The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

George Malpas was seized with a sudden anxiety. He tried to speak; but long familiarity with the ways of warders made him frightened to use his tongue.

‘Not half!’ said the other, with a wink. ‘One leather wallet. Fifty pounds in Bank of England notes.’

‘God! That’s something like!’ said the other, handing it to George with a wink.

He thrust it into the breast pocket of the coat which had been placed that morning in his cell, and the action gave him an unfamiliar thrill. What a thing it was to have pockets!

‘Well, Malpas, it’s good-bye, then,’ said the warder, who was also a humorist. ‘Look in any time you’re passing!’

George Malpas did not smile. They showed him out of a small doorway at the side of the arch under which the prison vans came grinding in. From his cell he had been able to hear the sound of the horses’ shoes sliding on the stone. He saw a street along which free men were moving with a rapt, purposive hurry. Sometimes a passer-by would turn and look up idly at the great nail-studded doors and the fan of spikes that surmounted them. George had never seen the gateway before. He only knew the jail as a heavy building dominating the hill above the station. When they had brought him handcuffed from the train, humiliated, wondering if it were worth while wrenching himself free and throwing his body on the rails, they had driven him to the prison in a black van. Now he stood undetermined, not knowing which way to take. Over the hill-side the city of Shrewsbury sprawled: spires, chimney-pots, towers, and smoke stacks blowing in a free and windy sky. Not a leaf on the trees, and black, unfriendly dust whirling along brick pavements.

He shivered. For some reason his newly-pressed clothes hung loose and damp upon him. He must have lost flesh. Of course he had lost flesh. Who wouldn’t after fourteen months in jail? A cart came slowly past him with a load of horse manure. A good smell . . . a country smell! The driver cracked his whip, and the noise made George Malpas jump. That was a bad sign surely! The sooner he got a drink and steadied his nerves the better. He looked up and down the road for the sign of a public-house. A hundred yards away a strip of hoarding with gilt letters topped the sky-line of a red brick building. Astill’s Celebrated Entire, it said. Brummagem beer was better than nothing. He crossed the road with long strides, but a dog-cart driven fast down the middle of the street made him pause. There was a bicycle behind it, and he did not think he could avoid both. People should not be allowed to drive so furiously.

He reached the public-house and thanked God for his escape. He felt that in gaining the shelter of its walls he was doing more than sheltering from the bitter wind and the dust. He grew surer of himself, cracked a joke with the barmaid, and paid for his beer. The florin that she tendered him in change for a half-crown looked like a foreign coin. He examined it suspiciously.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘One of these new ones. It’s quite a change to get the Prince of Wales’ head, isn’t it? I don’t think he looks half the man of King Edward.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No, he don’t.’ He examined the coin, bewildered. Then, fearing that she must read the whole of his story in his ignorance, he pocketed his money and darted out into the street again. It was strange how a broken habit reasserted itself. He put his hand in his unfamiliar waistcoat pocket and pulled out his watch. Nine o’clock. That was impossible. He laughed, realising that his watch had run down at its usual winding time on the night of his arrest.