“Good Lord,” he ejaculated. “Are we both crazy?”
“Nothing crazy about either of us,” I assured him. “What we see in the
cage is what is in the cage.”
“Is there such a critter as that, honest?” he pressed me.
I gave him a pretty full account of the animal, its habits and
relationships.
“Well,” he said, weakly, “I suppose you’re telling the truth. If there
is such a critter let’s get where I can’t see it.”
I helped him to his feet and assisted him to a bench altogether out of
sight of that building. He put on his collar and knotted his cravat.
While I had held it I had noticed that, through its greasy condition,
it showed plainly having been a very expensive cravat. His clothes I
remarked were seedy, but had been of the very best when new.
“Let’s find a drinking fountain,” he suggested, “I can walk now.”
We found one not far away and at no great distance from it a shaded
bench facing an agreeable view. I offered him a cigarette and we
smoked. I meant to let him do most of the talking.
“Do you know,” he began presently. “Things you said to me run in my
head more than anything anybody ever said to me. I suppose it’s because
you’re a sort of philosopher and student of human nature and what you
say is true. For instance, you said that criminals would get off clear
three times out of four, if they just kept their mouths shut, but they
have to confide in some one, even against all reason. That’s just the
way with me now.”
“You aren’t a criminal,” I interrupted him. “You lost your temper and
made a fool of yourself just once. If you’d been a criminal and had
done what you did, you’d have likely enough got off, because you’d have
calculated how to do it. As it was you put yourself in a position where
everything was against you and you had no chance. We were all sorry for
you.”
“You most of all,” he amplified. “You treated me bully.”
“But we were all sorry for you,” I repeated, “and all the jury too, and
the judge. You’re no criminal.”
“How do you know,” he demanded defiantly, “what I have done since I got
out?”
“You’ve grown a pretty good head of hair,” I commented.
“I’ve had time,” he said. “I’ve been all over the world and blown in
ten thousand dollars.”
“And never seen----” I began.
He interrupted me at the third word.
“Don’t say it,” he shuddered. “I never had, nor heard of one. But
I wasn’t after caged animals while I had any money left. I didn’t
remember your advice and your other talk till I was broke. Now, it’s
just as you said, I’ve just got to tell you. That’s the criminal in me,
I suppose.”
“You’re no criminal,” I repeated soothingly.
“Hell,” he snarled, “a year in the pen makes a man a criminal, if he
never was before.”
“Not necessarily,” I encouraged him.
“It’s pretty sure to,” he sighed. “They treated me mighty well and put
me to bookkeeping, and I got my full good-conduct allowance. But I met
professionals, and they never forget a man.”
“Now it don’t make any difference what I did when I got out, nor what I
tried to do nor how I met Rivvin, nor how he put Thwaite after me. No,
nor how Thwaite got hold of me, nor what he said to me, nor anything,
right up to the very night, till after we had started.”
He looked me in the eye. His attitude became alert. I could see him
warming to his narrative. In fact, when after very little rumination
he began it, his early self dropped from him with his boyhood dialect
and the jargon of his late associates. He was all the easy cosmopolitan
telling his tale with conscious zest.