The next morning Supple Jim, sitting in the warm sunshine in the
bay-window of his favorite restaurant, lazily finished a hearty
breakfast of ham and eggs, glancing casually, meanwhile, at the morning
paper which lay open before him. At a respectful distance his attendant
awaited the moment when this important guest should snap his fingers,
demand his damage, and call for a Carolina Perfecto. These would be
forthcoming with alacrity, for Mr. James Hawkins was more of an autocrat
on Fourteenth Street than a Pittsburg oil magnate at the Waldorf. Just
now the Supple James was reading with keen enjoyment how, the day
before, a quick-witted old gentleman had brought a malefactor to
justice. At one of the paragraphs he broke into a gentle laugh, perusing
it again and again, apparently with intense enjoyment.
Had ever such a farce been enacted in the course of justice! He tossed
away the paper and swore softly. Of course, the only thing that had
rendered such a situation possible at all was the fact that the aged
Farlan was a superlative old ass. To hear him tell his yarn on the
stand, you would have thought that it gave him positive pain to testify
against a fellow being. Did you ever see such white hair and such a big
white beard? Why, he looked like Dowie or Moses, or some of those
fellows. When Jim had tripped him up and slipped off the ring, the old
chap had already swallowed half a dozen "County Antrims," and wasn't in
a condition to remember anything or anybody. The idea of his going so
piously into court and swearing the thing on to Monohan; it gave you the
creeps! A fellow might go to "the chair" as easy as not, in just the
same way. Of course, Jim had not intended to get the young greenhorn
into any trouble when he had sold him the pawn-ticket. He had been just
an easy mark. And when the police had arrested him and found the ticket
in his pocket, there was not any call for Jim to set them straight. That
was just Monohan's luck, curse him! Let him look out for himself.
But to see the patriarch carefully forging the shackles upon the wrong
man, had filled Jim with a wondering and ecstatic bewilderment. The
stars in their courses had seemed warring in his behalf.
Think of it! That fellow Monohan could get twenty years! It made him
mad, this infernal conspiracy, as it seemed to him, between judges and
prosecutors. It mattered little, apparently, whether they got the right
man or not, so long as they got someone! What business had they to go
and convict a fellow who was innocent, and put him, "Jim," the cleverest
"gun" in the profession, in such a position? He wondered if folks in
other lines of business had so many problems to face. The stupidity of
witnesses and the trickery of lawyers was almost beyond belief. It was a
perennial contest, not only of wit against wit, strategy against
strategy, but, worst of all, of wit against impenetrable dulness. Why,
if people were going to be so careless about swearing a man's liberty
away, it was time to "get on the level." You might be nailed any time by
mistake, and then your record would make any defence impossible. You had
the right to demand common honesty, or, at least, _intelligence_, on the
part of the prosecution.
But the main question was, What was going to become of Monohan? Well,
the boy was convicted, and that was the end of it. It was quite clear to
Jim that, had he been victimized in the same way, no one would have
bothered about it at all. It was simply the fortune of war.
But twenty years! His own pitiful aggregate of six, with vacations in
between, as it were, looked infinitesimal beside that awful burial
alive. He'd be fifty when he came out--if he ever came out! Sometimes
they died like flies in a hot summer. And then there was always
Dannemora--worst of all, Dannemora! It would kill _him_ to go back. He
couldn't live away from the main stem _now_. Why, he hadn't been in
_stir_ for five years. All his prison traits, the gait, the hunch, were
effaced--gone completely. His brows contracted in a sharp frown.
"What's the use?" he muttered as he rose to go. "He ain't worth it! I
can stake his wife and kids till his time's up! But, God! _I_ could
never go back!"
Yet the same irresistible force which had directed him to the court-room
the day before, now led him to the Grand Central Station. Like one
walking in a dream, he bought a ticket and took the noon train alone to
Ossining.
Following a path that led him quickly to a hill above the town not far
from the prison walls, he threw himself at full length beside a bowlder,
and gazed upon the familiar outlook. Across the broad, shining river lay
the dreamy blue hills he had so often watched while working at his
brushes. Here and there a small boat skimmed down the stream before the
same fresh breeze that sent the red and brown leaves fluttering along
the grass. The sunlight touched everything with enchantment, the cool
autumn air was an intoxicant--it was the Golden Age again. No, not the
Golden Age! Just below, two hundred yards away, he noticed for the first
time a group of men in stripes breaking stones. Some were kneeling, some
crouching upon their haunches. They worked in silence, cracking one
stone after another and making little piles of the fragments. At the
distance of only a few feet two guards leaned upon their loaded rifles.
Jim shut his eyes.