VI
The patient suddenly stopped talking. He had decided on stratagem. He decided to deceive his warder. They kept him bound all day, and left him so during the night. Having given him his supper, the old attendant placed a mat near the bed and laid down. In a few moments he was sound asleep, and the patient began his task.
Contorting his body so as to get at the ironwork of the bedstead, and feeling for the edge of the iron frame with his wrist hidden in the long sleeves of the straitjacket, he commenced quickly and vigorously to rub the sleeve on it. After a short time the thick canvas gave way, and he had freed his wrists and the first finger of one of his hands. Then matters progressed more speedily. With an ingenuity born of insanity he untied the knot behind his back which secured the sleeves, unlaced the jacket, and then for a long time listened intently to the snoring of the warder. Satisfied that the old man was sleeping soundly, the patient took off the jacket and slid from the bed. He was free! He tried the door. It was locked from the inside, and the key was probably in the warder’s pocket. Afraid of awaking him, he did not dare to search his pockets, and so decided to get out of his room through the window.
It was a still, warm, dark night. The window was open. The stars were shining. He gazed at them, recognizing familiar constellations; and rejoicing that they, as it seemed to him, understood and were in sympathy with him. His mad resolution increased. It was necessary to get rid of the iron bar which formed the grating of the window in order to be able to clamber through the narrow opening into the corner of the garden, overgrown just here with bushes, and to scale over the high stone wall. Then would come the last struggle, and afterwards—mayhap death!
He tried ineffectually to bend the thick iron bar with his bare hands. Then he made a cord by twisting up the strong canvas sleeves of the straitjacket, and fastened it to the forged spike on the end of the bar. Upon this he hung with the whole weight of his body. After frantic efforts, almost exhausting his remaining stock of strength, the spike gave way, and the narrow passage was open. He squeezed through it, bruising and lacerating his shoulders, elbows, and bared knees, and pushed his way through the bushes, but came to a stop before the wall. All was quiet. The light of the small lamps used in the rooms showed feebly through the windows of the building. No one was to be seen inside it. Nobody saw him. The old warder watching by his bed was probably still sound asleep. The twinkling rays of the stars seemed to penetrate into his very heart, giving him renewed spirit.
“I am coming to you,” he whispered, glancing upwards.
Having fallen at the first attempt to scale the wall, with torn nails and bleeding hands and knees he began to search for a suitable place. A few bricks had become detached from the wall where it met the wall of the Mortuary, and making use of the hollows thus formed, the patient climbed on to the wall, seized hold of the branches of an elm growing on the other side, and quietly let himself down the tree on to the ground.
He rushed to the well-known spot near the flight of steps. The blossom with its closed petals showed up clearly and darkly in the dewy grass.
“The last!” whispered the patient—“the last! Today is victory or death! But it is all the same to me. Wait,” said he, gazing up to the starry sky, “I will soon be with you.”
He rooted up the plant, tore it to pieces, and holding it crushed in his clenched hand, he returned to his room the same way he had left it. The old warder still slept. The patient, barely reaching the bed, fell on to it senseless.
In the morning they found him dead. His face was calm and serene. The tired features, with the thin lips and deeply sunken closed eyes, wore an expression of proud happiness. When they had laid him on a stretcher they attempted to open his clenched hand and remove the scarlet blossom. But it was too late, and he carried his trophy to the grave.