The work had come to be far more welcome to him than the cell, with the partner to whose society he was chained. The hum and click and throb stole his thought, and the automatic movements, in which he had become an adept, soothed his aching mind. For several hours this afternoon the mechanical occupation absorbed him and he worked on, noting little about him. Then, all at once, as he turned to pick up the bit of cotton waste with which he kept the steel clutches of the machine before him free from dust, he became conscious of something unaccustomed. His own machine was number eight. At the one adjoining, number nine, which was next to the broad middle way bisecting the shop, Paddy the Brick was wont to stand. Now, however, another man was in his stead. At near view Harry recognised him as one whose place was further along, next the wall, and glancing in that direction he saw that Paddy the Brick was running the other's machine. The meaning of the "wireless" message leaped instantly to his mind. When, after dinner, the long line had broken and distributed its units, the man had taken number nine, and the exchange had been effected so quickly and naturally that it had been thus far unnoted by the watchful Superintendent sitting moveless on the raised platform at the end of the aisle, his revolvers on the desk before him. What did the transfer mean? Harry wondered. The men nearby worked on, but they seemed to be restive, waiting for something, with a subdued excitement and anxiety. As he glanced sideways toward the newcomer, at the haggard parchment visage, lean and ashen with the pallor of long confinement, he noted that the other kept his back to the platform and his head studiously bent over his machine, and there darted to Harry's recollection what Paddy the Brick had said one day to him--of the "lifer" and his hatred of the warden. The tapped message of the morning had spoken of the latter, too. "Your ... chance!" Could that have meant the chance to "get" the man he hated? As if in answer to the startled thought, there sounded voices behind him. He looked over his shoulder. The Warden himself was entering the door at the end of the shop, and there were visitors with him. Then instantly every conscious thought save one fled from him and he clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a cry. With the Warden were three figures, a man and two women, and the women were Echo Allen and Nancy Langham.