Manfred nodded. He nodded many times thoughtfully, and felt a new interest in the bluff, brusque man.
“And whilst I’m doubling the guard and that sort of thing, I know in my heart that that ‘something’ of yours isn’t ‘something’ with dynamite in it, or ‘something’ with brute force behind it, but it’s ‘something’ that’s devilishly deep—that’s how I read it.”
He jerked his head in farewell, and the cell door closed behind him with a great jangling and snapping of keys.
He might have been tried at the sessions following his committal, but the Crown applied for a postponement, and being informed and asked whether he would care to raise any objection to that course, he replied that so far from objecting, he was grateful, because his arrangements were not yet completed, and when they asked him, knowing that he had refused solicitor and counsel, what arrangements he referred to, he smiled enigmatically and they knew he was thinking of this wonderful plan of escape. That such persistent assurances of delivery should eventually reach the public through the public press was only to be expected, and although “Manfred says he will escape from Wandsworth” in the Megaphone headline, became “A prisoner’s strange statement” in the Times, the substance of the story was the same, and you may be sure that it lost nothing in the telling. A Sunday journal, with a waning circulation, rallied on the discovery that Manfred was mad, and published a column-long account of this “poor lunatic gibbering of freedom.”
Being allowed to read the newspapers, Manfred saw this, and it kept him amused for a whole day.
The warders in personal attendance on him were changed daily, he never had the same custodian twice till the governor saw a flaw in the method that allowed a warder with whom he was only slightly acquainted, and of whose integrity he was ignorant, to come into close contact with his prisoner. Particularly did this danger threaten from the new officers who had been drafted to Wandsworth to reinforce the staff, and the governor went to the other extreme, and two trusted men, who had grown old in the service, were chosen for permanent watchdogs.
“You won’t be able to have any more newspapers,” said the governor one morning. “I’ve had orders from headquarters—there have been some suspicious-looking ‘agonies’ in the Megaphone this last day or so.”
“I did not insert them,” said Manfred, smiling.
“No—but you may have read them,” said the governor dryly.
“So I might have,” said the thoughtful Manfred.
“Did you?”
Manfred made no reply.
“I suppose that isn’t a fair question,” said the governor cheerfully; “anyhow, no more papers. You can have books—any books you wish within limits.”
So Manfred was denied the pleasure of reading the little paragraphs that described the movements and doings of the fashionable world. Just then these interested him more than the rest of the newspaper put together. Such news as he secured was of a negative kind and through the governor.
“Am I still mad?” he asked.
“No.”
“Was I born in Brittany—the son of humble parents?”
“No—there’s another theory now.”
“Is my real name still supposed to be Isadore something-or-other?”
“You are now a member of a noble family, disappointed at an early age by a reigning princess,” said the governor impressively.
“How romantic!” said Manfred in hushed tones.
The gravity of his years, that was beyond his years, fell away from him in that time of waiting. He became almost boyish again. He had a never-ending fund of humour that turned even the tremendous issues of his trial into subject-matter of amusement.
Armed with the authority of the Home-Secretary came Luigi Fressini, the youthful director of the Anthropological Institute of Rome.
Manfred agreed to see him and made him as welcome as the circumstances permitted. Fressini was a little impressed with his own importance, and had the professional manner strongly developed. He had a perky way of dropping his head on one side when he made observations, and reminded Manfred of a horse-dealer blessed with a little knowledge, but anxious to discover at all hazards the “points” that fitted in with his preconceived theories.
“I would like to measure your head,” he said.
“I’m afraid I cannot oblige you,” said Manfred coolly; “partly because I object to the annoyance of it, and partly because headmeasuring in anthropology is as much out of date as bloodletting in surgery.”
The director was on his dignity.
“I’m afraid I cannot take lessons in the science—” he began.
“Oh, yes, you can,” said Manfred, “and you’d be a greater man if you did. As it is Antonio de Costa and Felix Hedeman are both beating you on your own ground—that monograph of yours on Cerebral Dynamics was awful nonsense.”
Whereupon Fressini went very red and spluttered and left the cell, afterwards in his indiscretion granting an interview to an evening newspaper, in the course of which he described Manfred as a typical homicide with those peculiarities of parietal development, that are invariably associated with cold-blooded murderers. For publishing what constituted a gross contempt of court, the newspaper was heavily fined, and at the instance of the British Government, Fressini was reprimanded, and eventually superseded by that very De Costa of whom Manfred spoke.
All these happenings formed the comedy of the long wait, and as to the tragedy, there was none.
A week before the trial Manfred, in the course of conversation, expressed a desire for a further supply of books.
“What do you want?” asked the governor, and prepared to take a note.
“Oh, anything,” said Manfred lazily—“travel, biography, science, sport—anything new that’s going.”
“I’ll get you a list,” said the governor, who was not a booky man. “The only travel books I know are those two new things, Three Months in Morocco and Through the Ituri Forest. One of them’s by a new man, Theodore Max—do you know him?”
Manfred shook his head.
“But I’ll try them,” he said.
“Isn’t it about time you started to prepare
