"What for?"
"You can see for yourself. Shall we go?"
From a bulging pocket he produced three flattish electric lanterns, of the sort carried on the belt by a policeman. Taking one himself, Stannard handed, the second to Martin and the third to Ricky.
As they approached the high iron gates, the bright pale-white beams of the lamps flickered and roved. They touched the spikes atop the brick wait They swept past the lettering. 'Fiat Justitia, MDCCCXCVI,' carved in stone over the doors. They raked the ground. Except for the ruts of heavy Army lorries trundling paper-bales, no approach marred Pentecost's weedy gravel.
From his other side pocket—"Don't worry; I oiled the lock this afternoon!" Stannard brought out an immense old-fashioned key, rust-coloured but not rusty. To his annoyance he had to use two hands in turning it. Then the lock clicked with a heavy snap like a game-trap.
"Now!" he ordered, a little out of breath. "One of you at each door. Push!"
The big doors moved soundlessly (oiled hinges too?), and fairly easily. The breath of the prison, which at one time might not have been too pleasant, blew out at them. Now it was only a thick warmth overlaid by a mustiness of dried paper-bales. A little way ahead then’ lights caught a large arched barrier of vertical bars, with an opening in it like an ordinary door.
"Swing the gates shut," called Stannard. "We don't want intruders."
Martin and Ricky, their lamps hooked on their belts, complied. Inside they saw a heavy and complicated pattern of bolts, which they did not touch. The next moment they were shut up inside Pentecost
Nerves sang a little more thinly, pulse-beats were a trifle faster.
"Just a minute." Ruth's quiet voice rose hollowly.
"It's all right old girl!" Ricky assured her.
"But Stan told us at dinner," continued Ruth, "that they've' stored this place full. If they've filled up the — the condemned cell and the execution shed, what are you going to do?"
"They haven't my dear." Stannard's chuckle, echoing, sounded huge. "Either they were respectful or they hadn't the stomach. Our little self-contained flat is empty. Now follow me closely, and don't lose my light."
Martin Drake glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch. Eighteen minutes to twelve.
Behind the barrier of vertical iron bars, they saw a mountain of brown-paper bales. Holding his lamp ahead, Stannard slipped sideways through the opening in the barrier, and edged to the left Ruth, with an appealing glance at Martin, followed Stannard. Martin followed her. Dr. Laurier came next with Ricky at the end.
Then they made a sharp turn to the right They were in a narrow aisle — just broad enough for walking in a straight line — between the bales on one side and a grey-brick wall, with doors, on the other.
"You'll get used to the atmosphere," Stannard called from ahead, where his light bobbed and splashed. His voice went up in reverberations, which seemed to roll back at them through dust-puffs from the bales. "They had a ventilating system. Quite a good one."
And Martin's imagination, heightened and tautened, began to bring this prison to life: with doors opening, bells ringing, the blank-faced men in the grey garb.
Just before the war he had visited Eastaville, a local prison like this one. He had been given only glimpses, which came back as much in sounds as in visual images. The wing they called B Halclass="underline" with its high tiers of cells facing each other across an open space, and a steel-woven net slung between to prevent suicides. Each oak cell-door painted yellow. Stung by bells, the unending shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, or march, march, march. A sense of suffocation; and the voice of a blue-uniformed prison officer "Quiet, there!" A workshop: "Quiet, there!" A line of grey men, stiffly at attention near the door of the Governor's room, to get punishment or make complaint: "Quiet, there'"
"Turn to the right, here!" called Stannard.
Martin, peopling unseen corridors and galleries with old shades out of Eastaville, realized that they had all been shuffling as the aisle narrowed. Ruth coughed in the dust
Their turn led them through an aisle of bales, then into another one between bales and wall with another line of doors (notcell-doors) to the right.
"Why," Martin asked, "do cell-doors look so repulsive when they're painted yellow?"
"I beg your pardon?" demanded Dr. Laurier, adding to the burst of echoes which rolled to upper and outer air. — "Never mind!" said Martin.
Ruth, a gallant little figure in red sweater and black slacks, not quite so tall as Jenny, turned around and smiled at him.
"Here we are," announced Stannard.
Martin's heart jumped a little, then went on (it seemed to him) normally. With the image of Jenny in his mind, with what he had heard about Jenny over the 'phone, he told himself he was the calmest person there. This was going to be easy.
They emerged, one by one, into a completely cleared space.. The beams of the three lamps converged. You could see that the corridor was ten feet wide. Ahead of them, cutting off the corridor, was a grey-brick wall; and into this was set an iron door, with a very small barred opening in it so that you could peer and talk through.
Stannard's breath was noisy in his nostrils. "Here are the premises,’' be explained. "I have not even looked into the rooms. I have done nothing except oil the lock of this door."
He held up the key he had shown to Ruth and Martin that afternoon. He fitted it into the lock. And, with a squealing creak of hinges, the iron door swung inwards.
A sudden animation seized that whole group, and they began talking twenty to the dozen. Martin afterwards supposed he must have talked too.
The babble of their voices carried them through into a passage some eight feet wide and twenty feet long, ending in a dead-wall facing them. It was floored with very dirty asphalt In the wall to the left, eternally the grey-brick, was a door which faced across to a corresponding door on the right.
Stannard, taking one of the lamps from Ricky, propped it up a little slantways against the floor and the dead-end wall so that it should shine straight down the passage.
"Would you like first—" he put his hand on the knob of the left-hand door—"to see the execution shed first?"
"No!" cried Ruth. "The other one. I mean, the beginning. I mean, after all, the condemned cell is the beginning."
Stannard turned to the other door.
"I have always understood," rattled Dr. Laurier loudly, "the condemned cell really is a room, with wall-paper and religious pictures."
"Oh, yes," said Stannard. (Damn the man, thought Martin; his voice rasps on you like a lecturer's). "Oak door," he went on. "Notice the little glass peep-hole high up. The condemned man had two warders — or wardresses, if it happened to be a woman — with him or her every instant of the time. That peephole was for the hangman."
"Hangman?" Ricky's voice went up.
"To judge weight and height for the proper drop."
Stannard had difficulty with the iron knob. Ricky wrenched open the scraping door. The first thing their lights picked up, inside, was a dilapidated rocking-chair.
And now the pull and swirl, of what Stannard had called atmosphere or vibrations, began to creep round Martin Drake. He could imagine someone sitting in that rocking-chair, someone who started up and cried, "Get out!" No, this wasn't going to be too easy. Martin subconsciously felt that, when he and Stannard drew lots, he would be the one to be locked up.
"Look there!" Stannard was saying. "Over in the corner. The rope."
"Rope?" Ruth almost screamed. "Not—?"
"No, of course not Easy, my dear!"
"I'm all right How dare you say I'm not all right?"
"Do you remember, this afternoon, when I told you about Hessler, the multilator of women's bodies? That he tried to escape from the condemned cell?"