CHAPTER IX.

MARION WITNESSES A QUEER SIGHT.

“Big Belle, the Confidence Queen,” was a very versatile woman. At liberty, she was noted for the variety of her accomplishments, and in prison walls she was equally useful both in her cell and in the workroom.

But this strange woman’s greatest delight was in the care of the sick, and as she passed from cot to cot in the prison hospital both her hand and her voice were as gentle as a mother’s.

She was a large, fine-looking woman, with brilliant black eyes, but the coarse prison garb did not enhance the beauty of either face or figure.

Belle had “done time” at the “Isle de Blackwell” before, so she felt very much at home in her present occupation.

There was not a rule or regulation about the prison that she did not know, and if she ever longed to break one of them there was no indication of it in her manner.

Rather, it seemed to her associates that Belle was merely “biding her time,” and, according to all accounts, a goodly portion of her ill-gotten gains was steadily drawing interest in various banks in anticipation of her coming.

As Big Belle bent over one of her charges whose face was covered with bandages, she moistened them as skillfully as any trained nurse could have done, and as the prison physician entered the ward she went over to him promptly, standing with calmly folded hands and eyes cast down, the very embodiment of meekness and servitude.

“How is she this morning?” was the doctor’s first question, asked without even raising his eyes from the prescription he was writing.

“Worse, Dr. Brookes,” said “Big Belle” in a lady-like voice. “I should say that the vitriol was still burning deeper, and if I am not much mistaken there is a considerable fever.”

“I’ll have to get you a thermometer,” said Dr. Brookes, without thinking; “you can certainly take temperature, Belle, they tell me you are clever.”

A half-suppressed laugh from the woman startled him. He looked up and caught her eye, and then he, too, smiled slightly.

“I keep forgetting that you people aren’t to be trusted,” he said, pleasantly. “When will I ever learn that I am working in a prison!”

The woman did not answer, but she followed him with her eyes as he moved away. She was by far too clever not to understand his words, and by far too unhappy not to be secretly pleased by them.

“He’d trust me all right, if he dared,” she thought. “As if there was any danger of my killing myself, or any one else for that matter!”

“May I come in a minute?” asked a pleasant voice at the door.

Dr. Brookes looked around quickly, and a smile spread over his features. His visitor was Marion Marlowe, in her nurse’s dress and bare-headed, except for the light shawl, which she was just slipping to her shoulders.

“Come right in,” said the young man, as he went quickly forward, then stopped suddenly at the thought of his professional dignity.

“Oh, Miss Marlowe, what ward do you come from, please? I am almost afraid to make you welcome.”

“Don’t fear,” said Marion, smilingly, as she stepped into the ward. “Since I came back from the city, I have only been helping in the linen room. They have been kind enough to keep me off the wards until I grew a little stronger.”

“Big Belle” was just passing on her way to the vitriol patient and Marion watched her movements with a look of wonder.

“The cleverest ‘confidence woman’ in the world,” whispered the doctor. “She counts the victims she has fleeced by the score, yet see how gentle she is with my patients.”

“What is the matter with her?” asked Marion, nodding toward the patient with the bandaged face.

“Why, she was in some drunken fight with another woman. I believe it was over some man, and as they left Jefferson Market Court her rival fairly deluged her with vitriol. She only came up from the city yesterday—sent up as a ‘drunk and disorderly’ for ten days only, but she’ll never go back. She is slowly dying.”

“Poor thing!” sighed Marion, with tears in her eyes. “But her fate is the same as dozens that I have seen already. Oh, this awful island! This awful island!”

She was moving toward the patient when Dr. Brookes stopped her.

“No, Marion!” he said, firmly; “you must not go any nearer. Erysipelas has set in and you know you are still in a weak condition. If you should catch any infection in my wards, I would never forgive myself—so forgive me, please, for being inhospitable!”

“Big Belle” came back and stood quietly beside the doctor. She had something to say to him and was awaiting his permission to speak.

“She wishes me to send for her father,” she reported as Dr. Brookes turned to her. “She knows that she is dying, and is anxious to see him.”

“Get his name,” was the doctor’s answer, but “Big Belle” smiled sadly. “I tried to,” she said, quickly, “but she lapsed into unconsciousness that minute.”

“They may know his name in the office,” said the doctor. “I’ll go right down now and see if I can wire him.”

As Dr. Brookes and Marion reached the door of the building, a breath of salt, fresh air came over the water.

“What a mockery!” said Marion, with a heart-felt sigh. “Oh! this place is so beautiful with its wonderful, changing scenery, yet how sad are the hearts that dwell in these buildings. How weary are the eyes that gaze out on these waters!”

The tramp of many feet came as an echo to her words. Marion turned, and through the iron grating saw the convicts marching to their luncheon.

“Oh! do let me go in and see them!” she cried, impulsively. “It is the first time I have been in here, although I have been a month on the Island.”

Dr. Brookes spoke to the turnkey who at once opened the great guard doors.

As Marion stepped into the dim corridor, with its small high windows and bleak gray walls, she shuddered involuntarily as all do at their first visit to a prison.

Tier after tier of cells rose above her head and now that the convicts were on their way to the dining-room she stood still for a moment and gazed morbidly into the blackness.

Suddenly there was a cry from the doctor and a guard came running toward him.

Dr. Brookes pointed with one hand toward a closed cell just above them, and with the other tried desperately to push Marion behind him.

But he was a second too late, for Marion’s glance had followed his own, and for the next few minutes both stood speechless with horror.

A man whose face was so familiar to Marion that her heart almost stopped beating when she recognized it, was hanging by the neck to the door of his cell. In the momentary excitement of the meal hour he had seized his opportunity, and when the guard at last cut him loose he was too far gone to be resuscitated.

“Who is he?” asked Dr. Brookes, as they brought him down.

Almost automatically the guard muttered the dead man’s number, but with ashen lips Marion gave the information.

“His name is Lawson,” she said, in a whisper; “and he is the villain who boarded at my father’s home one summer. He was a hypnotist by profession, and he abducted my sister Dollie! He was sentenced to Sing Sing, so I had no idea that I would see him here.”

The guard explained that he had been transferred to the Island by special order, only a few days previously.

Reginald Brookes bit his lips in a burst of anger.

“Forgive me,” he said, humbly; “I had no idea you bore such sorrow. Thank Heaven he has paid the penalty and yes—I am glad that you saw it.”

“I am, too,” said Marion, who was deathly pale. “If it had to be—I am glad that I saw it.”