“Now, my old ourang-outang,” said the gipsy, addressing himself to the emaciated man, “let us have an account of your times when you were in the land of the living.”
“I had thought,” responded the prisoner addressed, “that I had some weeks since achieved a victory over memory and buried all recollections of the past. I had shut myself wholly in passive resignation to the future without suffering myself to revert to the bygone events of my life, the frequent reference to which had previously worn me to the object you now behold. But that man,” pointing to the gipsy, “has broken down the barrier within which I had taken shelter. He has, in a few words, informed me of the causes of my ruin. His villainies have brought me here.
“The family of which I am an unworthy member was more distinguished for its ancestors than for its possessions.”
The speaker had got thus far when the ponderous lock of the door was turned, and a police sergeant and two constables, accompanied by a prison warder, entered.
“Now then, prisoners, this way,” said the sergeant.
The culprits rose from their seats. Peace, the gipsy, Mr. Green, with several others, were conducted to the prison van, or “Black Maria,” as it is termed by criminals.
The cadaverous-looking man was abruptly cut short in his narrative.
Most persons will doubtless remember having seen the ominous-looking vehicle called “Black Maria” going to and from the various police offices and the metropolitan prisons. It is not unlike a hearse in external appearance, and is suggestive of one of the darker phases of metropolitan and provincial criminal life.
On mounting the steps of the sable vehicle Peace was ushered into a passage running up the centre from end to end of her Majesty’s carriage. A number of dark doors were on each side, through one of which he was gently pushed by one of his janitors.
He then found himself shut up in a close box on a seat, not too well ventilated nor too clean.