THE LIGHTED FUSE
In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning--the same room
Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy
prison archway--Craig stood staring out of the open window across the
yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand--the game he
had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card.
He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat
talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of
the escape of prisoner No. 239--a tender subject with the official, but
one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular
interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had
come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be
in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust
every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort
the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the
pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate.
Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him
to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on
which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not
an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the
defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence--an alibi--he
could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational
accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the
convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon--he
could arrange that with the Board--would make the fellow tractable, and
he could take him with him on parole.
The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish
to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig
was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard
toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the
toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative
eyes--in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen
of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and
fame.
The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with
him.
"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden.
Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He
gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and
was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank
back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For
each--the would-be murderer and the man he had shot--in the self-same
instant recognised the other.
At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew
further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden
and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to
clutch a heavy, brass-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed
at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him
with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He
looked at the Warden.
"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is
permissible."
"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the
room with the paper he had been looking for.
As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood
there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not
going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions."
Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them.
"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you--the one
who was caught?"
The other looked at him cunningly. "The one you swore shot you?"
Craig's fingers twitched. "Yes," he said, after a pause.
"No. I never saw him before that night."
"What did he pay you for that job?"
Paddy the Brick stared. "Good Lord! _He_ wasn't one of us. He just
happened in for a social call!" He leaned across the table. "Say," he
whispered, "what did you want to hang him for?"
There was in the posture, the whisper, an inexpressible assumption of
identity of interest which stung and galled the man who faced him. The
blood welled into Craig's face, then very slowly ebbed.
"Would you know him again, if he had changed his appearance? If, for
instance, he wore a beard?"
"Know him!" Paddy the Brick jerked his thumb toward the window. "Why,
we was mates over there."
Craig looked at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then he
pointed to a chair.
"Sit down," he said.
At midnight that night the home city of Harry Sevier was ablaze with
lights and throbbing with the last feverish activity of a strenuous
campaign. The candidate of the new party had returned that afternoon
from a tour of the southern portion of the state, and plenteous
bunting, everywhere displayed, testified to an enthusiasm that,
carefully fostered by his lieutenants, had permeated every section and
class. That evening, to ring down the curtain with a brilliant
_finale_, a torchlight procession had been organised. Ten thousand
strong, the blazing flambeaux had marched and countermarched along the
city's main thoroughfares, and Harry had reviewed them from the balcony
of the hotel which was the party's _rendezvous_.
He had flung himself into the fight with every ounce of his splendid
vitality which had been deepened and strengthened by the months of
mountain solitude. There was infinitely more at issue now than he had
dreamed when he canvassed chances at the bungalow. The cause of the
new party had then seemed inevitably a losing one. But during that
long campaign--particularly in the last few weeks--it had been borne in
upon him that the time had been ripe for the venture. Long arrogance
and effrontery had borne their legitimate fruit in a profound
resentment that had been fanned to vivid life by the quickening breath.
There had been an erasure of old lines, and at length the party in
power, aroused and desperate, had found itself fighting for its life.
There were no odds offered that day on its victory! Once committed,
however, there had been no turning back possible. Harry's bridges had
been burned behind him. He could only go forward, and, fighting on, he
had striven to thrust his problem, with its increasing implications,
into the background of his mind. And in spite of himself the zest of
victory had absorbed him. To-night's parade had been an inspiring
spectacle and it had called from him the last speech of the campaign.
As he closed, amid the shouting and applause, a motor drew up at the
curb and stopped just before the hotel entrance. On its fear seat,
shielded from the gaze of the pavement by the leather hood, was Cameron
Craig, and beside the chauffeur sat Paddy the Brick.
The crowds thinned, began to melt away; here and there the golden
square of a window went black on the quieting street. Still the car
made no move. At length a little knot of men issued from the hotel
lobby, pausing in the lighted doorway to say good night to one another.
Craig leaned forward.
"The one in the centre," he said, in a low voice. "The one with the
beard."
As he spoke, Harry Sevier's look crossed the pavement and met squarely
Craig's envenomed gaze. He saw the heavy head thrust forward from the
hood, with the white bandage across the temple and under it the
smouldering, implacable eyes. For a space that seemed interminable the
eyes held each other. A ghastly expression crossed his face. Very
slowly he turned and re-entered the lobby.
Brent, who was the last to leave him, looked at him anxiously.
"You're about all in," he said. "You look positively ill."
Harry tried to smile.
"It's nothing. I think I'll rest now." His voice had all at once lost
its _timbre_, had become flat and expressionless. All the electric
force, the fire and enthusiasm, had faded from it.
Brent held out his hand. "Thank heaven it's over--all but the voting!"
he said fervently. "It's the reaction, I suppose."
"Yes," replied Harry, dully. "No doubt it's the reaction."
He turned and went slowly to the elevator.
In the automobile at the curb Craig touched Paddy the Brick on the
shoulder. "Well?" he asked. "Is he number 239?"
Paddy the Brick looked at him with a white fury distorting his features.
"I don't know whether he's 239 or not," he said, "but I'd swear to
anything that would 'fix' him! That's the lawyer that let them send me
up two years ago!"