The Voyage of the Hoppergrass Part 15

"Sure. Honest, I won't."

"Well, all right, then. Mind what yer promised, now!"

He took a key down from a hook under the lamp, unlocked the cell door, and pa.s.sed in the banjo. After locking the door with great care, and replacing the key on its hook, he bade us all good night, and went upstairs.

"Burglary? Is that what the Czar has run you in for?" This from the stranger with the banjo.

"That is the crime with which we are charged."

"Well, I must say you disappoint me. I had always hoped for something better in the way of burglars. I hope you won't be offended but really, you know, you don't look DESPERATE enough."

"It's our first offence," said Mr. Daddles.

"That's what I thought," said the stranger heartily, "but I didn't like to say so,--for fear of hurting your feelings. Cheer up,-- you'll improve as time goes on."

"Have you been here long?" I asked.

"Came in yesterday,--or day before yesterday, rather. We were in that black sloop,--perhaps you noticed her? You were in the white cat-boat, weren't you? We saw you when you came in."

"Did you see her go out?"

We all asked this eagerly.

"No,--has she gone out? We were on board our boat all the afternoon,--down in the cabin, I guess. Wish I'd stayed there. But we had the tent,--one of the fellows likes to sleep on sh.o.r.e, and so we all stayed. Say, this is a little bit of Russia, isn't it?

Eb could give the Czar points. This is a new police-station, and he thought it ought not get rusty."

"Find your quarters comfortable over there?" asked Mr. Daddles across the corridor.

"Great!" said Ed Mason. He had already taken off his coat, rolled it up for a pillow, and lain down on one of the wooden benches in our cell. I was preparing to do the same. Upstairs we heard the front door slam, as Justin, and the last of the "possy," left the police-station.

"S-s-s-t!"

This came from the banjo-player's cell.

"Watch this, boys!"

I looked out the barred door of our cell, and so did Mr. Daddles and Jimmy from theirs, on the other side of the corridor. The banjo-player, holding his instrument by the head, was poking the neck of it through his door. Very carefully he managed it, and I soon saw what he was after. The big key, hanging on the wall under the lamp, was just within his reach. With the utmost care he inserted one of the keys of the banjo in the ring of the cell key, and drew it off the hook. Then holding the banjo very delicately he pulled it slowly inside the cell, until he had the key in his hands. Then he grinned out at us.

"Talk about Baron Trenck and Monte Cristo!" he said.

In a second more he had put one hand through the bars of his cell, put the key into the lock and let himself out.

"What's the matter with this,--hey, what? Another chapter in Celebrated Escapes!"

Then he tip-toed back into his cell, and shut the door again.

"It won't do to go upstairs too soon. I'll give 'em time to get home. Then I'll get the keys to your cells,--never shall it be said of Despard D'Auvigny that he deserted his friends in misfortune! A regular jail-delivery,--what? The destruction of the Bastille was nothing to this! And we'll carry Eb's head on a pike."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Daddles, "I never thought of that! Do you suppose the keys to our cells are upstairs? I thought you were the only one to get anything by this,--I was resolving always to carry a banjo with me."

"Why, I guess they'll be upstairs,--I can't for the life of me see why this was left down here. But I don't care,--I've no fault to find with the arrangement. Now, we'll have to wait awhile."

We all sat down and waited for about ten minutes. Then the banjo- man, saying "the hour has came!" opened his door again, and stole softly upstairs. Half way up he turned and came back for a match.

Mr. Daddles gave him one, and he vanished with it. He was gone a long while, and we began to be in despair, thinking that he couldn't find the keys, or perhaps that he had gone away without troubling himself any more about us.

At last however, we heard him once more on the stairs. He came down, on tip-toe, holding up two keys. He was smiling gleefully.

"They were in Eb's desk and all tagged and numbered."

In a moment or two we were all out in the corridor. Our new friend locked all the cell doors, and hung up his key on its hook.

"It shall be an unsolved mystery to them all. They shall puzzle themselves bald-headed over it," he whispered.

Upstairs we stopped long enough to return the keys to Eb's desk.

Our friend still had his precious banjo under his arm. We had to go cautiously in the dark, as we dared to light only one match, and that we kept covered as well as we could. There was a window at the rear of the building, and unlike the window in the corridor below, it was not barred.

Mr. Daddles and I looked out. There were no lights to be seen, and no people about. We raised the window very cautiously, an inch at a time.

"Country police have their disadvantages," whispered Mr. Daddles, "but they have this virtue: they go home at night, and let the jail take care of itself. In the city, we should have had to pick our way through the slumbering forms of innumerable cops."

We listened at the window. Bailey's Harbor, after its great excitement over the captured burglars, had gone home, and gone to sleep. Everything was quiet as a graveyard. We could hear the slapping of the water against the timbers of the wharf, and somewhere, a rooster, disturbed by the moonlight, crowed once. It was a dim and sleepy sound, and it was not repeated. The fog had nearly gone; the moon shone clear.

One by one, and as quiet as mice, we crawled through the window, and dropped to the earth below.

CHAPTER VII

BUT WE DECIDE TO GO

Mr. Daddles stood on a ledge of the building a moment, and quietly pulled down the window.

"It wasn't locked," he muttered, "so there'll be nothing to show how we got out."

We were in a little yard at the rear of the jail. There was a large empty building,--a barn, or a boat-builder's work-shop, on the next lot. It cast a deep shadow over one side of the yard, and we kept in this shadow, as we stole toward the fence. A short alley ran down the hill on the other side of this fence. In a moment or two we were tip-toeing through the alley. It seemed to me that I had been going on tip-toe for hours,--I wondered if I would forget how to walk in the usual way.

Everything was quiet; we met no one, and heard nothing. Turning up the street we kept on, silently, until we reached the open s.p.a.ce near the water. There was the tent, white and still in the moonlight. We looked in at the flap of the tent,--two dim forms lay wrapped in blankets, breathing heavily, and both sound asleep.

"Look at 'em!" said the banjo-man, in a low tone, "sleeping like babes, while _I_ was languishing in jail."

"Wake up!" he said, in a slightly louder voice, prodding the nearest one with his banjo.

"Ub-ber-ubber-er-bubber-yah!" remarked the man, sitting bolt upright, and looking about him, as if he had been attacked by wild animals.

"That's all right," said Sprague, "it's only me. Don't get excited. Keep quiet,--don't bubber any more. We're hunted criminals, with a price upon our heads. Prices, I should say."