He took her assent for granted, and slowly they began walking straight toward what Jean now knew to be a very famous place—famous if only because it had been the first prison visited by Elizabeth Fry.
“Where is the real prison?” she asked hesitatingly.
“You turn yourself right around-about and you’ll see it clear enough.”
She turned quickly, and beyond the Castle mound, far to the right, she saw a large, commonplace-looking yellow brick building which reminded her of a modern factory. The knowledge that Harry Garlett was there gave her a stab of pain. Quickly she turned away and once more stared at the sinister-looking Old Prison, and it was with a thrill of surprise that she saw that the low doors giving access to the dark, grimy-looking building were all wide open.
“I should be afraid to come here at night,” she exclaimed. “That place looks as if it were haunted.”
“You’re not the only one to say that. My wife wouldn’t go in the Old Prison not after dark—for a hundred pounds! It’s said that on All-Hallows Eve one ’ears groans and awful moanings agoing on the whole night. However, I’ve never been there to see, and bless you! people are sure to say them sort of things about that sort of place. Now you come along—and I’ll show you what many a lady in Grendon would give a good bit to see.”
He moved on, his bunch of keys clanging in his big hands as he walked, till they came right up to the widest of the low entrances to the deserted building.
The black oak iron bound door had been clamped back to the wall, leaving the way in clear.
“I’d best go in first,” said the porter; and Jean, following him, found herself almost at once in pitch-darkness, groping along a narrow passage. Suddenly he took out of his pocket and turned on an electric torch. But that only seemed to make more dense the thick-feeling blackness, though it enabled Jean to see that on each side of the passage were tiny, windowless cells. Was it possible that human beings had ever been confined in such holes as that?
They walked on and on along the lightless, airless burrows, and once the girl stumbled badly on the uneven earthen floor.