"Haven't I?" said Dr. Fell, musingly. "Well, maybe not. The same night — of the day he died, I mean-the same night there was a light in the window of the Governor's Room."
"Did anybody investigate?"
"No. You couldn't get any of the villagers near there after dark for a hundred pounds." Oh, well! A superstitious imagination―" It wasn't a superstitious imagination," the doctor affirmed, shaking his head. "At least, I don't think so. I saw the light myself."
Rampole said, slowly, "And tonight your Martin Starberth spends an hour in the Governor's Room."
"Yes. If he doesn't funk it. He's always been a nervous chap, one of the dreamy kind, and he was always a little ticklish about the prison. The last time he was in Chatterham was about a year ago, when he came home for the reading of Timothy's will. One of the specifications of the inheritance, of course, was that he should pass the customary `ordeal.' Then he left his sister and his cousin Herbert in charge of the Hall, and returned to America. He's in England only for the the merry festivities."
Rampole shook his head.
"You've told me a lot about it," he said; "all but the origin. What I don't see is the reason behind these traditions."
Dr. Fell took off his eyeglasses and put on a pair of owlish reading-spectacles. For a moment he bent over the sheets of paper on his desk, his hands at his temples. -
"I have here copies of the official journals, made from day to day like a ship's log, of Anthony Starberth, Esquire, Governor of Chatterham Prison 1797–1820, and of Martin Starberth, Esquire, Governor 1821–1837. The originals are kept at the Hall; old Timothy gave me permission to copy them. They ought to be published in book form, one day, as a sidelight on the penal methods of that day." He remained for a time with his head down, drawing slowly on his pipe and — staring with brooding eyes at the inkwell. "Previous to the latter part of the eighteenth century, you see, there were very few detention prisons in Europe. Criminals were either hanged outright, or branded and mutilated and turned loose, or deported to the colonies. There were exceptions, like the debtors, but in general no distinction was made between those who had been tried and those who were awaiting trial; they were flung in willy-nilly, under a vicious system.
"A man named John Howard started an agitation for detention prisons. Chatterham prison was begun even before Milbank, which is generally supposed to be the oldest. It was built by the convicts who were to occupy it, of stone quarried from the Starberth lands, under the muskets of a redcoat troop commissioned by George III for that purpose. The cat was freely used, and sluggards were hung up by their thumbs or otherwise tortured. Every stone, you see, has meant blood."