Part 42 (2/2)

In the middle of the night he began to feel very cold. Instinctively he tried not to awake, as if even in sleep he knew how comfortless his surroundings were. He thrust his hands up his coat-sleeves and curled himself up on the bed; but at last the cold waked him completely.

More benumbing still than the frost of the autumn night was the consciousness of his misery. He s.h.i.+vered with cold, and yet could not rouse himself sufficiently to get up.

In the darkness of the night, the clear light of the hopes which had so heartened him grew pale. An unspeakable fear a.s.sailed him that he might be condemned to long years of imprisonment, and the darkness which engulfed him now seemed like a symbol of that terrible time,--an endless horror.

Through the window could be heard the monotonous pouring of the rain.

The night wind was caught in the wooden screen, sent a damp breath into the cell, and swept on with a low moan.

In the intervals between these sounds, Wolf thought he could hear an indistinct sc.r.a.ping and scratching. From time to time it ceased, then began again. Could it be rats in the drain under the cell?

In the morning he started up suddenly. The key was thrust hastily into the lock, and the door opened violently.

The corporal on guard appeared on the threshold.

”Is _this_ one here, at any rate?” he cried.

The dawn only lighted the cell faintly; but he could make out the form of the prisoner, and gave a sigh of relief.

”Thank G.o.d!” he said. ”I am spared that, anyhow. They aren't both gone.”

He called a gunner in, and searched every corner with a lantern.

While he was on his knees lighting the s.p.a.ce under the bed, the gunner whispered furtively to Wolf, ”The other man has escaped.”

At first the reservist did not understand. Escaped? How was that possible?

He looked round the cell, and was unable to imagine how any one could escape from such a place.

Suddenly he remembered the scratching and sc.r.a.ping in the night, and his eyes sought for some tool with which it might be possible to break a hole through a wall. He noticed the strong iron trestles which supported the bed when it was let down; it might perhaps be done with one of them. But no. Up by the window the thickness of the wall could be seen; it must be close on twenty inches.

And yet Findeisen had escaped!

Necessity had quickened the wits of the dull lad, and had made him inventive. When they confronted him with the corpse of the sergeant, he realised that he had committed a murder; and from that moment he felt his head no longer safe on his shoulders. The fear of death lent him a subtlety of which he would never otherwise have been capable.

He had, as Wolf guessed, used the iron bed support as an implement. He had at once recognised that it would be impossible to break through the princ.i.p.al external wall; the other walls, however, might be expected to be considerably less strong, and they sounded hollower when he tapped them. Findeisen knew that one of them merely divided his cell from another, and so was useless for his purpose. But beyond the other wall lay a shed in which the fire-engine was kept. Its window, he knew, was only covered with wire-netting, and opened on to a field.

And as soon as all was quiet in the guard-house he had set to work, listening anxiously in the direction of the corridor during the pauses of his boring and levering. The wall was only the length of a brick thick, and after the first stone had been broken out bit by bit, it cost but little labour to widen the hole enough to let a man pa.s.s.

The night sentinels declared that they had not remarked anything unusual. Besides, they had an excuse in the regulations; for in such pouring rain they were permitted to take shelter in the sentry-boxes.

So it was not even known when the prisoner had escaped.

A warrant for his arrest was sent out, but in vain. Gunner Findeisen had disappeared.

Later during the same morning on which Findeisen, avoiding all frequented paths, had slipped away through undergrowth and thickets to the frontier, Wolf, a prisoner awaiting trial, was removed to the house of detention in the capital.

The train in which he and the soldier who guarded him travelled pa.s.sed another at an intermediate station. Reservists were looking out of every carriage; men from every branch of the service were mixed together, and all were alike in the wildness of their spirits.

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