There were several factors in Hulsey’s favor now, one being that a new substitute guard was on duty over the guards’ entrance gate during the absence of the regular guard who was away on vacation. There was only one patient in the hospital besides Hulsey. The yard guard must be lured into the hospital, overpowered, his uniform stripped from him, then Hulsey, garbed in the uniform, would attempt to deceive the guard at the gate and be given the keys.
At fifteen minutes to midnight, on Hulsey’s first day in the hospital, the “lifer” quietly rose from his bed while the white-clad convict nurse’s back was turned. Three minutes later the unsuspecting nurse had been neatly laid out from a well-directed blow behind the ear, bound with sheets, gagged, stripped of his white suit and tenderly tucked in the bed recently occupied by Mr. Malcolm Hulsey.
The other patient, a feeble old convict, was gagged and tied down in his bed with sheets. Hulsey then donned the nurse’s white suit and, after arranging the nurse and the old convict in their beds so that they appeared to be sleeping peacefully, the “lifer” lay face down on the floor and awaited developments.
At twelve o’clock the new guard appeared at the hospital window and switched on the lights. Having counted the men in the hospital every hour since eight o’clock, the guard intended now to give the patients a hasty glance and proceed to the gate. There were his two patients, apparently sleeping peacefully. But where was the nurse?
Hulsey’s heart pounded like a riveting hammer as he lay sprawled on the floor. Would the ruse work? Would the guard enter the hospital to investigate, or would he report to Captain Dunlap when he saw the white-clad figure on the floor?
The guard’s eyes then rested on the man on the floor.
“Huh!” he ejaculated. “Funny place for nursie to be sleeping!”
But the nurse’s sprawled form did not indicate slumber. The guard was puzzled. Perhaps the nurse had fainted, or fallen and hurt himself. The guard tapped on the window with a key. No answer, no movement of nurse or patients.
Then the unsuspecting “screw” unlocked the door and entered. An older guard would have reported to the Captain. He was in the act of bending over to turn the pseudo-nurse upon his back when his ankles were suddenly seized and his feet perked from under him.
The guard’s head struck an iron bedstead as he fell, thus relieving Hulsey of the unpleasant job of beating him into unconsciousness.