The Stratagem and Other Stories

“I remember one of us who took pleasure in keeping his spade bright—it was the regulation that spades must be kept bright, a torture in itself in such a place, where mildew grows on everything as fast almost as snow falls in happier climates. Well, sir, the governor found out that this man took a pleasure in the glint of the sun on the steel, and he forbade that man to clean his spade. A trifle, indeed. What do you know of what pris- oners think of trifles? The man went raving mad, and for no other reason. It seemed to him that such de- tailed refinement of cruelty was a final proof of the in- nate and inherent devilishness of the universe. Insanity is the logical consequence of such a faith. No, sir, I will spare you the description.” Bevan thought that there had already been too much description, and in his complacent English way surmised that Duguesclin was exaggerating, as he was aware that Frenchmen did. But he only remarked that it must have been terrible. He would have given a good deal, now, to have avoided the conversation. It was not altogether nice to be on a lonely platform with a self- confessed multiple murderer, who had presumably es- caped only by a further and extended series of crimes. “But you ask,” pursued Duguesclin, “you ask how I escaped? That, sir, is the story I propose to tell you. My previous remarks have been but preliminary; they have no pertinence or interest, I am aware; but they were necessary, since you so kindly expressed in- terest in my personality, my family history—heroic (I may claim it) as is the one, and tragic (no one will deny it) as is the other.” Bevan again reflected that his interlocutor must be as bad a psychologist as the governor of Devil’s Island was a good one; for he had neither expressed nor felt the slightest concern with either of these matters. “Well, sir, to my story! Among the convicts there was one universal pleasure, a pleasure that could cease only with life or with the empire of the reason, a pleas-