THE JAWS OF DEATH
But the odds had to be taken.
“Ring the bell, Ivan,” Drexel ordered. Ivan did so, and the gates
slowly creaked open upon their frozen hinges. A sentry appeared,
looking more a bear than a man in his huge sheepskin coat.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
“Captain Laroque,” Drexel gruffly returned.
“Come in, captain.”
Drexel drove into the prison yard, more than half expecting the gates
to close behind him with a clang. They did not, but that proved
nothing. The governor would wait till he had him in the prison itself
before he sprang the trap.
In the court the prison van stood ready. But that also proved nothing.
Drexel stepped from his sleigh, his nerves as taut as violin strings,
and crossed to the prison entrance. Suddenly from the blackness
overhead there rushed down a wild tumult of bells. He stood frozen in
his tracks. This was the signal, the alarm! He looked to see every door
burst open and belch out scores of guards.
The next moment his heart beat again. That horrific alarm was only the
chimes of the Fortress Cathedral hymning “Glory to God in Zion,” and
announcing that it was three of the night.
He put his guards in charge of the van, then crossed the court and
entered the governor’s office. Colonel Kavelin, who sat at his desk
smoking a cigarette and making an erasure in a record with a big knife,
stood stiffly up. Drexel glanced keenly into the broad bearded face.
There was a glint to the sharp beady eyes that boded unpleasantness.
Had he telephoned?
“Captain Laroque?” queried the governor.
Drexel put on a formidable look to match his name, one part brutality
to one part swagger.
“At your service, Colonel Kavelin,” he returned, holding himself ready
to make a dash out of the door. “I suppose you know my business. You
had a message from the administrator of prisons?”
“I had two,” growled the governor.
“Two!” Drexel backed nearer the door.
“Yes, two.”
“The second--when did you get it?”
“Five minutes ago.”
“You--you called him up?”
“No. He called me up.”
Drexel caught at hope. “What did he say?”
“He said to tell you, when you had finished, to come back to him.”
Sabatoff!
“The transfer of these prisoners may seem all right to him,” the
governor went on, suddenly flaring into anger. “But to remove them on
the very first day I am in charge, it is an insult--it is casting doubt
on my watchfulness and trustworthiness.”
So that was the meaning of the governor’s black manner! He had been
pricked in his professional pride, and since he dared not vent his
spleen on those above he was venting it on their agent.
“Come, colonel,” said Drexel soothingly. “I understand. I am more sorry
than you that it is necessary for me to be here on this errand. Can I
say more?”
The scowl slowly lifted from the governor’s face. “Pardon me, captain.
I should have remembered that we are both mere order-obeying machines.”
He held out his hand. “We might as well be friends. I’ve heard much of
you, Captain Laroque, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Drexel took the hand. “Thank you, colonel.”
“Though at least they might have notified me sooner,” grumbled the
governor. “The executions are all arranged for--the orders all
given--the men appointed to the work merely waiting for the hour. But
that’s no fault of yours, captain!” He proffered his cigarette case.
“Will you join me?”
“If you please. Thank you. And now I suppose the prisoners are ready?”
“They have merely to be brought from their cells. Will you let me have
the order?”
Drexel handed it forth, and life stood suspended in him while it
underwent the scrutiny of the governor’s sharp eyes. If Sabatoff had
made an error in the form!
But the governor thrust it into a drawer of his desk. “So you only want
four of them?”
“Four, yes. The prisoners known as Borodin, Sonya Varanova, Razoff and
The White One.”
“They trust me with one out of the five; I dare say I should be
satisfied,” said the governor ironically. “The order against the fifth,
of course, still stands. I suppose you will wait here while I bring
them.”
It flashed upon Drexel that if Sonya first saw him in this bright room,
her natural astonishment might be observed and prove the means of their
betrayal. Better that the first meeting should be in her shadowy cell.
“No, I will go with you,” he said.
The governor summoned guards and ordered irons for four and a wheeled
chair for The White One; then armed with a lantern he led the way from
the office. A deeper chill, a more fearsome suspense, settled upon
Drexel as he entered the cold and gloomy corridors whence no voice
could penetrate the outer world--behind whose every door lay some
political dreamer who perhaps would never again look upon the sun.
Through one dark corridor--then another--then another, the governor and
Drexel marched, followed by a guard with manacles and leg-chains, and
another trundling The White One’s chair.
At length the governor paused and thrust a key into a door. “In here is
the old woman,” he said.
They entered. The lantern’s yellow light revealed The White One upon
the straw mattress of an iron cot. She turned her white head and
regarded the invaders with calm questioning.
The governor stepped forward, the guard with the irons beside him.
“Hold out your hands!” he ordered.
“What for?” she asked in her even voice.
“For those,” and he pointed to the heavy manacles in the hands of the
guard.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“None of your questions! Out with your hands!”
She returned his look with the calm defiance of her unbroken spirit. “I
shall give you no aid in leading me to a fate I am ignorant of.”
“You won’t!” roared the governor.
He snatched the manacles from the guard, tore off her coarse blanket
and was reaching for her wrists, when Drexel quickly shouldered in
front of him.
“Wait, colonel. I’ll make her obey!”
He seized the lantern and held it before him, so standing that his body
blocked the governor’s sight of the blanched head on the pillow.
“You hear me--hold out your hands!” he commanded in a voice that would
have been a credit to Captain Laroque himself.
She gazed up at him with her calm defiance; then the lips slowly
parted, and a dazed, marvelling look came into the gray old eyes. Then
her face was as calm as before.
Slowly she stretched out her thin white wrists.
Her legs were not put in chains. They were already sufficiently
shackled by disease. With a show of roughness, but with infinite care,
Drexel lifted the frail figure from the bed and placed it in the chair.
Then he wheeled her into the corridor.
The dungeon of Razoff was next entered. To him, too, Drexel covertly
revealed himself; and a few minutes later, irons on hands and feet, he
was waiting in the corridor beside The White One.
Thus far all had gone with the smoothness of a wish. The governor now
unlocked a third door. “Here are the condemned ones--all together,”
said he.
They entered, followed by the guards. In the days before the Fortress
had become a political prison, this gloomy dungeon had been a casemate,
and the one window through the five feet of solid masonry had been the
embrasure through which had looked forth the muzzle of a great cannon.
Beneath the window, on the bed, her brother’s arm about her, sat Sonya.
Drexel’s heart gave a leap. His feverish gaze saw naught but her.
“Get ready there!” ordered the governor.
From out a shadowy corner sprang a third figure. “You’ve come at last!
I’m ready!”
Drexel’s breath suddenly stopped. His blood seemed all to leave him,
and he seemed to turn to ice.
“I’m ready! Come on!” cried Freeman eagerly.
“Now don’t you be afraid I’ll overlook you,” the governor grimly
reassured him. “But I don’t want you yet.”
“What!” cried Freeman. “Hasn’t the order for my release from prison
come yet?”
“The order that is going to release you from prison and everything
else--yes.”
“But my pardon? My reprieve?” Freeman took a quick step forward and
pointed a finger at Drexel. “Are you sure he hasn’t got it?”
“No. Be quiet, will you!” and the governor gave him a push.
Sonya had been looking at Freeman in questioning surprise. “The order
for your release?” she now asked.
“Oh, we all entertain hope to the last,” he said, and retreated into
his corner.
Drexel took breath and hope into himself. If he kept silent, if he kept
in the shadow, he might go unrecognized by Freeman and there might yet
be a chance. He guessed Freeman’s reason for being here, but he saw the
governor was not a confidant of the plan.
Colonel Kavelin turned to the gray-garbed brother and sister. “You two
are the ones I want.”
“Our execution was set for four,” said Borodin. “Is not our life short
enough, without your stealing an hour from it?”
“I suppose,” said Sonya, “that the gallows grows impatient.”
Many a jailer, less hardened than Colonel Kavelin, finds a perverted
gratification in delaying to give relieving news to a prisoner--there
is a rarely exquisite pleasure in watching the poor thing writhe a
little longer. Colonel Kavelin did not deign to set the brother and
sister right, and Drexel did not dare to, for the statement that they
were to be removed, not executed, would be certain to rouse Freeman’s
deadly suspicion.
“Let’s have those irons,” said the governor to the guard. Then he
looked back at Drexel who had shrunk into the shadow near the door.
“These prisoners are inclined to make trouble, Captain Laroque. To save
time and a row, we’ll just put the irons on them ourselves. I’ll attend
to the man. Women seem your specialty, so I turn her over to you.”
Drexel could but obey. He pushed his cap far down, and praying that the
dusk of the dungeon might be a mask to him against the eyes of Freeman,
he took a set of the irons and moved forward to Sonya. She met him with
a gaze of magnificent wrath and contempt.
“Is it not enough that you should hang us,” she demanded, “without
hanging us in chains?”
“We’ll hang you as we please, my lady,” Drexel roughly responded.
“Spoken like the infamous Captain Laroque!” she flamed back at him.
“That kind of talk will make it all the worse for you,” he growled. He
knelt down, the leg-irons in his hands. “Put out your foot!”
“I will not!”
“Put out your foot, I say!”
“I will never submit to chains!” she cried.
“Don’t waste words on her--use force,” advised the governor, who with
the aid of a guard was practising this expedient on Borodin. “Or wait a
minute, and I will help you.”
“I can manage her,” Drexel quickly returned.
But how he had no idea. Oh, this delay!--with destruction watching from
Freeman’s corner. If she only knew!
Suddenly he thought of something she had taught him one day in
the house in Three Saints’ Court--the telegraph code of political
prisoners, by means of which they speak among themselves by
dot-and-dash raps upon their dungeon walls. Sonya’s back was to
Freeman; the governor was bent over Borodin. He seized one of her
ankles. She did not struggle, but she grew rigid.
“Oh, you brute!” she breathed hotly.
With quick sharp indentations of his thumb Drexel spelled his name
upon her ankle. He felt a start go through her. Again he spelled his
name; then, ordering the guard away and turning his back to Freeman,
he raised his face so that the governor’s light shone full into it. A
quivering tensity told him that she saw and recognized.
“Put out your foot!” he growled once more.
With the wrathful indignation of one who yields to brute force, she
acceded; and a minute later, with the same air of outraged pride, she
yielded her wrists to the manacles. He had a momentary glimpse of her
face. It showed nothing of the hope of life that thrilled her; it
showed nothing of her awed astonishment at his presence. Its control
was perfect.
“Are you ready, captain?” asked the governor.
“All ready, colonel,” said Drexel.
Freeman came out of his corner, and Drexel matched the movement by
slipping toward the door. “Good-bye, comrades,” said the spy, in the
tone of the last and long farewell.
Brother and sister clasped the false hand, then moved toward the door.
Drexel began to breathe again. Another minute and the cell door would
be between him and Freeman.
The spy twitched the governor’s sleeve. “Colonel,” he said in a low,
eager voice, “my pardon will certainly be in your office--”
The governor shook him off with an oath and turned his back upon him.
Then, obeying his instinctive care, he examined first the irons on
Sonya’s ankles then those upon her wrists.
“Well, Captain Laroque,” he remarked with satisfaction, “I guess
they’ll give you no trouble on the journey.”
“Journey?” said Borodin.
“Yes,” said the governor coolly. “Didn’t I tell you you were being
removed to Schlusselburg?”
“Schlusselburg!” exclaimed Borodin.
“Schlusselburg!” exclaimed Freeman, springing forward.
The life went out of Drexel.
“You’re removing them to Schlusselburg?” Freeman demanded fiercely. “By
whose order?”
The governor answered with a curse and with a drive of his fist into
Freeman’s chest. Freeman came back from the blow in a fury.
“You’ll pay for that, Colonel Kavelin!” He turned to Drexel. “You’re
taking them? Who are you?”
He jerked the lantern from the governor and swung it into Drexel’s
white face. He stared. Then his swollen, discoloured countenance
gleamed with triumph.
“This is no Captain Laroque!” his voice rang out. “He is a
revolutionist! And this is no removal of prisoners to Schlusselburg!
It’s a plot to set them free!”
The governor, Borodin and Sonya gazed at Freeman, each amazed in a
different way. Drexel seemed to be whirling downward into abysmal
depths.
“I denounce this as a plot!” Freeman cried on. “And this Captain
Laroque is himself wanted by the police!” His face gleamed into
Drexel’s. “Captain,” he exulted, “I think this puts us even!”
Drexel had not a word.
The governor looked at Drexel with suspicion. “What does this mean,
captain?”
Drexel desperately took his nerves in both his hands and summoned all
his boldness. “I was going to ask you the same question, colonel,” said
he.
“Most noteworthy acting, captain,” put in Freeman sardonically. “But
even such rare acting won’t save you now!”
“I find,” Drexel continued to the governor, in a tone of cool comment,
“that condemned revolutionists frequently lose their nerve at the last
moment and go out of their head.”
“I’m no revolutionist, Colonel Kavelin,” Freeman retorted. “I’m a
secret agent of the political police. I’m the man that laid bare this
whole plot. And with this Captain Laroque, you’ve got them all!”
The governor wavered. Drexel saw it. He gave Freeman a black look--a
Captain Laroque look. “You dog! Be careful, or you’ll go too far!” he
warned.
He turned to the governor. “Colonel,” he said, to recall to the
governor his credentials, “to stop the ravings of this crazed
prisoner you might tell him that you have had two messages from the
administrator of prisons about this matter, in addition to the official
order for the removal.”
“Tricks! Forgery!” said Freeman contemptuously.
“I have found, and doubtless so have you, colonel,” Drexel went on
coolly, “that an unnerved prisoner like this, with the fear of the
gallows upon him, will make any frantic pretense, that he’s a spy,
or what-not, in the hope of thereby gaining a little delay in his
execution. At first, you remember, his pretense was that a reprieve was
coming.”
Drexel’s eyes had never left the governor’s face, that barometer of his
fate; and during his last words he saw it began to glower at Freeman.
“Enough of this fooling, colonel,” said he in his harshest Captain
Laroque voice, giving Freeman his darkest look. “It is not my custom to
waste time on these dogs of prisoners!”
“Nor mine!” said the governor. “I’m too old a bird to be fooled by such
tricks.”
“What! You don’t believe me?” cried Freeman.
“No, I don’t believe you! And be quiet, if you want an unbroken head!”
The governor started out the door. “Come on, Captain Laroque.”
“But, colonel, stop, stop!” Freeman cried with frantic energy. “I tell
you this is a trick--a plot! He’s going to set those prisoners free!
Remember, I give you warning!”
“And I’ve given you warning!” returned the governor wrathfully, and
drove his heavy fist into Freeman’s face. The spy reeled back, then
rushed forward with a wild look of evil in his eyes. “Seize him!” the
governor sharply ordered the guards. They pinioned Freeman in their
arms. “Hold him till we get out of here. I’ll come back and let you out
later.”
They passed out of the dungeon, Drexel last. He glanced back. The
guards were too occupied by their writhing prisoner to notice, but he
caught Freeman’s eyes. He flashed him an instant-long look of triumph.
“Since you claim acquaintance with me,” he said, “I wish you good-bye.”
“Curse you!” grated out Freeman. “And curse that idiot governor! But in
five minutes I’ll be out of here--”
But the closing of the door cut off his sentence in the middle.
The governor led the way, Drexel brought up the rear, pushing The
White One’s chair, and between them Borodin, Razoff and Sonya shuffled
with short, clanking steps. Once The White One turned her head and
gave him an upward look--a look that might have been a warrior angel’s
benediction. And once Sonya stole him back a look--and ah, such a look
as it was!... Fresh spirit flamed into him.
They moved in clanking processional back through dungeon-bordered
corridors--every step a step nearer freedom; and came at last to the
governor’s door.
“I hope there will be no further delay,” said Drexel.
“None at all,” said the governor. “I have the receipt for the prisoners
all ready for your signature. That formality done with and you are
free.”
They entered the office. A man who sat at the governor’s desk turned
them a casual look. Then he slowly rose to his feet and stared.
It was Prince Berloff.