“Don’t be an ass!” I said, in a determined voice, “There’s nothing here that can’t be explained.  Make way for me, please!”

They parted and let me through, and I saw him.  He stood, spruce, frock-coated, dapper, as he always was, with his face pressed against and into the grill, and either hand raised and clenched tightly round a bar of the trap.  His posture was as of one caught and striving frantically to release himself; yet the narrowness of the interval between the rails precluded so extravagant an idea.  He stood quite motionless—­taut and on the strain, as it were—­and nothing of his face was visible but the back ridges of his jaw-bones, showing white through a bush of red whiskers.

“Major Shrike!” I rapped out, and, allowing myself no hesitation, reached forth my hand and grasped his shoulder.  The body vibrated under my touch, but he neither answered nor made sign of hearing me.  Then I pulled at him forcibly, and ever with increasing strength.  His fingers held like steel braces.  He seemed glued to the trap, like Theseus to the rock.

Hastily I peered round, to see if I could get glimpse of his face.  I noticed enough to send me back with a little stagger.

“Has none of you got a key to this door?” I asked, reviewing the scared faces about me, than which my own was no less troubled, I feel sure.

“Only the Governor, sir,” said the warder who had fetched me.  “There’s not a man but him amongst us that ever seen this opened.”

He was wrong there, I could have told him; but held my tongue, for obvious reasons.

“I want it opened.  Will one of you feel in his pockets?”

Not a soul stirred.  Even had not sense of discipline precluded, that of a certain inhuman atmosphere made fearful creatures of them all.

“Then,” said I, “I must do it myself.”

I turned once more to the stiff-strung figure, had actually put hand on it, when an exclamation from Vokins arrested me.

“There’s a key—­there, sir!” he said—­“stickin’ out yonder between its feet.”

Sure enough there was—­Johnson’s, no doubt, that had been shot from its socket by the clapping to of the door, and afterwards kicked aside by the warder in his convulsive struggles.

I stooped, only too thankful for the respite, and drew it forth.  I had seen it but once before, yet I recognised it at a glance.

Now, I confess, my heart felt ill as I slipped the key into the wards, and a sickness of resentment at the tyranny of Fate in making me its helpless minister surged up in my veins.  Once, with my fingers on the iron loop, I paused, and ventured a fearful side glance at the figure whose crookt elbow almost touched my face; then, strung to the high pitch of inevitability, I shot the lock, pushed at the door, and in the act, made a back leap into the corridor.

Scarcely, in doing so, did I look for the totter and collapse outwards of the rigid form.  I had expected to see it fall away, face down, into the cell, as its support swung from it.  Yet it was, I swear, as if something from within had relaxed its grasp and given the fearful dead man a swingeing push outwards as the door opened.