Rampole started in, oratorically, to tell how worthless he was; young men always feel impelled to do this, and Rampole even went so far as to mean it. The effect was somewhat marred by his putting his hand into the butter-dish at the height of the peroration, but she said she didn't, care if he rolled in the butter, and laughed at his humiliation. So they decided they ought to eat something. She kept saying everything was, "ridiculous," and Rampole seized recklessly on the idea.
"Have some of this damn silly tea," he suggested. "Take a little of this maundering, bughouse lemon and a soupcon of senile sugar. Go on, take it. It's a curious thing, but I feel like throwing the loony toast at you precisely because I love you so much. Marmalade? It has a very low I.Q. I recommend it. Besides―"
"Please! Dr. Fell will be in any moment. Do stop dancing about! — And would you mind opening a window? You beastly Americans like everything so stuffy. Please!"
He strode across to a window beside the fireplace and threw back the curtains, giving a very fair imitation of her accent as he continued his monologue. The rain had slackened. Throwing open the leaves of the window, he poked his head out, and instinctively looked towards Chatterham prison. What he saw caused him not a shock of surprise or fear, but a calm, cold jubilation. He spoke with pleasure and deliberateness.
"This time," he said, "I'm going to get the son — I'm going to get him."
He nodded as he spoke, and turned a queer face to the girl as he pointed out into the rain. Again there was a light in the Governor's Room of Chatterham prison.
It looked like a candle, small and flickering through the dusk. She took only one glance at it before she seized his shoulder.
"What are you going to do?"
"I've told you. Heaven willing," said Rampole, briskly,
"I'm going to kick hell out of him."
"You're not going up there?"
"No? Watch me! That's all I ask, just watch me." "I won't let you! No, I'm serious. I mean it! You can't―"
Rampole emitted a laugh modelled on the pattern of a stage villain. He took the lamp from the table and hurried out towards the hall, so that she was forced to follow. She seemed to be fluttering around him.
"I asked you not to!"
"So you did," replied the other, putting on his raincoat. "Just help me with the sleeve of this thing, will you? Good girl! Now what I want," he added, inspecting the hatstand, "is a cane. A good heavy one…. Here we are. `Are you armed, Lestrade?' 'I am armed.' Plenty."
"Then, I warn you, I'll go along!" she cried, accusingly.
"Well, get your coat on, then. I don't know how long that little joker will wait. Come to think of it, I'd better have a flashlight; the doctor left one here last night, as I remember…. Now."
"Darling!" said Dorothy Starbeth. "I was hoping you'd let me go…."
Soaked, splattering through mud, they cut down across the lawn and into the meadow. She had some difficulty manoeuvring the fence in her long raincoat; as he lifted her over it, he felt a kiss on his wet cheek, and the exultation of confronting that person in the Governor's Room began to leave him. This wasn't a joke. It was ugly, dangerous work. He turned in the dimness.
"Look here," he said, "seriously, you'd better go back. This isn't any lark, and I won't have you taking chances."
There was a silence while he heard the rain beating on his hat. Only that lonely light shone over the rainsheets flickering white across the meadows. When she answered, her voice was small and cool and firm.
"I know it as well as you do. But I've got to know. And you've got to take me, because you don't know how to get to the Governor's Room unless I show you the way. - Checkmate, dear.
She began to splash ahead of him up the slope of the meadow. He followed, slashing at the soggy grass with his cane.
They were both silent, and the girl was panting, when they reached the gates of the prison. Away from firelight, you needed to deny to yourself several times that there could be nothing supernatural about this old house of whips and hangings. Rampole pressed the button of his flashlight. The white beam ran along that green-fouled tunnel; probed it, hesitated, and moved forward.
"Do you suppose," the girl whispered, "it's really the man who-?"
"Better go back, I tell you!"
"It's worn off," she said in a small voice. "I'm afraid.
But I'd be more afraid to go back. Let me get a grip on your arm and I'll show you the way. Careful.-What do you suppose he's doing up there? He must be crazy to risk it."
"Do you suppose he can hear us coming?"
"Oh no. Not yet; it's miles and miles."
Their footfalls made sounds like the squish of oozing water. Rampole's light darted. Small eyes regarded them, scuttling away as the beam pried open dark corners. There were gnats flicking round their faces, and somewhere close there must have been water, for the croaking of frogs beat harshly in guttural chorus. Again that interminable journey wound Rampole through corridors, past rusty gates, down stone stairs and twisting up again. As the flashlight's beam found the face of the Iron Maiden, something whirred in the darkness.
Bats. The girl ducked, and Rampole struck viciously with his stick. He had miscalculated, and the cane clanged against iron, sending a din of echoes along the roof. From a flapping cloud, the squeaks of the bats shrilled in reply. Rampole felt her hand shaking on his arm.
"We've warned him," she whispered. "I'm afraid. We've warned him… No, no, don't leave me here! I've got to stay with you. If that light goes out… Those ghastly things; I can almost feel them in my hair…."
Though he reassured her, he felt the thick knocking of his own heart. If there were dead men walking in the stone house where they had died, he thought, they must have faces just like that big, empty, spider-hung countenance of the Iron Maiden. The sweat of the old torture room seemed to linger. He tightened his jaws as though he were biting on a bullet, as soldiers did to stifle the pain of an amputation in Anthony's day.
Anthony…
There was a light ahead. They could see it dimly, just at the top of a flight of stairs leading to the passage which ran outside the Governor's Room. Somebody was carrying a candle.
Rampole snapped off his light. He could feel Dorothy shaking in the dark as he put her behind him and began to edge up the stairs along the left-hand wall, the stick free in his right hand. He knew with cold clarity that he was not afraid of a murderer. He would even have liked to swing the heavy cane against a murderer's skull. But what made the small wires jerk and jump in his legs, what made his stomach feel cold as a squeezed rag, was the fear that this might be somebody else.
For a moment he was afraid the girl behind him was going to cry out. And he knew that he, too, would have cried out if there had been a shadow across that candlelight, and the shadow had worn a three-cornered hat…. Up there he heard footsteps. Evidently the other person had heard them coming, and then believed he must have been mistaken, for the sounds were going back in, the direction of the Governor's Room.
Somewhere there was the tapping of a cane…
Silence.
Slowly, during interminable minutes, Rampole moved up the staircase. A dim glow shone from the open door of the Governor's Room. Putting the electric torch in his pocket, he took Dorothy's cold and wet hand. His shoes squeaked a trifle, but the rats were squeaking, too. He moved down the corridor and peered round the edge of the door.
A candle in a holder was burning on the centre table. At the table, Dr. Fell sat motionless, his chin in his hand, his stick propped against his leg. On the wall behind him the candlelight reared a shadow which was curiously like that of the Rodin statue. And, sitting up on its haunches beneath the canopy of old Anthony's bed, a great grey rat was looking at Dr. Fell with shiny, sardonic eyes.