Something was worrying the good rector's Eton conscience. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. He added:
"I say, Mr. Rampole, was Herbert there?"
"Why Herbert?' the doctor asked, sharply
"It's — ah — it's only that I wish he were here. That young man is dependable. Solid and dependable. No nerves. Admirable; very English, and admirable."
Again the rumble of thunder, prowling stealthily and low down along the sky. A fresh breeze went swishing through the garden, and white blossoms danced. There was a flicker of lightning, so very brief that it was like an electrician flashing on footlights momentarily to test them before the beginning of a play.
"We'd better watch to see that he gets in safely," the doctor suggested, gruffly. "If he's drunk, he may get a bad fall. Did she say he was drunk?"
"Not very."
They tramped up along the lane. The prison lay in its own shadow on that side, but Dr. Fell pointed out the approximate position of the gateway. "No door on it, of course," he explained. But the rocky hill leading up to it was fairly well lighted by the moon; a cow-path meandered almost into the shadow of the prison. For what seemed nearly ten minutes nobody spoke. Rampole kept trying to time the pulse of a cricket, counting between rasps, and got lost in a maze of numbers. The breeze belled out his shirt with grateful coolness.
"There it is," Saunders said, abruptly.
A beam of white light struck up over the hill. Then a figure, moving slowly but steadily, appeared on the crest with such weird effect that it seemed to be rising from the ground. It tried to move with a jaunty swing, but the light kept flickering and darting-as though at every slight noise Martin Starberth were flashing it in that direction. Watching it, Rampole felt the terror which must be running in the slight, contemptuous, tipsy figure. Very tiny at that distance, it hesitated at the gates. The light stood motionless, playing on a gaping archway. Then it was swallowed inside.
The watchers went back and sank heavily into their chairs.
Inside the house, the clock began to strike eleven.
"— if she only told him," the rector had been running on for some time, but Rampole only heard him now, "to sit near that window!" He threw out his hands. "But, after all, we must be sensi — we must — What can happen to him? You know as well as I do, gentlemen…."
- Bong, hammered the clock slowly. Bong, three, four, five
"Have some more beer," said Dr. Fell. The rector's smooth, unctuous voice, now raised shrilly, seemed to irritate him.
Again they waited. An echo of footfalls in the prison, a scurry of rats and lizards as the light probed; in Rampole's taut fancy he could almost hear them. Some lines in Dickens came back to him, a sketch of prowling past Newgate on a drizzly night and seeing through. a barred window the turnkeys sitting over their fire, and their shadows on the whitewashed wall.
A gleam sprang up now in the Governor's Room. It did not waver. The bicycle lamp was very powerful, cutting a straight horizontal band against which the bars of the window leapt out. Evidently it had been put down on a table, where it remained, sending its beam into one comer of the room without further movement. That was all — the tiny shaft of brightness behind ivy-fouled bars, lonely against the great ivy-fouled hulk of the prison. The shadow of a man hovered there, and then vanished.
It seemed to have an incredibly long neck, that shadow.
To his surprise, Rampole discovered that his heart was bumping. You had to do something; you had to concentrate….
"If you don't mind, sir," he said to his host, "I'd like to go up to my room and look at these journals of the two governors. I can keep my eye on the window from there. And I want to know."
It suddenly seemed vitally important to know how these men had come to death. He fingered the sheets, which were damp from his hand. They had been there, he remembered, even when he held the receiver of the telephone in the same hand. Dr. Fell grunted, without seeming to hear him.
The thunder went rattling, with a suggestion of heavy carts shaking the window panes, when he ascended the stairs. His room was now swept by a thick breeze, but still exhaling heat. Lighting the lamp, he drew the table before the window and put down the manuscript sheets. He glanced round once before he sat down. There were the copies of those comic songs, lying scattered on the bed, which he had bought this afternoon; and there was the church-warden pipe.
He had a queer, vague idea that if he were to smoke that pipe, the relic of lightheartedness, it might bring him closer to Dorothy Starberth. But he felt foolish, and cursed himself, the moment he picked it up. When he was about to replace it there was some noise; the brittle clay slipped through his fingers and smashed on the floor.
It shocked him, like breaking a living thing. He stared at it for a moment, and then hurried over to sit down facing the windows. Bugs were beginning to tick and swarm against the screen. Far across the meadow was that tiny, steady lamp in the window of the prison, and he could hear the voices of the rector and Dr. Fell mumbling in conversation just below.
A. Starberth, Esquire, His Journal.
PRIVATE.
(Eighth September, 1797. This being the First Year in the Good Works of Chatterham Gaol, in the Shire of Lincoln; like-wise the Thirty-Seventh in the Reign of His Sovereign Majesty, George III).
Quae Infra Nos Nihil Ad Nos.
These typwriter sheets carried a more vivid suggestion, Rampole felt, than would have the yellowed originals. You imagined the handwriting to have been small, sharp, and precise, like the tight-lipped writer. There followed some fancy composition, in the best literary style of the day, on the majesty of justice and the nobility of punishing evil-doers. Suddenly it became business-like:
TO BE HANGED, Thursday, the tenth inst., the following, viz.:
John Hepditch. For Highway Robbery.
Lewis Martens. For Uttering Forged Notes, the amt. £ 2.
Cost of timber for erecting gallows, 2s 4d. Parson's fee 10d, which I would readily do away with but that it is subscribed by law, these being men of low birth and with small need of ghostly consolation.
This day I have overseen the digging of the well to a commodious depth, viz., 25 feet, and 18 feet across at the wide lip-it being rather a moat than a well proper, and being designed to hold the bones of evildoers, thus saving any unnecessary cost of burial, as well as a most praiseworthy safeguard for that side. Its edge has been buttressed by a row of sharpened iron spikes, by order of me.
I am much vexed, in that my new suit of scarlet, together with the laced hat, which I ordered these six weeks ago, did not arrive by the mail-coach. I had resolved to present a good appearance — scarlet, like a judge, would (I am convinced) make an imposing figure-at the hangings, and have prepared words to speak from my balcony. This John Hepditch (I have heard) has a pretty talent for the making of speeches, though of low birth, and I must take care he doth not outshine me.
I am informed by the chief turnkey that there is some discontent, and a striking upon cell-doors, in the underground corridors, due to a species of large grey field-rat which eats the bread of those confined, and is not easily frightened away; these men further complain that, due to natural darkness, they are unable to see such rats until the rats are upon their arms and snatch at food. Master Nick. Threnlow asked me, What he should do? To which I replied, That it was through the instigation of their own, wicked habits that they had come to such a pass, and must endure it; and I further counselled that any unwarranted noises should be met by such Floggings as would induce the malefactors to preserve their proper chastened demeanour.