Then 9009 was taken back to the dungeon, and he was kept there for thirty days.
For thirty days he was in blackness and silence. At regular intervals, which were of twenty-four hours but seemed much longer, the wicket snapped open and a half loaf of bread with a pitcher of water was thrust in, entering with a gray pallor of daylight immediately shut off again. He slept much, in short periods, at any hour, irregularly; the rest of the time he squatted in the centre of his cube of darkness, and thought. He saw the confidence-man, stepping back a-tiptoe, raising his arm, shooting; the burglar falling. He saw himself bounding down the corridor, leaping over white faces gazing upward, emerging out into the sunlight—into the bristling circle of the guards’ ambush. And now another picture had joined these two: he saw the shock-headed safe-cracker peering out of his cell and laughing his soundless sneering laugh during the struggle in the corridor; he saw his cell-mate gazing at him with a shocked expression. And he did not understand.
