The Arm Chair at the Inn Part 15

"Tell him about it! Why, we nearly fell on his neck, and before he left he had our whole story in his head and a lot of our letters and cards in his clothes. They might be of use, he said, in proving that we had not, by any means, started out to undermine his Supreme Highness's government. But that under fear of death--and he winked meaningly--we had been compelled to take up arms against the most ill.u.s.trious republic of Boccador.

"Nine long, weary months pa.s.sed after this and not another human being crossed our threshold except the head jailer. When we bombarded him with questions about the fellow who had pa.s.sed himself off as the American consul, and who had stolen our letters and had never shown up since--d.a.m.n him!--we had all learned to speak a little Spanish by this time--he pretended not to hear and, his inspection over, locked the door behind him. Pretty soon we fell into the ways of all disheartened prisoners--each man following the bent of his nature. I warded off sickening despair by carving with my pocket-knife--which they let me keep as being too small to do them any harm--little figures out of the beef bones I found in my soup. That's how I came to recognize those in Monsieur Lemois' cabinet. When I was lucky enough to get hold of a knuckle bone with a rounded k.n.o.b at the end, I made a friar with a bald head, the smooth k.n.o.b answering for his pate. Other bones were turned into grotesque figures of men, women, and animals. These I gave to the sentry, who sent them to his children. Often he brought me small pieces of calico and I made dresses and trousers for them. When I got tired of that I trained two fleas--and they were plenty--to play leap-frog up my arm.

"When these little diversions failed to drive dull care away, we pa.s.sed the time cursing the gentleman in the immaculate cotton ducks. He had either lied to us, or was dead, or had been transferred--anyway, he had gone back on us and left us to rot in jail.

"At last we determined to escape.

"We had made that same resolution every day for months and had planned out half a dozen schemes, some of which might have been successful but for two difficulties--the double guard on the outside of the building and the two dogs in the jail-yard. There was now but one chance of success. We would dig a hole in the dirt floor clear under the wall, watch for a stormy night, and make a break for the town and the coast, where we might be able to signal some trading craft and so get away.

"So we started to digging, beginning on the side opposite the door--our utensils being a sharpened bone, my pocket-knife, and a bayonet which had dropped from a sentry's scabbard, and which I managed to pick up on our exercise walk in the court-yard and conceal in the straw on which we slept. This straw too helped hide the dirt. We rammed the wisps up into each end of the pallets, put the excavated earth in the middle with a dusting of loose straw over it, and so hid our work from view. At the end of a month we had a hole under the wall large enough to wriggle in.

I could see the daylight through the loose earth on the other side.

Then we waited for a storm, the rainy season being on and thunder showers frequent. Two, three, four nights went by without a cloud; then it began to pour. We determined to try it just before the guards were changed. This was at 2 A. M. by the church clock. The outgoing sentry would be tired then and the new man not thoroughly awake.

"When the hour came I crawled in head first, worked myself to the end of the tunnel, and, putting out my hands to break away the remaining clods of earth, came b.u.mp up against a piece of heavy board. There I lay trembling. The board could never have rolled down from anywhere, nor could our opening have been detected from the outside.

"Somebody had placed it there on purpose!

"I wriggled back feet foremost, whispered in my companions' ears what I had found, and we all three sat up the rest of the night wondering what the devil it meant. When morning broke, the head jailer came in. I noticed instantly a change in his manner. Instead of a few perfunctory questions, he gave a cursory glance around the cell, his eyes resting on the pile of straw, and turning short on his heel left without a word.

"There was no question now but we were suspected, so we held a council of war and determined to keep quiet--at least for some nights. What was up we didn't know, but at all events it was best to go slow. So we stuffed most of the dirt back in the hole and waited--our ears open to every sound, our teeth chattering. You get pretty nervous in jail--especially when you have about made up your mind that the next hour is your last.

"We didn't wait long.

"That afternoon the bolts were slid back and the head jailer, who had never before appeared at that hour, stood in the doorway.

"I thought right away that it was all over with us; that we were discovered and that we were either to be shot or moved to another cell--I really didn't care which, for instant death could not be much worse than lingering in a South American prison until we were gray-bearded and forgotten.

"The jailer stepped inside, half closed the door, and made this announcement:

"'The American consul is outside and wants to see you.' Then he stepped out, leaving the door open.

"They have a way of coaxing you to escape down in that country and then filling you full of lead. It's justifiable murder when sometimes a trial and conviction might raise unpleasant international questions. We all three looked at each other and instantly decided not to swallow the bait. The American consul dodge had been tried when they wanted to get legal possession of our letters. So it isn't surprising that we didn't believe him. Then, to my astonishment, I caught through the crack of the door a suit of white duck, and the natty young man stepped in.

"'I've been down the coast,' he began as chipper as if he was apologizing for not having called after we had invited him to dinner, 'or I should have been here before. I have a permit from the governor to come as often as I like, or as often as you would be glad to see me. I must tell you, however, that I am pledged to keep faith with the authorities, and it is their confidence in me which has gained me this privilege. I can bring you nothing to eat or drink, no tools or knickknacks or any bodily comforts. I can only bring myself. This I have told his Excellenza, who has his orders, and who understands.' Then he turned to the jailer. 'Get me a stool and I will stay a while with them. You can leave the door open; I will be responsible that none of them attempts to escape.'

"When the jailer was out of hearing, he pa.s.sed around cigarettes, lighted his own, and started in to tell us the news of the day: what was going on in town and country; how the revolution had been put down; how many insurgents had been shot, exiled, or sent to horrible prisons--worse than ours, which, he informed us, was really only a sort of police station and unsafe except for the dogs and the guards, who were picked men and who had never been known to neglect their duty. Only the year before five men had attempted to dig their way out and had been shot as they were climbing the outside wall--rather dispiriting talk for us, to say the least, but it was talk, and that was what we hungered for, especially as his spirits never flagged.

"All this was more or less entertaining, and he would have had our entire confidence but for two things which followed, and which we could not understand. One was that he always chose rainy or stormy nights for his subsequent visits, dropping in on us at all hours, when we least expected him; and the other that he never referred to what was being done for our release. That he would not discuss.

"By and by we began to grow uneasy and suspect him. One of the men insisted that he was too d.a.m.ned polite to be honest, and that the American consul yarn was a put-up job. Anyway, he was getting tired of it all. It would take him but half an hour to dig the loose earth out of the tunnel, and he was going to begin right away if he went at it alone.

"We at once fell to, working like beavers, digging with everything we had--our fingers bleeding--until we had cleaned out the dirt to the plank. Then we crawled back and waited for the consul's customary visit.

After that was over--no matter how long it lasted--we'd make the dash.

"He came on the minute; and this time, to our intense disgust, brought his guitar--said he thought we might like a little music--and without so much as by-your-leave opened up with negro melodies and native songs, the instrument resting in the hollow of his knee, one leg crooked over the other, a cigarette stuck tight to his lower lip.

"Hour after hour went by and still he sang on--French, German, Italian--anything and everything--rolling out the songs as if we had been so many cla.s.smates at a college supper. Charming, of course, had we not had a hole behind us and freedom within sight.

"Hints, yawns, even blunt proposals to let us go to bed, had no effect.

Further than these we dared not go. We were afraid to turn him out bodily lest we should be suspected of trying to get rid of him for a purpose. To have let him into the secret was also out of the question.

Better wait until he was gone.

"Would you believe it, he never left until broad daybreak, his confounded irritating cheerfulness keeping up to the last, even to his tossing his fingers to us in good-by, quite as he might have done to his sweetheart.

"At eight o'clock on that same morning, not more than two hours after he had left, there came a bang at the door with a sword-hilt, the bolts were drawn, and we were marched into the court-yard between five soldiers in command of a sergeant. Then came the orders to fall in, and we were pushed into the same room where, nearly a year before, we had been examined by the ruffian in shoulder-straps and sent back to our cell.

"And here I must say that, for the first time since our capture, I lost all hope. Five men for three of us, and two of the cartridges blank!

"The squad closed in and we were lined up in front of a table before another black-haired, greasy, villanous-looking reptile who read the death-warrant, as near as I could make out--he spoke so fast. Then he rose from his seat, bowed stiffly, and left the room. Next the sergeant saluted us, ordered his men to fall in, and left the room. Then the jailer stepped forward, shook our hands all around, and left the room.

"We were free!

"Outside, in the broad glare of the scorching sun, his boyish face in a broad grin, stood the consul, looking as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox.

"'I am sorry you found me such a bore last night,' he said, gay and debonair as an old beau at a wedding, 'but there was nothing else to do.

If I'd gone home earlier and let you crawl out of that hole, you would have been shot to a dead certainty. I knew a month ago you were at work on it, and when it was nearly finished I got permission to drop in on you. The plank that you ran up against I had put there with the help of the jailer. It was meant to keep you quiet until my mail got in. I was helpless, of course, to a.s.sist you until it did, being my government's representative. It arrived yesterday, informing me that our State Department has taken up your cases with your government and has entered a formal protest. Now all of you come over to the consulate, and let me see what I can do to fix you out with some clothes and things.

"'After that we'll have breakfast.'"

XI

IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS, AND OTHER OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH

The Engineer's story whetted every one's appet.i.te for more. Lemois, hoping to further inspire him, left his chair, crossed the room, and began searching through the old fifteenth-century triptych to find some object of interest which would start him to talking again as entertainingly as had the carved soup bones from the Moscow prison. When he reoccupied his seat he held in his hand a small statuette in terra-cotta. This he placed on the table where the light fell full upon it.

"You overlooked this, I am afraid," he said, addressing The Engineer.

"It is one of the most precious things I own. It is a portrait of Madame de Rabutin-Chantal, the grandmother of Madame de Sevigne." The Sevigne family were a favorite topic with the old gentleman, and anything pertaining to them of peculiar interest to him. "You will note, I am sure, Monsieur Herbert, the marvellous carving especially in the dress and about the neck."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lemois crossed the room and began searching through the old fifteenth-century triptych]

Before Herbert could answer, Louis craned his head and a disgusted look overspread his face. "I hope," he said, "she didn't look like that, Lemois--squatty old party with a snub nose."

Herbert, ignoring Louis' aside, reached over and took the little image in his fingers.

"Squatty or not, Louis, it is an exquisite bit--modern Tanagra, really.

Seventeenth century, isn't it, Lemois?"

Lemois nodded. If he had heard Louis' remark he gave no sign of the fact.

"Yes," continued Herbert, "and wonderfully modelled. We can't do these things now--not in this way"--and he pa.s.sed it to The Engineer, who turned it upsidedown, as if it were a teacup, glanced at the bottom in search of its mark, and without a word handed it back.

Lemois replaced the precious object in the triptych, his mind still filled with his favorite topic, and, turning suddenly, wheeled a richly upholstered chair from a far corner into the light.

"And here is another relic of Madame Sevigne, monsieur. This is madame's own chair; the one she always used when she stopped here, sometimes for days at a time, on her way to her country-seat, Les Rochers. The room which she occupied, and in which she wrote many of her famous letters, is just over our heads. If monsieur will shift his seat a little he can see the very spot in which she sat."