So now force and cunning had declared war on Alfred, and feebleness in person enlisted in his defence. His adversary lost no time; that afternoon Rooke told him he was henceforth to occupy a double bedded room with another patient.
“If he should be violent in the middle of the night, sing out, and we will come—if we hear you,” said the keeper with a malicious smile.
The patient turned out to be the able seaman. Here Mrs. Archbold aimed a double stroke; to shake Alfred's nerves, and show him how very mad his proposed father-in-law was. She thought that, if he could once be forced to realise this, it might reconcile him to not marrying the daughter.
The first night David did get up and paraded an imaginary deck for four mortal hours. Alfred's sleep was broken; but he said nothing, and David turned in again, his watch completed.
Not a day passed now but a blow was struck. Nor was the victim passive; debarred writing materials, he cut the rims off several copies of the Times, and secreted them: then catching sight of some ink-blots on the back of Frank's clothes-brush, scraped them carefully off, melted them in a very little water, and with a toothpick scrawled his wrongs to the Commissioners; he rolled the slips round a half-crown, and wrote outside, “Good Christian, keep this half-crown, and take the writing to the Lunacy Commissioners at Whitehall, for pity's sake.” This done, he watched, and when nobody was looking, flung his letter, so weighted, over the gates; he heard it fall on the public road.
Another day he secreted a spoonful of black currant preserve, diluted it with a little water, and wrote a letter, and threw it into the road as before: another day, hearing the Robin express disgust at the usage to which he was now subjected, he drew him apart, and offered him a hundred pounds to get him out. Now the ex-prizefighter was rather a tender-hearted fellow, and a great detester of foul play. What he saw made him now side heartily with Alfred; and all he wanted was to be indemnified for his risk.
He looked down and said, “You see, sir, I have a wife and child to think of.”
Alfred offered him two hundred pounds.
“That is more than enough, sir,” said the Robin; “but you see I can't do it alone. I must have a pal in it. Could you afford as much to Garrett? He is the likeliest; I've heard him say as much as that he was sick of the business.”
Alfred jumped at the proposal: he would give them two hundred apiece.