"Yes."
"Leave your bloomin' boots be'ind as a keepsake. We haren't pussy-footed, me hangel."
"All right, I'm ready."
"Now, take out the blocks, me boy, and 'andle with care. If they falls on your toes they might 'urt, besides disturbin' the bloomin' deputy, which we must be werry careful to havoid, Bobbs, out of consideration for 'is feelings. Sh!"
A footstep was heard coming along the corridor, and the re-enforcement of light told the prisoners that the turnkey had a lantern in his hand, the dim gas jet at one end only sufficing to deepen the shadows in the cells. Robert lay back on his pallet and closed his eyes till the steps retreated. In a half-minute the turnkey would be back. He was a new man, both Gradger and Hawkins being still on the sick list from the blows they had received in the riot of the day before.
"St, Bobbs, hare you ready?"
"All ready."
Robert had removed six bricks and carefully muffled them in his bedquilt, leaving an aperture not much larger than the door of a kennel. The light came nearer and nearer and suddenly he heard the cracksman groaning piteously. The turnkey raised his lantern, approached the cell from which these sounds issued and peered in.
"Somebody bludgeoned yesterday," thought he. But "somebody" was standing at the front of his cell, with his hands firmly grasping two bars. As the turnkey stooped and brought his eyes nearer, the two bars were wrenched out and clasped around his neck. Being a sturdy fellow, his instinct was to struggle rather than to cry. But his struggle availed him nothing in the surprise of the moment, with the odds of position against him. His head was drawn down through the bars and he nuzzled a soft substance on the cracksman's breast. Then a strange odor got possession of his senses. He gasped, fought, gasped again, and finally fainted away. When his writhings had ceased the cracksman removed his lantern and laid it lightly on the floor outside.
"Climb through, Bobbs—not that way."