A fresh contemplative pause, followed by a fresh soliloquy:
“The position is far from brilliant. On the one side, everything; on the other, nothing. Opposite me, a man of my own strength, or stronger, because he has not the same scruples that hamper me. And I am without weapons to attack him with.”
He repeated the last sentence several times, in a mechanical voice, and then stopped and, taking his forehead between his hands, sat for a long time wrapped in thought.
“Come in, Mr. Governor,” he said, seeing the door open.
“Were you expecting me?”
“Why, I wrote to you, Mr. Governor, asking you to come! I felt certain that the warder would give you my letter. I was so certain of it that I put your initials, S. B., and your age, forty-two, on the envelope!”
The governor’s name, in point of fact, was Stanislas Borély, and he was forty-two years of age. He was a pleasant-looking man, with a very gentle character, who treated the prisoners with all the indulgence possible.
He said to Lupin:
“Your opinion of my subordinate’s integrity was quite correct. Here is your money. It shall be handed to you at your release. … You will now go through the searching-room again.”
Lupin went with M. Borély to the little room reserved for this purpose, undressed and, while his clothes were inspected with justifiable suspicion, himself underwent a most fastidious examination.
He was then taken back to his cell and M. Borély said:
“I feel easier. That’s done.”
“And very well done, Mr. Governor. Your men perform this sort of duty with a delicacy for which I should like to thank them by giving them a small token of my satisfaction.”
He handed a hundred-franc note to M. Borély, who jumped as though he had been shot:
“Oh! … But … where does that come from?”
“No need to rack your brains, Mr. Governor. A man like myself, leading the life that I do, is always prepared for any eventuality: and no mishap, however painful—not even imprisonment—can take him unawares.”
Seizing the middle finger of his left hand between the thumb and forefinger of the right, he pulled it off smartly and presented it calmly to M. Borély:
“Don’t start like that, Mr. Governor. This is not my finger, but just a tube, made of gold-beater’s skin and cleverly colored, which fits exactly over my middle finger and gives the illusion of a real finger.” And he added, with a laugh, “In such a way, of course, as to conceal a third hundred-franc note. … What is a poor man to do? He must carry the best purse he can … and must needs make use of it on occasions. …”
He stopped at the sight of M. Borély’s startled face:
“Please don’t think, Mr. Governor, that I wish to dazzle you with my little parlor-tricks. I only wanted to show you that you have to do with a … client of a rather … special nature and to tell you that you must not be surprised if I venture, now and again, to break the ordinary rules and regulations of your establishment.”
The governor had recovered himself. He said plainly:
“I prefer to think that you will conform to the rules and not compel me to resort to harsh measures. …”
“Which you would regret to have to enforce: isn’t that it, Mr. Governor? That’s just what I should like to spare you, by proving to you in advance that they would not prevent me from doing as I please: from corresponding with my friends, from defending the grave interests confided to me outside these walls, from writing to the newspapers that accept my inspiration, from pursuing the fulfilment of my plans and, lastly, from preparing my escape.”
“Your escape!”
Lupin began to laugh heartily:
“But think, Mr. Governor, my only excuse for being in prison is … to leave it!”
The argument did not appear to satisfy M. Borély. He made an effort to laugh in his turn:
“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.
“That’s what I wanted,” Lupin replied. “Take all your precautions, Mr. Governor, neglect nothing, so that later they may have nothing to reproach you with. On the other hand, I shall arrange things in such a way that, whatever annoyance you may have to bear in consequence of my escape, your career, at least, shall not suffer. That is all I had to say to you, Mr. Governor. You can go.”
And, while M. Borély walked away, greatly perturbed by his singular charge and very anxious about the events in preparation, the prisoner threw himself on his bed, muttering:
“What cheek, Lupin, old fellow, what cheek! Really, anyone would think that you had some idea as to how you were going to get out of this!”
The Santé prison is built on the star plan. In the centre of the main portion is a round hall, upon which all the corridors converge, so that no prisoner is able to leave his cell without being at once perceived by the overseers posted in the glass box which occupies the middle of that central hall.
The thing that most surprises the visitor who goes over the prison is that, at every moment, he will meet prisoners without a guard of any kind, who seem to move about as though they were absolutely free. In reality, in order to go from one point to another—for instance, from their cell to the van waiting in the yard to take them to the Palais de Justice for the magistrate’s examination—they pass along straight lines each of which ends in a door that is opened to them by a warder. The sole duty of the warder is to open and shut this door and to watch the two straight lines which it commands. And thus the prisoners, while apparently at liberty to come and go as they please, are sent from door to door, from eye to eye, like so many parcels passed from hand
