A newspaper boy passed; on his tray the morning newspapers and the illustrated magazines. Half a dozen pairs of yearning eyes followed him. Probably each convict would have sold his soul for a copy of the Morning Post or the Daily Chronicle. Opposite to where they were lined up, the station wall was covered with posters and play bills and advertisements.
The first thing Rupert read was the "Ingenue Theatre," a poster staring at him in six-inch letters. His jaws dropped, and he blinked his eyes to drive away the mist that rose before them.
Then the train backed into the station. The warder in charge gave a sharp order. As Rupert swung round in obedience to the command he saw another poster facing him, the Financial Times, and beneath in huge letters one word—"RADIUM."
He started, a frown knitted his brows. For a moment he forgot what he was, where he was. That one word had conjured up the past, swept the fog from his brain.
"Now, 381, what are you about?"
He pulled himself together with an effort and rolled into a third-class compartment of the train with his fellow convicts.
Radium! The word seemed to be burning into his brain. He said it aloud and received a sharp reprimand from the warder seated on his left by the window.
There rose before his eyes a vision of Dartmoor, the disused tin-mine on his father's farm; Robert Despard and he groping in the semi-blackness up to their knees in water.... Their discovery of pitch-blende—and Despard's belief that, in that old worthless mine, there might lie hidden a fortune.
A fortune for his father and his sister. His father whom he had ruined and shamed. And his sister!
Again he blinked his eyes, driving away the mist before them. He found himself staring straight at the convict facing him. The man was talking to him. He saw the fingers of his handcuffed hands moving stealthily. He saw his half-closed eyes contracting and expanding. He answered: