Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/309

Rh Just here the keeper, on his rounds to see that everything was in order, interrupted the talk.

Throughout the next two days the Eagle whistled a great deal, frequently putting his fingers in his mouth and giving long, sharp blasts, which were nothing more than signals in the game he was arranging; for, during the exercise hour on the second afternoon, an invisible hand threw a stone over the prison wall, carrying the short but significant message: "It is all arranged."

Saturday evening the keeper entered the woman's cell and told her that he had come to take her to see the magistrate in accordance with her request. She did not return to prison. The restlessness and suppressed excitement which ruled throughout the night in the prison office gave clear indication that something unusual had occurred. Some days later, I learned from the Commandant that robbers had attacked the keeper who was escorting the woman, taken his arms from him, gagged him and, after having tightly roped him, rolled him under a pile of planks, where he was not discovered until the following day. The woman under escort had disappeared and, up to that date, had not yet been found. The investigation of the affair revealed the fact that she had been at home, taken her little girl and fled.

For a fortnight after the Eagle looked pensive but at the same time happy and proud. The resourceful leader evidently had trusty members of his gang outside the walls, who could be depended upon to carry out his will. He was soon tried and, though he expected a death sentence, he felt that the sad, large-eyed woman and her little daughter had evidently prayed for him, inasmuch as the tribunal unexpectedly found extenuating circumstances and sentenced him to only four years of close confinement.