"So many of them become religious on the edge of the drop simply out of funk--nervous collapse and a sort of clutching at a chance in the next world. They often struggle and call out when they"re being pinioned.

It"s impossible to give them any sort of anaesthetic."

"Is that done then? I didn"t know."

"It"s not talked about, of course, sir. It"s quite unofficial and it"s not generally known. But we nearly always give them something if it"s possible, and then they know nothing of what"s happening."

Sims nodded. "The best way," he said sadly, "the lethal chamber would be better still."

There was a momentary silence between the two men. The prison doctor felt instinctively that his distinguished visitor shrank from the ordeal before him and was bracing himself to go through with it. He was unwilling to interrupt such a famous member of his profession. It was an event to meet him, a thing which he would always remember.

Suddenly Sims rose from his chair. "Now, then," he said with a rather wan smile, "take me to the poor fellow."

Dr. Marriott opened the door and made a sign to the waiting warder.

Together the three men went to the end of the pa.s.sage.

Another door was unlocked and they found themselves in a low stone hall, with a roof of heavily barred ground gla.s.s.

There was a door on each side of the place.

"That"s the execution room," said Dr. Marriott in a whisper, pointing to one of the doors. "The other"s the condemned cell. It"s only about ten steps from one to the other. The convict, of course, never knows that. But from the time he leaves his cell to the moment of death is rarely more than forty-five seconds."

The voice of the prison doctor, though very low in key, was not subdued by any note of awe. The machinery of Death had no terrors for him. He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, with an unconscious note of the showman.

The curator of a museum might have shown his treasures thus to an intelligent observer. For a second of time--so strange are the operations of the memory cells--another and far distant scene grew vivid in the mind of Morton Sims.

Once more he was paying his first visit to Rome, and had been driven from his hotel upon the Pincio to the nine o"clock Ma.s.s at St. Peter"s.

A suave guide had accompanied him, and among the curious crowd that thronged the rails, had told in a complacent whisper of this or that Monsignore who said or served the Ma.s.s.

Dr. Marriott went to the door opposite to the one he had pointed out as the death-chamber.

He moved aside a hanging disc of metal on a level with his eyes, and peered through a gla.s.s-covered spy-hole into the condemned cell.

After a scrutiny of some seconds, he slid the disc into its place and rapped softly upon the door. Almost immediately it was opened a foot or so, silently, as the door of a sick-room is opened by one who watches within. There was a whispered confabulation, and a warder came out.

"This gentleman," said the Medical Officer, "as you have already been informed by the Governor, is to have an interview with the convict absolutely alone. You, and the man with you, are to sit just outside the cell and to keep it under continual observation through the gla.s.s.

If you think it necessary you are to enter the cell at once. And at the least gesture of this gentleman you will do so too. But otherwise, Dr.

Morton Sims is to be left alone with the prisoner for an hour. You quite understand?"

"Perfectly, sir."

"You antic.i.p.ate no trouble?--how is he?"

"Quiet as a lamb, sir. There"s no fear of any trouble with him. He"s cheerful and he"s been talking a lot about himself--about his violin playing mostly, and a week he had in Paris. His hands are twitching a bit, but less than usual with them."

"Very well. Jones will remain here and will fetch me at once if I am wanted. Now take Dr. Morton Sims in."

The door was opened. A gust of hot air came from within as Morton Sims hesitated for a moment upon the threshold.

The warm air, indeed, was upon his face, but once again the chill was at his heart. Lean and icy fingers seemed to grope about it.

At the edge of what abysmal precipice, and the end of what sombre perspective of Fate was he standing?

From youth upwards he had travelled the goodly highways of life. He had walked in the clear light, the four winds of heaven had blown upon him.

Sunshine and Tempest, Dawn and Dusk, fair and foul weather had been his portion in common with the rest of the wayfaring world.

But now he had strayed from out the bright and strenuous paths of men.

The brave high-road was far, far away. He had entered a strange and unfamiliar lane. The darkness had deepened. He had come into a marsh of miasmic mist lit up by pale fires that were not of heaven and where dreadful presences thronged the purple gloom.

This was the end of all things. A life of shame closed here--through that door where a living corpse was waiting for him "pent up in murderers" hole."

He felt a kindly and deprecating hand upon his arm.

"You will find it quite ordinary, really, sir. You needn"t hesitate in the very least"--thus the consoling voice of Marriott.

Morton Sims walked into the cell.

Another warder who had been sitting there glided out. The door was closed. The doctor found himself heartily shaking hands with someone whom he did not seem to know.

And here again, as he was to remember exactly two years afterwards, under circ.u.mstances of supreme mental anguish and with a sick recognition of past experience, his sensation was without precedent.

Some one, was it not rather _something_? was shaking him warmly by the hand. A strained voice was greeting him. Yet he felt as if he were sawing at the arm of a great doll, not a live thing in which blood still circulated and systole and diastole still kept the soul co-ordinate and co-incident.

Then that also went. The precipitate of long control was dropped into the clouded vessel of thought and it cleared again. The fantastic imaginings, the natural horror of a kind and sensitive man at being where he was, pa.s.sed away.

The keen scientist stood in the cell now, alert to perform the duty for which he was there.

The room was of a fair size. In one corner was a low bed, with a blanket, sheet and pillow.

In the centre, a deal table stood. A wooden chair, from which the convict had just risen, stood by the table, and upon it were a Bible, some writing materials, and a novel--bound in the dark-green of the prison library--by "Enid and Herbert Toftrees."

Hanc.o.c.k wore a drab prison suit, which was grotesquely ill-fitting. He was of medium height, and about twenty-five years of age. He was fat, with a broad-shouldered corpulence which would have been less noticeable in a man who was some inches taller. His face was ordinarily clean-shaven, but there was now a disfiguring stubble upon it, a three weeks" growth which even the scissors of the prison-barber had not been allowed to correct and which gave him a sordid and disgusting aspect.

The face was fattish, but even the bristling hairs, which squirted out all over the lower part, could not quite disguise a curious suggestion of contour about it. It should have been a pure oval, one would have thought, and in the gas-light, as the head moved, it almost seemed to have that for fugitive instants. It was a contour veiled by a dreadful something that was, but ought not to have been there.

The eyes were grey and had a certain capability of expression. It was now enigmatic and veiled.

The mouth was by far the most real and significant feature of the face.

In all faces, mouths generally are. The murderer"s mouth was small. It was clearly and definitely cut, with an undefinable hint of breeding in it which nothing else about the man seemed to warrant. But despite the approach to beauty which, in another face, it might have had, slyness and egotism lurked in every curve.

... "So that"s how it first began, Doctor. First one with one, then one with another. You know!"

The conversation was in full swing now.

The doll had come to life--or it was not quite a doll yet and some of the life that was ebbing from it still remained.

The voice was low, confidential, horribly "just between you and me."

But it was a pleased voice also, full of an eager and voluble satisfaction,--the last chance of toxic insanity to explain itself!

The lurid swan-song of a conceited and poisoned man.