"You've made yourself a wicked enemy," Thorp observed, prodding the giant with his toe. "That's Walt Eriss."
"Walt Eriss!" Joel's green eyes widened. Walt Eriss' trial had created the sensation of the decade.
Walt Eriss had been a brilliant surgeon, but with a pathological twist. A modern Jack the Ripper who delighted in torturing his patients. He had killed forty-three women by his own confession before he was apprehended!
Joel stared at the hulking form as if it were some monster. "But why were the others letting him throttle you?" he asked Nick Thorp. "Why didn't they stop him?"
"They're afraid of him."
"But they could've ganged him...." Joel stopped with his mouth open.
A bell had begun to ring with an ear-splitting clangor!
Muttered exclamations burst from the prisoners as they exchanged alarmed glances. The bell continued to ring.
"What's happening?" Joel asked.
Nick Thorp shook his grizzled head. "I don't know. But the bell's a signal for us to line up at our bunks."