He bowed respectfully and was gone.
* * * * *
“Clever talker, that fellow,” commented the secretary of the commission, breaking the silence. “He almost had me believing him. Who is he, Blalock? You had him summoned, I believe.”
The physician nodded.
“I confess it was as much from personal interest in the man as from any hope that he might give valuable evidence here,” he said. “He surprised me with his outburst. He is a clever talker. Ellis is his name--Martin Ellis--and he comes of a splendid and well-to-do family. University graduate and quite capable of having carved out a wonderful career. But he was idolized at home and given more money than was good for him. It made him an idler and a young ne’er-do-well. But whatever he did he did openly, and I never heard of anything seriously wrong until he was convicted of the crime which brought him here.”
“Murder, I suppose?” Stevenson, the chairman, was interested in spite of himself. “He spoke of being in for life.”
“Yes; killing a girl. Agnes Keller was her name. Poor, but well thought of. Church worker, member of the choir and so on. It was brought out at the trial--in fact, Ellis told it himself--that he was infatuated with her and they were together a great deal. Not openly, of course, because old man Ellis, his father, would have pawed up the earth. The affair ended like all these clandestine affairs, specially if the girl is young and pretty and poor. It was the theory of the prosecution that when she discovered her condition she became frantic and demanded that Ellis marry her, the alternative being that she would go to his father with the story. It was charged that he killed her to avoid making a choice. The evidence against him was purely circumstantial, but the jury held it was conclusive.
“Ellis admitted on the stand that they often went riding in his motor-car at night. One damning fact against him was that he was seen driving, alone and rapidly, along the country lane near where her body was found. He had nothing to back up his claim that he felt ill and went for a drive in an effort to relieve a sick headache. Of course he denied absolutely that he was responsible for her condition, or that he even knew of it, but the jury was out less than an hour. The only hitch, I learned later, was whether to affix the death penalty or not.”
“He said you were a witness against him. What part did you play?” asked Stevenson.
“An unwilling one,” answered Blalock, quickly. “I did not believe that Ellis was guilty then. I am not convinced of it now. But as the girl’s physician, and presumably one of those to whom she would go in her trouble, I was questioned as soon as the coroner had held an autopsy. I admitted that she had confided in me and that I had agreed that the man responsible should marry her. She did not tell me his name, but my evidence added weight to the theory that Ellis killed her to avoid marrying her.”
The door to the room swung open and the warden stood on the threshold.
“May I come in?” he asked. “Dinner is almost ready and I thought I had better give you warning.”
He crossed to an empty chair and sat down.
“We concluded the taking of evidence quite a little while ago,” said the chairman. “Since then Dr. Blalock has been entertaining us with the story of the crime of that fellow Martin Ellis who was one of the witnesses. Quite unusual.”
“Yes, the sheriff who brought him here told me all about it,” answered the warden. “He’s hard to handle. Had trouble with one of the guards a while back and we had to discipline him.”
“Two days in the solitary cell on bread and water, wasn’t it?” asked Blalock. “He didn’t have any good words for it.”
The warden flushed.
“Few of those who taste of it do,” he admitted. “Too much a matter of being left alone with your thoughts and your conscience. They’ll punish you as much as anything can do. Well, suppose you take an adjournment and come on to dinner? Will you want to make the regular inspection tour of the prison?”
“Oh, sure,” yawned the chairman. “Undoubtedly, everything is all right, as usual, but if we omitted it the newspapers would have something to howl about.”
He rose, and, with the rest of the commission trailing them, followed the warden to the dining-room.
“Well, let’s make the inspection and have it over with,” Stevenson suggested, when the meal was finished. “Where do we go first, warden?”
“Through the shops and smaller buildings first, then the cells. That way you’ll end up closest to the administration building and you can go back into conference with the least delay.”
Uniformed guards stood smartly at attention as the warden piloted the commission through. “Trusties” ingratiatingly hovered about the party, eager to be of service. Great steel-barred doors swung open at the approach of the commission and clanged to noisily behind it. The afternoon sunlight, slanting through the bars, relieved the somberness of the cell blocks and revealed them in their spick-and-spanness, made ready for the occasion.
“Well, everything seems to be O. K.,” said the chairman, as the party again drew near to the offices. “Anyone else got any suggestions?”
“Yes, I’d like to see the dark cell,” answered the secretary. “I don’t recall ever visiting it, and that fellow Ellis interested me. He said it was a pocket edition of Hades. Where is it, warden?”
The warden assumed a jocular air.
“You’ll be disappointed,” he warned. “It’s down in the basement, where prisoners who want to do so can yell and scream to their hearts’ content without disturbing anyone. A trifle dark, of course, but if to some it is hell it is because they choose to make it so. If you really want to see it, come ahead. It’s not occupied, however.”
He did not mention that he had seen to that. With all this uproar about the management of the prison, it wasn’t safe to take chances. The commission, he had foreseen, might decide to make a _real_ investigation, and you never could tell in just what condition a man would be after several hours in “solitary.”
* * * * *
“There you are gentlemen?” he said, with a flourish of the hand when a “trusty” had switched on the lights in the basement. “Not _one_ dark cell, but half a dozen.”
He stood back as the members of the commission crowded forward and peered into the dark recesses. Over each doorway a single electric bulb shone weakly, far too weakly for the rays to penetrate into the corners. The solid, bolt-studded doors stood open, formidable and forbidding.
“Any of you want to try it?” asked the warden from the background.
“Sure, let Blalock take a whirl at one of them,” suggested the secretary. “His conscience ought to be clear enough not to trouble him. Go on, doctor; try it and let us know how it feels. I’d do it myself, but I don’t dare risk _my_ conscience.”
Blalock, standing just inside the doorway of one of the cells, turned and for a moment surveyed them in silence.
“Your suggestion, of course, was made in jest,” he said. “But,” a sudden ring came into his voice, “I am going to take you up on it! No,” as a chorus of exclamations came from the others, “my mind is quite made up. Warden, I want this as realistic as possible. You will please provide me with a suit of the regulation convict clothing.”
“Well, of all the blamed fools,” ejaculated the chairman. Then he gave his shoulders a shrug. “Go on and get a zebra suit, warden. I only hope this doesn’t get into the papers.”
A “trusty” was dispatched for the striped suit. When it had been brought Blalock already had removed his outer garments, amid the bantering of the others. He did not deign to answer them until he had buttoned about him the prison jacket and jammed upon his head the little striped cap.
“I guess I’m ready,” he said then. “You gentlemen have seen fit to ridicule the experiment I am about to make. But I say to you that I am doing this in all seriousness. I do not believe that ‘solitary’ is as bad as Ellis pictured it to us. I am going to find out. Warden, you will please see that conditions here are made exactly like those which surround a prisoner in this place.”
He whirled upon his heel and strode into a cell.
“How long do you want to be left in there?” asked the warden. “Fifteen minutes or so?”
“Ellis declared his belief that I could not stand it for an hour or two,” came the reply from the depths of the cell. “Suppose that we make it two hours. At the end of that time you may return and release me. But not a minute before.”
“Very well, Number 9982,” replied the warden. “You now are alone with your conscience.”
The heavy door clanged shut, and a faint _click_ told Blalock that the light above the door had been snapped off. Then the sound of footsteps, growing fainter and fainter, the _clang_ of the door leading to the basement--then silence. Blalock was alone.
Feeling with his hands, he made his way to a corner of the cell and sat down upon the bare, hard floor.
* * * * *
He shut his eyes and set about concentrating his mind upon some subject other than the fact that he was a prisoner, of his own free will to be sure, but a prisoner nevertheless.