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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
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RGL e-Book Cover
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CONVERSATION, in the Warder's Arms at Moorlands had turned on the familiar topic of escape.
"Bah! Don't tell me. Any chap who had friends outside could do a bolt right enough."
The speaker, Sim Witley, propping his long body against the wall, waved his empty tumbler with a contemptuous gesture towards the half dozen prison officers in uniform who were taking their evening glass in the bar.
Fine old John Tarbet, a grizzled principal warder, took up the challenge.
"Do a bolt. Certainly. But, friends or no friends, none have ever been at liberty very long."
Witley laughed sneeringly.
"That's because an escape has never been properly organised from outside. You chaps think yourselves smart because when some poor beggars bolt, blindly as a rabbit, without grub or money or a change of clothes, you manage to run him down. Even then it takes a hundred of you, and half the police in the county to do it. You'd find it jolly different business if the convict who cleared had pals to meet him. You'd never see him again, I'll warrant."
A storm of protest rose, John Tarbet stilled it with a wave of his big, brown hand.
"I don't agree with you, Mr. Witley," he returned with dignity. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It is more than thirty years since any escape has been successful, and our system is infinitely better now than it was in those days. We have telephone and telegraph in every direction. In less than ten minutes after a man has escaped every police-station within twenty miles is warned, and every railway station watched."
"Who'd be fool enough to try the railway?" jeered Witley. The sensible thing would be to have a motor handy. Once aboard the motor and stowed away under the seat or under a rug, and the fellow 'ud be in Tarnmouth and aboard a ship in less than an hour." And Witley laughed again, as if his argument was final.
"All very well, Mr. Witley," broke in Oliver Cleave, smart-looking assistant warder. "But how's the fellow to find the motor? You forget it's only in a fog that a lag gets a chance to run."
"Why, agree to have a car in some particular place whenever it was foggy," retorted Witley. "That's plain to the meanest intelligence."
"And how long do you think it would be before someone smelt a rat if the same car were standing at the same place every foggy day for weeks," said Cleave smartly.
The others grinned. Cleave had plainly scored.
Witley, a queer-tempered fellow, turned rude.
"Not one of you chaps would ever spot it, that I'll swear. I'll bet fifty pounds I can show you blind bats how easy it would be to get a man out of that fine prison of yours."
"I don't suppose any of us have such a sum to risk," said Oliver Cleave, quietly. "In any case, if such a bet become known it would cost both parties dear." He rose to leave, and the others did the same.
Witley's coarse laugh rang out again.
"I stick to my opinion," he cried; and some of these days I'll show you chaps you're not quite so smart as you think yourselves."
THE edict had gone forth that the Walbrook Newtake was to be cleared and put under cultivation. Generations of prison farm bailiffs had shied at the task; but now that the granite had been cleared from all the rest of the prison farm, it was decided that the task must at last be undertaken.
The Newtake was a pasture of about eighteen acres, which sloped steeply towards the Walbrook, and was bounded on one side by the rapid stream, and on the other by a road which curved round the outer edge of the prison farm, and about a mile further on entered the main road between Tarnmouth, the big seaport, and Moorlands.
The surface of the Newtake was almost as much granite as grass. The weather-worn boulders, covered with moss and lichen, varied in size from a few pounds up to a hundred tons or more, and some were buried many feet deep in the peaty soil.
Convicts are not trusted with more tools than necessary. Most of the farm work, even to the tossing of hay, is done by hand. The method employed to clear the granite was to use a few star-class men to break up the big boulders with blasting powder, then to turn on strong gangs, who lugged the ponderous fragments from their deep beds with ropes, and hauled them away on rough sleds.
In spite of its being hard work, the convicts like a job of this kind. When a dozen pull on one rope, it gives unlimited opportunity to talk, and if No. 77 is pulled up he can always excuse himself by saying he was asking 89 not to tread on his toes.
One bright afternoon in early winter, no fewer than eighty men were marched down after dinner to the Walbrook Newtake.
Among the eight warders in charge were Principal Warder Tarbet and Assistant-Warder Oliver Cleave.
The men set steadily to work and all went quietly.
"Very cold, Cleave," remarked Tarbet, as he passed his junior.
"Bitter, sir. It's this north-west wind. The glass is falling fast, and I'm looking for rain before night."
At that moment the hoot of a motor-horn was heard in the distance, and a big green car near came sliding down the opposite hill.
"That Mr. Witley's car," observed Cleave.
Tarbet smiled.
"Were you thinking of his silly talk the other night?"
"I had it in my mind," admitted Cleave.
"I don't think you need worry," replied the other. "This isn't quite the day for a bolt. And anyhow, that's not Mr. Witley in the car. It's his chauffeur."
A menacing cloud rose apace in the north-west, and as it swept across the low sun, a golden dusk fell upon the high tors to the north-west, though to the south the sun was still brilliant.
Cleave saw Grey Tor vanish into the great mass of rolling blue-black vapour. He went up to Tarbet.
"There's a heavy shower coming, sir."
The principal warder glanced in the direction indicated.
"H'm!' looks a bit thick. Get the men in."
The whistles shrilled, and warders hurried to and fro. But the storm was swifter. A blast of bitter wind swept across the open moorland, and next instant a gust of stinging sleet crackled on granite walls and warders' capes.
Tweet! Tweet! went the whistles, and then a deeper, longer toot-hoot as the green car came storming back up the road in the teeth of the storm.
And at the sound there was a sudden commotion among the gathering ranks of the convicts, and a burly fellow in the ugly, arrow-marked drab, sprang from among them, knocking a man spinning as he went, and tore straight across the broken ground in the direction of the wall.
Two shots in the air, then one at the runaway. That is the law of the prison. But the nearest warder, a long Irishman named Flynn, flung his carbine to his shoulder and blazed straight at the fugitive.
He missed. Small wonder, for the man was already a mere blur in the fierce rush of the swirling sleet. More shots rang out, but to no effect. The buckshot in the warders' carbines has so little powder behind it that it won't do more than sting a man at over fifty yards.
Cleave, away gathering men near the brook, heard the shots, knew what had happened, and yelling to Milton, the nearest warder, to mind his men plunged through the water and dashed away—not towards the road, but northwards in the very face of the storm.
IN the Newtake the wild confusion which had followed the escape was quelled in a moment. Warders with levelled rifles closed round the excited gangs. The men were driven together, and in rapidly formed files were marched off to the prison.
The chase was left to the mounted guards.
"Where's Cleave?" cried Tarbet, sharply.
"Gone in chase, sir," answered Milton.
Tarbet said nothing, but the grim contraction of his lips augured ill for the disobedient warder. Prison discipline is that of the army. A subordinate may not take anything upon himself without orders.
In a very few minutes the gangs came trampling over the streaming gravel through the great stone portals of the prison. Already the prison had been warned by telephone. Stern old Colonel Peyton was at the gate. Even Tarbet quailed before the autocratic governor of Moorlands.
"Who is missing?" was the first question.
"Jabez Carne, I believe, sir." The fine old warder hardly dared meet the governor's eyes. He was bitterly ashamed that a man under his charge should have escaped.
"You believe! Call the roll."
The roll was called. Sure enough it was Carne who failed to answer. Carne, a typical Bill Sykes, in for ten years for half murdering an old man whom he had robbed of his savings.
"Nice sort of fellow to have loose on an inoffensive countryside," remarked the colonel bitterly. "Where's he gone?"
"A motor came up the road. He ran for it, sir,"
"A motor! Did he get into it?"
"No one knows, sir. The sleet was too thick to see."
Suddenly one of the junior warders, Milton, the same man whom Cleave had last called to, spoke up.
"Sir!" he cried, in a voice of utter amazement, "There's no one missing. The numbers are right!"
Colonel Peyton and Tarbet both started, and the colonel swung round on Milton.
"What d'ye mean? Are you crazy. Isn't Carne gone?"
"Yes, sir—no, sir—I don't know, sir!" said Milton, helplessly. "The numbers are right. I've counted them twice. Eighty-two we took out after dinner. Eighty-two there are now!"
"This is sheer lunacy!" muttered the colonel. "You, Tarbet, count them again."
Tarbet, frowning, obeyed. He marched down the line of drab-clad men drawn up in the shelter of the arches, counting as he went. The convicts, aware something was up, exchanged sly glances.
He came to the end. "Eighty-two," he muttered in blank amazement.
Suddenly a man sprang out of the ranks and ran towards the colonel, in a twinkling Milton and another warder had him tight.
"Let me go!" he cried, in a high, cracked voice. "I want to speak to the governor!"
"Bring him up here!" ordered the colonel, sharply.
"Why do you want to speak to me? Do you know anything about this?" demanded the colonel. Then, changing his tone suddenly:
"Hallo, who are you? I don't know your face."
The man, a tall, thin fellow, whose face was degrees whiter than his sun-tanned mined fellows, stammered helplessly.
"Who is he," demanded the colonel, impatiently of Tarbet.
The principal warder stared at the man.
"I don't know, sir," he said at last, in a dazed voice. "I never saw him before."
"Y-you did!" almost screamed the man. "You k-know me, Mr. Tarbet. I'm Witley!"
"Witley!" muttered Tarbet helplessly.
"Yes, Witley—Simeon Witley. You remember what I said about a chap being able to escape?"
Tarbet nodded. He was almost beyond words.
"I thought I'd show you. I dressed up as a convict. I hid in a boulder hole while the men were at dinner, and then worked with them. It was my car that came. I meant to run for it, but another convict knocked me down and went off instead."
The colonel had taken in every word, his face set like stone.
"Take these men to their cells," he ordered. "You, Tarbet, bring this person"—indicating Witley—"to my office."
"B-but you'll let me go!" implored Witley, in a shaking fright. "It w-was only a joke!"
"You'll find it a pretty serious one," returned the colonel icily.
Witley, beside himself with fright, actually tried to break away from Tarbet. But the old warder's grip was iron. The long, slim, dissipated youth was a child in his arms.
"Best not try that game, Mr. Witley. One's enough in a day," he remarked quietly.
Suddenly came the sound of feet behind them. The colonel turned.
"By Jove, they've got him!" he exclaimed, in tones of deep relief.
Tarbet, still clutching Witley tightly, looked back. Here came Cleave and one of the mounted guard. Between them Jabez Carne, capless, dripping, covered with mud, and looking much the worse for wear.
"Then he didn't get to the motor!" cried the colonel.
"He did, sir," returned the civil guard, saluting.
"Then how in the name of goodness did you catch him?"
"Cleave did it, sir."
Colonel Peyton turned quickly to Cleave.
"It was quite simple, sir. I knew the motor would have to go all round the farm to get to the main road. I cut across. There was a cart and horse handy in the top field. I drove it out and turned it across the road. That stopped the car right enough."
The governor's eyes gleamed.
"Simple enough. Yet you seem to have been the only man with wits enough to think of it. I congratulate you, Cleave. You shan't lose by this."
Cleave's tanned cheeks burnt dusky red. Praise from the colonel was praise indeed.
Suddenly he caught sight of Witley, and uttered a sharp exclamation.
"Cleave, you know who I am—speak for me!" cried Witley piteously.
A ghost of a smile flitted across the colonel's stern face.
"Come to me later," he said, "at six, Cleave. Meanwhile, take Carne to his cell. And Tarbet, I'll leave Mr. Witley in your charge for the present. Don't let him escape, and bring him to my office at six."
IT was Oliver Cleave who told the whole story. "If that man had got off, Mr. Witley," said the colonel, when Cleave had finished, "nothing could have saved you from a sentence of two years for aiding and abetting. As it is, I'm inclined to stretch a point. I think you've had your lesson."
"I have, sir!" cried Witley fervently.
"Very well, you may go."
With a word of heartfelt thanks, Witley vanished.
"Do him all the good in the world, Cleave," said old Tarbet, as the two warders went off to their quarters for supper. "He'll straighten up now."
"I hope he will," said Cleave.
Tarbet proved a true prophet. The shock cured Witley. He gave up loafing in bar-rooms and took to managing his clay-pits. He is now a respected member of Moorlands society, and Cleave and he are excellent friends.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.