|HICKS was sitting within by a plain board table, reading. It was a
whitewashed room and had a window with rusted bars. The door banged, and
the key again creaked in the lock. The jailor walked to and fro in the
corridor.
Hicks looked up from his reading, and stared in a half-comprehending
way.
“I have a selfish thirst for knowledge, Mr. Hicks,” said Hennion.
He took the chair on the opposite side, and looked at the book on the
table. The feeble gas jet stood some six inches out from the wall,
directly over the table.
“It's the Bible,” said the other. “It needs to be made modern, but
there's knowledge in it.”
“I didn't mean that.”
“Lazarus and Dives. That's fanciful justice. A trick to pacify Lazarus.
But there's knowledge. Notice what the dogs did. That's satire.”
It seemed a trifle uncanny, the place, the little man with the absorbed
manner, metallic voice and strange language, black hair and beard,
intent black eyes. Hennion had never interviewed a criminal before.
“I'm not a reporter, Mr. Hicks, nor a lawyer.”
Hicks marked his place and closed the book.
“I know who you are.”
“I was a friend of Wood's, in a way, but I'm not here in malice. I
gathered you hadn't anything personal against him. It seemed to follow
you had some sort of a long-range motive in it. I wanted to ask you why
you shot Wood.”
Hicks' gaze grew slowly in intentness as if his mind were gathering
behind it, concentrating its power on one point. The point seemed to be
midway between and above Hennion's eyes. Hennion had an impulse to
put his hand to the spot, as if it were burnt, but his habit of
impassiveness prevented. He thought the gaze might represent the way in
which Hicks' mind worked. A focussing mind was a good thing for anyone
who worked with his brains, but it might have extravagances. An analysis
concentrated and confined to an infinitely small point in the centre
of the forehead might make an infinitely small hole to the back of the
head, but it would not comprehend a whole character. A man's character
ran to the ends of his hands and feet.
“I'm an engineer,” Hennion went on, “and in that way I have to know the
effectiveness of things I handle and apply. And in that way men too are
to me so much effectiveness.”
“I know about you,” said Hicks sharply. “Your men like you. You've never
had a strike.”
“Why--no.”
Hicks' manner had changed. It was quick, excited, and angular.
“You're wrong. They're something more to you, that you didn't count in.
Why do they like you?”
“I don't know.”
“Exactly. But it's something effective, ain't it?”
Hennion paused and felt confused. A man of such sharp analysis and
warped performance as this, how was one to get to understand him? He
leaned back in his chair and crossed his knees. The sharp analysis
might be a trick Hicks had caught from listening to Aidee's speeches. It
sounded like Aidee.
“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hicks, in the way of effectiveness, why did you shoot
Wood?”
Hicks' eyes were little pin-points of concentration.
“He sold the people to the corporations.”
“Well. But suppose he did. Will the next man do any better? If not,
where's the effectiveness?”
“He won't be so sharp.”
“You thought Wood was too sharp to be downed Aidee's way?”
“He was the devil's latest scheme. I sent him to the devil.”
“And shoulder the consequences. I like that. But the next man. Suppose I
were the next man.”
Hicks' teeth clicked together. His hands moved across the table. They
were thin and claw-like, and the nails scratched the boards. He said
softly:
“Look out what you do.”
“What shall I do? I'm looking around for advice. Does it seem queer if I
ask some of you?”
Hennion felt brutally master of the situation. There seemed something
unfair in his greater size, his colder nerves and more untroubled brain,
unfair to the little man opposite, with his hot impulses, his sad and
sordid tragedy. Hennion felt so much at ease as to wonder why he did
not feel more repulsion for Wood's murderer, and consoled himself by
thinking Wood himself had been tolerant of hostilities and extremities,
and would probably feel no repulsion for Hicks. Perhaps the key to Hicks
was that he was created without tolerance. He was made up of intense
convictions and repulsions and inflamed nerves. Whatever goal his
purpose fixed on would become a white-hot point, blinding him to
circumstances. And this focussing nature, which acted like a lens to
contract general heat into a point of fire, was a natural phenomenon in
dynamics. It seemed a characteristic of better service for starting a
fire, and furnishing the first impulse of a social movement, than for
running steady machinery. Some people claimed that society was running
down and needed a new impulse. If so, it needed the Hicks type. If not,
the trouble with Hicks might be that he was a phenomenon occurring at
the wrong time, a fire that had to be put out.
“You ask me!”
“Then it does seem queer? But I ask it. Could a man be a party boss, and
satisfy you?”
Hicks' gaze was now troubled and wild, as if he were trying to find
the centre of the conception with his focus, and could not; as if the
attempt to look at the conception with other than a set hostility was
to break up the organisation of his mind. He drew back, his finger nails
scratching across the table, and hid his face. Hennion rose.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You ask me!”
“Well, I don't think your method is the right one. If a clock's out of
order, I don't think shooting into it is the right method. I dare say it
expresses the way a man feels, but I don't see that it mends the clock.
But if I were undertaking to mend it, and didn't know any too much about
it, I might like to ask the man that was for shooting what his idea
was. I told you I had a selfish thirst for knowledge. Under the
circumstances, I beg your pardon.”
“Why do you ask me?” Hicks' fingers shook on the table. “There's a man
who can tell you. He can lead you. He led me, when I wasn't a fool.”
“Who? You mean Aidee?”
Hicks nodded, and fell to glowering at his nervous fingers, absent and
brooding.
“He didn't tell you to shoot Wood. I know better than that.”
“No, he didn't.”
“Why, there's another thing I'd like to know. What did Aidee do?”
“Do! He held me back! He was always holding me back! I couldn't stand
it!” he cried sharply, and a flash of anger and impatience went over his
face. “He shouldered me like a log of wood on his back. Maybe I liked
that papoose arrangement, with a smothered damn fire in the heart of me.
No, I didn't! I had to break loose or turn charcoal.”
Hennion wondered. The man reminded him of Aidee, the same vivid phrase,
the figures of speech. But Aidee had said that he did not know him. It
appeared that he must know him. If Aidee had been lying about it, that
opened sinister suggestions. Hennion did not like Aidee, neither did he
like in himself this furtive sense of satisfaction in the suggestions.
“Aidee told me he didn't know you. I hadn't thought he would lie about
it.”
“By God, don't call him a liar to me!” Hicks jumped to his feet, and had
his wooden chair swung over his back in an instant.
“I don't. I want it explained,” Hennion said coolly. “You can't do
anything with that. Sit down.”
“He's the only man alive that dares tell the truth. You're all hounds,
cowards, thieves! He's a saint in hell!”
“Likely enough. You're a hot disciple. Still, I'm waiting for an
explanation.”
“Don't you call him a liar!”
“Haven't. Sit down.”
Hicks sat down, his thin hands shaking painfully. His eyes were
narrowed, glittering and suspicious. Hennion tipped his chair back, put
his hands into his pockets, and looked at the weak, flickering gas
jet, and the ripples of light and shadow that crossed the whitewashed
ceiling. They were wild, disordered, and fugitive, as if reflections
from the spirit behind Hicks' eyes, instead of from the jet at the end
of a lead pipe.
“I'll help you out with a suggestion,” Hennion said slowly. “You don't
mean to leave Aidee in that shape, since you feel about him in this way.
But you don't know whether your story would go down with me, or whether
it might not get Aidee into trouble. Now, if I'm forecasting that story,
it's something like this. You knew each other years ago, not in Port
Argent.”
Hicks said nothing.
“Carried you around papoose-fashion, did he? But there's some likeness
between you. It might happen to be a family likeness.” Still no comment.
“If it so happened, you might be related. You might be twins. And then
again you might not. You might have been his first convert. Partners
maybe in Nevada. That: was where he came from,--silver mines and what
not. It's no business of mine.”
He paused and meditated, looking at the pulsating light; then brought
his chair down and leaned forward.
“I take the liberty to disagree with you. I'm no exception to the run
of men, and I'm neither a hound, nor a coward, nor a thief, nor yet a
liar.”
“I know you're not.”
“However, your story, or Aidee's, is no business of mine. I gave you
those inferences because they occurred to me. Naturally you'd suspect
they would. So they do. Gabbling them abroad might make some trouble for
Aidee, that's true. I shan't gabble them.”
“I know you won't.”
“I wanted your point of view in shooting Wood. If you don't see your
way to give it, all right. I judge it was the same way you were going to
club me with a chair. Simple enough and rather silly. Goodnight, then.
Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes.”
Hennion leaned back and studied the gaslight, and disliked himself.
Hicks clasped and unclasped his hands on the table.
“It won't hurt him,” he said hoarsely, “between you and me. Besides, you
can do that for me. He's my brother, old Al. But I cut away from him. I
kept off. I kept away from him for a while, but I couldn't live without
seeing him. You see? I couldn't do it. Then he came here, and I followed
him, and I lived with a shoemaker across the river and cobbled shoes.
But I heard every speech he made in Port Argent, though he never saw me.
He thinks I'm dead, don't he? I dodged him pretty slick.” He flushed and
smiled--“I liked it,” he whispered, growing excited. “It was better'n
the old way, for we got along all right this way. You've heard of him!
Ain't he wonderful? Ain't he a great one, hey? That was Al. I liked it,
but he didn't know. You see? How'd he know when he thought I was dead,
didn't he? I watched him, old Al!”
His face was lit up with the warm memory of it. He clicked his teeth,
and swayed to and fro, smiling.
“We got along all right this way. All right. My idea. Wasn't Al's. I
kept the other side the river, mostly. Nobody can touch him when he's
fired up, can they? They didn't know Al like I knew him. They called him
the Preacher. He scared 'em like prairie fire. He's got his way. I've
heard him. I watched 'em, and I knew him, but they didn't, did they?”
He focussed his excited eyes suddenly on Hennion.
“You! I know you; I know your men that live on the east side. I heard
a man say you'd got a heart like a baked potato and don't know it. That
fat-headed foreman of yours, Kennedy, he can tell you more 'n you
ever thought of. Think you're a composite of steel and brick, set up
according to laws of mechanics, don't you? Oh, hell! Go and ask Al. He's
a wonder. Why do your men like you? Go and ask 'em. I've told you why.
Why'd I shoot Wood? Al wouldn't have let me, but it 'll do good. He
scares 'em his way, I scare 'em mine. You wait and see! It 'll do good.”
Hennion studied the gas jet, until he could see nothing but an isolated
impish dancing flame, until it seemed as if either the little man across
the table were chattering far away in the distance and darkness, or else
he and the gas jet were one and the same.
Aidee had been four years in Port Argent, and so Hicks had been
following and watching him, cobbling shoes, living a fanciful, excited
life, maniacal more or less. Hennion fancied that he had Hicks' point of
view now.
“You wait and see! It'll do good.”
“Well,” said Hennion, “I dare say you've answered the question. You
haven't told me yet what I can do for you.”
Hicks' excitement died out as suddenly as it had risen. He reached a
trembling hand across the table, and whispered:
“I thought---- What do you think they'll do to me?”
“I can't help you there. You'll have counsel.”
“No, no! It's this. I thought I'd write a letter to Al, and you'd give
it to him afterwards, a year afterwards--supposing--you see?”
He hesitated pitifully.
“All right, I'll do that.”
“I won't write it now.”
“I see.”
“You'll keep it still? You won't tell? You won't get a grudge against
Al? If you do! No. I know about you. You won't tell.”
“No, I won't. Well, good-night, then.”
“Good-night.”
His voice was husky and weak now. He put out his hand, hesitating.
Hennion took it promptly. It felt like a wet, withered leaf.
Hennion went and knocked at the door, which Sweeney opened. Hicks sat
still by the table, looking down, straggling locks of his black hair
plastered wet against his white forehead, his finger nails scratching
the boards.
The door clanged to, and the noise echoed in the corridor.
“I heerd him gettin' some excited,” said the jailor.
“Some.”
“Think he's crazy?”
“That's for the court to say.”
“Ain't crazier'n this old jail. I need a new one bad, Mr. Hennion. Look
at them windows! I seen mighty clever boys here. A sharp one could dig
out here some night, if he had the tools.”
“Then you'd better not suggest it to Hicks.”
“Ho! He ain't thinkin' of it. He's a weakly man.”
“No, probably not.”
“He ain't got the tools, either. I know the business. Look at the
experience I've had! But I need a new jail, Mr. Hennion, bad, as I told
Mr. Wood.”
“Better write out a statement of the case. Good-night. Much obliged for
your trouble.”
The jailor talked busily till they came to the outer door. Hennion broke
away, and left him in the doorway smoking his short pipe.
He came presently to sit in the tall Champ-ney library, and heard Henry
Champney speaking in that tone and accent which made an ordinary remark
sound like one of the Ten Commandments. Camilla was silent.
“Do you then, ha! cross the Rubicon?” Champney asked.
“Wood's organisation, sir? Carroll and the city jailor both seem to
think it a foregone conclusion. Sweeney thinks if one of his 'boys' had
a crowbar, or chisel, or a pair of tongs, he'd return to the community;
so he wants a new jail, thinking it might include a new salary.”