“Couldn’t you make some excuse to put it off a day or so? It ain’t like Mr. Bourke.”
“Not much. Off she goes at 11.12.” And he got up heavily and shuffled out.
The head-keeper took a decanter of brandy from the sideboard and placed it, with a number of glasses, on the table. Then he called in the newspaper men and other witnesses.
He wandered about restlessly as the men entered and drank in silence. He carried a stick of malacca topped with silver. One or two of the newspaper men shuddered as it caught their eye. They knew its hideous portent.
“Guess we’d better go,” he said, after one more fruitless trip to the telegraph table. “It takes time to go through those underground passages.”
As the great gates were about to close behind them he turned suddenly and called a guard.
“If it should so happen that Mr. Bourke should come, or telegraph, or that anything should happen before—11.16—I can delay it that long—just you be on hand to make a bolt. It ain’t like Mr. Bourke to sit down and do nothing. I feel it in my bones that he’s moving heaven and earth this minute.”
XXVI
It was five minutes after eleven. Patience sat on the edge of her bed, her hands clenched, her face grey. But she was calm. The horror and sinking which had almost mastered her as the warden read the death warrant, she had fought down and under. And she had drunk a quantity of black coffee. She had but one thought, one desire left,—to die bravely. Even Bourke was forgotten, and hope and regret. She was conscious of but one passionate wish, not to quail, not for a second. Perhaps there was a slight touch of the dramatic instinct, even in this last extremity, for she imagined the scene and her attitude again and again. In consequence, there was a sense of unreality in it all. She felt as if about to play some great final act; she could not realise that the climax meant her own annihilation. Physically she was very tired, and should have liked to lie down for hours, although the coffee had routed sleep. Once she half extended herself on the bed, then sat erect, her mouth contracting spasmodically.
Suddenly she heard the noise of many feet shuffling on a bare floor. She knew that it came from the execution room. She shuddered and bit her lips. Now and again, through the high windows, came the shrill note of a woman’s voice, or a baby’s soft light laugh.