He calls back that his name is Percy Reginald Grainger, and his town residence is “The Mansions,” Macleay Street, next to Mr Isaacs, the magistrate, and he also gives her the address of his solicitor.
She bangs and shrieks again, and states that she will get his name from the charge sheet in the morning and have him up for criminal libel, and have his cell mate up as a witness—and hers, too. But just here a policeman comes along and closes her wicket with a bang and cuts her off, so that her statements become indistinct, or come only as shrieks from a lost soul in an underground dungeon. He also threatens to cut us off and smother us if we don’t shut up. I wonder whether they’ve got her in the padded cell.
We settle down again, but presently my fellow captive nudges me and says: “Listen!” From another cell comes the voice of a woman singing—the girl who is in for “inciting to resist, your worship,” in fact. “Listen!” he says, “that woman could sing once.” Her voice is low and sweet and plaintive, as of a woman who had been a singer but had lost her voice. And what do you think it is?
The crowd in accents hushed reply—
“Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.”
Mrs Johnson’s cell is suddenly silent. Then, not mimickingly, mockingly, or scornfully, but as if the girl is a champion of Jesus of Nazareth, and is hurt at the ignorance of the multitude, and pities Him:
Now who is this Jesus of Nazareth, say?
The policeman, coming along the passage, closes the wicket in her door, but softly this time, and not before we catch the plaintive words again.
The crowd in accents hushed reply
“Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.”
My fellow felon throws the blanket off him impatiently, sits up with a jerk, and gropes for his pipe.
“God!” he says. “But this is red hot! Have you got another match?”