The interview had not gone too badly. The officer was suspicious but not more so than was to be expected. His main interest obviously centred on Stafford, and Ramage was sure he had accepted the story of Louis being the representative from some ministry or committee in Paris.
As he stretched out on the cot he reflected that whatever happened - and for the moment there was no need to be too pessimistic - Louis had almost certainly had time to get the report out of his room and into the courier's hands. Sleep, that was what he needed; worrying could achieve nothing, since once again everything was in Louis's hands.
Dawn was a pale grey square at the window when he was woken by the rasp of bolts being pulled back. A moment later the door creaked open and a wedge of yellow lantern light on the floor showed a small bowl being put down on the floor just inside the cell. The door slammed shut, cutting off the light, and the bolts rasped again, all without anyone saying a word.
Ramage rubbed his eyes and heard the faint rasp of other bolts: presumably the inmate of another cell was also receiving his breakfast. He walked carefully over to the door and picked up the bowl. It was a watery gruel which had a vague smell of dried peas, and he saw something he had not noticed at first, a large crust of bread, the end of a long loaf.
There was no spoon - presumably they were afraid of a prisoner using it to beat in the guard's head, although heaving the bread like a half brick would do more damage. He tilted the bowl and began drinking, and was reminded immediately of the landlady's medicine. The taste was not the same; the prison gruel had far less body but hinted at the same strange origins. Certainly the gruel owed most of its substance to cabbage water, although the peas floating around in it might well have been rabbit droppings for all the taste or sustenance they offered.
Birds began to chatter outside the window as it grew lighter. There were a few high clouds and the wind seemed to be from the south-west. With luck it would hold there long enough to give Jackson a fast reach over to Folkestone tonight. Was Louis's courier already heading towards the coast from Amiens? Already through Picquigny, Abbeville and Montreuil? In his imagination Ramage travelled the road back to Boulogne, crossed the Channel, hired a horse at Folkestone and rode to Aldington, where his clothes and perhaps Gianna, were waiting ...
He put the bowl down angrily: of all the thoughts that had tried to fight their way into his mind in the past week, the one he had resisted most successfully until this moment was of Gianna, and he knew he had to continue to shut her out. Men were supposed to be spurred on to great feats of daring and bravery by the thought of beautiful women, but he was damned if it worked for him. He had often thought of Gianna just before going into action, but all that happened was that the prospect of getting his head knocked off became even less attractive. Now there was a possibility of getting it lopped off by the guillotine he found even this brief glimpse of her painful. Next week, he whispered to himself, she must go away now and come back next week ...
There was no sign of life inside the police station although outside the window the occasional clatter of hooves showed that the people of Amiens were beginning to stir. He felt grubby and greasy; his chin and cheeks were ready for a shave, though presumably prisoners were not trusted with a razor.
It was Sunday morning, and in London it would be another couple of hours before the family came down to breakfast. Then - he stood up abruptly to shake off the thought and began pacing up and down the cell. Five paces to the window, turn, five paces back. The floor was made of stone blocks: the same stone as the walls. He passed by the door and noted that it was made of four thick baulks of timber, braced and strengthened by iron crossbars, with the whole surface closely studded with iron bolts which would presumably deflect the blade of an axe, whether wielded from inside or outside the cell.
For the moment the question of escaping did not arise, he decided, but to give himself something to do he began going over every inch of the cell. The window was so small he would have difficulty getting his head through it, let alone his shoulders, so there was no point in testing the bars. The outside wall - stone blocks, each four feet wide by a foot thick, with the bars of the window set in the middle. The inner walls - again solid granite blocks, probably a foot or more thick. The ceiling was a good nine feet high, and rust marks in the plaster showed him that it was made up of iron rods spaced about six inches apart. A woodsman's axe would make no impression on the door itself and the hinges were outside in the corridor. Whoever designed and built this cell knew his job. Despite all the stories of daring escapes from barred cells, the fact was that the only way out of this, without the key to the door, would be by igniting a barrel of powder .. .
Supposing things did go wrong, and it came to escaping? He shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the cot. The only way out was through the door, and the only way of opening the door was by sliding back the bolts and turning the key in the lock from outside. If Stafford had been there he might have been able to pick the lock from inside, but even he could not slide back those big bolts.
Which left no alternative but to overpower the jailer. Get the man inside the cell under some pretext or other, knock him out, walk blithely out of the building and hope to vanish down the side streets. It would be wise to watch the habits of the jailers. The one on duty at the moment was a cautious beggar who opened the door just enough to push the bowl in and then slammed it shut. Habit or orders? Was one jailer on duty at a time, or was there another one sitting or standing out there as well? He needed to know that before he made any move.
Then he pushed the thoughts away: it was still early on Sunday, and the courier would not yet have reached Boulogne. All being well, Dyson, Jackson and Rossi would sail tonight for the rendezvous and Jackson would transfer to the Folkestone Marie to arrive in England tomorrow morning. He would deliver the report and be back in the Folkestone boat ready to sail for the rendezvous on Monday night, meet the French Marie, and be back in Boulogne on Tuesday.
There could be a delay of course - the courier for Amiens might be a day late getting to Boulogne; the Marie might lose twenty-four hours if she could not leave Boulogne early enough to reach the rendezvous that night. Hellfire and damnation, it was hard to guess . . . All right, say the courier reaches Boulogne too late for the Marie to sail tonight to get to the rendezvous, Dyson would sail on Monday night instead, and Jackson deliver the dispatch on Tuesday and get back to Boulogne soon after dawn on Wednesday.
Say Louis and Stafford managed to escape from Amiens and made their way to Boulogne, they would miss the Marie sailing with the dispatch, so they would have to wait for her to return on Tuesday or possibly not until Wednesday. They would be safe enough hidden on board her all day Wednesday, until they could sail on Wednesday night.
This meant that to give them all a chance of getting away - which was the least he owed the men - he needed to keep his secret until dawn on Wednesday. After that he could confess, tell blatant lies, bait the gendarmes or do whatever he wanted, knowing that he would not endanger the men or the dispatch. It was a long time to wait; today, Monday and Tuesday: seventy-two hours.
He stood up suddenly, as if to drive away the hours. It might not arise; Louis might convince the officer that all the trouble had been caused by a foreman with a roving eye. I’ll be back at the hotel by this afternoon, he told himself, and began pacing up and down the cell.
He was used to walking in a confined space - the quarterdeck of his last two ships had not allowed more than a dozen uninterrupted paces - but this cell was even smaller and the constant turning made him feel dizzy. Queasy, perhaps; the turning was swilling the gruel around in his protesting stomach, and the few pieces of stale bread he managed to swallow did nothing to ballast it down.