"She knows better," retorted Napier. Something seemed to go wrong with the line after that. He didn't get Singleton again. Singleton was greatly occupied about that time.
As a special, indeed an unprecedented, concession, a permit was ultimately obtained for an unnamed lady to pay a visit to a person designated only by the Number 96 in a metropolitan prison.
Singleton didn't show Miss Ellis the permit until he had talked to her for some minutes about the superhuman difficulties that had to be surmounted before he had been able to get their request so much as listened to. He had sworn not to yield up the all-powerful piece of paper without exacting a pledge from Miss Ellis. She was to promise on her word of honor that she wouldn't let the Schwarzenberg know who had moved in the matter. This was of an importance he could not explain to her, but it was "the condition."
CHAPTER XXIX
"Where are we now?" Miss Ellis peered through the blurred window of the taxi.
"Oh, it's a part you don't know. You haven't an idea," Singleton began again, "what a triumph it is—this permit. Nobody believed it could be brought off. And you are to see her alone! What do you say to that?" He sat back in the car and looked at Miss Ellis.
"Is it so unusual?"
"Unusual! Bless my soul, it's unheard of! The rule is, either you stand outside a grille and talk through bars, or you sit with a table between you and the pr—the person you've come to see. The warder, or in this case it would be the wardress, stands there, two feet away, hearing every word you say and watching your hands to see that nothing's smuggled."
"They behave like that to prisoners in the first class?"