Captains of souls

by Edgar Wallace

"Take this gentleman to the governor's room," said the doorkeeper.

Ronald was amused because the second warder put his hand on his arm as though he were a prisoner, and did not remove his hand even when he was unlocking the innumerable gates, doors and grilles which stood between liberty and the prisoners.

The governor's room was scarcely more cheerful than the gatekeeper's lodge. There was a desk piled with papers, a worn leather armchair and an office smell which was agreeable and human.

The governor shook hands with the visitor, whom he had met before, and Ronald nodded to the two other pressmen who were waiting.

Then they took him out into the yard.

The warder led the way, and the doctor followed, then came the governor and last, save for the warder who brought up the rear, went Ronald Morelle, without a single tremor of heart, to the house of doom.

To a great glass-roofed hall with tier upon tier of galleries and yellow cell doors, and near at hand (that which was nearest to them as they came in) one cell, door ajar. Outside three blankets neatly folded were stacked one on each other. They were the blankets in which the condemned man had slept.

Here was a wait. A nerve-racking wait to those with nerves. Ronald had none. A small door opened into the yard and he strolled through it and found himself in a small black courtyard. Twenty paces away was a little building which looked like a tool house. There were two gray-black sliding doors and these were open. All he could see was a plain clean interior with a scrubbed floor, and a yellow rope that hung from somewhere in the roof. He was joined by an officer whom he took to be the chief warder.

Physically Ronald was a coward. He admitted as much to himself. He feared pain, he shrank from danger. In his questionable business transactions he guarded himself in every way from unpleasant consequences, employing two lawyers who checked one another's conclusions.

Yet he could watch the pain of others and never turn a hair. He had witnessed capital operations and had found stimulus in the experience which the hospital theatre brings to the enthusiastic scientist. He had seen death administered by the law in England, America and France. Once he stood by the side of a guillotine in a little northern town of France and watched three shrieking men dragged to "the widow" and was the least affected of the spectators, until the blood of one splashed his hand. And then it was only disgust he felt. He himself was incapable of violent action. He might torture the helpless, but he would have to be sure they were helpless.