“Quick! What has all that got to do with your attempt to escape?” says the Governor, and Mona feels as if she wants to strike him.
“But that’s not everything, your Excellency,” says the prisoner.
“Go on,” says the High Bailiff.
“After a time my wife stopped writing, and then I had a letter from a neighbour.”
“What did it say?” asks the High Bailiff, and with a fierce flash of his wild eyes the prisoner tells him.
Another German, who for some reason had been exempted from internment, had been put in by the authorities to help his wife to carry on the business, which was going to wreck and ruin. He was a scoundrel, and he had got hold of his wife, who had given in to him for the sake of the children.
“It drove me mad to think of it, sir. That’s why I worked at night, making that tunnel under the ground, while the other men were sleeping. I wanted to get back and kill him.”
“Good thing we caught you in time, then,” says the Governor.
The sentence is bread and water and seven days’ solitary confinement.