XV
Ronald Morelle came down the carpeted stairs of the House of Shame, and there was a half smile on his lips, as though the echoes of laughter were still vibrating through this silent mansion and he must respond.
The hall was in darkness except for the light admitted by a semi-circular transom. Turning his head, he saw that the door of the salon was ajar, and he hesitated. He had never seen the salon by daylight, only at night, when the soft lights were burning and silver chandeliers glowed with tiny yellow globes.
He pushed open the door. The darkness here had been relieved by somebody who had opened one window and unshuttered two others. The room was in disorder, chairs remained where the sitters had left them, and the cold gray light of morning looked upon tarnished gilding and faded damask, and the tawdry litter of the night before. Merciless, pitiless, contemptuous was the sneer of the clean dawn.
Ronald's smile deepened. And then he caught a reflection of himself in one of the long mirrors. He looked pale and drawn. He shivered. Not because the mirror gave back the illusion of a sick man—he knew well enough he was healthy—but because he glimpsed the something in his eyes, the leering devil that sat behind the levers and turned the switches of desire.
A car was waiting for him at the end of the slumbering street. Madame did not like cars at the door in the early hours of the morning, and he stepped in, wrapping his coat about him.
The sun had not yet risen and Wechester was a two hours run with a clear road.
Sault was in Wechester Gaol awaiting the dread hour, and from somewhere in Lancashire, a gaunt-faced barber who had marked in his diary the date of an engagement, had taken train to Ronald's destination, carrying with him the supple straps that would bind the wrists of the living and be slipped from the wrists of the dead.
The clear sky gave promise of a perfect winter day, but the morning air was cold. He pulled up the windows of the car and wished he had bought a newspaper or book to wile away the time. In two hours the soul of Ambrose Sault—
The soul! What was the soul? Was it Driesh's "Entelechy;" that "innnermost secret" of animation? Was there substance to the soul? Was it material? A flame, Merville had once called it, a flame from a common fire. Could the flame leap at will from a man's body and leave him—what? A lunatic, a madman, a beast without reason? Ronald shrugged away the speculation, but the scholar in him was uneasy and insensibly he came back to the problem.
The promise of fair weather was belied as the car drew nearer to Wechester. A mist, thin and white, lay like a blanket on the streets, and Ronald's car "hawked" its way into the still thicker mist which lay on Wechester Common. The car drew up at the prison gates, and he looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter of nine.
Ronnie saw a thin man, thinly clad, walking up and down outside. His hair was long and fell over his coat collar, his nose was red with the cold, and now and again he stopped to stamp his feet. Ronnie wondered who he was.
A wicket opened at his ring, and he showed his authority through the bars before, with a clang and a clatter of turning locks and the thud of many bolts, the door swung open and he found himself in a square stone room furnished with a desk, a high stool and one chair.
The warder took his authority and read it, made an entry in the hook, and rang a bell. It was a cheerless room, in spite of the fire, thought Ronald. Three sets of handcuffs garlanded above the chimney piece; a suggestive truncheon lay on brackets near the warder's desk, and within reach of his hand, and a framed copy of Prison Regulations only served to emphasize the bareness of the remaining wall.
Again the clatter and click of the lock and another warder came in.
"Take this gentleman to the governor's room," said the doorkeeper.
Ronald was amused because the second warder put his hand on his arm as though he were a prisoner, and did not remove his hand even when he was unlocking the innumerable gates, doors and grilles which stood between liberty and the prisoners.
The governor's room was scarcely more cheerful than the gatekeeper's lodge. There was a desk piled with papers, a worn leather armchair and an office smell which was agreeable and human.
The governor shook hands with the visitor, whom he had met before, and Ronald nodded to the two other pressmen who were waiting.
Then they took him out into the yard.
The warder led the way, and the doctor followed, then came the governor and last, save for the warder who brought up the rear, went Ronald Morelle, without a single tremor of heart, to the house of doom.
To a great glass-roofed hall with tier upon tier of galleries and yellow cell doors, and near at hand (that which was nearest to them as they came in) one cell, door ajar. Outside three blankets neatly folded were stacked one on each other. They were the blankets in which the condemned man had slept.
Here was a wait. A nerve-racking wait to those with nerves. Ronald had none. A small door opened into the yard and he strolled through it and found himself in a small black courtyard. Twenty paces away was a little building which looked like a tool house. There were two gray-black sliding doors and these were open. All he could see was a plain clean interior with a scrubbed floor, and a yellow rope that hung from somewhere in the roof. He was joined by an officer whom he took to be the chief warder.
Physically Ronald was a coward. He admitted as much to himself. He feared pain, he shrank from danger. In his questionable business transactions he guarded himself in every way from unpleasant consequences, employing two lawyers who checked one another's conclusions.
Yet he could watch the pain of others and never turn a hair. He had witnessed capital operations and had found stimulus in the experience which the hospital theatre brings to the enthusiastic scientist. He had seen death administered by the law in England, America and France. Once he stood by the side of a guillotine in a little northern town of France and watched three shrieking men dragged to "the widow" and was the least affected of the spectators, until the blood of one splashed his hand. And then it was only disgust he felt. He himself was incapable of violent action. He might torture the helpless, but he would have to be sure they were helpless.
"Chilly this morning, sir," said the chief warder conversationally, and said that he did not know what was happening to the weather nowadays. "Is this the first time you've been inside?"
"In a prison? Oh lord, no," said Ronnie.
"Ah!" The warder jerked his head toward the door. "On this kind of job?"
"Yes, twice before."
The officer looked glum.
"Not very pleasant. It upsets all the routine of the establishment. Can't get the men out for exercise till after it is over. They sit in their cells and brood—we always have a lot of trouble afterwards."
"How is he going to take it?" asked Ronald.
"Who, the prisoner?" Mr. Marsden smiled. "Oh, he's going to take it all right. They never give any trouble—and he—he'll go laughing, you mark my words. We like him, here—that's a funny thing to say, isn't it? But I assure you, I've had to take three men off observation duty—they are the warders who sit in the cell with him—they got so upset. It is a fact. Old fellows who'd been in the prison service for years. Here's the deputy."
A tall man in a trench coat had come through the grille.
"Good morning, Morelle, have you seen the governor?"
Ronnie nodded.
"He won't be here for the—er—event," said Major Boyle. "Between ourselves, he said he couldn't stand it. An extraordinary thing. Have you seen Sir John Maxton?"
"No, is he here?" asked Ronnie interested.
"He's in the cell with the man—there he is."
Sir John's face was gray: he seemed to have shrunken. He had not expected to see Ronnie, but he made no comment on his presence.
"Good morning, Boyle. Good morning, Ronnie. I have just said goodbye to him."
"Aren't you staying?"
"No—he understands," said Sir John briefly. Then he seemed to be conscious of Ronnie's presence. The deputy had gone back to the hall.
"Ronnie, how could you come here this morning—and meet the eyes of this man so soon to face God?" he asked in a hushed voice.
Ronnie's lips curled.
"I suppose you feel in your heart that it is a great injustice, that your noble-minded murderer should go to a shameful death, whilst a leprous but respectable member of society like myself walks free through that gate!"
"I would wish no man this morning's agony," said the other.
"Suppose you were God—"
"Ronnie, have you no decency!"
"Ob, yes—but suppose you were: would you transfer the soul and the individuality of us two, Ambrose Sault and Ronnie Morelle?"
"God forgive me, I would, for you are altogether beastly!"
Ronnie laughed again.
There was the sound of a slamming door and a man came into the yard, squat, unshaven, a little nervous. A derby hat was on the back of his head, and in his hands, clasped behind him, was a leathern strap.
"There's the hangman," said Ronnie. "Ask him what he thinks of murderers' souls! What is death, Sir John? Look at those tablets on the wall—just a few initials. Yet they sleep as soundly as the great in the Abbey under their splendid monuments. Though they were hanged by the neck until they were dead. You would like God to change us. One of those changes which Merville talked about the other night—it was a pity you weren't there."
Sir John said nothing: he walked to the grille and a warder unlocked the steel door. For a second he stood and then, as the hangman went into the hall, he passed out through the opened gate.
Presently two warders came from the hall and then another two, walking solemnly in slow step, and then a bound man; a great rugged figure who overshadowed the clergyman by his side. The drone of the burial service came to Ronald Morelle and he took off his hat.
Sault was reciting something. His powerful voice drowned the thin voice of the minister:
"It matters not how straight the Gate—"
He paced in time to the metre.
"How charged with punishment the scroll,
"I am the master of my fate—"
Nearer, and yet nearer, and then their eyes met!
The debonair worldling, silk hat in hand, his hair brushed and pomaded, his immaculate cravat set faultlessly—and the other! That big gray-faced man with the mane of hair, his rough clothes and his collarless shirt!
They looked at one another for a fraction of a second, eye to eye, and Ronald felt something was drawing at him, tugging at his very heart strings. The eyes of the man were luminous, appealing, terrible. And then with a crash the world stood still—all animate creation was frozen stiff, petrified, motionless, and Ronald swayed for a moment.
Then a firm hand on his arm pushed him forward. He stepped forth mechanically. He had a curious, almost painful feeling of restriction. And then he realized, with a half-sob, that his hands were bound behind him, strapped so tightly that they were swollen and tingling, and warders were holding his arms. He tried to speak, but no sound came, and looking up he saw—!
Once more he was looking into eyes, but they were the eyes of himself! Ronald Morelle was standing watching him with sorrow and pity. Ronald Morelle was watching himself! And then again the urgent hand pressed him forward and he paced mechanically.
"——I know that my Redeemer liveth——"
The little clergyman was walking by his side, reading tremulously. Ronald looked down at himself, his shoe was hurting him, somebody had left a nail there and he cursed François: but those were not his shoes he was looking at, they were great rough boots and his trousers were old and frayed and there was a shiny patch on his knee.
"—Man that is born of a woman hath but little time upon this earth, and that time is filled with misery—"
He walked like one in a dream into the shed and felt the trap sag under him. The executioner—it must be the executioner, he thought, stooped and strapped his legs tightly. Ronald wondered what would happen. It was an absurd mistake, of course, rather amusing in a way—François had not been paid his month's salary, and François was meeting his brother today from Interlaken, Interlaken in the Oberland.
The man put a cloth over his face—it was linen, unbleached and pungent. When the executioner passed the elastic loops behind his ears, he released one too quickly and it stung.
"It is not me, it is not me," said Ronald numbly, "it is the body of Ambrose Sault—the gross body of Ambrose Sault! I'm standing outside watching! It is Sault who is being hanged—Sault! I am Morelle—Morelle of Balliol—Major Boyle," he screamed aloud. "Major Boyle—you know me—I am Morelle—"
Yet his body was huge—he felt its grossness, its size, the strength of the corded muscles of the arm; the roaring fury of the life which surged within him. He heard a squeak—the lever was being pulled—
With a crash the trap gave way and the body of Ambrose Sault swung for a second and was dead, but it was the soul of Ronald Morelle that went forth to the eternal spaces of infinity.
The prison clock struck nine.