"He'd better keep his nose in his office," said the other darkly. "He'll walk through the shops once too often! I know a man around the corner who'd give his neck to 'get' him—he's a lifer, and nothing makes much difference to him!"
He crossed the narrow cell as he spoke, and sitting on one of the three-legged stools that constituted the cell's only movable furniture, took a bent tin spoon from under his jacket and began to tap upon the wall. Harry had sometimes seen him at this occupation—a kind of crude signalling he had thought it. Now, however, some rhythm in the sound caught him, reminding him of the click of the keys in a telegraph office. "What is that you are doing?" he asked, as the other stopped.
"Doing?" Paddy the Brick turned his narrow eyes over his shoulder. "I've been having a chat with an old pal of mine in the upper tier. That's what."
"Talking?"
"Yes. It's the prison-wireless. Didn't you ever hear of that?"
"No."
The other rose and pulled away the blanket from the foot of his bunk. There in the whitewashed wall was a double row of minute scratches. "That's the alphabet," he said. "It's mighty handy—we work it by relay. I can call up any cell on this side in fifteen minutes. Better learn it," he added jeeringly. "You'll have plenty of time!"
Harry's gaze turned back to the little barred window with its meagre square of blue. The time he had been there was to be measured only by months, yet how century-long had dragged the leaden-footed procession! His painful reverie was broken by Paddy the Brick's voice, jarring and malicious:
"Ever read the Bible?"
The other had taken the small dingy volume—the sole book the place afforded—from its shelf, and was lying on his back on his bunk, his eyes peering over its rim.