“Oh,” came back the cell-mate’s voice, and all the shrill strength was out of it, and it fell down heavy as lead; “oh, she’s cut out religion—gone back to hell!”
They sank into a final silence; again the darkness drew about them, crushing, tainted, without mercy. Above, the littl man coughed, drearily, endlessly; below, the strong man twitched to the torture of his nerves; and to their ears, uncouth and fantastic, there came the breathing of the prison.
And after a while, like a kindness, sleep enwrapped the upper bunk. And in the lower, 9009 felt slowly his mind leave his tossing body to wander over walls, in the free wide world. He lay there, in semi-ecstatic insomnia; his senses were drugged. Suddenly they awoke to a tapping.
They awoke and were immediately alert. From a cell down the corridor, there came a tapping, a soft tapping, faint but insistent:
“Tap-tap (pause); tap-tap (long pause); tap-tap-tap-tap-tap (pause); tap (long pause); tap-
