Part 12

"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 bump 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 passed 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 damned 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 classmates 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 assist 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 appetite 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 Sévigné." The Sévigné 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."

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 passed 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 Sévigné, 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."

But The Engineer neither shifted his seat nor rose to the bait. None of the small things of past ages appealed to him. Even mummies and the spoil of coffins three thousand years old--and he had inspected many of them--failed to stir him. It was what was built over them, and the brains and power that hoisted the stones into place, as well as the forces of wind and water--the song of the creaking crane--those were the things that thrilled him. That Herbert, after his career in the open, had contented himself with a few tools and a mass of clay was what had most surprised him when he came upon his statues in the Royal Academy.

So he kept silent until what Louis called the "bric-à-brac moment" had passed--such discussion often occurring whenever Lemois felt he had a new audience. Gradually the talk drifted into other channels. Mistaken identity and the injustice of convictions on circumstantial evidence were gone into, The Engineer recalling some of his own errors in dealing with his men in Egypt. At this Le Blanc, wandering slightly from the main topic, gave an account of a mysterious woman in white who on certain nights when the moon was bright used to descend the wide staircase of a French château which he often visited, the apparition being the ghost of a beautiful countess who had been walled up somewhere below stairs by a jealous husband, and who took this mode of publishing her wrongs to the world. Le Blanc had seen her himself, first at the head of the great staircase and then as she crept slowly down the steps and disappeared through the solid wall to the left of the baronial fireplace. His hostess, who affected not to believe in such uncanny mysteries, tried to persuade him it was merely a shaft of moonlight stencilled on the white wall, but Le Blanc scouted the explanation and was ready to affirm on his word of honor that she looked at him out of her great, round, beseeching eyes, and would, he felt assured, have spoken to him had not one of the servants opened a door at the moment and so scared her away.

I told of a somewhat similar experience in which a strong-minded Englishwoman, who laughed at ghosts and all other forms of unsavory back numbers, and a bishop of distinction were mixed up. There was a haunted room in the Devonshire country house that no one dared occupy. Another white figure prowled here, but whether man or woman, no one knew. That it was quite six feet high and broad in proportion, and had at various times scared the wits out of several nervous and semi-hysterical females who had passed the night between the sheets, all agreed. As it was the week-end, there were a goodly number of visitors and the house more or less crowded. When the haunted room was mentioned, even the bishop demurred--preferring to take the one across the corridor--he being a frequent visitor and knowing the lay of the land. The strong-minded young woman, however, jumped at the chance. She had all her life been hoping to see a ghost and, in order to allow his or her ghostship free entrance, had left the door of the haunted room unlocked when she got into bed. Despite her screwed-up courage she began to get nervous, and when she heard the door creak on its hinges and felt the cold, clammy air of the corridor on her cheek, she slid down off her pillow and ducked her head under the sheet. Then, to her horror, she felt the blanket slowly slipping away and, peering out, was frozen stiff to see a tall figure, dressed in white, standing at the foot of her bed, its long, skinny fingers clutching at the covering. Without even a groan she passed promptly into a fit of unconsciousness, known as a dead faint, where, with only a sheet over her, she lay until the cold woke her. She left by the early coach and believes to this day that she would have been strangled had she offered the slightest protest. Nor did her hostess's letter, covering a full explanation, satisfy her. "It was not a ghost you saw, my dear, but the bishop, who wanted an extra blanket, and who jumped out of bed in search of one, and into your room, thinking it empty. It's a mercy you didn't scream, for then the situation could never have been explained--better say nothing about it, or, if you do--stick to its being a ghost."

While these and other yarns were sent spinning around the table, Louis had cut in, of course, with all sorts of asides--some whispers behind his hand to his next neighbor--some squibs of criticism exploded without rhyme or reason in our midst--all jolly and diverting, but nothing approaching a story short or long.

My own and Herbert's efforts to draw him out into something sustained brought only--"Don't know any yarns" and "Never had anything happen to me"--followed at last by--"The only time I was ever in a tight place was when I was sketching in Perugia; then I jumped through the window and took most of the sash with me."

"Let's have it!" we all cried in one breath. No one was so lively and entertaining once we got him started.

"That's all there is to it. They had locked the door on me--three of them--and when the back of the chair gave out--I was swinging it around my head--I made a break for out-of-doors."

"Oh!--go on--go on, Louis!" came the chorus.

"No, I'd rather listen to you men. I haven't been tattooed in the South Seas, nor half murdered rounding Cape Horn. I'm just a plain painter, and my experience is limited, and my three Perugian villains were just three dirty Italians, one of whom was the landlord who had charged me five prices for my meal, and tried to hold me up until I paid it--only a vulgar brawl, don't you see? The landlord had his head in splints when I passed him the next day."

"You were lucky to escape," said The Engineer. "They have a way of knifing you while you are asleep. I had a friend who just got out of one of those Italian dives with his life."

"Yes, that was why I was swinging the chair. Hard for any three men to get at you if its legs and back hold out. Of course a fellow can sneak up behind you with a knife and then you--By Jingo!--come to think of it, I _can_ tell you a story! It just popped into my head. You have brought it all back"--and he nodded to our guest--"about the closest shave--so I thought at the time--that I ever had in my life. Your ghost stories don't hold a candle to it--stealthy assassin--intended victim sound asleep--miraculous escape!--Oh! a blood-curdler!--I was scared blue."

Everybody shifted their chairs and craned their heads to watch Louis' face the better, overjoyed that he had at last wakened up. Louis scared blue--and he a match for any five men--meant a tale worth hearing.

"It was the summer I made those studies of mountain brooks flowing out of the glaciers--you remember them, Herbert? Anyway, I was across the Swiss border, and in a ragged Italian town dumped down on the side of a hill as if it had been spilt from a cart--one of those sprawled-out towns with a white candle of a campanile overtopping the heap. The diligence, about sunup, had dropped me at the exact spot with my traps, and was hardly out of sight before I had started to work, and I kept it up all day, pegging away like mad, as I always do when a subject takes hold of me--and this particular mountain brook was choking the life out of me, with lots of deep greens and transparent browns all through it, and the creamy froth of a glass of beer floating on the top.

"When the sun began to sink down behind the mountains I realized that it was about time to find a place to sleep. I was at work on a 40 x 30--rather large for out-doors--and, as it would take me several days, I had arranged with a goatherd--who lived in a slant with stones enough on its roof to keep it from being blown into space--to let me store my wet canvas and my palette and box under its supports. I'd have bunked in with the goats if I'd had anything to cover me from the cold--and it gets pretty cold there at night. Then again I knew from experience that a goatherd's sour bread and raw onions were not filling at any price. What I really wanted was two rooms in some private house, or over a wine-shop or village store, with a good bed and a place where I could work in bad weather. I had found just such a place the summer before, on the Swiss side of the mountains, belonging to an old woman who kept a cheap grocery and who gave me for a franc a day her two upper rooms--and mighty comfortable rooms they were, and with a good north light. So I hung the wet canvas where the goats couldn't lick off my undertones, shouldered my knapsack, and started downhill to the village.

"I found that the red-tiled houses followed a tangle of streets, no two of them straight, but all twisting in and out with an eye on the campanile, and so I struck into the crookedest, wormed my way around back stoops, water barrels, and stone walls with a ripening pumpkin here and there lolling over their edges, and reached the church porch just as the bell was ringing for vespers. When you want to get any information in an Italian village, you go to the priest, and if he is out, or busy, or checking off some poor devil's sins--and he has plenty of it to do--then hunt up the sacristan.

"There must have been an extra load of peccadilloes on hand that night, for I didn't find his reverence, nor the sacristan, nor anybody connected with the church. What I did find was a chap squatting against one side of the door with a tray on his lap filled with little medals and rosaries--and a most picturesque-looking chap he was. His feet were tied up in raw hides; his head bound in a red cotton handkerchief, over which was smashed a broad-brimmed sombrero; his waist was gripped with another to match; his lank body squeezed into a shrunken blue jacket, and his shambly legs wobbled about in yellow breeches. The sombrero shaded two cunning, monkey eyes, a hooked nose, a wavering mouth, and a beard a week old. It was his smile, though, that tickled my funny-bone, and this happened when he held up the tray for my inspection--one of those creepy, oily smiles that spread slowly over his dirty, soapy face, like the swirl of oil and turpentine which floats over a basin of suds when you wash your brushes.

"Not a very inviting person;--a loafer, a lazzaroni, a dead-beat of a dago, really--and yet my heart warmed to him all the same when he answered me with enough French sandwiched between his 'o's' and 'i's' to help out my bad Italian. What finally trickled from his wrinkled lips was the disappointing announcement that no hostelry at all worthy of the Distinguished Signore existed in the village, nor was there money enough in the place for any one of the inhabitants to have a surplus of anything--rooms especially--but there was--here the oily smile overran the soap-suddy face--a most excellent casino kept by an equally excellent citizen where travellers were wont to stay overnight; that it was up a back street--they were all 'back' so far as I had seen--and that, if the Distinguished Signore would permit, he would curtail the sale of his religious relics long enough to conduct his D. S. to the very door.

"So we started, the vendor of 'helps to piety' ahead and I following behind, my knapsack over my shoulder. I soon discovered that if the casino was up a back street he was going a long way round to reach it. First he dived into an alley behind the mouldy, plaster-pock-marked church--the candle-stick of the campanile--ducked under an archway--'_sotto portico_,' he called it--opened out into a field, struck across a little bridge into another street--hardly a soul about, nothing alive--nothing except dogs and children--all of which he explained was a short cut. For some time his dodging made no impression on me; then the way he rounded the corners and hugged the shadowed side of the street, away from the few dim lamps, set me to wondering as to his intentions. What the devil did he mean by picking out these blind alleys? He must have seen that I was no tenderfoot or tourist who had lost his way.