“Well, my dear chap, I must leave you. We have been chatting for a whole half-hour, and those ladies are still waiting for me. What on earth will they say to me?”
He was about to ring for the warder when Gurn abruptly stayed him.
“Tell me,” he said with a sudden air of interest, “when is that man coming—what’s his name? Dollon?”
The young barrister was on the point of saying he did not know, when a brilliant recollection came into his mind.
“ ’Gad, how frightfully stupid I am! Why, I have a copy of the telegram he sent the magistrate in my portfolio here now.” He opened the portfolio and picked out a sheet of blue paper. “Here it is.”
Gurn took it from him and read:
“Will leave Verrières tomorrow evening by 7:20 train, arriving Paris 5 a.m. …”
Gurn appeared to be sufficiently edified: at all events he paid no attention to the rest of the message. Lord Beltham’s murderer handed the document back to the barrister without a word.
A few minutes later Maître Roger de Seras had rejoined his lady friends, and the prisoner was once more in his cell.
XXV
An Unexpected Accomplice
Gurn was walking nervously up and down in his cell after this interview, when the door was pushed open and the cheery face of the warder Nibet looked in.
“Evening, Gurn,” he said; “it’s six o’clock, and the restaurant-keeper opposite wants to know if he is to send your dinner in to you.”
“No,” Gurn growled. “I’ll have the prison ordinary.”
“Oh—ho!” said the warder; “funds low, eh? Of course, it’s not for you to despise our dietary, but still, Government beans—” He came further into the cell, ignoring Gurn’s impatient preference for his room to his company, and said in a low tone: “There, take that,” and thrust a banknote into the hand of the dumbfounded prisoner. “And if you want any more, they will be forthcoming,” he added. He made a sign to Gurn to say nothing, and went to the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes: I’ll just go and order a decent dinner for you.”
Gurn felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from him; the cell seemed larger, the prison walls less high; he had an intuition that Lady Beltham was not deserting him. He had never doubted the sincerity of her feelings for him, but he quite realised how a woman in her delicate position might feel embarrassed in trying to intervene in favour of any prisoner, and much more so in the case of the one whom the entire world believed to be the single-handed murderer of her husband. But now Lady Beltham had intervened. She had succeeded in communicating with him through the medium of this warder. And almost certainly she would do much more yet.
The door opened again, and the warder entered, carrying a long rush basket containing several dishes and a bottle of wine.
“Well, Gurn, that’s a more agreeable sort of dinner, eh?”
“Gad, I wanted it after all,” said the murderer with a smile. “It was a good idea of yours, M. Nibet, to insist on my getting my dinner sent in from outside.”
Nibet winked; he appreciated his prisoner’s tact; obviously he was not one to make untimely allusions to the warder’s breach of discipline in conveying money to him so simply, but so very irregularly.
As he ate Gurn chatted with Nibet.
“I suppose it is you who will get Siegenthal’s place?”
“Yes,” said Nibet, sipping the wine Gurn had offered him. “I have asked for the berth no end of times, but it never came; I was always told to wait because the place was not free, and another berth must be found first for Siegenthal, who was my senior. But the old beast would never make any application. However, three days ago, I was sent for to the Ministry, and one of the staff told me that someone in the Embassy, or the Government, or somewhere, was taking an interest in me, and they asked me a lot of questions and I told them all about it. And then, all of a sudden, Siegenthal was promoted to Poissy and I was given his billet here.”
Gurn nodded: he saw light.
“And what about the money?”
“That’s stranger still, but I understood all the same. A lady met me in the street the other night and spoke to me by name. We had a chat there on the pavement, for the street was empty, and she shoved some banknotes in my hand—not just one or two, but a great bunch—, and she told me that she was interested in me—in you—, and that if things turned out as she wished there were plenty more banknotes where those came from.”
While the warder was talking Gurn watched him carefully. The murderer was an experienced reader of character in faces, and he speedily realised that his lady’s choice had fallen on an excellent object. Thick lips, a narrow forehead, and prominent cheekbones suggested a material nature that would hesitate at nothing which would satisfy his carnal appetites, so Gurn decided that further circumlocution was so much waste of time, and that he might safely come to the point. He laid his hand familiarly on the warder’s shoulder.
“I’m getting sick of being here,” he remarked.
“I dare say,” the warder answered uneasily; “but you must be guided by reason; time is going on, and things arrange themselves.”
“They do when you help them,” Gurn said peremptorily; “and you and I are going to help them.”
“That remains to be seen,” said the warder.
“Of course, everything has got to be paid for,” Gurn went on. “One can’t expect a warder to risk his situation merely to help a prisoner to escape.” He smiled as the warder made an exclamation of nervous warning. “Don’t be frightened, Nibet. We’re not going to
