In Direst Peril

by David Christie Murray

CHAPTER V

“You gave me that last night,” I said, holding the scrap of paper before me. “You knew what was in it?”

“I didn't know, sir; I guessed. Poor gentleman's wife, sir? I thought so, sir.”

“Robert Hinge, you're an Englishman, and you've served your queen.”

“And king as well, sir. King William was on the throne when I joined, sir.”

“How long have you known this unhappy gentleman, this Count Rossano, who is imprisoned here?”

“Eight years and over.”

The man stood bolt upright before me until I gave him the word to stand at ease. I questioned him closely, and with a growing belief in him. This was the substance of what I heard from him: He had been in General Rodetzsky's service for a year or thereabouts when he first came to visit the fortress. The stables in which the general's horses were bestowed were in themselves beautifully tidy, but outside, immediately beside the door, was a great heap of manure and rotten straw, the accumulation of years, which was an eyesore to the new groom, who took immediate measures for removing it. He was at work at it a whole day and then left it. Returning a week later to his task, he thrust the prongs of his pitchfork through a pane of glass which lay hidden by the rubbish heap, and heard not only the crash and fall of the glass itself, but a startled cry. A peasant was in charge of the cart which was carrying away the refuse heap, and Robert Hinge took no apparent notice of this cry. He knew that the fortress was a prison. He had heard queer stories about the treatment the Austrians gave their prisoners. His interest was awakened, and his fancy began to be excited. When he had filled the cart, and the peasant had gone away, Hinge cleared from the wall the remainder of the heap, and found that he had laid bare a grated window almost on a level with the ground. The glass was so thickly incrusted with filth as to be as opaque as the wall by which it was surrounded, but at the broken pane a face appeared. The man in telling me the story was honestly moved. He could not describe the condition of the man he saw without imprecations on his jailer and the whole country that held them. He told me that the prisoner's hair grew to his waist, and was of a dreadful unwholesome gray; that his beard and mustache were matted, his eyes were sunken, and his face was unwashed and of the color of stale unbaked bread. The man spoke with difficulty, but had a fair knowledge of English, though he seemed unused to it. He had inhabited that hole in the earth for years. How many years he did not know until Hinge, in answer to his questions, told him the date of the year and the day of the month. The conversation was interrupted by the coming of an officer, and Hinge covered up the window before anything was seen. Afterwards he broke a few more panes and heaped clean straw against the wall to hide the window, but in such a fashion as to admit air and light. Many hundreds of times he had sat outside his stable door within arm's-length of the prisoner, and had listened to him while he talked. They had a preconcerted signal at which the prisoner instantly ceased to speak. Food and water were thrust in upon the unhappy man at regular intervals, but he was never visited, and lived a horrible, lonely death in life there, which made the flesh creep to hear of. The stench of the chamber Hinge described as something horrible and sickening, and he thought it a marvel that the man had lived so long.

The wretched man had never been allowed a minute's exercise outside his cell, and Brunow's pretence of having seen him was, of course, an invention. That did not surprise me, but I hated Brunow for it. The man's shallow and worthless spirit could go hovering about a tragedy like this with his butterfly irresponsible lies. The thought made me angry.

“Hinge,” I said, when the groom had told me all he had to say, “I am going to trust you with a secret. I think you are the man to keep it. I am going to ask you to help me in a difficult and dangerous bit of work. I think you are the man for the job. If we succeed, I am going to pension you handsomely for life.”