The lips fluttered as though Sorez was spurred by this promise to a supreme effort.
“The key––he has it.”
“Who?”
Wilson followed the eyes and saw the brass thing lying near the Priest.
He turned again to Sorez––
“Can you tell me anything about where she is? Is she near you?”
“I––don’t know.”
There was nothing for it but to open each door in order. It was of course likely that the two had been thrust into nearby cells, but had these been filled she might have been carried to the very end of the passageway. He fitted the ponderous brass thing into the first lock. It took a man’s strength to turn the rusty and clumsy bolt, but it finally yielded. Again it took a man’s strength to throw open the door upon its rusted hinges. A half savage thing staggered to the threshold and faced him with strange jabbering. Its face and hands were cruelly lacerated, its eyes bulging, its tattered remnants of clothes foul. Wilson faced it a second and then stepped back to let it wander aimlessly on down the corridors.
The cold sweat started from his brow. Supposing Jo had gone mad? If the dark, the slime, the rats, 198 could do this to a man, what would they not do to a woman? He knew her; she would fight bravely and long. There would be no whimpering, no hysterics, but even so there would be a point where her woman’s strength would fail. And all the while she might be calling for him and wondering why he did not come. But he was coming,––he was! He forced the key into the next door and turned another creaking lock. And once again as the door opened he saw that a thing not more than half human lay within. Only this time it crouched in a far corner laughing horribly to itself. It glared at him like some animal. He couldn’t let such a thing as that out; it would haunt him the rest of his life. It was better that it should laugh on so until it died. He closed the door, throwing against it all his strength with sudden horror. God, he might go mad himself before he found her!
At the end of a dozen cells and a dozen such sights, he worked in a frenzy. The prison now rang to the shrieking and the laughter of those who wandered free, and those who, still half sane, but savage, fought with their fellows, too weak to do harm. The farther he went the more hopeless seemed the task and the more fiercely he worked. He began to sicken from the odors and the dampness. Finally the bit of metal stuck in one of the locks so fast that he could not remove it. He twisted it to the right and to the left until his numbed fingers were upon the point of breaking. In a panic of fear he twisted his handkerchief in the handle and throwing all his weight upon it tried to 199 force it out. Then he inserted the muzzle of his revolver in the key handle and using this for a lever tried to turn it either way. It was in vain; it held as firmly as though it had been welded into the lock. In a rage he pounded and kicked at the door. Then he checked himself.