|ALLEN AIDEE lay on his back across the bed in his whitewashed cell, and
smoked, swinging one foot swiftly, incessantly, like a pendulum, arguing
with Sol Sweeney, and gesticulating with loose fingers. The bed was a
wooden cot with a mattress on it.
Sweeney sat at the table under the gas jet, and smoked too. He had a
large friendly acquaintance with jailbirds, and his placid philosophy
was composed out of his knowledge of them.
“I seen folks like you, Hicks,” he said, “two or three. Trouble is you
gets hold of one end of a string. Any old string 'll do. All the same to
you. 'Hullo!' you says, 'this is a valyble string. Fact, there ain't any
other string, not any other real string. This the only genwine. Follow
it, and you gets wherever you like. It's that kind of a string,' says
you. 'God A'mighty, what a string!' says you. Then you rolls yourself up
in it, and there you are! Ball up! Ain't no more use! For you take a
solid man like me, and he talks to you and he shows you reason, but you
don't see it. Why? 'Cause you're balled up in the string, that's why.”
Allen snapped out his answer.
“I'll tell you the trouble with you.”
“Ain't any trouble with me.”
“Ain't! Well, I know this, I can stand your kind about half an hour at
a stretch. Give me two hours of you--damn! I'd drink rat poison to get
cooled down.”
“That's the trouble with you,” said the complacent jailor. “Ain't me.”
“Trouble! No! You ain't equal to that. You ain't capable of that! You've
got no more consistency or organisation than a barrel of oil. You're all
fat and hair. Solid! So's a brick solid. Damn! You're solid, but are you
alive? You'll be dead before anybody sees the difference. Ain't any real
difference!”
Sweeney puffed his pipe contentedly, but thoughtfully, and shook his
heavy beard.
“Well, well! But now, I'll say this for you, Hicks. You're an
entertainin' man. I'll say that to anybody that asks. I'll say, 'Hicks
is a man that's got language, if I know what's what.'”
The jailor rose. Allen swung his foot swiftly.
“I wish you'd do something for me, Sweeney.”
“What's that?”
“Let me have the gas at night. I don't sleep good. If I had the gas I
could get up and read. You heavy men, you sleep all night. You don't
know what it is.”
“Why, I'll see, Hicks. I'll ask about that to-morrow.”
“Oh, let me have it to-night!” he pleaded.
“I ain't going to sleep good to-night. I can feel it. It'll be eternity
before morning. I swear I'll be dead before morning. I'll turn it low.”
“Well--I don't see no harm in that. It ain't in me to rough a man.”
He went out, locking the door noisily behind him.
Allan lay still. His foot swung steadily, but more slowly. After a time
Sweeney came down the corridor, making his ten o'clock round. He went to
the end, and back again, and then downstairs. The corridor was quiet.
Half an hour later Allen got up and filled his pipe, lit it at the gas
jet, turned the jet low, and lay down again across his mattress. He
smoked with quick, sharp puffs, but not fast. He swung his foot slowly,
and stared at a point on the blank wall over the gas jet. Eleven o'clock
struck.
After the theatre crowds were gone past, the noise of the city grew
less. There were fewer cars, and only now and then footsteps on the
neighbouring pavement. Twelve o'clock struck.
He got up again, slipped off his shoes, and went to his window.
A maple tree grew directly in front, some twenty feet away. Its leaves
were thick, but he could see the glitter of the electric light through
them. The sidewalk was high as the lower windows of the jail, for the
Court House Square was on sunken land. The black shadow of the maple
covered the front of the jail down to the ground.
The grating of the window had its bars set at both sides, and at the
top and bottom. There were two rows of bricks from the bars to the inner
edge of the window, and the wooden framework that held the panes of
glass was set close to the grating. The outside of the sill was stone.
Allen went back and lifted his mattress. There was a rent in the seam
of the lower edge. He thrust in his hand, drew out a black cloth cap
and put it on his head. Then he drew out a heavy chisel with a battered
wooden handle, and returned to the window.
The woodwork came away, cracking slightly as the nails drew out. He
leaned the boards and frame carefully against the wall. He tried one
crack after another between the bricks at the bottom of the window,
pushing and pressing. Presently one became loose, then another. He laid
them one by one in a neat row on the floor.
The work at the sides and top was slower, because it was difficult to
get a purchase, and to prevent fragments from falling. He dug till he
got the purchase, and then held the brick up with one hand and pried
with the other. Once a fragment of cement fell with a smart slap on the
sill. He got down suddenly and sat on the floor, and listened, wiping
his wet hands and forehead with his cap. Either Sweeney or his assistant
was always around at night, and would have heard, if he had happened to
be in the upper corridor.
He carried the mattress to the window and laid it underneath to catch
and deaden the noise, if anything more fell.
It was half-past one by the striking of the city clocks when he finished
stripping off the first thickness of bricks. If the ends of the bars
were buried more than two layers downward, there would not be time to
strip them all before daylight. He forced up those on the sill, which
were opposite one of the bars, and felt with his fingers. He felt the
end of the bar, and knew that at that rate he would be out by three
o'clock.
He worked on. His black hair hung wet against his forehead. He watched
intensely for the loosened fragments of cement. He grew more skilful,
more noiseless. The loudest sound in the cell was his own breathing, and
except for that, only little rasps and clicks.
When the last brick was out and laid in its place, he moved the grating,
which came out easily with a little scraping noise. It was heavy, and
he rested a corner of it on the mattress, so that the ends of the bars
caught in the sides of the window. Then he brought his blanket. In
lifting the blanket he noticed the short iron braces on the cot bed.
They suggested an idea. He took out the screws of one of them with the
chisel, carried it to the window, and scratched it on the bricks until
its black enamel was rubbed off one end; then laid it on the floor.
Whether possible to do so or not, people would think he must have
loosened the bricks with the brace. He wasn't going to mess “old Al”
again, he thought, no, nor meet him in St. Louis for that matter, nor be
led around the rest of his life by a string.
“Not me, like a damn squealing little pig”
He slit one end of the blanket into strips with his chisel, tied each
strip to the bars of the grating and dropped the other end of the
blanket through the window. Leaning out, he looked down and saw that it
reached the grating of the window below. He put his shoes into his side
coat pockets, the chisel into an inner coat pocket, and felt in his vest
for the money Alcott had left him. He pulled his cap on hard, turned off
the gas jet, and climbed over the grating.
He gripped with both hands the corner of it which projected into the
window, opposite the corner which rested on the mattress within the
cell, and let himself down till his feet caught on the grating of the
window below, slipping his hands alternately along the edges of the
blanket, and so down step by step, feeling for the bars with his feet.
When his feet reached the stone sill below he felt the top bars under
his hands. He stopped to catch the lower bars in order to lower himself
to the ground, and his face came opposite the upper half of a partly
dropped window. The lower half of it was curtained. A gas jet burned
inside.
The room was like the cell overhead, whitewashed, but larger and
furnished with ordinary bedroom furniture. The gas jet was fixed in the
same place as in his own cell. The light fell flickering across the wide
bed. A man lay there asleep on his back, his thick beard thrust up and
in the air, his feet toward the window, where Allen clung like a spider.
The sleeper was Sweeney. Allen slipped to the ground, sat down, and
covered his face with his hands, and shivered. He had not known that
Sweeney slept underneath him.
He pulled on his shoes, stood up, and went out under the maple tree to
the sidewalk. He was glad he had not known that Sweeney slept underneath
him. The sky was nearly covered by clouds, a few sparkling spaces here
and there.
The blanket hung from the dismantled upper window, and flapped in the
night wind against the wall.
As he climbed the bank to the sidewalk the clock in the church tower
across the street struck three. It frightened him. It seemed too
spectacular a place to be in, there under the great arc light that
poured its glare down upon him, while the bells above the light were
pealing, shouting in their high tower, clamouring alarm over the Court
House Square, over the little old jail, the grim, small, dingy jail, low
down in the sunken land, jail of the one ungrated window and flapping
blanket, jail of the sleeping Sweeney.
He hurried along the sidewalk toward Maple Street. At the corner of
the square was a drug store with gas jets flaring behind two glass
globes--one red, the other blue--the two dragonish eyes of the monstrous
long shape of the block looming behind and over them. All the blocks
around seemed unnaturally huge. They crowded close to the street, and
stared down at him with their ghastly blank windows--nervous, startled
fronts of buildings that shivered and echoed to the sound of his steps.
There were no other sounds now but a small whispering wind, and his own
steps and their pursuing echoes. The red and blue globes in the corner
drug store glared intolerably. As he passed they began suddenly to flow
and whirl all over their glassy slopes.
He turned to the right, past the great brick Ward School building, out
of Easter Street into Buckeye Street, which was only an unpaved road;
and here his feet made no noise in the dust; neither were there any
lights; so that he went softly in the darkness. A row of little wooden
shanties were on the right, and on the left the mass of the Ward School
building. Still higher, the roof of a steepleless church, whose apse
overhung the empty lot behind the school, rose up, splitting the sky
with its black wedge. In front of him were the buildings of the Beck
Carriage Factory, bigger than church and school together. The vacant
spaces between them, these buildings and shanties, were by day
overflowed with light, overrun by school children and factory hands,
over-roared by the tumult of the nearby thoroughfares of Bank and Maple
Streets. By night they were the darkest and stillest places in Port
Argent. One man might pass another, walking in the thick dust of the
cart road and hardly be aware of him. It was too dark to see the rickety
fence about the schoolyard, or make out the small sickly maples.
He came to a sidewalk with a curb, and saw up the hill to the left the
dim glow from the lights of Maple Street, and went toward them. At the
corner of Maple Street he stopped and thrust his head cautiously around
the angle of the building.
A block below, a policeman stood in the glare of the arc light, swinging
his club slowly by its cord, and looking around for objects of interest,
not apparently finding anything of the kind. Allen drew back his head.
It might be better to go back and cross Bank Street at another point and
so come to the bridge along the docks by the river. It would take some
time. He would have to pass an electric light in any case.
Footsteps were approaching on Maple Street from the other direction.
Presently four men appeared on the other corner and crossed to the
corner where he stood flattened against the wall, and in the shadow. All
walked unsteadily, with elaborate care. Two of them maintained a third
between them. The fourth followed a few paces in the rear.
As they passed, Allen pulled his cap over his eyes, and dropped in
behind them, and so they approached Bank Street, and he drew close to
the three in front.
“Hullo!” said the policeman calmly; “jagged?”
“Say!” exclaimed the maintainer on the left, stopping; “tha's mistake.
Smooth as silk. Ain't it?”
“You're out late, anyhow,” said the policeman.
“It's a weddin'. Ain't it? Wa'n't us. 'Nother feller did it.”
“Well, get along, then.”
“All ri'! All ri'!”
He watched the five men as far as the next electric light, and then
dropped them as objects of interest.
“Hoi' on!” exclaimed the man walking beside Allen, turning suddenly upon
him. “That ain't right. There's five of us. Two, three, four, five. Bet
your life! That ain't right.”
They all stopped and looked at Allen. He started and his breath came
harsh in his throat.
“'Nother weddin'?” said the middleman thickly. “Wa'n't him. 'Nother
feller did it. You didn', did you?”
Allen shook his head “No.”
“Tha's so! Well, tha's right. 'Sh good thing. If 'nother feller does it,
'sh good thing.”
They shambled on amiably across the drawbridge. Allen fell behind,
stopped, and leaned against the guard rail.
In a few moments he could hear their footsteps no more, but he could
hear the mutter of the river against the stone piers. Leaning over the
rail, he could see here and there a dull glint, though the night
was dark; and across the wide spaces over the river he could see
the buildings on each side, low, heavy masses, only saved from the
smothering night and made sullenly visible by the general glow of the
street lamps beyond them. There a few red lights along shore, some in
the freight yards, some belonging to anchored or moored vessels, small
sail-boats, and long black lumber and coal barges from the northern
lakes. He could remember looking down at other times in the night at
the dull glint of water, and being shaken as now by the jar of fighting
things in his own mind, angry things fighting furiously. At those times
it seemed as if some cord within him were strained almost to snapping,
but always some passing excitement, some new glittering idea, something
to happen on the morrow, had drawn him away. But those moments of
despair were associated mainly with the glinting and mutter of dusky
water. “I been a fool,” he muttered, and a little later, “What's the
use!”
He decided to go to the shoe-shop and change his clothes, shave his
beard, and pick up a few things, and then hide himself on some outgoing
freight train, the other side of Muscadine Street, before the morning
came. The morning could not be far off now. Shays would keep quiet,
maybe, for a while. He would take Shays' razor.
He roused himself and moved on. He began to have glimpses of schemes,
tricks, and plans. There were little spots of light in his brain, which
for a while had seemed numb, dull, and unstirring. But he carried away
with him the impression of the glints of the gloomy river and the mutter
of its hurrying.
His feet dragged with his weariness. He turned into Muscadine Street and
crept along the sidewalk on the right.
Suddenly a switch engine in the freight yards glared him in the face
with its one blinding eye, yelled and hissed through its steam whistle,
and came charging toward him. He leaped aside and fell into a doorway,
and lay there crouching. Then he sat up and whimpered, “I ain't fit. I'm
all gone away. I ain't fit.”
He rubbed his face and hands, peered around the corner to see the
harmless engine withdrawing in the distance then got up and crossed the
street. The nearness of the familiar shop windows, as he passed them one
after another, comforted him not a little. On the next corner was the
grocer's, the butcher's shop this side of it, and the shoemaker's shop
was over the rear of the grocery. The mingled butcher-shop and grocery
smell pervaded the corner, comforting, too, with its associations.
He turned the corner and climbed slowly the outside wooden stairway,
with the signboard at the top, “James Shays,” and leaning over the
railing, he saw a faint light in the windows of the shop. He entered the
hall, turned the knob of the door softly, opened the door part way, and
peered in.
The table stood in its ordinary central place, on it were a bottle, a
tin cup, and a small lit lamp with a smoky chimney. The work bench was
unchanged in place. The door of the inner room beyond stood open, but
that room was dark. On the pile of hides in the corner some clothes,
taken from the hooks overhead, had been thrown, and on the clothes lay
Coglan, face downward and asleep.
Allen thought, “He's sleeping on my clothes,” and stepped in, closing
the door softly behind him.