Free Knight Without Armour by James Hilton Page B

uneducated; but
the only reply was a surly: “You’ll find that out in good
time.”
    The men were armed with big revolvers, apart from which they were of such
physique that resistance was out of the question. A.J. gathered together a
few possessions and accompanied his two escorts to a pair-horse van waiting
at the kerbside. This they bade him enter, one of them getting inside with
him, while the other took the reins. The inside was almost pitch dark. After
a noisy rattling drive of over half an hour the doors were opened and A.J.
was ushered quickly into a building whose exterior he had no time to
recognise. The two guards led him into a large bleak room unfurnished except
for a desk and a few chairs. A heavily-built and dissipated-looking man sat
at the desk twirling his moustache. When A.J. was brought in the man put on a
pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and stared fiercely.
    “You are Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov?” he queried; and to
A.J.’s affirmative, merely replied: “Take him away.”
    The guards continued their Journey with him along many corridors and
across several courtyards. He knew that he was in a prison, though which one
out of the many in Petersburg he had no idea. At last one of the guards
unlocked and opened a door and pushed him into a room already occupied by
what at first seemed a large crowd. But that was because, in the dim light
admitted by a small and heavily-barred window, it was difficult to
distinguish the inhabitants from their bundles of clothing.
    They had seemed asleep when A.J. entered, but as soon as the guards
retired and the door was relocked they all burst into sudden chatter. A.J.,
dazed and astonished, found himself surrounded by gesticulating men and
youths, all eager to know who he was, why he had been sent there, and so on.
He told them his name, but thought it wiser to say that no charge had been
made against him so far. They said: “Ah, that is how it very often
happens. They do not tell you anything.” They even laughed when he
asked the name of the prison; it amused them to have to supply such
information. It was the Gontcharnaya, they said.
    Altogether there were a score or more inhabitants of that room. About half
were youths of between seventeen and twenty-one. One of them told A.J. he had
already been imprisoned for two months without knowing any charge against
him, and there was a steady hopelessness in his voice as he said so.
“These people are not all politicals,” he went on, whispering
quietly amidst the surrounding chatter. “Some are criminals—some
probably government agents sent to spy on us—who knows?—there is
always that sort of thing going on. A fortnight ago two fellows were taken
away—we don’t know where, of course—nothing has happened
since then until you came.”
    Considering their plight the majority of the prisoners were cheerful; they
laughed, played with cards and dice, sang songs, and exchanged anecdotes. One
of them, a Jew, had an extensive repertoire of obscenity, and whenever the
time fell heavily somebody would shout: “Tell us another story,
Jewboy.” Another prisoner spent most of his time crouched in a corner,
silent and almost motionless; he was ill, though nobody could say exactly
what was the matter with him. He could not take the prison food, and so had
practically to starve. The food was nauseating enough to anyone in good
health, since apart from black bread it consisted of nothing but a pailful of
fish soup twice a day, to be shared amongst all the occupants. A.J. could not
stomach it till his third day, and even then it made him heave; it smelt and
tasted vilely and looked disgusting when it was brought in with fish-heads
floating about on its greasy surface. It was nourishing, however, and to
avoid it altogether would have been unwise. There were no spoons or drinking
vessels; each man dipped his own personal mug or basin into the pail and took
what he wanted, and