is a keyhole in the laboratory door?” I suggested, with a grin.
“Sir!” he exclaimed indignantly. “Dr. Jervis, I am surprised at you.” Then, perceiving my facetious intent, he smiled also and added: “But there is a keyhole if you’d like to try it, though I’ll wager the Doctor would see more of you than you would of him.”
“You are mighty secret about your doings, you and the Doctor,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “You see, it’s a queer trade this of the Doctor’s, and there are some queer secrets in it. Now, for instance, what do you make of this?”
He produced from his pocket a leather case, whence he took a piece of paper which he handed to me. On it was a neatly executed drawing of what looked like one of a set of chessmen, with the dimensions written on the margin.
“It looks like a pawn—one of the Staunton pattern,” I said.
“Just what I thought; but it isn’t. I’ve got to make twenty-four of them, and what the Doctor is going to do with them fairly beats me.”
“Perhaps he has invented some new game,” I suggested facetiously.
“He is always inventing new games and playing them mostly in courts of law, and then the other players generally lose. But this is a puzzler, and no mistake. Twenty-four of these to be turned up in the best-seasoned boxwood! What can they be for? Something to do with the experiments he is carrying on upstairs at this very moment, I expect.” He shook his head, and, having carefully returned the drawing to his pocket-book, said, in a solemn tone—“Sir, there are times when the Doctor makes me fairly dance with curiosity. And this is one of them.”
Although not afflicted with a curiosity so acute as that of Polton, I found myself speculating at intervals on the nature of my colleague’s experiments and the purpose of the singular little objects which he had ordered to be made; but I was unacquainted with any of the cases on which he was engaged, excepting that of Reuben Hornby, and with the latter I was quite unable to connect a set of twenty-four boxwood chessmen. Moreover, on this
day, I was to accompany Juliet on her second visit to Holloway, and that circumstance gave me abundant mental occupation of another kind.
At lunch, Thorndyke was animated and talkative but not communicative. He “had some work in the laboratory that he must do himself,” he said, but gave no hint as to its nature; and as soon as our meal was finished, he returned to his labours, leaving me to pace up and down the walk, listening with ridiculous eagerness for the sound of the hansom that was to transport me to the regions of the blest, and—incidentally—to Holloway Prison.
When I returned to the Temple, the sitting-room was empty and hideously neat, as the result of Polton’s spring-cleaning efforts. My colleague was evidently still at work in the laboratory, and, from the circumstance that the tea-things were set out on the table and a kettle of water placed in readiness on the gas-ring by the fireplace, I gathered that Polton also was full of business and anxious not to be disturbed.
Accordingly, I lit the gas and made my tea, enlivening my solitude by turning over in my mind the events of the afternoon.
Juliet had been charming—as she always was—frank, friendly and unaffectedly pleased to have my companionship. She evidently liked me and did not disguise the fact—why should she indeed?—but treated me with a freedom, almost affectionate, as though I had been a favourite brother; which was very delightful, and would have been more so if I could have accepted the relationship. As to her feelings towards me, I had not the slightest misgiving, and so my conscience was clear; for Juliet was as innocent as a child, with the innocence that belongs to the direct, straightforward nature that neither does evil itself nor looks for evil motives in others. For myself, I was past praying for. The thing was done and I must pay the price hereafter, content to reflect that I had trespassed against no one but myself. It was a miserable affair, and many a heartache did it promise me in the lonely days that were to come, when I should have said “good-bye” to the Temple and gone back to my old nomadic life; and yet I would not have had it changed if I could; would not have bartered the bitter-sweet memories for dull forgetfulness.
The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others Page 10
