"What about the Holy One?" put in the City Magistrate. "Did you 'autopsy' him? A pleasure to hang a chap like him."
"Yes, the brute. I'll show you his neck vertebrae presently if you like. Kept 'em as a curiosity. An absolute break of the bone itself. People talk about pain, strangulation, suffocation and all that. Nothing of the sort. Literally breaks the neck. Not mere separation of the vertebrae you know. I'll show you the vertebra itself—clean broken…."
Captain Malet-Marsac swayed on his feet. What should he do? A blue mist floated before his eyes and a sound of rushing waters filled his ears. Was he fainting? He must not faint, and fail his friend. And then, the roar of the waters was pierced and dominated by the voice of that friend saying—
"Hul_lo_! old bird. Awf'ly good of you to turn out, such a beastly cold morning."
John Robin Ross-Ellison had come round an adjacent corner, a European warder on either side of him and another behind him, all three, to their credit, as white as their white uniforms and helmets. On his head was a curious bag-like cap.
Ross-Ellison appeared perfectly cheerful, absolutely natural, and without the slightest outward and visible sign of any form of perturbation.
"'Morning, Ranald," he continued. "Sorry to be the cause of turning you out in the cold. Gad! isn't it parky. Hope you aren't going to keep me standing. If I might be allowed I'd quote unto you the words which a pretty American girl once used when I asked if I might kiss her—'Wade right in, Bub!'"
"'Fraid I can't 'wade in' till seven o'clock—er—Ross-Ellison," answered the horribly embarrassed Major Ranald. "It won't be long."
"Right O, I was only thinking of your convenience. I'm all right," said the remarkable criminal, about to suffer by the Mosaic law at the hands of Christians, to receive Old Testament mercy from the disciples of the New, to be done-by as he had done.
An Indian clerk, salaaming, joined the group, and prepared to read from an official-looking document.