AMBUSH
Lying in his bunk Harry awoke to the consciousness of another bleak
dawn. The morning waking was always a pain to him, for in sleep the
barriers fell away and the mind fared forth along the free, sweet
highways of memory. He did not open his eyes at once, but he felt the
rasp of the coarse blanket at his throat, smelled the cold clamminess
of the granite floor, and realised by a thousand reminders of the
sharpened senses that another round of the treadmill awaited him. He
remembered drearily that to-morrow would be Thanksgiving Day. In the
world outside it was the time of yellow maples and the red of the
frost-kissed sumac, of wild grapes purpling in the thickets and clumps
of alder blooms in the fence-corners--of blazing hearths and good
fellowship!
Mingling with the stir of reawakening life in the corridors there
sounded a light _tap-tap_--the tattoo of a tin spoon against the stone.
Without moving he opened his eyes. Paddy the Brick was up and
dressed--if donning the cheap flannel shirt, the striped jacket and
trousers, might be called dressing--and, stooped in the corner of the
cell, was industriously at work with the 'prison-wireless.' For a
while Harry watched him curiously; then suddenly his ear made out a
word. For in time he had taken his cell-mate's sneering advice, and
because the busy mind, turned too long upon itself, must perforce
occupy itself with something extraneous, had mastered the code that was
scratched in the white-washed wall. He had a retentive memory,
sharpened now by disuse, and the tiny _tap-tap_ that he had learned to
distinguish through the muffling masonry, though he never used it as a
means of communication, had soon become an open book to him. Strange
things he had heard in this manner--furtive, uncouth gossip of that
under-world, which, although much was couched in an unknown _argot_ and
was meaningless to him, had yet served in a way to lighten the
unendurable emptiness. The word he had caught now was "visitors."
In another moment Harry was listening intently, for the sounds were
spelling something which instinct told him was wickedly suggestive
though he could not guess its purport. "Warden ... to-day," tapped the
signalled code, "--take ... number nine ... machine ... your ...
chance--"
Whatever else might have been said was blotted by the whirring clang of
the electric gong in the central corridor. Through the great
lamelliform bee-hive it sent its waking clamour, the signal for rising
to the new day's tasks. With the sound Paddy the Brick thrust the
stolen utensil out of sight and shot a stealthy glance at the upper
bunk, but its occupant had apparently just awakened.
All the ensuing morning, as he rubbed himself down in the plenteous
cold water which the spigot provided, and did his share in the cleaning
of the bare cell--while he sopped his brown bread in the weak breakfast
coffee, and presently tramped in the long file to the shop to feed the
voracious machines with the clean-smelling leather--all the while
Harry's brain was busy with the message he had heard. "Visitors?"
Occasionally visitors had passed through the shops--panging reminders
to him of the world outside. Perhaps in some devious way the other had
heard that some would come to-day. But turn and twist the rest of the
words how he might, they meant nothing. Dinner time came, with its
lifting break in the unvarying monotony, then the long lock-step back
to the shop and its labour.
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.
A sickness like that of death rushed upon him. That she could come
there--careless of the chance that she might see him in these loathsome
surroundings--a common convict, with cropped hair and striped clothing,
marked with all the badges of the jailbird--smote him with an
unendurable pain. She, who knew that he had loved her--to see him in
this guise! All the agony he had suffered rolled over him anew,
intensified a thousand-fold. He pulled his cap-visor low over his eyes
and snatching up the bit of oily waste, drew it across his cheek,
smudging his face from chin to brow.
The little group of four had paused near the desk of the
Superintendent, the Warden smilingly pointing out to the two girls the
details of the work. Harry's fingers performed their task by sheer
instinct; for his very life he had not been able to help stealing a
swift sidelong look at Echo's face, pale beneath its russet cloud of
hair, and he distinguished with a fierce bitterness the jaded shadows
that had crept beneath her eyes, tokens that belied her conventionally
polite show of interest. So, though she condemned him to this torture,
she too suffered!
Could he have looked beneath that controlled exterior he would have
discerned a pain and dread to match his own. With that luncheon in the
dining-car a sense of fate had fallen upon her, heavy and irrevocable,
as though some huge weight was closing down. The whip of conscience
had driven her to this day's quest. If the law had erred--if, in truth
an innocent man, as Mason believed, lay under condemnation--it was for
lack of her testimony: the thought had laid upon her sensitive mind a
new sense of guilty responsibility. She must be certain, beyond
peradventure. The visit to the Evelands for the Thanksgiving season
had furnished the opportunity and the round of the Penitentiary with
Malcolm had arranged itself. It had been easy to advert to Mason's
belief in the innocence of the prisoner he had defended, and it had
seemed natural enough for her to ask the Warden to point out the man as
they went through the shops. They had now entered the room in which he
had told her the man worked--she was standing on the threshold of the
knowledge she feared.
She started at the Warden's voice, close to her ear, above the rasping
clamour of the machines: "The last row, at the end. The middle
machine--that's the one."
With a quick intake of her breath she looked where he pointed. The
colour faded from her cheeks. Doubt--if she had clung to doubt--was
ended now! The man who had started with levelled pistol from behind
the curtain of Craig's library had been short and stocky and
round-shouldered. The side-face of the distant prisoner at whom she
was now looking with such painful intensity, under the shadow of his
cap-brim showed smudged with oil and dust; but his shoulders were broad
and straight and his frame tall and lithe. Whatever the law said, this
man was not the man who had shot Craig! She alone could swear it!
She felt suddenly a kind of terror of the place. She touched Malcolm's
arm. "I've seen enough--please! Could we turn back now?"
The Warden overheard and nodded. "Just wait here a moment," he said,
"and we'll go. I want to take a look forward." He strode from them
down the broad way between the lines of workers.
Harry heard the step behind him on the steel floor. He thought the
others were with him. Under the rattle of the cogs his sick
imagination caught the swish of a dress--almost he thought he caught a
faint breath of a familiar perfume--and he averted his face till they
should pass. It was by reason of this that his lowered eyes caught a
stealthy movement in the man at the next machine--a movement of one
hand which crept under his jacket, and jerked forth, clutching
something shining and murderous.
Harry acted without conscious thought, by swift and certain instinct.
As the lean arm, tense with hate, went up behind the Warden's back, he
leaped forward with a cry of warning, caught the wrist whose hand held
the sharpened file, and both went down clinched and struggling together.
The cry, sharp and strained, pierced across the din. It brought the
Superintendent to his feet on his platform, like the release of a
coiled spring, a revolver in either hand.
"Back to the door!" he roared, and Malcolm's sinewy arm swept the two
girls behind him. The fierce clamour of a bell sounded outside. There
was sudden pandemonium. Doors opened, men in uniform dashed by her,
and on the platform the Superintendent stood, crouching forward like a
panther about to spring, still as a statue, both hands outstretched
with their gleaming muzzles, his eyes flashing over the room.
In that desperate struggle, as he clung to the maddened convict, Harry
was conscious only of the strenuous confusion--of commands that snapped
like whip-lashes--of the burly form of the Warden above him and that of
a "trusty" who snatched at the vicious weapon--of a sudden anguished
pang in his shoulder.
Then, swiftly and sweetly, the whole world slipped away into blankness
and silence.
A half hour later, as Echo and Nancy sat with Malcolm in the office, on
the ground floor of the frame building just inside the great double
gates of the prison, the Warden entered. His grave face lightened with
a smile of reassurance.
"All well," he said cheerfully. "It came close to being a nasty wound,
but the doctor says no harm will come of it, though he will be in the
hospital ward for a week. I wouldn't have had this fracas happen while
you ladies were here for a year's salary," he added, "and that's a
fact!"
Nancy's face was still pale, and she shivered as he spoke, but she gave
a little laugh, as she said, "We didn't bring you luck to-day, did we?
You'll be wary of Friday visitors hereafter."
"On the contrary," he asserted, "I'm inclined to think I'm a mighty
lucky man. It was cunningly planned, with collusion, too, and if it
had succeeded there might have been a very bad hour or two--for
everybody."
Malcolm turned to him. "The man saved the situation, Warden, and it
was a very close call, indeed. If there was collusion I imagine it'll
be dangerous in the ranks for him hereafter."
The Warden nodded. "I've thought of that. The trusty who has been
clerking in the Record-Room, upstairs, is sick, as it happens. He
shall have the place. He sha'n't come to any harm as long as I'm in
charge, rest assured of that."
He went with them to the great double-gate. "It's a curious thing," he
said thoughtfully, as they said good-bye, "that the man who did that
should have been the very one we had been talking about, isn't it?"
The same thought was in all their minds. There had flashed across
Echo's, too, a memory of her childhood, a revolting incident of another
prison, where a hundred convicts had risen, had killed their keepers
and for two days had run desperate riot within the enclosure--till
troops had been rushed to the scene. What if that flaming human lava
had burst beyond control to-day? She shuddered.
A single hand, maybe, had prevented this--the hand of the man who once
before had saved her--who was now shut in this horrible place, perhaps
for want of the testimony which she alone could give!