Part 16 (1/2)

When he again came up into the light, he was a marked man, under Warder Black's constant suspicion.

Now, however, his expression was changed: he no longer belonged to Colmoor, though he was there. Sometimes he felt like shouting at the burden of his secret. In his impatience to proclaim it, he pined to write to Loveday--but now his punishment had lost him that privilege.

Meantime, the problem was to get ten good miles beyond Colmoor: a hard one; but his brain had already accomplished a task far harder: and the greater implied the less.

His first thought, when he had begun to plan, had been Loveday; his second, that on no account could he permit Loveday to incur further risk, or expense, for him; his third, that he might yet use Loveday to any extent not involving risk or expense.

At the next weekly ”School” he sat near a Thames-works hackle-maker, who, though he could write, was no scholar, and was laboriously spoiling a second letter-sheet, when Hogarth whispered him: ”Can I help you? I see it's to your mother. I could get her a quid from a friend of mine”.

”Well, I'm much obliged....!”

The laborious letter, after half an hour, had in it:

”If you go to 15, Cheyne Gardens, the gentleman will give you a sovereign which he owed me for cutting down the elm in the beech-wood at Teddington for him”.

Now, Loveday lived at 15, Cheyne Gardens, and had only to see those words ”_the elm in the beechwood_,” to scent a cypher from Hogarth.

He offered five pounds for that letter: but it was two weeks before he decided upon the intended words: ”Small chloroform--trenches--rock”.

There were several trenches, many rocks: yet one midnight, when a bl.u.s.tering wind huddled the bracken, and the prison stood darkling, wrapped in mystery, a lonely figure in an ulster was there; and under each of three rocks he deposited two vials: for the formation of only three gave the least chance of concealment.

What Hogarth's plan could be he racked his brain in vain to dream, guessing that prisoners, on returning from the moor, must be searched, even to the ears: Hogarth, therefore, could never use the vial within the walls, and must mean to use it without--a sufficiently wild proceeding. But the finding of the vials, was sure: for the ”rock” which Hogarth had had in mind was one of those granite ones common on Colmoor, standing five feet high on a small base; and one day he swept his hand among the gorse under it, and, with a glad half-surprise, touched two vials.

Three days later he again swept his hand among the gorse, touched the vials, breasted his handkerchief, laid the vials on it, and presently contrived to tie them together with a twig.

At his feet now was a wheelbarrow full of marl, and two yards off Warder Black, waiting for him to roll the barrow; but, inserting his spade between a wheel and a side of the barrow, his back toward Black, Hogarth, with a tug, bent the spade: then walked to Black.

”Look here”, he said, ”that spade isn't much good now....”

Black strode to look, Hogarth a little behind him: and at the instant when the officer was a-stoop to lift the spade, Hogarth took the vials from his breast, and laid them upright in the little pocket of Black's tunic, near his bayonet-sheath and cartridge-box, above the belt.

By the time the matter of the spade was settled, the great bell rang, the gangs went marching over the old familiar level, up the old path in the gra.s.s-mound on which the Palace stands, and so, in lax order, like shabby French conscripts, powdered, toil-worn, into the gates.

Then the search on parade: during which, as Black busily searched him, Hogarth said: ”Search well”.

They were then led up to cells.

And the moment Hogarth's door closed upon him, he put his skilly-can on the floor, and, with one stamp, stamped it out of shape; also he broke his cup, and pocketed two fragments of it.

A few minutes afterwards, before cocoa, Black, trotting in heavy haste here and there in the gallery, looked in to say: ”Bath to-night”.

And Hogarth: ”Warder! a word with you! sorry, I have trodden on my can....”

Upon which Black went stooping to look, the can now standing on the low shelf; and as he said ”I shall report this”, Hogarth, stooping, with quick deftness had the vials picked from the thick pocket.

”Well, fall in”, said Black to him; ”better take your precious can, and give it to a bath-room warder for the store-keeper to change”.

Hogarth, as he pa.s.sed out, placed the vials on the shelf over his door, where they were secure, since cells were never searched; and, the bathers having formed in single file, five feet between man and man, away they moved and down--away and down--lost in s.p.a.ce, treading the journey of galleries, till, at the bottom, they pa.s.sed up a vaulted corridor, monastically dim, across a yard open to starry sky, and into the door of a semi-detached, steep-roofed building, which was the bath-house.

A row of thirty-five baths; a very long bench for undressing; in the s.p.a.ce between bench and baths three warders walking: such was the bath-house: all whitewashed, galvanized iron, and rigour; but for its old record of uneventfulness a scandal was preparing that night.