Part 13 (1/2)

Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me. When I had played with him and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was, he became so angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he knew.

With an arm-wide sweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and a cutting edge, he whistled it through the air and rapped it down on my crown. I was in amaze. Never had so absurd a thing happened to me. He was wide open, and I could have run him through forthright. But, as I said, I was in amaze, and the next I knew was the pang of the entering steel as this clumsy provincial ran me through and charged forward, bull- like, till his hilt bruised my side and I was borne backward.

As I fell I could see the concern on the faces of Lanfranc and Bohemond and the glut of satisfaction in the face of de Villehardouin as he pressed me.

I was falling, but I never reached the gra.s.s. Came a blurr of flas.h.i.+ng lights, a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of dim light slowly dawning, a wrenching, racking pain beyond all describing, and then I heard the voice of one who said:

”I can't feel anything.”

I knew the voice. It was Warden Atherton's. And I knew myself for Darrell Standing, just returned across the centuries to the jacket h.e.l.l of San Quentin. And I knew the touch of finger-tips on my neck was Warden Atherton's. And I knew the finger-tips that displaced his were Doctor Jackson's. And it was Doctor Jackson's voice that said:

”You don't know how to take a man's pulse from the neck. There--right there--put your fingers where mine are. D'ye get it? Ah, I thought so.

Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer.”

”It's only twenty-four hours,” Captain Jamie said, ”and he was never in like condition before.”

”Putting it on, that's what he's doing, and you can stack on that,” Al Hutchins, the head trusty, interjected.

”I don't know,” Captain Jamie insisted. ”When a man's pulse is that low it takes an expert to find it--”

”Aw, I served my apprentices.h.i.+p in the jacket,” Al Hutchins sneered. ”And I've made you unlace me, Captain, when you thought I was croaking, and it was all I could do to keep from snickering in your face.”

”What do you think, Doc?” Warden Atherton asked.

”I tell you the heart action is splendid,” was the answer. ”Of course it is weak. That is only to be expected. I tell you Hutchins is right. The man is feigning.”

With his thumb he turned up one of my eyelids, whereat I opened my other eye and gazed up at the group bending over me.

”What did I tell you?” was Doctor Jackson's cry of triumph.

And then, although it seemed the effort must crack my face, I summoned all the will of me and smiled.

They held water to my lips, and I drank greedily. It must be remembered that all this while I lay helpless on my back, my arms pinioned along with my body inside the jacket. When they offered me food--dry prison bread--I shook my head. I closed my eyes in advertis.e.m.e.nt that I was tired of their presence. The pain of my partial resuscitation was unbearable. I could feel my body coming to life. Down the cords of my neck and into my patch of chest over the heart darting pains were making their way. And in my brain the memory was strong that Philippa waited me in the big hall, and I was desirous to escape away back to the half a day and half a night I had just lived in old France.

So it was, even as they stood about me, that I strove to eliminate the live portion of my body from my consciousness. I was in haste to depart, but Warden Atherton's voice held me back.

”Is there anything you want to complain about?” he asked.

Now I had but one fear, namely, that they would unlace me; so that it must be understood that my reply was not uttered in braggadocio but was meant to forestall any possible unlacing.

”You might make the jacket a little tighter,” I whispered. ”It's too loose for comfort. I get lost in it. Hutchins is stupid. He is also a fool. He doesn't know the first thing about lacing the jacket. Warden, you ought to put him in charge of the loom-room. He is a more profound master of inefficiency than the present inc.u.mbent, who is merely stupid without being a fool as well. Now get out, all of you, unless you can think of worse to do to me. In which case, by all means remain. I invite you heartily to remain, if you think in your feeble imaginings that you have devised fresh torture for me.”

”He's a wooz, a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool wooz,” Doctor Jackson chanted, with the medico's delight in a novelty.

”Standing, you _are_ a wonder,” the Warden said. ”You've got an iron will, but I'll break it as sure as G.o.d made little apples.”

”And you've the heart of a rabbit,” I retorted. ”One-tenth the jacketing I have received in San Quentin would have squeezed your rabbit heart out of your long ears.”

Oh, it was a touch, that, for the Warden did have unusual ears. They would have interested Lombroso, I am sure.