Mr. Constable's physician recommended rest and a complete change of
scene. With all the world to choose from, the patient made a peculiar
selection for his place of sojourn. It was Sing Sing, on the Hudson. But
Mr. Constable strictly complied with the Doctor's advice in not allowing
anyone to know his address.
There is not much to be seen in Sing Sing except the State Prison, but
Mr. Constable saw that very thoroughly. For two days he spent all the
time allotted to visitors in making himself acquainted with convict
life. He was writing a novel, he told the Warden, and wanted local
colour. No--he did not know any one in the prison--he was an Englishman,
and only on a visit to this country. Would he like to make a tour of the
buildings with the Warden? Nothing, he declared, would give him greater
pleasure--he was interested in every detail. So, escorted by the Warden,
he passed through the clean, well-aired corridors, inspected the orderly
kitchens and the huge laundries, viewed the immense workshops filled
with convicts toiling in splendid, disciplined silence, watched the men
file to their meals, their hands hooked over one another's shoulders,
their heads bent down, eyes upon the ground, bodies close together, and
their feet keeping time in the lock-step prescribed by the regulations.
It was all very impressive, he told the Warden--a wonderful triumph of
system and discipline. He congratulated the official, and was invited
into the private office for a smoke and chat.
Did the Warden suppose there were any innocent men in the cells? Very
likely there were some--it was not uncommon for prisoners to have new
trials granted them, and occasionally a man would be acquitted on these
second trials. Did many of the men return after serving sentence? Yes, a
good many. Why? Well, principally, the Warden supposed, because it was
hard for an ex-convict to get an honest job after he got out. "Damned
near impossible, unless he has mighty good friends," the official added
feelingly.
Was not that a reflection on the system? Well, the Warden wasn't there
to pass on that--the Prison Association had undertaken to handle the
question, but he couldn't see that they'd done much with it.
But the innocent men--the men who were afterwards acquitted--they would
be--they were not ex-convicts? No, the Warden guessed they were all
right. And the pardoned ones? The Warden smiled.
"I'm not very strong on pardons myself," he admitted. "I'd about as soon
employ an out-and-outer. Too much politics in pardons for me. Moreover,
sometimes they're not appreciated. We had a queer fellow here once who
served five years, and was a model prisoner too. Well, when he was
discharged someone met him at the station with a pardon from the
Governor. 'You cur,' he shouted at the man who handed it to him, 'get
pardons for those who need them!' With that he tore the paper into bits,
threw the pieces in the man's face and gave him a terrible thrashing. We
never learned what the trouble was, though the fellow served two more
years for the assault. But some of us thought he must have been innocent
all the time. However, when he came out again nobody offered him another
pardon."
The next day Mr. Constable visited the prison without the escort of the
Warden. In the work-rooms the silence of the workers oppressed him, but
it was better than the language of some of the under-keepers which
fairly sickened him. He had heard foul-mouthed men hurl epithets and
profanity back and forth often enough, but never before had he seen the
frightful answers which human beings can make without the utterance of a
syllable. Many times that day he saw murder done with the eyes--the
foulest, fiercest, most glutting murder of which the human heart is
capable. In every regulation he saw manhood debased, individuality
destroyed, education neglected, reformation defeated, and glancing from
the faces of the convicts to those of the keepers, he could not say
which this "splendid system" had most brutalised.
Then Mr. Constable returned to his cheerless room at the hotel and
locking himself in, lay down on the sofa, only to offer his body as a
pavement for files of close-cropped and shaven men who passed over him
with the steady tramp-tramp, tramp-tramp of the lock-step, stamping him
into the ground gladly and sternly, gloatingly and viciously--deeper and
deeper, until he felt the damp earth upon his face and heard less and
less clearly the tread of those marching feet.
Then it ceased altogether and Mr. Constable smiled in his sleep as he
dreamed he was dead, only to awake with a shriek when he felt that he
was living.
The next morning the Warden met him on the street.
"How's the local colour getting on?" he asked pleasantly.
"I was working with it all last night."
The Warden stared silently at the speaker for a moment, frowned slightly
and passed on.
"Good God!" he muttered to himself, "if it makes a man look like that to
write, I never want to read again."
Mr. Constable left Sing Sing for Niagara, where he stopped long
enough to write a letter in the public writing-room of an hotel. The
composition of this missive, however, consumed several hours, for the
writer kept glancing apprehensively over his shoulder and when anyone
approached the table he covered his paper with the blotter and waited
until he was alone again. But when at last the letter was finished he
omitted to sign it, which was the more neglectful since no one could
possibly have recognised the shaky handwriting as that of the snappy,
energetic, confident Mr. Theodore Constable. Even the clerk in the New
York Post Office who handled the envelope cursed the writer as he
puzzled out the address.
Mr. Constable next visited Detroit presumably for the sole purpose of
dictating curious statements to the hotel typewriter. These he mailed
to New York with some enclosures, addressing the envelopes in large,
childish capitals.
The rest of his vacation was spent in the bedroom of a second class
boarding-house in Chicago.
At the end of three weeks he returned to New York looking far worse
than when he went away. Mr. Hertzog therefore hesitated to tell him that
Horton had moved for another trial on newly-discovered evidence.
But the matter could not be kept secret, for Horton's counsel had done
more than claim he could prove his client's innocence; he not only
produced one or two strikingly significant exhibits received anonymously
from Detroit, but also asserted he was daily obtaining clues from
unknown friends in other cities which might lead to the discovery of a
conspiracy, if not to the conspirators themselves.
Even a careless student of human nature must have observed the marked
change which had taken place in Mr. Constable.
The lines that come gradually with age and experience give meaning
and character to the face--even the traces of illness are not without
a certain dignity. But when care begins to crease the face of
self-complacence its effects are distortions, terrible as those
which some iron implement of torture would suddenly produce.
Mr. Constable's florid countenance was without a line until it was
wrinkled and furrowed and scarred.
Mr. Hertzog was shocked by the appearance of his partner. Was the man
going mad? He had seen such changes foreshadow insanity. But if he was
going mad--from what cause? He must make sure.
Mr. Constable sat in the junior partner's private office reading a copy
of the affidavits supporting the latest move in Horton's long fight, and
Mr. Hertzog watched him. He noted that the trembling hands left little
spots of perspiration on the pages, he saw the twitching lips every now
and then forming words--he counted the rapid throbbing of the arteries
in head and neck. All this he had expected and discounted, but he was
unprepared for the horrid look of cunning in the man's eyes, as he
glanced up from his reading.
For a few moments neither of the partners spoke. Then Mr. Constable
broke the silence.
"You think--you would say these papers were--that they made a strong
case?"
Mr. Constable's eyes were fixed upon his partner in anxious inquiry,
like a sick man waiting the decision of a doctor testing the heart or
lungs.
"Yes, it's strong. Too damned strong."
The answer given slowly and with emphasis was received with a smile such
as the face of a dead man might attempt with cracking skin and snapping
muscles.
"And the papers--are they--should you say they were well drawn?"
"Yes--that fellow Mackenzie seems to have learned something during these
years--damn him! By the way, how long did he get?"
"Who?"
"Horton, of course."
"Three, I think--yes, it was three years."
"Then he's served two years and--let's see--two years and three months."
Mr. Hertzog pushed the electric button in his desk. "Get me the Revised
Statutes covering Sing Sing regulations," he said to the boy who
answered the summons. The book was brought and Mr. Hertzog began
studying its pages, his head resting on his hands and his elbows on the
desk. For five minutes--ten minutes, there was silence.
"Don't let's take up this thing, Hertzog--I think--I think he'll win."
Mr. Constable's voice was almost a whisper.
But Hertzog, engrossed in the volume before him, did not hear. Mr.
Constable glanced at the stern Hebraic face, flushed and changed his
remark to a question.
"Do you think he'll win?"
The junior partner started up nervously.
"How the devil can I tell!" he burst out angrily. "What's the
use of sitting there parroting 'Do-you-think-he-can-win?
Do-you-think-he-can-win?' He's got a damned good case on the merits.
There's something in the Code that may fix him, but I don't count on it.
Don't ask such idiotic questions. Of course I think he can win, but I
also think he mustn't. If you want my opinion"--Mr. Hertzog swung
himself about and cast a searching glance at the shrivelled, mean little
figure crushed into the leather easy-chair beside him. "If you want my
real opinion, Constable," he repeated, "I think we've _got_ to win.
Haven't we?"
For a moment Mr. Constable stared silently at his partner. Then shaking
his head he mumbled a word or two, stopped, put his hand to his throat,
began again, stammered a disjointed sentence and suddenly poured forth a
torrent of confused and incoherent words that thickened into a clotted
gurgle and freed itself in a sputter swelling to peal upon peal of
hideous, shattering, mirthless laughter--laughter which forced the man
to his feet and rocked him with its spasms.
Hertzog leaped toward the door and fastened it. The clerks must not hear
the horror of this. Then he darted to the window, but by the time he had
closed it the laughter had died out, and Constable was quivering upon
the floor, the blood gushing from his mouth.