Aunt Chloe, sole dependence of the Art Club below-stairs: day or night nurse—every student in the place knows the touch of her hand when his head splits with fever or his bones ache with cold; provider of buttons, suspender loops and buckles; go-between in most secret and confidential affairs; mail-carrier—the dainty note wrapped up in her handkerchief so as not to "spile it!"—no, she wouldn't treat a dog that way, nor anything else that lives and breathes or has feeling, human or brute.
"If there's a new 'drove' of them, as Aunt Chloe says," remarked Marny, tossing aside his brushes, "let's take a look at them. They are worth your study. You may never have another chance."
This was why it happened that within the hour Marny and I crossed the bridge and left his studio and the city behind us.
The river below was alive with boats, the clouds of steam from their funnels wreathed about the spans. Street-cars blocked the roadway; tugging horses, sweating under the lash of their drivers' whips, strained under heavy loads. The air was heavy with coal-smoke. Through the gloom of the haze, close to the opposite bank, rose a grim, square building of granite and brick, its grimy windows blinking through iron bars. Behind these, shut out from summer clouds and winter snows, bereft of air and sunshine, deaf to the song of happy birds and the low hum of wandering bees, languished the outcast and the innocent, the vicious and the cruel. Hells like these are the infernos civilization builds in which to hide its mistakes.
Marny turned toward me as we reached the prison. "Keep close," he whispered. "I know the Warden and can get in without a permit," and he mounted the steps and entered a big door opening into a cold, bare hall with a sanded floor. To the right of the hall swung another door labelled "Chief of Police." Behind this door was a high railing closed with a wooden gate. Over this scowled an officer in uniform.
"My friend Sergeant Cram," said Marny, as he introduced us. The officer and I shook hands. The hand was thick and hard, the knotted knuckles leaving an unpleasant impression behind them as they fell from my fingers.
A second door immediately behind this one was now reached, the Sergeant acting as guide. This door was of solid wood, with a square panel cut from its centre, the opening barred like a birdcage. Peering through these bars was the face of another attendant. This third door, at a mumbled word from the Sergeant, was opened wide enough to admit us into a room in which half a dozen deputies were seated at cards. In the opposite wall hung a fourth door, of steel and heavily barred, through which, level with the eyes, was cut a peep-hole concealed by a swinging steel disk.
The Sergeant moved rapidly across the room, pushed aside the disk and brought to view the nose and eyes of a prison guard.
As our guide shot back a bolt, a click like the cocking of a gun sounded through the room, followed by the jangle of a huge iron ring strung with keys. Selecting one from the number, he pushed it into the key-hole and threw his weight against the door. At its touch the mass of steel swung inward noiselessly as the door of a bank-vault. With the swinging of the door there reached us the hot, stuffy smell of unwashed bodies under steam-heat—the unmistakable odor that one sometimes meets in a court-room.
Marny and I stepped inside. The Sergeant closed the slab of steel, locking us inside, and then, nodding to us through the peep-hole, returned to his post in the office.