Naturally the excitement in the prison on the following morning was intense. Howard was gone, and he could be tracked by his means of exit from his cell to the roof, down the outer wall, across the garden, and over the boundary wall. Here the trail stopped; and though his home in Pye Street was immediately searched, no one would confess to having seen him. It was felt that recapture was almost hopeless. It occurred, however, to Denis Power, the warder of Howard’s ward, that this man had come to prison with a “pal,” a certain Jerry Simcox, who had been convicted at the same time and for the same offence. Mr. Power thereupon visited Simcox in his cell.
“So Punch has gone, sir?”
“How did you know that?”
“Why, sir, you couldn’t keep him. We was in Newgate together, him and me, and in Horsemonger too; but we got out of both. There ain’t no jail ’ll hold Punch Howard.”
“Oh, you got out together, did you?” said the officer, growing interested.
“Yes, and could again out of any ‘stir’ in the three kingdoms, and they could not take us either. We got to too safe a crib for that.”
“Ah—?” Power spoke unconcernedly. If he had appeared too anxious Simcox would have remained silent.
“Punch has got an uncle down Uxbridge way who works at some brick fields at West Drayton. Six or eight hundred of them—Mr. Hearn’s lot, they is. That’s where we went, and the police daren’t follow us there. They don’t allow no ‘coppers’ on the premises thereabouts, Mr. Power. That’s the place to hide.”
“No doubt,” thought Mr. Power; “and Howard’s gone there now.”
Within an hour he had obtained the governor’s permission to go in pursuit, with a brace of pistols in his pocket, and unlimited credit.