"It's very queer, sir, but all over the place it's the same. We can't get none of the doors unlocked."
Mr. Murray started off at a good round pace, Slater following hard at his heels. The chief warder tried his hand himself. He tried every lock in the prison; not one of them vouchsafed to budge. Not one, that is, with a single exception. The exception was in Ward B, No. 27. Mr. Murray had tried all the other doors in the ward, beginning with No. 1--tried them all in vain. But when he came to No. 27, the lock turned with the customary ease, and the door was open. Within it was Oliver Mankell, standing decorously at attention, waiting to be let out. Mr. Murray stared at him.
"Hum! there's nothing the matter with this lock, at any rate. You'd better go down."
Oliver Mankell went downstairs--he was the only man in Canterstone jail who did.
"Well, this is a pretty go!" exclaimed Mr. Murray, when he had completed his round. Two or three other warders had accompanied him. He turned on these. "Someone will smart for this--you see if they don't. Keep those men still."
The din was deafening. The prisoners, secure of a grievance, were practising step-dances in their heavy shoes on the stone floors: they made the narrow vaulted corridors ring.
"Silence those men!" shouted Mr. Jarvis, the second warder, who was tall and thin as the chief was short and stout. He might as well have shouted to the wind. Those in the cells just close at hand observed the better part of valour, but those a little distance off paid not the slightest heed. If they were locked in, the officers were locked out.
"I must go and see the governor." Mr. Murray pursed up his lips. "Keep those men still, or I'll know the reason why."
He strode off, leaving his subordinates to obey his orders--if they could, or if they couldn't.
Mr. Paley's house was in the centre of the jail. Paley, by the way, was the governor's name. The governor, when Mr. Murray arrived, was still in bed. He came down to the chief warder in rather primitive disarray.