THE MYSTERY MAN
RAY BENNETT woke from a refreshing sleep and sat up in bed. One of the warders, who had watched him all night, got up and came over.
“Do you want your clothes. Carter?” he said. “The Governor thought you wouldn’t care to wear those old things of yours.”
“And he was right,” said the grateful Ray. “This looks a good suit,” he said as he pulled on the trousers.
The warder coughed.
“Yes, it’s a good suit,” he agreed.
He did not say more, but something in his demeanour betrayed the truth. These were the clothes in which some man had been hanged, and yet Ray’s hands did not shake as he fixed the webbed braces which held them. Poor clothes, to do duty on two such dismal occasions! He hoped they would be spared the indignity of a third experience.
They brought him his breakfast at six o’clock. Yet once more his eyes strayed toward the writing-pad, and then, with breakfast over, came the chaplain, a quiet man in minister’s garb, strength in every line of his mobile face. They talked awhile, and then the warder suggested that Ray should go to take exercise in the paved yard outside. He was glad of the privilege. He wanted once more to look upon the blue sky, to draw into his lungs the balm of God’s air.
Yet he knew that it was not a disinterested kindness, and well guessed why this privilege had been afforded to him, as he walked slowly round the exercise yard, arm in arm with the clergyman. He knew now what lay behind the third door. They were going to try the trap in the death house, and they wished to spare his feelings.
In half an hour he was back in the cell.
“Do you want to make any confession. Carter? Is that your name?”
“No, it is not my name, sir,” said Ray quietly, “but that doesn’t matter.”
“Did you kill this man?”
“I don’t know,” said Ray. “I wanted to kill him, and therefore it is likely that I did.”
At ten minutes to eight came the Governor to shake hands, and with him the Sheriff. The clock in the prison hall moved slowly, inexorably forward. Through the open door of the cell Ray could see it, and, knowing this, the Governor closed the door, for it was one minute to eight, and it would soon open again. Ray saw the door move. For a second his self-possession deserted him, and he turned his back to the man who came with a quick step, and, gripping his hands, strapped them.
“God forgive me! God forgive me!” murmured somebody behind him, and at the sound of that voice Ray spun round and faced the executioner.
The hangman was John Bennett!
Father and son, executioner and convicted murderer soon to be launched to death, they faced one another, and then, in a voice that was almost inaudible, John Bennett breathed the word:
“Ray!”
Ray nodded. It was strange that, in that moment, his mind was going back over the mysterious errands of his father, his hatred of the job into which circumstances had forced him.
“Ray!” breathed the man again.
“Do you know this man?” It was the Governor, and his voice was shaking with emotion.
John Bennett turned.
“He is my son,” he said, and with a quick pull loosed the strap.
“You must go on with this, Bennett.” The Governor’s voice was stern and terrible.
“Go on with it?” repeated John Bennett mechanically. “Go on with this? Kill my own son? Are you mad? Do you think I am mad?” He took the boy in his arms, his cheek against the hairy face. “My boy! Oh, my boy!” he said, and smoothed his hair as he had done in the days when Ray was a child. Then, recovering himself instantly, he thrust the boy through the open door into the death chamber, followed him and slammed the door, bolting it.
There was no other doorway except that, to which he had the key, and this he thrust into the lock that it might not be opened from the other side. Ray looked at the bare chamber, the dangling yellow rope, the marks of the trap, and fell back against the wall, his eyes shut, shivering. Then, standing in the middle of the trap, John Bennett hacked the rope until it was severed, hacked it in pieces as it lay on the floor. Then:
Crack, crash!
The two traps dropped, and into the yawning gap he flung the cut rope.
“Father!”
Ray was staring at him; oblivious to the thunderous blows which were being rained on the door, the old man came towards him, took the boy’s face between his hands and kissed him.
“Will you forgive me, Ray?” he asked brokenly. “I had to do this. I was forced to do it. I starved before I did it. I came once . . . out of curiosity to help the executioner—a broken-down doctor, who had taken on the work. And he was ill . . . I hanged the murderer. I had just come from the medical school. It didn’t seem so dreadful to me then. I tried to find some other way of making money, and lived in dread all my life that somebody would point his finger at me, and say: ‘There goes Benn, the executioner.’ ”
“Benn, the executioner!” said Ray wonderingly. “Are you Benn?”
The old man nodded.
“Benn, come out! I give you my word of honour that I will postpone the execution until to-morrow. You can’t stay there.”
John Bennett looked round at the grating, then up to the cut rope. The execution could not proceed. Such was the routine of death that the rope must be expressly issued from the headquarter gaol. No other rope would serve. All the paraphernalia of execution, down to the piece of chalk that marks the “T” on the trap where a man must put his feet, must be punctiliously forwarded from prison headquarters, and as punctiliously returned.
John shot back the bolts, opened the door and stepped out.
The faces of the men in the condemned cell were ghastly. The Governor’s was white and drawn, the prison doctor seemed to have shrunk, and the Sheriff sat on the bed, his face hidden in his hands.
“I will telegraph to London and tell them the circumstances,” said the Governor. “I’m not condemning you for what you’re doing, Benn. It would be monstrous to expect you to have done—this thing.”
A warder came along the corridor and through the door of the cell. And behind him, entering the prison by virtue of his authority, a dishevelled, dust-stained, limping figure, his face scratched, streaks of dried blood on his face, his eyes red with weariness. For a second John Bennett did not recognize him, and then:
“A reprieve, by the King’s own hand,” said Dick Gordon unsteadily, and handed the stained envelope to the Governor.