'Where do you think you're going?' a sergeant demanded. The Governor looked at him lividly.
'Since I happen to be the Governor,' he said, 'the Governor of this prison, you understand, I'm going inside. Now if you'll kindly stand aside.'
'Any means of identification, sir?' asked the Sergeant. 'My orders require me to prevent anyone leaving or entering.'
The Governor rummaged through the pockets of his suit and produced a five-pound note and a comb. 'Now look here, officer...' he began, but the Sergeant was already looking. At the five-pound note. He ignored the comb.
'I shouldn't try that one if I were you,' he said.
'Try what one! I don't seem to have anything else on me.'
'You heard that one, Constable,' said the sergeant, 'Attempting to offer a bribe to'
'A bribe...offer a bribe? Who said anything about offering a bribe?' exploded the Governor. 'You asked me for means of identification and when I try to produce some, you start talking about bribes. Ask the warder on the gate to identify me, dammit.' It took another five minutes of protest to get inside the prison and by then his nerves were in no state to deal at all adequately with the situation. 'You've done what?' he screamed at the Chief Warder.
'Moved all the men from the top floors to the cells below, sir. Thought it better in case they got onto the roof. Of course, they're a bit cramped but...'
'Cramped? They were four to a one-man cell already. You mean to say they're eight now? It's a wonder they haven't started rioting already.' He was interrupted by the sound of screams from C Block. As Prison Officer Blaggs hurried away, the Governor tried to find out what was happening. It was almost as difficult as getting into the prison had been. A battle was apparently raging on the third floor of A Wing. 'That'll be due to putting Fidley and Gosling in with Stanforth and Haydow,' the warder in the office said.
'Fidley and...Put two child murderers in with a couple of decent honest-to-God armed bank robbers? Blaggs must be mad. How long did it take them to die?'
'I don't think they're dead yet,' said the warder with rather more disappointment in his voice than the Governor approved. 'Last I heard, they'd managed to stop Haydow from castrating Fidley. That was when Mr Blaggs decided to intervene.'
'You mean the lunatic waited?' asked the Governor.
'Not exactly, sir. You see, there was this fire in D Block'
'Fire in D Block? What fire in D Block?'
'Moore set fire to his mattress, sir, and by the time' But the Governor was no longer listening. He knew now that his career was at stake. All it needed to finish him was for that lunatic Blaggs to have acted as an accessory to murder by packing all the swine in the Top Security Block into one cell. He was just on his way to make quite certain when Chief Warder Blaggs returned. 'Everything's under control, sir,' he said cheerfully.
'Under control?' spluttered the Governor. 'Under control? If you think the Home Secretary's going to think 'under control' means having child killers castrated by other prisoners, I can assure you you're not up-to-date with contemporary regulations. Now then, about Top Security.'
'Nothing to worry about there, sir. They're all sleeping like babes.'
'Odd,' said the Governor. 'If there was going to be an attempted breakout you'd think they were bound to be involved. You're sure they're not shamming?'
'Positive, sir,' said Blaggs proudly. 'The first thing I did, sir, by way of a precaution, was to lace their cocoa with that double-strength sleeping stuff.'
'Sweet Jesus,' moaned the Governor, trying to imagine the consequences of the Chief Warder's experiment in preventive sedation if news leaked out to the Howard League for Penal Reform. 'Did you say 'double strength'?'
