door was a steel-barred gate through which the eyes of guards and trusties, watchful or merely hostilely curious, could always peer. In one corner was a three-legged stool; above it, on a triangular shelf, a Bible covered with dust; a placard shone yellow on the wall to the left. That was all.
He sat on the edge of the bunk, his survey made, holding his chin in his two hands, tormented by a strange sensation. It was an odor; a taint was in the air; something elusive, but which would not go. Curiously enough, in his mind, it called up visions of circus menageries, seen in childhood. After a while he worked out the connection. The smell of a menagerie, it came from caged animals. Here also, there were things in cages. These were not animals; they were men. The taint in the air, it came from men, many men, caged.
The idea made him a little sick. But now, something else was troubling him, something still more vague, more elusive, more irritating than that which he had just caught—something that he must solve.
[ 24 ]
