"What is that noise in there?" asked Dr. Ransome, through the bars.
"Rats--dozens of them," replied The Thinking Machine, tersely.
The three men, with final goodnights, were turning away when The Thinking Machine called:
"What time is it exactly, warden?"
"Eleven seventeen," replied the warden.
"Thanks. I will join you gentlemen in your office at half-past eight o'clock one week from to-night," said The Thinking Machine.
"And if you do not?"
"There is no 'if' about it."
II.
Chisholm Prison was a great, spreading structure of granite, four stories in all, which stood in the center of acres of open space. It was surrounded by a wall of solid masonry eighteen feet high, and so smoothly finished inside and out as to offer no foothold to a climber, no matter how expert. Atop of this fence, as a further precaution, was a five-foot fence of steel rods, each terminating in a keen point. This fence in itself marked an absolute deadline between freedom and imprisonment, for, even if a man escaped from his cell, it would seem impossible for him to pass the wall.