The staggering whisper of the penman said: “I seen the bodies of Flaherty and Coons. They were cut in two. They were ripped right in two, the pair of them. That’s how close the bullets out of that machine gun come together.”
“Wait’ll we get far enough to have the machine guns open up on us,” said Phil Bray. “There ain’t any sense being afraid of things that we ain’t reached yet.”
He sat up and looked around him. The stars swarmed lower in the sky in shining clusters. Time went by rapidly. The stars drifted up in the east and drifted down in the west. The wheel of the constellations was turning. It seemed to be spinning with an increasing speed.
That was because in time the wheel would turn the sun up above the eastern horizon. When that happened, the men would come to the death house. They would see the warden lying on the floor, dead. They would see the empty cell.
No, long before that they would discover the break. The two guards would return at the end of one hour. And was not that hour almost ended now?
Bray sat up, his head tilted back at a sharp angle, a strangling angle. He had a magnificent face. He would have been more handsome than Joe Mantry, even, had it not been that his nose was too small. It by no means filled up the space that extended between mouth and brow. It gave one a sense of emptiness among the features. One sees that emptiness most often in the face of an ape.
“We gotta go back,” Bray said.
“We gotta go where?” said Dave Lister. “Go back to the cell, you mean? You go back if you want to. I ain’t such a fool. I’d rather go to hell.”
“We gotta go back,” said Bray.
“All right, baby,” answered Joe Mantry. “You go back, and I’ll stay here and be a rear guard.”
“We gotta go back,” said Bray.
“You go back then,” said Dave Lister. “I’ll stay here. When they find us, we dive off the edge of the roof. That’s all right. Or else we just sit still and plug ourselves. We got the guns to do it. Out here we can pick and choose.”
“Maybe we can pick and choose some of the guards when it gets light enough,” remarked Joe Mantry. “I’d like to get me the big freckle-faced son that kicked me in the ribs that day. Maybe I’ll get a chance at him before they turn the lights on the roof. Maybe he’ll come out here to hunt for us. Would I laugh if I got a chance to unload a few slugs into him?”
“We gotta go back,” said Phil Bray.
He crawled straight out from among the chimney pots. Dave Lister clung to his coat tails, whispering:
“Don’t go, chief. They’ll see you. They’ll give you away. What are you doing to us?”
Bray struck the hand of Lister away and went on. Joe Mantry crawled out in pursuit.
“We gotta go with the chief,” he whispered to Lister.
“Yeah, we gotta go—with him!” panted the penman, and took up his own way across the roof.
They got to the place where the blanket rope hung down from the drain pipe two stories up. Instantly they made a human ladder. Bray was the foundation of it. Lister climbed over him, and then helped Mantry up with a swing that took him well on his way, and in a moment Joe Mantry was sprawling out on the top of the roof above. The tall, thin-legged body of Dave Lister followed. Phil Bray himself had to run back and then sprint forward and leap high in his stockinged feet before he managed to catch the end of the blanket rope. But his grip was strong, and he handed himself up the length of the blankets until he was with his friends above.
There he stretched out, panting.
For Dave Lister had gasped: “The east guard has spotted us! Ratten out, boys!”
They pressed themselves out on the roof. The guard who walked the eastern wall had, in fact, halted in his pacing, and was looking directly toward them, as it seemed. The signal would be three rapid shots from his rifle. That signal would start the alarm bell clanging. Every guard in the prison would come to life with a jump.
The rifle shots were not fired. The guard continued to pace the wall. Phil Bray led the way back through the unlocked door at the end of the death house. As he crawled through and rose to his feet, he remained for a moment bent forward, as though he were dodging a blow.
“The warden!” he gasped. “Boys, the warden’s body is gone!”
“Are dead men walking to-night?” breathed Dave Lister.
The three of them crowded around the spot where the warden had lain. There was a big pool of blood about the smudged outline which the head and shoulders of poor Bergman had left on the concrete floor. A good quart of blood seemed to have spilled out there in an irregular splotch such as a hurled egg would leave on a wall. Only at one point the red liquid had flowed away in a long stream.
“Who’s been in here? Who’s carried him out? Why ain’t the alarm bell ringing?” demanded Phil Bray.
“The alarm will start in a minute,” answered Joe Mantry. “And then the music will start. Well, there’s enough food left up here to keep us going for two or three days— booze, too—and we’ve got enough bullets in here to keep them backed up. Why, boys, this is going to be a party!”
“We’re going on from here,” said Phil Bray. “Maybe we’ve still got a chance!”
He opened the door which commanded the head of the stairs. Those steps went down to a landing where a bright light was burning. There was another powerful lamp burning just above the door which Bray had opened. A funnel of brightness seemed to be pouring up into his face; the law was laying a ghostly hand on him, thrusting him back.
“Come here, Joe!” he commanded.
Joe Mantry approached, saying: “It’s better this way.
We’ll have a couple of days; that’s better than a couple of, hours!”
“Shut up, you fool! They’d smoke us out in a few minutes,” answered Phil Bray. “Climb up on my shoulder and jimmy that electric light, will you? Maybe the other stairway lights work on the same switch. Maybe we can blow the lot of ‘em! And if “
Joe Mantry leaped at him with a grunt of eagerness. It was perfectly apparent that if the stairs could be buried in darkness, the three of them would be able to take at least a few long steps in the direction of freedom. Joe Mantry stood up, like the sure-footed athlete that he was, on the shoulders of his chief. He rose on tiptoes, reached the electric bulb, and turned it out. In another moment, with his Colt, he had “jimmied” the fixture. There was a faint snapping, hissing sound, and the flash of a spark; afterward there was thick darkness on the landing of the stairs below them.
“Now, boys!” said Phil Bray, and Mantry dropped down again.
Their unshod feet made rapid whispering, thumping sounds as they fled down the stairs. Suddenly some one began to shout far before them, demanding light, cursing.
They turned around the comer of the stairs, and heard the voice immediately in front of them. They ran it down. The butt of Bray’s gun struck down the clamorer. The man fell with long groan, and tumbled down half a dozen steps.
Other voices began to shout. Light glimmered over the stairs at the next landing. They stole into the field of it like three guilty shadows. People were speaking excitedly. One man was shouting:
“Listen, chief! Tell us what happened! Who did it? Did you fall down? What happened?”
“He’s dying! He’s been brained!” shouted another. “Speak to us, chief!”
Off that landing place, double doors opened upon a corridor of a cell room, and there the three criminals saw the warden standing with blood running down his hideous face, and wide-open, staring eyes that saw nothing, while two of his assistants gripped his arms, supporting his staggering body and trying to get speech out of him.