“What a perfect hide-out. No one will go looking for the big thief there!”
“Oh, he’s all right for the moment — but how are we going to get you out, now that we are here?”
Van Ryn laughed, showing his white, even teeth. “That’s easy,” he said casually. “I’ll walk!”
“Aren’t there guards and warders?”
“Not so’s you’d notice them. They’ve got peculiar ideas about prisons in this city. It’s got Sing-Sing beat to a frazzle! No one tries escaping, ’cause they can’t get anywhere — no money, and no boots, that’s the bars they use in this burg; that, and one spy in each block to let them have the low-down about any little plan to frame a get-away.”
“But lots of the prisoners must have friends in the town — surely they could get out first and get help later?”
“That’s where you’re all wrong. Not a man in this prison was raised in Tobolsk. The local crooks get put on rail for a lock-up a thousand miles away — so what could a fellah do, anyway, with no friends, no boots, no money, and a couple of hundred miles of snow between him and the next town?”
“You can get out, then, if we can get you away afterwards?”
“I certainly can! About five o’clock ’ll be the best time.”
“How — er — will you manage?” Simon asked, a little doubtfully.