“And did you kill anybody?” asked Paul.
“Unworthy that I am, I smote the Philistine; in the name of the Lord of hosts, I struck off his head. It was for a sign in Israel. And now I am gone into captivity, and the mirth is turned into weeping, but the Lord shall deliver me in His appointed time. Woe unto the Philistine in that day! woe unto the uncircumcised! It were better that a stone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depths of the sea.”
The warder rang his bell. “Inside, you two!” he shouted.
“Any complaint?” asked the Governor on his rounds.
“Yes, sir,” said Paul.
The Governor looked at him intently. “Are you the man I put under special treatment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then it’s ridiculous to complain. What is it?”
“I have reason to believe that the man I have to take exercise with is a dangerous lunatic.”
“Complaints by one prisoner about another can only be considered when substantiated by the evidence of a warder or of two other prisoners,” said the Chief Warder.
“Quite right,” said the Governor. “I never heard a more ridiculous complaint. All crime is a form of insanity. I myself chose the prisoner with whom you exercise. I chose him for his peculiar suitability. Let me hear no more on this subject, please.”
That afternoon Paul spent another disquieting half hour on the square.
“I’ve had another vision,” said the mystical homicide. “But I don’t yet know quite what it portends. No doubt I shall be told.”
“Was it a very beautiful vision?” asked Paul.
“No words can describe the splendour of it. It was all crimson and wet like blood. I saw the whole prison as if it were carved of ruby, hard and glittering, and the warders and the prisoners creeping in and out like little red ladybirds. And then as I watched all the ruby became soft and wet, like a great sponge soaked in wine, and it was dripping and melting into a great lake of scarlet. Then I woke up. I don’t know the meaning of it yet, but I feel that the hand of the Lord is hanging over this prison. D’you ever feel like that, as though it were built in the jaws of a beast? I sometimes dream of a great red tunnel like the throat of a beast and men running down it, sometimes one by one and sometimes in great crowds, running down the throat of the beast, and the breath of the beast is like the blast of a furnace. D’you ever feel like that?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Paul. “Have they given you an interesting library book?”
“Lady Almina’s Secret,” said the lion of the Lord’s elect. “Pretty soft stuff, old-fashioned too. But I keep reading the Bible. There’s a lot of killing in that.”
“Dear me, you seem to think about killing a great deal.”
“I do. It’s my mission, you see,” said the big man simply.
Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery felt very much like Solomon at ten o’clock every morning of the week except Sunday. It was then that he sat in judgment upon the cases of misconduct among the prisoners that were brought to his notice. From this chair Colonel MacAdder had delivered sentence in undeviating accordance with the spirit and the letter of the Standing Orders Concerning the Government of His Majesty’s Prisons, dispensing automatic justice like a slot machine: in went the offence; out came the punishment. Not so Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery. Never, he felt, was his mind more alert or resourceful or his vast accumulation of knowledge more available than at his little court of summary justice. “No one knows what to expect,” complained warders and prisoners alike.
“Justice,” said Sir Wilfred, “is the capacity for regarding each case as an entirely new problem.” After a few months of his administration, Sir Wilfred was able to point with some pride to a marked diminution in the number of cases brought before him.
One morning, soon after Paul began on his special regime of reclamation, his companion was called up before the Governor.
“God bless my soul!” said Sir Wilfred, “that’s the man I put on special treatment. What is he here for?”
“I was on night duty last night between the hours of 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.,” testified the warder in a singsong voice, “when my attention was attracted by sounds of agitation coming from the prisoner’s cell. Upon going to the observation hole I observed the prisoner pacing up and down his cell in a state of high excitement. In one hand he held his Bible, and in the other a piece of wood which he had broken from his stool. His eyes were staring; he was breathing heavily, and at times muttering verses of the Bible. I remonstrated with the prisoner when he addressed me in terms prejudicial to good discipline.”
“What are the words complained of?” asked the Chief Warder.
“He called me a Moabite, an abomination of Moab, a wash-pot, an unclean thing, an uncircumcised Moabite, an idolater, and a whore of Babylon, sir.”
“I see. What do you advise, officer?”
“A clear case of insubordination, sir,” said the Chief Warder. “Try him on No. 1 diet for a bit.”
But when he asked the Chief Warder’s opinion, Sir Wilfred was not really seeking advice. He liked to emphasize in his own mind, and perhaps that of the prisoners, the difference between the official view and his own.
“What would you say was the most significant part of the evidence?” he asked.
The Chief Warder considered. “I think whore of Babylon, on the whole, sir.”
Sir Wilfred smiled as a conjurer may who has forced the right card.
“Now I,” he said, “am of a different opinion. It may surprise you, but I should say that the significant thing about this case was
