Savage Bride

Chapter Twenty-four

The badly frightened turnkey came hurrying back along the jail corridor, bringing the prison commandant at his heels.

“In here,” he said fearfully, stopping short outside the last cupboard-like crevice of all.

The commandant was still chewing the last mouthful he had brought away from the table with him in his haste. He took his time, swallowed first, then ordered, “Well, open it, fool. Have I eyes that can see through this iron slab?”

Keys clashed and the cell was exposed to view.

“Oh,” said the commandant. “I had forgotten who was in here.” He said it almost with an air of relief.

“I don’t know when it happened,” the turnkey expostulated. “He was all right the last time I looked in.”

“Well, I suppose we have to make sure,” the commandant said unhappily, stepping reluctantly forward to go in. “And right on top of eating, too. I didn’t even have my coffee yet.”

The turnkey trailed in after him.

“We don’t want any more mistakes, like that other time,” the commandant continued. “Remember what happened?”

“The one from Eighteen. Yes.” The turnkey crossed himself.

“We had him already lying out there on the ground, when he rolled his head over and his lips started to move.”

“Well, luckily there was that shovel there handy, to quiet him with.”

“As long as we were that far, why should we have the trouble of bringing him all the way back again with us — and then maybe the next day it would happen anyway?”

“Si, mi comandante, you’re right,” the turnkey agreed judiciously.

“Bring in the lamp from the corridor,” the commandant said irritably. “I can’t get used to this dimness.” While he was waiting, he lit a cigarette, to temper some of the foul odor in the cell.

The turnkey came back with an oil lamp, and rays of straw-colored light, spearing up the walls ahead of it, finally coalesced into a satisfactory patina of illumination.

Cotter’s body lay laterally across the cot. His leg over-spanned it on one side, his head hung partly off the other. There was not room for it to hang down entirely. His arms lay spread out sideward.

His neck and throat and shoulders were all dark, as though a sudden empurpled birthmark had overspread him there. There was something the matter with his throat. It seemed to yawn open, as though his mouth were lower down than where it belonged; as though he were grinning in the wrong place.

The commandant bent over a little toward him, blowing cigarette smoke away from between himself and the corpse, so that he could see clearly. He nodded. “We don’t have to have any doubts this time,” he commented.

“But how—?” the turnkey faltered.

The commandant looked around briefly on the small area of floor space. He stooped, picked something up.

“With this,” he answered. “Here it is, right here.” It was a small sliver, about an inch long, about half an inch wide.

The turnkey goggled at it.

“It’s one of those blades the americanos make so beautifully. They’re very hard to get down here. I used to have some, though. They call them... ah... you know, shave-with-safety. You cannot cut yourself with them. That is the way in which they shave up there.”

“But if you can’t cut yourself with them, how could it do that to him?” the turnkey pointed out naively.

“Ah, you’re very dense,” snapped the commandant. “You can’t cut yourself with it while it’s in the holder. You can when you take it apart.”

“I won’t get in trouble, will I, mi comandante?”

“No, you didn’t know he had it,” the commandant reassured him.

“You did, mi comandante?” the turnkey gaped in astonishment.

“Naturally. It was sent to him through me. It came from the Minister of the Interior, no less. He said he wanted the inmates to look neat, he didn’t like them with stubble all over their faces when he came here on inspection visits. This particular one, in any event.”

The turnkey still didn’t understand. He scratched his skull in bafflement. “But if it’s supposed to be used in a holder, and if the señor ministro wanted him to use it, then why didn’t he send him the holder with it? Why did he just send him this part?”

“Stop trying to figure out things that don’t concern you,” the commandant reprimanded him. “It’s none of your business and it’s none of mine. The señor ministro is entitled to a slight fit of absent-mindedness once in a while, a man with all the heavy responsibilities he’s got.”

He suddenly caught sight of something, leaned sharply forward again, and thrust his whole arm down between cot and wall. He brought up a small piece of rumpled paper and smoothed it out.

“Wait a minute, here’s a note he seems to have written. With a piece of soft charcoal, it looks like.”

“I gave him that a few days ago,” the turnkey admitted. “It was soft, he couldn’t hurt himself with it.” He craned his neck across his superior’s shoulder. “Does it say why he did it?”

The commandant gave a shoulder fling of incomprehension. “No, it says the same thing over and over. It must be some kind of lesson, like they give little boys to do in school.”

The words were: