“I think I shall go up to the jail this evening,” I said. “I’ve been here a fortnight, and have never made it out yet.”
“No, no, early to-morrow would be your best time. Not that you would see him—don’t you run away with that notion; but you might chance on Mr. Hodson, the superintendent, about nine o’clock, and get a few words with him, and as you’re so nice spoken—and so nice looking—perhaps he might make things a bit easy.”
The next morning after I had had my early tea—at Mrs. de Castro’s it was not tea but excellent Mysore coffee—I tied up the reproachful Kipper in the veranda, and received instructions as to the route from my hostess, who escorted me to the entrance, still wearing a bed jacket and red felt slippers.
“You’ll just go round this corner”—(ours was a corner house)—“up on to the Cubbon Road, past the magazine, and then turn into the Petta Road; walk along that till you come to Government Offices, the D.P.W.—my husband was a clerk in them—go round that corner, and you’ll find yourself on the way that leads to the racecourse—the jail is on your left. The whole distance isn’t more than a mile and a quarter. I expect people will think it strange to see a nice-looking young lady like you tramping about in the dust all by herself; they’ll be wondering who you are, and what’s your business. I’m sure Mrs. Cotton and Mrs. Dicks, my neighbours, will do their dead best to dig it out of me, but I can be as close as a snail. Well, well,” she concluded, “mind you don’t stay out too long in the sun.” And with this adjuration she left me.
CHAPTER XXVI
WITHIN THE PRECINCTS
I had resolved on, yet dreaded, this expedition, knowing that to see even the outside of the place where Ronnie was imprisoned would fill me with sickening horror; but the longer I deferred the excursion the more reluctant I should be to face it. I reasoned down my antipathy and shrinking, and urged myself not to be a fool. Was I not living in Bangalore solely to be near Ronnie? And I wished him to know what would surely comfort him: that I was within reach.
It was a delightfully fresh morning as I started forth and took a short cut over the maidan. In the distance I noticed a regiment on parade and a number of people riding. As I made my way across the track a girl passed me, galloping along with a radiant face. How she was enjoying herself! Six weeks ago and I had been as she! but now, I seemed to have lost my identity.
Leaving the maidan behind me, I turned into the Petta Road and, at the end of a short walk, found myself outside the precincts of the jail. After considerable delay I was admitted by a warder, ushered into a large, bare, whitewashed room, and invited to state my business.
“I wish to see the superintendent,” I murmured.
“The superintendent is engaged, but perhaps the deputy will give you an interview.”