"I doubt it," Pierce said, with no sign of anxiety. Soon after, he was taken from the room.
Alone with Sharp, Harranby said, "I shall break him, you may be sure of that." The same day, Harranby arranged for Pierce to be transferred from Newgate Prison to the House of Correction at Coldbath Fields, also called the Bastille. "The Steel" was not ordinarily a holding place for accused criminals awaiting trial. But it was a frequent ruse for police to send a man there if some information had to be "winkled out" of him before the trial.
The Steel was the most dreaded of all English prisons. In a visit in 1853, Henry Mayhew described its features. Chief among them, of course, were the cockchafers, narrow boxes in a row with "the appearance of the stalls in a public urinal," where prisoners remained for fifteen-minute intervals, treading down a wheel of twenty-four steps. A warder explained the virtues of the cockchafer in this way: "You see the men can get no firm tread like, from the steps always sinking away from under their feet and that makes it very tiring. Again the compartments are small, and the air becomes very hot, so that the heat at the end of a quarter of an hour renders it difficult to breathe."
Even less pleasant was shot-drill, an exercise so rigorous that men over forty-five were usually exempted. In this, the prisoners formed a circle with three paces separating each. At a signal, each man picked up a twenty-four-pound cannonball, carried it to his neighbor's place, dropped it, and returned to his original position where another shot awaited him. The drill went on for an hour at a time.
Most feared of all was "the crank," a drum filled with sand and turned with a crank handle. It was usually reserved as a special punishment for unruly prisoners.
The daily regimen of Coldbath Fields was so debilitating that even after a shot sentence of six months, many a man emerged "with the steel gone out of him" his body damaged, nerves shot, and resolution so enfeebled that his ability to commit further crimes was severely impaired.
As a prisoner awaiting trial, Pierce could not be made to undergo the stepper, the shot-drill, or the crank; but he was obliged to follow the rules of prison conduct, and if he broke the rule of silence, for example, he might be punished by a time at the crank. Thus one may presume that the guards frequently accused him of speaking, and he was treated to "softening up."
On December 19th, after four weeks in the Steel, Pierce was again brought to Harranby's office. Harranby had told Sharp that "now we shall see a thing or two," but the second interrogation turned out to be as brief as the first:
"Where is the man Barlow?"'
"I don't know."
"Where is the woman Miriam?"
"I don't know."
"Where is the money?"
"I don't know."
Mr. Harranby, coloring deeply, the veins standing out on his forehead, dismissed Pierce with a voice filled with rage. As Pierce was taken away, he calmly wished Mr. Harranby a pleasant Christmas.
"The cheek of the man," Harranby later recorded, "was beyond all imagining."
Mr. Harranby during this period was under considerable pressure from several fronts. The bank of Huddleston & Bradford wanted its money back, and made its feelings known to Harranby through the offices of none other than the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston himself. The inquiry from "Old Pam" was in itself embarrassing, for Harranby had to admit that he had put Pierce in Coldbath Fields, and the implications of that were none too gentlemanly.
Palmerston expressed the opinion that it was "a bit irregular," but Harranby consoled himself with the thought that any Prime Minister who dyed his whiskers was hardly in a position to berate others for dissembling.
Pierce remained in Coldbath until February 6th, when he was again brought before Harranby.,
"Where is the man Barlow?"
"I don't know."
"Where is the woman Miriam?"
"I don't know."
"Where is the money?"
"In a crypt, in Saint John's Wood," Pierce said.
Harranby sat forward. "What was that?"
"It is stored," Pierce said blandly, "in a crypt in the name of John Simms, in the cemetery of Martin Lane, Saint John's Wood."
Harranby drummed his fingers on the desk. "Why have you not come forth with this information earlier?"
"I did not want to," Pierce said.
Harranby ordered Pierce taken away to Coldbath Fields once more.
On February 7th, the crypt was located, and the appropriate dispensations obtained to open it. Mr. Harranby, accompanied by a representative of the bank; Mr. Henry Fowler, opened the vault at noon that day. There was no coffin in the crypt--- and neither was there any gold. Upon re-examination of the crypt door, it appeared that the lock had been recently forced.
Mr. Fowler was extremely angry at the discovery, and Mr. Harranby was extremely embarrassed. On February 8th, the following day, Pierce was returned to Harranby's office and told the news.
"Why," Pierce said, "the villains must have robbed me."
His voice and manner did riot suggest any great distress, and Harranby said so.
"Barlow," Pierce said. "I always knew he was not to be trusted."
"So you believe it was Barlow who took the money?"
"Who else could it be?"
There was a short silence. Harranby listened to the ticking of his clock; for once, it irritated him more than his subject. Indeed, his subject appeared remarkably at ease.
"Do you not care," Harranby said, "that your confederates have turned on you in this fashion?"