Tier after tier of cells rose above her head and now that the convicts were on their way to the dining-room she stood still for a moment and gazed morbidly into the blackness.
Suddenly there was a cry from the doctor and a guard came running toward him.
Dr. Brookes pointed with one hand toward a closed cell just above them, and with the other tried desperately to push Marion behind him.
But he was a second too late, for Marion’s glance had followed his own, and for the next few minutes both stood speechless with horror.
A man whose face was so familiar to Marion that her heart almost stopped beating when she recognized it, was hanging by the neck to the door of his cell. In the momentary excitement of the meal hour he had seized his opportunity, and when the guard at last cut him loose he was too far gone to be resuscitated.
“Who is he?” asked Dr. Brookes, as they brought him down.
Almost automatically the guard muttered the dead man’s number, but with ashen lips Marion gave the information.
“His name is Lawson,” she said, in a whisper; “and he is the villain who boarded at my father’s home one summer. He was a hypnotist by profession, and he abducted my sister Dollie! He was sentenced to Sing Sing, so I had no idea that I would see him here.”
The guard explained that he had been transferred to the Island by special order, only a few days previously.