Randall Garrett by Thin Edge

Author:Thin Edge
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-02-22T12:28:45+00:00

VI

Commodore Sir Harry Morgan was herded into a prison cell, given a shove across the smallish room, and allowed to hear the door slam behind him. By the time he regained his balance and turned to face the barred door again, it was locked. The bully-boys who had shoved him in turned away and walked down the corridor. Harry sat down on the floor and relaxed, leaning against the stone wall. There was no furniture of any kind in the cell, not even sanitary plumbing.

“What do I do for a drink of water?” he asked aloud of no one in particular.

“You wait till they bring you your drink,” said a whispery voice a few feet from his head. Morgan realized that someone in the cell next to his was talking. “You get a quart a day—a halfa pint four times a day. Save your voice. Your throat gets awful dry if you talk much.”

“Yeah, it would,” Morgan agreed in the same whisper. “What about sanitation?”

“That’s your worry,” said the voice. “Fella comes by every Wednesday and Saturday with a honey bucket. You clean out your own cell.”

“I thought this place smelled of something other than attar of roses,” Morgan observed. “My nose tells me this is Thursday.”

There was a hoarse, humorless chuckle from the man in the next cell. “‘At’s right. The smell of the disinfectant is strongest now. Saturday mornin’ it’ll be different. You catch on fast, buddy.”

“Oh, I’m a whiz,” Morgan agreed. “But I thought the Welfare World took care of its poor, misled criminals better than this.”

Again the chuckle. “You shoulda robbed a bank or killed somebody. Then theyda given you a nice rehabilitation sentence. Regular prison. Room of your own. Something real nice. Like a hotel. But this’s different.”

“Yeah,” Morgan agreed. This was a political prison. This was the place where they put you when they didn’t care what happened to you after the door was locked because there would be no going out.

Morgan knew where he was. It was a big, fortresslike building on top of one of the highest hills at the northern end of Manhattan Island—an old building that had once been a museum and was built like a medieval castle.

“What happens if you die in here?” he asked conversationally.

“Every Wednesday and Saturday,” the voice repeated.

“Um,” said Harry Morgan.

“‘Cept once in a while,” the voice whispered. “Like a couple days ago. When was it? Yeah. Monday that’d be. Guy they had in here for a week or so. Don’t remember how long. Lose tracka time here. Yeah. Sure lose tracka time here.”

There was a long pause, and Morgan, controlling the tenseness in his voice, said: “What about the guy Monday?”

“Oh. Him. Yeah, well, they took him out Monday.”

Morgan waited again, got nothing further, and asked: “Dead?”

“‘Course he was dead. They was tryin’ to get somethin’ out of him. Somethin’ about a cable. He jumped one of the guards, and they blackjacked him. Hit ‘im too hard, I guess. Guard sure got hell for that, too.

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