"— and plunge on a rope into a brick-lined pit. All in a merciful matter of seconds.
"My point," he added, after a slight pause, "is that these two rooms and the passage form a separate unit a kind of self-contained flat, shut off by the iron door of the passage. Here is the key to that passage."
And he held it up. It was a large key, though it fitted easily into the pocket of his brown tweed plus-four suit
"All the inside doors of the prison, of course, were unlockedat the time the government took it over for the infernal storage purposes.'" Stannard's face mocked diem behind the big key. "However, I got this one. Shall I tell you how my test would have worked if you (most unfortunately!) had not decided to go driving?"
Martin, himself white as a ghost with wrath, merely nodded. "The vigil," mused Stannard, "would have begun at midnight, outside the iron door to the self-contained flat." Another nod.
"You and I," pursued Stannard, "would then have drawn lots. Whoever lost would have gone to the execution shed and closed the door behind him. The other would have locked the iron door, so that the loser would be shut into the flat.
"The winner," Stannard's mouth quirked, "would sit down outside the iron door, and wait The locked-up man, of course, could move from the execution shed across to the condemned cell But I cannot think that any swirling and pressing influences would hammer his brain less hard in the condemned cell than in the execution shed. He would be a rat in a spiritual trap. If be cried out for help, the man outside must unlock the iron door and let him out
"The man outside, it is true, even the so-called winner, would have no easy time. If any spiritual evil raged there, he would be very close to it. You and I — one inside, one out— would remain there alone from twelve o'clock to four o'clock in the morning, when it begins to grow daylight 'Spend the night' was I think the term you used?"
"Something like that yes’"
Stannard threw the key up and caught it