I stood there upright in the pitch-darkness of that awful place, quivering, tense, and I was holding something pressed to my lips with both hands, kissing it. Something that wasn’t made to be kissed — a Colt automatic, still warm from my leg. It was all I had, in that darkest hour of my life, with the noises of bedlam percolating through the slitted door from outside. It was going to get me out of there, one way — or the other. I knew if I stayed there longer than twenty-four hours I stood a good chance of going whacky myself. A place like that will do that to you.
Then I hid it in the straw. To leave it strapped to my leg would have meant losing it; they’d muffed it the first time, but they wouldn’t when they came back in the morning to put me into asylum-garb. I lay down close by it, keeping my body over it, and the long ghastly night slipped away. The horrible noises at least died down after a while, as the inmates fell asleep.
It was when they started growing louder again that I could tell it must be morning. I had no other way of knowing. A little later the murky yellow that faintly outlined the door-slits changed to gray all at once, so I knew the light in the corridor had been turned off.
The lower of the two openings had tipped me off long ago to the way they’d feed me. It was a small hinged slot that was pushed inward from the outside, without opening the door at all. To simply shoot through it and kill the guy was worse than useless; he might fall down out of reach of my arm and I’d never be able to get the key off him and let myself out. Then they’d simply gang up on me out there and it would be all over. On the other hand, if I waited until they came in to me, to get my clothes, there would almost certainly be two of them to handle. They didn’t, apparently, carry firearms, just those wooden bludgeons.
The problem solved itself without my having to decide. The door-flap suddenly cracked open without any warning, then slapped shut again long before I could get the gun out of the straw and make a move over toward it — and there was a wooden bowl of beans and bread standing there on the floor. So my only chance was when they came in here, the feeding was done too cagily to be able to take advantage of it. I stayed there motionless, sprawled on my side, my right hand buried in the straw just within reach of the gun — waiting, waiting.
Hours went by, and they didn’t come. They must have forgotten they’d left me in my own clothes, or maybe they were too lazy to bother. I hadn’t closed my eyes, but who could think of sleeping in the fix I was in? A hand abruptly snatched the bowl of junk away, thinking it was empty, then finding that it wasn’t, put it back, and I heard myself being cursed out and threatened from the other side of the door. I just lay pat and didn’t make a sound. I figured that was the noon feeding, overlooking the fact that this wasn’t exactly the Ritz. About fifteen minutes later the yellow came back again in the corridor and showed me I’d been half a day slow — it was evening already. And in a little while the banquet would be getting under way! And in a little while after that, somebody uninvited would show up at that banquet! And here I was!
I would have pitched the bowl of food out, to rile them, get them to come in to me, but the slot in the door was latched or something on the outside, I couldn’t budge it. I had a bad time after that. Suppose they didn’t come near me for days, weeks even? And then suddenly, just when I’d given up all hope, there was a tinkering at the door — not the slot this time, but the lock itself.
By the time they got it open, my finger was fish-hooked around the hidden trigger. Two of them came in together, the way I’d figured they would. One just had his truncheon ready, the other had a suit of bughouse-garb slung over his arm. The straw rustled as I shifted the gun to cover the foremost; any fool would have known which one to take first.
They closed the cell door after them before doing anything else, which was just as well. I still didn’t make a move, just lay there breathing heavily.
“Stand up!” the one with the club said.
I didn’t stir.
He swung the club back to bean me one so I’d obey him. There was no question of fair play in this, the odds were too great against me. And there was more than just my life at stake; they’d put me through a night of hell that doesn’t bear dwelling on. So I gave no warning, didn’t even uncover the gun, just blinked my eyes.
It must have seemed to them as though a firecracker exploded in the straw. The one with the club, who was the nearer of the two, opened his mouth and then dropped vertically with it still open that way. The other one turned to get at the door and get out, and I got him in the back of the head. When I peered out into the corridor, it was empty, so I closed the cell door after me and started down it. I could tell by the twittering going on in near-by cells that the gunshots had been heard, but whether the sound would carry any distance in that thick-walled place I doubted.
Anyway, I met no one as far as the turn in the corridor, which seemed miles away. I hugged the wall, in shadow half the time, and of course my hand wasn’t empty nor down at my side. Around the turn I saw a staircase. Whether it was the one they’d carried me up the night before I could no longer remember, but this was no time to be choosy. I started inching down it. My shoes, yawning wide open without laces, were a real danger, threatened to trip me at any moment. On an impulse I stepped out of them and went on just in my socks.
Chapter IV
Death Joins the Party
It was the wisest thing I could have done, it did away with the scrape of shoe leather on stone, silenced my tread, although I hadn’t been thinking about that when I did it. At the foot of the stairs there was another passageway, wider than the one above. At the end of that, in full sight of me, a guard was dozing on a chair tilted back against the wall. If I’d kept my shoes on, he surely would have heard me. This one was armed, too; a Mauser rifle leaned back against the wall, cradled in the crook of his arm. Two cartridge belts full of steel shells criss-crossed his chest. But the big double door just beyond him, with a chain at the bottom and a chain at the top, was the door to the outside world.
Between him and me, though, a brightly lighted side door yawned wide open, splashing yellow on the mouldy wall opposite it. This one I remembered from the night before: the director’s office. And from within came a very faint sound, the scratch of a pen on paper, but enough of a give-away to show that it was occupied. A minute later there was the sound of some one clearing his throat
I could have tried squirming past the opening flat on my stomach, hoping his desk would hide me. But I figured he had the keys, not that fellow at the door. And I figured he had a car too, even if it was only a model-T. So I lounged around the comer of the doorway and sighted my gun at the middle of his face. He looked up and turned from coffee color to green.
“Come here,” I said. “The keys!”
He could hardly make the distance between us, he was wobbling like jelly. He had the keys in a big ring fastened at his wrist, I could hear them jangle.
I got him out into the passageway after me, where I could keep an eye on both of them at once. Then I warily closed in edgewise on the sleeping guard, keeping my gun on the director. The guard gave a sudden sigh that told me he was waking up.