IT WAS A STRANGE NIGHT, much given over to restlessness and rumors about Dick Mulrone. Rumors that he’d nubbed himself to cheat Mr. Jones; rumors that he’d been reprieved and was dead drunk on that score; rumors that he’d changed clothes with a visitor and gone out as the Duchess of Newcastle; rumors that twenty of his roistering friends had broke in, armed with pistols, muskets and poniards, to whisk him back to the freedom of Hounslow Heath where coaches lumbered in their dozens, overripe for the plucking . . .
Then, between midnight and dawn, the easy voice of Mr. Jones, the hangman, put a stop to it all:
“On the last day of counting
My true love sent to me:
Twelve jurors juggling,
Eleven clerks a-counting
Ten friends a-failing,
Nine dead men . . .
Eight widows weeping,
Seven judges judging,
Six drummers drumming,
Five yards of rope . . .
Four sextons digging,
Three parsons praying,
Two horses drawing—
And a felon in an elm tree.”
“That’s my boy!” mumbled the old man—and leaned over to dig his companion in the ribs. But Smith had at last gone to sleep, so the old man desisted and rocked himself to and fro, humming the tune of the Tyburn Carol as softly as a lullaby, and gently clinking his fetters in time, so that the tune and the jingling might have sounded like Christmas harness in a dreaming ear.
At a quarter to six—or thereabouts—the old man shook Smith and bade him be gone.
The Stone Hall was dark and quiet, still—as a consequence of the disturbed night. Probably no one was awake save the old man and the furtive boy.
“Up on me back!” breathed the old man and knelt so’s Smith might mount on that bony eminence to reach the grating.
“What if it ain’t unlocked?” whispered Smith, full of last minute dreads and alarms.
“It’s been done?”
“When?”
“While you slept. I heard. I saw. Come, now—up! Up! Up!”
Smith paused. “D’you think you could come too?”
“Don’t want to. This is me home. Got company.”
Smith nodded. He shook the old man’s hand.
“I’ll not be seeing you more—”
“I hopes not! Up you go!”
Smith hoisted himself onto the old man’s back, which was as hard and steady as a rock.
“Hope you gets a gentleman for the fireplace what suits—”
“That’s my affair!”
“No offense—”
“None took. In you go, you scabby little sparrow!”
Smith had opened the grating. The air within was thick and damp and laden with evil smells. For a moment he thought the vent was too narrow even for him. Then he pushed with his feet against the old man’s back and felt, first his shoulders, then his arms, elbows and hips scrape the rough stone walls.
“You’re in!” he heard the old man whisper. “Best of luck—and watch out for—”
Smith never heard what he was to watch out for, as all sound behind him was lost in the eerie sighing of the prison’s secret lungs.
This sighing was as regular as breathing itself—and a thousand times more foul for, high up on the roof, the windmill was motionless, under a muffling blockage of snow.
A hundred and fifty feet of rough, uncanny darkness, divided into three steep channels, lay between Smith and the last great shaft. At the juncture of each of these channels, once jagged but now smooth and somewhat slippery apertures were let in; these led to other parts of the jail and furnished Smith with foot- and fingerholds to heave himself round each sharp bend and continue his upward burrowing. That he was moving upward, he knew chiefly by the direction of his own sweat which ran continually into his eyes . . . not that those organs were of much use, for the darkness was formidable and absolute.
“So what was I to watch out for?” he muttered, ironically. “Black rats? Black cats?”
The sound of his own voice cheered him . . . and henceforward he mocked his trembling spirits aloud: with a curious effect of which he had no knowledge. His mumbling, muttering tones traveled weirdly through devious passages and stony veins till they were wafted into the deepest and most dreadful parts of the jail.
A man in the Press-Room—on whom were weights past bearing—heard faintly:
“Come on, now, me boy! Give in? Not you, me sweeting! What’s a bruised belly between friends? On with you! Up with you—to the waiting heavens!”
But other jailbirds in their remote cages heard, maybe, nothing so apt and heartening. Curses and abuse of the prison’s scope and architecture came out of the various gratings—as if Newgate were alive to its own wretchedness and was at last complaining aloud. Then (in the King’s Bench Ward), “Be off with you! You fat, wicked ’orror! What are you waiting for? Dinner? Be off or I’ll bite your ’orrible ’ead off!”
Smith and a rat. He’d met it by a nest of vents, its eyes gleaming in some vague, wandering light. It had come from a deeper channel and now stopped, amazed to watch what it took to be a grand relation, passing bulkily by.
“Upways, downways, in me lady’s chamber! Which way now? Lost! ‘Up,’ he said. But which way’s up? Where’s the sky? Which of these dismal ways is the one to ’eaven? Come, me old friend! Try this fair stinker! Feet first—as they says in the trade!”
This, heard in My Lady’s Hold, caused much terror and consternation; but farther on the wandering voice (believed by some to be that of a stoned-up ghost) was not so gay. It complained horribly of bruises and swellings got from scrapes and pressures against the ragged, bulging walls. It complained of having taken a wrong turn and finding itself, baffled and helpless, staring through bars into a cage more desolate than the one that had been left. It seemed to be losing heart under the strain of an intolerable journey. So miserable did the voice become at this point, that those who heard it were moved almost to tears by a plight they had no notion of, and whispered: “Whatever you are—wherever you are—for God’s sake cheer up—and the best of luck!”
Maybe this had reached its mark? At all events, nothing more was heard of the traveling voice, and the iron-barred vents were as silent as the grave.
What had happened? Smith had come into the last great shaft: the broad-ribbed, secret gullet that led to the windmill and the sky.
Bruised and much fouled from his journeying, he crouched in the last bend and stared triumphantly up. Fifteen feet above him hung the motionless vanes of the windmill, folded in snow. Beyond was the sky: gray and weighty and still dispensing its flakes which flickered down and down and down—even kissing Smith’s upturned face.
A tremendous moment. Not even the Dean of St. Paul’s had as fine a view to heaven, nor a more heartfelt gaze at the sky. Smith began to climb . . .
He stopped. There was an oddness about the lip of the shaft. A ragged irregularity, which seemed to be growing subtly. Two swellings . . .
A sudden gust of wind whipped a veil of snow across his vision; then it was gone and the two swellings were most marked.
What were they? Heads. Two men. A pair of hands reached down. Fingers twitched and beckoned . . .
In the sudden and terrible agony of his betrayal, Smith screamed aloud! Looking down upon him, waiting for him, grinning at him, were the two men in brown!
There came a second gust of wind, which performed a curious office. Or it might have been the effect of the amazed and horrified child’s scream . . . for sudden noises of a certain pitch sometimes have the power of a giant’s hand.
A quantity of snow shook and fell from the mechanism of the windmill, which now began to turn and draw up the air into the shaft, thus setting into motion all the stagnant, thick and heavy vapors that lay in the deep, stone veins of the jail. Up they came, blundering into the churning mill.
But this was not all. A second, more fearful circumstance attended. An uproar—as if the lid of Hell itself had been lifted—filled the shaft and shrieked and jabbered to the sky!
Together with the air, there had been sucked up from the gratings—through every portage and vent—the furious and savage voices of the jail’s inhabitants. Groans from the Press-Room, curses from the Stone Hall, hard, high laughter from the Master Debtors, and shrieks and wild whisperings from holds and wards and cells unknown—all mingled together in a chorus of truly monstrous scope and dimensions.
Fearfully, the men in brown stared at one another. Then they recalled their purpose. They looked down and added their own curses to the dreadful torrent. The boy was gone!
Smith, choked, deafened and despairing, had let go his hold. Eight feet he’d thumped to the bottom of the shaft. Then, his force not spent, he’d slipped, squealing, down a hole of formidable steepness—a vent that led, God knew where!
Had Smith been brought up to the Church, he’d have had a prayer off pat—for he traveled at speed on what he was sure was his last journey. (But, if he’d been brought up to the Church, he’d most likely not have been falling down a ventilator in Newgate Jail!)
“Gawd!” he panted. “Watch out—for ’ere comes Smith!”
Then—from some seven feet above the floor, between the pulpit and the open pews of the prison chapel—shot out a dusty, dirty bundle of commotion that howled as it fell, picked itself up—and bolted directly for the door.
Smith was back in jail.
The chapel was empty; but outside its door was a regular hubbub. The last sermon had just been preached over Dick Mulrone. He was on his way to the hangman’s cart. All of his friends, all of his admirers, all of his well-wishers had come to watch him—and now crowded the passages for a last pat on the back and a last sad wave.
The crowd was tremendous—more than enough to engulf the scurrying Smith. On all fours, he went among skirts and legs that were like a trampling forest.
“Got to get out! Got to get out!” he muttered—and butted and bit his way along. He came to a corner at the head of some stairs and was momentarily free—
“Smut!” shrieked a voice. “It’s Smut!”
His sisters! Come to attend his trial; but had been first dragged by Lord Tom to see the last of the hero of Hounslow Heath. (“Give him a good send-off, m’dears. He’d have done as much for me.”)
“Got to get out!” panted Smith, still on his hands and knees and glaring up at his family as though he was their faithful mongrel hound.
“Oh, Smut!” cried Miss Fanny. “You’ll be took and ironed for this!”
“Quick!” whispered Miss Bridget, handsome in her Tuesday best. “Under my skirt, child! Pop underneath—and not a sound!”
Miss Bridget tipped her great hoop so’s her skirt rose like a monstrous black bell about to chime against the strongly pantalooned clappers which were her legs. Smith looked briefly at his elder sister—and grinned. He darted forward and Miss Bridget dropped her skirts.
So began Smith’s escape from Newgate Jail, not at all as he’d dreamed—nor certainly as had been planned for him—but rather a quiet, muffled exit through the great gate itself.
True, there were alarms on the way, and some discomforts. Smith found it hard to keep out of the way of Miss Bridget’s feet—else she found it hard to prevent herself booting her felonious brother as if for his sins.
Miss Fanny also gave cause for alarm by asking aloud if “little Smut was all right in his flannel nest?” till Miss Bridget was heard to declare aloud: “You are a foolish cow, Fan! Hold your tongue, for pity’s sake!”
Then Lord Tom joined them (Smith would have known those sturdy feet anywhere) and Miss Fanny couldn’t resist whispering: “We’ve got him safe and sound! You’ll never guess where, Lord Tom! Not in a thousand years!”
But it seemed Miss Fanny ogled and stared and giggled so much at her sister’s heaving skirt that Lord Tom guessed directly, but had the good sense to hold his peace and bid Miss Fanny to do likewise.
Then, at last, they were outside and beginning to walk away.
“Look! Look!” shrieked Miss Fanny, suddenly. “Oh, Brid! Look!”
She pointed. Miss Bridget paled. Lord Tom looked alarmed.
In the thick snow behind Miss Bridget were not only her own footprints, but the unmistakable hop and scamper marks of an extra pair of feet!
“We’ll walk behind you, Brid,” said Miss Fanny; and for the rest of that extraordinary journey, Miss Bridget had two of the most particular and devoted followers a lady could have wished for. They followed in all of her four footprints with a caution and respect most exemplary!
By the time they got to Turnmill Street it was hard on ten o’clock.
“Home, child!” whispered Miss Bridget—and raised her skirt a trifle to step across the familiar door of the Red Lion Tavern.
As she did so, there was a faint shouting and roaring that seemed to be coming from a long way off.
“What was that, Lord Tom?”
The highwayman sighed. “From Tyburn, m’dear. They’ve just nubbed grand Dick Mulrone! I’m the only one left, Fanny. When will it be my turn?”