For ten minutes Gypo lay perfectly still in the cell, after the door
was bolted. He lay on his back. His head and neck were buttressed into
an upright position by a square block of stone that jutted from the
floor, by the wall farthest from the door. His feet were stretched
out, wide apart. One hand lay on his right hip, palm upwards, with the
fingers bent inwards, as if he had fallen asleep clawing something.
The other hand lay across his eyes. He drew very deep breaths at long
intervals. His face was perfectly at peace. It was bruised slightly
around the mouth and on the cheek-bones. Each feature was impassive,
like the features of a carved image. The glossy skin, the humps, the
eyebrows that were like snouts, the thick Ethiopian lips, attained a
majesty during that ten minutes of abnormal rest, a majesty that was
not so apparent while they were in movement, responding to the strange
impulses of his mind.
Gypo rested, exhausted, while he was being condemned to death. It was
a dead rest, like the rest of a child in the womb before birth,
sucking strength all round for the savage struggle with life that will
soon commence. Every organ and tissue and muscle was straining for a
renewal of strength.
When blundering reason flees, instinct, that is fundamental and
unerring, rushes to the defence of life.
At twelve minutes past three, one minute after he had been condemned
to death, Gypo moved. He opened his eyes and closed the right hand
that lay palm upwards on the ground. He clenched the hand rigidly
until the wrist joint snapped with the tension. Then he took the other
hand away from his eyes and dropped it to his bosom. He moved his eyes
around from side to side, slowly, suspiciously, blinking and listening
intently.
The cell was pitch black. Only at one point was there a speck of
light. There was a dim, oblong patch of light hanging slantwise in the
darkness some distance to his left front. That was the aperture near
the top of the door. It did not penetrate the darkness of the cell. It
merely hung there, obscurely and uselessly, like a foolish suggestion.
All round was pitch dark. Gypo shivered.
He was not afraid. No. He did not feel at all in the ordinary sense of
the word. But he was immediately fully conscious, as soon as he moved,
of all that had happened before he had been thrown into the cell.
Still more peculiar, he was quite calm and collected about everything.
The darkness consoled him. He felt at home in it. It concealed him. He
felt immensely big and strong in the darkness. There was nothing in
his immediate neighbourhood but a darksome void that his personality
overpowered. He could bellow and his voice would resound through that
darkness indefinitely. There would be no resistance. There was no
limit to the darkness, no wall, no horizon, no end. He was encompassed
by it, sheathed in it. It wound round and round him. It was an
impenetrable coat of mail, without weight, without thickness,
intangible.
Beyond it somewhere were his enemies. It came between him and them.
Ha!
He gathered himself up with a sudden spring. He got to his hands and
knees. Several joints snapped as he did so. His bruised body had grown
stiff, lying motionless on the stone floor. Just as he lay that way on
his hands and knees, he heard a rattle at the door. Immediately he
threw himself down again and pretended to be asleep. But he fell so
that his eyes were toward the oblong patch of light. He knew what had
rattled. It was the sentry having a look at him. An electric torch was
thrust through the aperture. It rested on him for a moment or two.
Then it was withdrawn.
During the couple of moments that the torch-light had flooded the cell
Gypo’s eyes were busy. They had darted around. Yes. The walls were
hopeless. He knew that of course. He had himself guarded a prisoner in
this same cell, a condemned prisoner whom he and McPhillip and Jem
Linnet, the bookmaker’s clerk, had afterwards brought out in a car. He
knew the whole routine. Perhaps that knowledge was responsible for his
calm, partly responsible. Nothing was uncertain in the near future. In
a few minutes they would come for him. Once in the car it would be
impossible to escape.
All right. His only chance was in the cell. Ha! That was why he was
calm and collected. After all, it was neither the darkness nor his
knowledge of what was destined to happen that made him calm. McPhillip
had at last made a plan. The door . . . the door . . . the door!
“Gypo,” he had said one night in Cassidy’s when he was drunk, “if we
ever get . . . ye know what I mean, Gyp . . . click . . . you
know . . . ye needn’t worry. I can manage that cell easy. Only I’d
need you. I’m too small. Listen.”
“I’ll do it, Frankie,” mumbled Gypo to himself excitedly, as he
crawled along the floor towards the door.
He moved like a bear on his hands and knees, with his head down and
his haunches high in the air. He moved noiselessly until he reached
the door. He felt along the edge of the wall and then drew himself
gradually to his feet. For a moment he toyed with the idea of taking
off his boots, but he could not remember that Frankie had said
anything about that. He decided to leave them on. He reached up with
his hands. He strained them to their full length before he reached the
top of the stone ledge over the door.
Drawing a deep breath he hoisted up his body, using his biceps as
levers. . . . His biceps swelled and knotted and snapped. . . . His
body rose smartly and without apparent effort. In an amazing way he
swung around his legs from the hips and landed his body gently on the
ledge, resting on the right side of his chest and stomach. The stone
ledge was no more than six inches wide. More than half his body rested
on the empty air, as it lay along the ledge. But he was as cool as if
he were standing loosely on the broad, firm earth. He was acting on
the plan he and McPhillip had rehearsed. His body performed the
movements without his mind exercising any control, either of guidance
or of warning, warning against danger that is called fear.
After a slight pause, he leaned his weight on his hands and rolled his
body around in a reckless movement. His legs shot into the air about
two feet. He stood poised on his hands for two seconds, as if he were
going to stand on his head. Then he lowered his right leg. He brought
it up to his hands. Slowly, with snapping gasps, he balanced himself
on the right leg and stood up straight.
He stood straight in the solid darkness for a moment. He breathed
twice rapidly. Then he groped upwards for the roof. He found it about
three inches above his head. He pawed the stones hurriedly, searching.
He couldn’t find what he wanted. It should be there. Mother of Mercy!
He pawed out farther. Nothing yet. Sweat stood out on his forehead,
suddenly, as if his body had been wrung. Savage anger gained control
of him. He bared his lips and distended his eyes. His last hope gone?
Had they taken it away during the last six months? He reached out one
inch farther. Too far.
With a muffled gasp, he hurtled forward from the ledge. His hands
scraped along the roof with a rasping sound. Then, just as they fell
in pursuit of the falling body, the fingers of the right hand closed
on an iron ring. They closed on it like a vice. The shoulder muscles
snapped. Gypo swung across the floor, brought up with a grunt, jerked
and swung back again, suspended from the iron ring by his right hand.
When he steadied himself, he changed hands on the ring and groped
about with his right hand, until he found a hole in the roof about
three inches away from the ring. That was the hole of the trap-door,
through which the wine had been let down into the cellar from the
garden. He gripped the ring with both hands and swung up with his
legs, until they found the far side of the hole. He jammed both feet
against the side of the hole and rested for four seconds, breathing
deeply. His knees were bent upwards.
He reached up into the hole with his right foot. The foot reached the
oaken door that lay across the mouth. It had been fastened with
leather hinges, but these had worn away and they had not been renewed
since the house became deserted. Several inches of earth had collected
on it. Gypo pushed against it and made no impression on this mass of
earth and rubbish that covered it. He took another rest and then
pushed with all his might. He raised it suddenly, with a sucking
sound, about three inches. A mass of dirt and earth fell down with a
swish. It landed on the floor beneath with a showery thud. The noise
terrified Gypo. The sentries outside the door would hear it.
In a furious rage, he kicked with all his might and sent the door
flying away from the hole. A whole load of earth fell with a rush and
a gust of cold night air came with it, with equal rapidity,
ferociously, as if it had been waiting a long time to attack.
In spite of the blinding dirt and the freezing air, Gypo stuck his
legs through the hole immediately and clutched the garden surface with
his heels. Then he let go one hand off the ring and gripped the side
of the hole. He hurt his collar-bone badly as he did so. Now his body
was secure in the hole. He let go the other hand, supporting himself
on the thigh muscles that gripped the sides of the hole until the
second hand and his head came into the hole. Then he scrambled through
on to the garden. He bounded to his feet and hurtled forward on his
face.
Two shots had thundered through the hole as he cleared it. They were
after him. He snorted with fright. For a moment he stood still,
confused by the din of voices and the rushing feet. Then he darted
away headlong through the rubbish towards the house, ten yards away.
His only escape lay that way. He entered the house at a bound, through
a hole in the kitchen wall. He cleared the kitchen in two strides. He
was in the hallway. Flash, flash, bang, bang. Two more shots. His fist
floored a tall man. He rammed a second with his head. He floundered
through the hall. Bang, bang. They whizzed closely past his right
side. He slipped on the flags of the hall as he tried to wheel towards
the right wall. He came to his hands and knees. As he rose again a man
threw himself upon him, firing as he did so, so closely that Gypo
smelt the explosion that flashed blindingly by his ear. Missed again.
They closed, grappling one another’s bodies, with groping, shifting
paws. They tumbled in the doorway. They both rose. Gypo loosed one arm
and struck. The other man collapsed without a sound. Gypo dropped him.
He fell on his back. It was the Dart Flynn.
Gypo grunted, bounded to his feet and wheeled to the right, into the
open air. With a gurgling laugh, he bounded away into the darkness. He
was away, swallowed by the night.