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To escape was impossible; to remain was madness; of hiding-places there was a fearful scarcity. The regulators came rushing into the prison proper, with footsteps echoing loudly through the barren corridors. Out into the open court they swarmed, then up the iron stairways to the galleries that ringed it about, peering into cells as they went, ousting the wretched inmates from remotest corners.
Sagging floors and weak stairways are braced, as are fireplaces injured by dampness and frosts. Paneled partitions are stripped of layers of disguising wall paper. Any efforts to modernize that hide original conditions are torn out and the house cleared of the rubbish left by its last tenant. Even then such a house is not overly attractive to particular housekeepers.
Done you know dem policers are sneakin' aroun' ebberywhere, up de stairways as well as ebberywhere else? An if one of dem happened to hear you speak such words, dis ole woman take a ride up to de Islan' in de Black Maria, and you go to de debbil, sure! Know all about 'em, honey been dare afore!" "Humph!" said the lawyer, nevertheless using lower voice even for the disclaimer.
Complete silence reigned throughout the imperial palace, except in the halls and stairways that led from the imperial dining-hall to the kitchens below. Both lay far from the apartments of the empress-abbess. She, therefore, felt that she could visit her child without fear of observation. She had just concluded her own solitary dinner, and was trying to collect her thoughts for prayer. In vain.
It twitches its rickety stairways impatiently under his feet, as if to shake him off and damage him by the fall—it viciously attempts to pinch and jam his fingers with moody dogged doors, which hold back as long as they can, and then close with a sudden snap, exceedingly dangerous to the unwary—it tears his clothes with ambushed rusty nails, and unsuspected hooks, and sharp and jagged splinters—it creaks its floors under his tread with a doleful whine, and complains of his cruel treatment in sharp-pointed, many-cornered tears of plaster, which it drops from the ceiling upon his head the instant he takes his hat off—it yawns its wide cellar doors open like a greedy mouth, evidently hoping that an unlucky step will pitch him headlong down—and it conducts itself in a thousand ill-natured ways like a sulky child that has been waked up too early in the morning, and not properly whipped into good behavior.
A court-yard intervenes between them, spanned by several bridges, connecting them. Each building is seven stories in height, and completely fire-proof. There are no openings in the floors for communication, but the various floors are connected by circular stairways of iron, placed outside the building.
It was at least fifteen feet underground, with two stairways leading down to it, so that if escape was cut off in one direction, it was still possible to get out on the other side. We immediately took possession, built a roaring fire, and were soon passing canteens of hot tea around the circle. Life was worth while again.
"There don't seem to be any door-mats on this boat," he said. "In every other respect she seems fitted out quite complete; all the latest magazines and enamelled bathtubs, and Chinese waiter-boys with cock-tails up their sleeves. But there ought to be a mat at the top of each of those stairways that hang over the side, otherwise some one is sure to soil the deck.
Charging on this dense mass, and clubbing their way to the building, the police entered it, and streaming up the stairways, cleared it floor by floor, some being knocked senseless, others leaping from windows, to be killed by the fall, and others escaping down- stairs, to be met by the force in the street. A thorough search was now made for arms, and the building emptied of them.
That would not be unfair to the owner of the trunk, she thought, for in any case, the blood stains would direct suspicion to Peterson's vanished neighbour. The key would be only a detail. As she descended the stairways leading from the sixth story to the ground floor, she met two or three men, but they had the air of tired commercial travellers going up to bed.
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