A line of convicts, clad in a kind of striped sacking, stood with their backs to a wall while a native warder strode up and down in front of them, watching another convict placing brushes and implements before them. Suddenly the warder spoke to the end man, an elderly stalwart fellow, obviously from the North. The reply was evidently unsatisfactory, perhaps insolent, for the warder suddenly seized the grey beard of the convict, tugged his head violently from side to side, shook him, and then smote him hard on either cheek. The elderly convict gave no sign of having felt either the pain or the indignity, but gazed straight over the warder's head. Of what was he thinking? Of what might be the fate of that warder were he suddenly transported to the wilds of Kathiawar, to lie at the mercy of his late victim and the famous band of outlaws whom he had once led to fame—a fame as wide as Ind?
There was something fine about the old villain, once a real Robin Hood, something mean about the little tyrant.
Had Ranald seen the incident? No, he stood with his back to a buttress looking in the opposite direction. Did he always stand with a wall behind him in this terrible place? How could he live in it? A minute of it made one sick if one were cursed with imagination. Oh, the horror of the prison system—especially for brave men, men with a code of honour of their own—possibly sometimes a higher code than that of the average British politician, not to mention the be-knighted cosmopolitan financier, friend of princes and honoured of kings.
Could not men be segregated in a place of peace and beauty and improved, instead of being segregated in a dull hell and crushed? What a home of soulless, hopeless horror!… And his friend was here…. Could he contain himself?… He must say something.
"Do you always keep your back to a wall when standing still, in here?" he asked of Major Ranald.
"I do," was the reply, "and I walk with a trustworthy man close behind me." "Would you like to go round, sometime?" he added.
"No, thank you," said Malet-Marsac. "I would like to get as far away as possible and stay there."
Major Ranald laughed.
"Wouldn't like to visit the mortuary and see a post-mortem?"
"No, thank you."