From his cell, Manfred was an interested listener, as day by day the uproar of the demonstration before the gates increased.
He found in the doctor who visited him daily a gentleman of some wit. In a sense, he replaced the governor of Wandsworth as an intellectual companion, for the master of Chelmsford was a reserved man, impregnated with the traditions of the system. To the doctor, Manfred confided his private opinion of the “Rational Faithers.”
“But why on earth have you left them so much money?” asked the surprised medico.
“Because I dislike cranks and narrow, foolish people most intensely,” was the cryptic reply.
“This Sweeney—” he went on.
“How did you hear of Sweeney?” asked the doctor.
“Oh, one hears,” said Manfred carelessly. “Sweeney had an international reputation; besides,” he added, not moving a muscle of his face, “I know about everybody.”
“Me, for instance?” challenged the man of medicine.
“You,” repeated Manfred wisely. “From the day you left Clifton to the day you married the youngest Miss Arbuckle of Chertsey.”
“Good Lord!” gasped the doctor.
“It isn’t surprising, is it,” explained Manfred, “that for quite a long time I have taken an interest in the various staffs of the prisons within reach of London?”
“I suppose it isn’t,” said the other. None the less he was impressed.
Manfred’s life in Chelmsford differed in a very little degree from his life in Wandsworth.
The routine of prison life remained the same: the daily exercises, the punctilious visits of governor, doctor and chaplain.
On one point Manfred was firm. He would receive no spiritual ministrations, he would attend no service. He made his position clear to the scandalized chaplain.
“You do not know to what sect I am attached,” he said, “because I have refused to give any information upon that point. I feel sure you have no desire to proselytise or convert me from my established beliefs.”
“What are your beliefs?” asked the chaplain.
“That,” said Manfred, “is my own most secret knowledge, and which I do not intend sharing with any man.”
“But you cannot die like a heathen,” said the clergyman in horror.
“Point of view is everything,” was the calm rejoinder, “and I am perfectly satisfied with the wholesomeness of my own; in addition to which,” he added, “I am not going to die just yet, and being aware of this, I shrink from accepting from good men the sympathy and thought which I do not deserve.”
To the doctor he was a constant source of wonder, letting fall surprising items of news mysteriously acquired.
“Where he gets his information from, puzzles me, sir,” he confessed to the governor. “The men who are guarding him—”
“Are above suspicion,” said the governor promptly.
“He gets no newspapers?”
“No, only the books he requires. He expressed a desire the other day for Three Months in Morocco, said he had half finished it when he was at Wandsworth, and wanted to read it again to ‘make sure’—so I got it.”
Three days before the date fixed for the execution, the governor had informed Manfred that, despite the presentation of a petition, the Home Secretary saw no reason for advising the remission of the sentence.
“I never expected a reprieve,” he replied without emotion.
He spent much of his time chatting with the two warders. Strict sense of duty forced them to reply in monosyllables, but he interested them keenly with his talk of the strange places of the world. As far as they could, they helped him pass the time, and he appreciated their restricted tightness.
“You are named Perkins,” he said one day.
“Yes,” said the warder.
“And you’re Franklin,” he said to the other, and the man replied in the affirmative. Manfred nodded.
“When I am at liberty,” he said, “I will make you some recompense for your exemplary patience.”
At exercise on the Monday—Tuesday was the fatal day fixed by the High Sheriff—he saw a civilian walking in the yard and recognized him, and on his return to his cell he requested to see the governor.
“I would like to meet Mr. Jessen,” he said when the officer came, and the governor demurred.
“Will you be good enough to refer my request to the Home Secretary by telegraph?” asked Manfred, and the governor promised that he would.
To his surprise, an immediate reply gave the necessary permission.
Jessen stepped into the cell and nodded pleasantly to the man who sat on the edge of the couch.
“I wanted to speak to you, Jessen,” Manfred said, and motioned him to a seat. “I wanted to put the business of Starque right, once and for all.” Jessen smiled.
“That was all right—it was an order signed by the Czar and addressed personally to me—I could do no less than hang him,” he said.
“Yet you may think,” Manfred went on, “that we took you for this work because—”
“I know why I was taken,” said the quiet Jessen. “Starque and François were within the law, condemned by the law, and you strike only at those the law has missed.”
Then Manfred inquired after the Guild, and Jessen brightened.
“The Guild is flourishing,” he said cheerfully. “I am now converting the luggage thieves—you know, the men who haunt railway stations.”
“Into—?” asked the other.
“The real thing—the porters they sometimes impersonate,” said the enthusiast, and added dolefully, “It’s terribly uphill business though, getting characters for the men who want to go straight and have only a ticket of leave to identify them.”
As he rose to go, Manfred shook hands.
“Don’t lose heart,” he said.
“I shall see you again,” said Jessen, and Manfred smiled.
Again, if you grow weary of that repetition “Manfred smiled,” remember that the two words best describe his attitude in those dreadful days in Chelmsford.
There was no trace of flippancy in his treatment of the oppressing situation. His demeanour on the occasions when he met the chaplain was one to which the most sensitive could take no exception, but the firmness was insuperable.
“It is impossible
