"It couldn't be done!" Martin Drake said. "Not at the prisons I mentioned, no. But what about Pentecost?" "Pentecost?"
"You've never heard of Pentecost Prison, Mr. Drake?" "Never."
Stannard crossed his knees comfortably and addressed Ruth.
"Fifty years ago Pentecost was one of our model local prisons." He paused. "I use the word 'local' prison to distinguish it from 'convict' prison. At local prisons, offenders serve sentences only up to two years; executions are always performed there.
"In '38," Stannard pursued, "Pentecost was closed. It was to be enlarged and modernized. Then came the war. The Government took it over with the usual rubber-stamp excuse of 'storage purposes'. Ever since then it's remained the same. It's not under the control of the Prison Commission; it's controlled by the Ministry of Works. I — ah — have some slight influence at the Ministry. I might get the keys for a night or two. Now do you begin to understand?"
"By George!" the young man said softly. His long, lean figure grew tense; his upper lip was partly lifted as though at the scent of danger. "I'd be eternally grateful, Mr. Stannard, if you could."
Stannard, too, seemed to have been struck by a startling new thought. Seeing that his cigar had gone out, he dropped it into a standing ashtray beside the chair.
"Extraordinary!" he said, and his face grew more red. "I've just remembered something else."
"Remembered what?" Ruth asked quickly.
"Pentecost is in Berkshire. It's under a mile or so from a place called Fleet House, a big Georgian house with a flat roof." His little black eyes stared at the past. "Eighteen years ago — or was it twenty? yes, twenty! — a man named Fleet, Sir George Fleet, pitched off that roof within sight of a lot of witnesses. It was accident, of course. Or else…"