"Just a minute." Ruth's quiet voice rose hollowly.
"It's all right old girl!" Ricky assured her.
"But Stan told us at dinner," continued Ruth, "that they've' stored this place full. If they've filled up the — the condemned cell and the execution shed, what are you going to do?"
"They haven't my dear." Stannard's chuckle, echoing, sounded huge. "Either they were respectful or they hadn't the stomach. Our little self-contained flat is empty. Now follow me closely, and don't lose my light."
Martin Drake glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch. Eighteen minutes to twelve.
Behind the barrier of vertical iron bars, they saw a mountain of brown-paper bales. Holding his lamp ahead, Stannard slipped sideways through the opening in the barrier, and edged to the left Ruth, with an appealing glance at Martin, followed Stannard. Martin followed her. Dr. Laurier came next with Ricky at the end.
Then they made a sharp turn to the right They were in a narrow aisle — just broad enough for walking in a straight line — between the bales on one side and a grey-brick wall, with doors, on the other.
"You'll get used to the atmosphere," Stannard called from ahead, where his light bobbed and splashed. His voice went up in reverberations, which seemed to roll back at them through dust-puffs from the bales. "They had a ventilating system. Quite a good one."
And Martin's imagination, heightened and tautened, began to bring this prison to life: with doors opening, bells ringing, the blank-faced men in the grey garb.
Just before the war he had visited Eastaville, a local prison like this one. He had been given only glimpses, which came back as much in sounds as in visual images. The wing they called B Hall: with its high tiers of cells facing each other across an open space, and a steel-woven net slung between to prevent suicides. Each oak cell-door painted yellow. Stung by bells, the unending shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, or march, march, march. A sense of suffocation; and the voice of a blue-uniformed prison officer "Quiet, there!" A workshop: "Quiet, there!" A line of grey men, stiffly at attention near the door of the Governor's room, to get punishment or make complaint: "Quiet, there'"