There was something fine about the old villain, once a real Robin Hood, something mean about the little tyrant.

Had Ranald seen the incident?  No, he stood with his back to a buttress looking in the opposite direction.  Did he always stand with a wall behind him in this terrible place?  How could he live in it?  A minute of it made one sick if one were cursed with imagination.  Oh, the horror of the prison system—­especially for brave men, men with a code of honour of their own—­possibly sometimes a higher code than that of the average British politician, not to mention the be-knighted cosmopolitan financier, friend of princes and honoured of kings.

Could not men be segregated in a place of peace and beauty and improved, instead of being segregated in a dull hell and crushed?  What a home of soulless, hopeless horror!...  And his friend was here....  Could he contain himself?...  He must say something.

“Do you always keep your back to a wall when standing still, in here?” he asked of Major Ranald.

“I do,” was the reply, “and I walk with a trustworthy man close behind me.”  “Would you like to go round, sometime?” he added.

“No, thank you,” said Malet-Marsac.  “I would like to get as far away as possible and stay there.”

Major Ranald laughed.

“Wouldn’t like to visit the mortuary and see a post-mortem?”

“No, thank you.”

“What about the Holy One?” put in the City Magistrate.  “Did you ‘autopsy’ him?  A pleasure to hang a chap like him.”

“Yes, the brute.  I’ll show you his neck vertebrae presently if you like.  Kept ’em as a curiosity.  An absolute break of the bone itself.  People talk about pain, strangulation, suffocation and all that.  Nothing of the sort.  Literally breaks the neck.  Not mere separation of the vertebrae you know.  I’ll show you the vertebra itself—­clean broken....”

Captain Malet-Marsac swayed on his feet.  What should he do?  A blue mist floated before his eyes and a sound of rushing waters filled his ears.  Was he fainting?  He must not faint, and fail his friend.  And then, the roar of the waters was pierced and dominated by the voice of that friend saying—­

“Hul_lo_! old bird.  Awf’ly good of you to turn out, such a beastly cold morning.”

John Robin Ross-Ellison had come round an adjacent corner, a European warder on either side of him and another behind him, all three, to their credit, as white as their white uniforms and helmets.  On his head was a curious bag-like cap.

Ross-Ellison appeared perfectly cheerful, absolutely natural, and without the slightest outward and visible sign of any form of perturbation.

“’Morning, Ranald,” he continued.  “Sorry to be the cause of turning you out in the cold.  Gad! isn’t it parky.  Hope you aren’t going to keep me standing.  If I might be allowed I’d quote unto you the words which a pretty American girl once used when I asked if I might kiss her—­’Wade right in, Bub!’”