"Do you mean that you're trying to give me a hint that I'd better run
away?" I demanded.
He took a step toward the cell door and I had a fleeting impression
that he was listening to determine whether or not there was any one in
the corridor. When he faced me again he was frowning reprovingly.
"I am a member of the bar in good standing," he reminded me stiffly.
"If you knew the first letter of the legal alphabet you'd know that I
couldn't advise a client to run away."
"Damn the legal alphabet!" I broke out hotly. "You're a man, Cy
Whitredge; and I'm another man and in trouble. Can't you drop the
professional cant for half a minute and talk straight?"
At this he shook his head again.
"It would prejudice your case mighty badly--that is, if you should try
it and not succeed. On the other hand--but no; I won't say another
word. Your best friend wouldn't advise you to make such a break.
Besides, you have no money, and you couldn't get very far without it.
I shouldn't even think of it, if I were you. Dwelling on a thing like
that sometimes gives it a chance to get hold of you. But this is all
foolishness, of course. You are going to Jefferson, and you'll take
your medicine like a man if you have to. That's all, I believe, for
the present. Keep a stiff upper lip, and if anybody comes to see you,
don't talk too much. I'll be over at the county seat in a day or two,
and we'll thresh it out some more."
After Runnels had brought me my supper, and I had nothing to do but to
wait for the constable and train-time, I did the very thing that
Whitredge had advised me not to do; I couldn't get it out of my mind
that freedom at any price was now the most desirable thing on earth--in
the universe, for that matter. It was facilely easy to picture a
future in some far distant corner of the country where I might begin
all over again and make good. Other men had done it. Every once in a
while I had read in the newspapers the story of some fellow who had
eluded his fate, deserved or otherwise, years before and had lived and
builded anew and in a fashion to win the applause of all men.
Because I had lived in a small town the better part of my life, I had
the mistaken notion that the world is very wide and that there must be
no end of safe hiding-places for the man who needs to seek one. From
that to imagining the possible details was only a series of steps, each
one carrying me a little nearer to the brink of decision. As I have
said, I had money of my own in the bank vault; much more than enough to
bribe easy-going Sam Jorkins, the constable who, as Whitredge had said,
was to take me to Jefferson. I weighed and measured all the chances
and hazards, and there were only two for which I could not provide in
advance. There was a possibility that Geddis might be staying late in
the bank; and if he were not, there was the other possibility that he
might have changed the combination on the vault lock since my arrest.
The more I thought about it, the more fiercely the escape notion
gripped me. Whitredge's talk had made it perfectly plain that the best
I could hope for in a court trial would be a light sentence. As
train-time drew near, the obsession pushed reason and all the scruples
aside. If I could only persuade Jorkins to let me go to the bank on
the drive to the station----
The town clock in the tower of the new city hall was striking eleven
when good old John Runnels and the constable came for me. At the final
moment I was telling myself feverishly that it would be of no use for
me to try to bribe honest Sam Jorkins; that this was the fatal weakness
in my plan of escape. Hence, I could have shouted for joy when Runnels
unlocked the cell door and turned me over, not to Jorkins, but to a
stranger; a hard-faced man roughly dressed, and with the scar of a
knife slash across his right cheek.
"This is Bill Simmons, a deputy from Jefferson, Bertie; come to take
you over to the county ja--to the sheriff's office," said Runnels.
"I've told him he ain't goin' to have no use for them handcuffs he's
brought along."
"That may be," growled the sheriff's messenger. "All the same, I ain't
takin' no chances--not me!" and with that he whipped the manacles from
his pocket. But Runnels intervened quickly.
"Nary!--not here in my shop, you don't, Simmons," he said. "For two
cents I'd go along with Bertie, myself, if only to see to it that he
gets a fair show. You treat him right and white, or I'll fire you out,
warrant or no warrant!"
When we reached the street I said I wanted to go around by way of my
boarding-house for a change of clothing.
"That's all been 'tended to," said the surly deputy, with a jerk of his
thumb toward a suitcase in the seat beside the driver of the hack
carriage. "You get in and keep quiet; that's all you've got to do."
After this he said nothing and made no further move until we were
jouncing along on our way to the railroad station. Then, without
warning, he turned upon me suddenly and tried to snap the hand-cuffs on
my wrists.
It was all I was waiting for; something to pull the trigger. In a
flash the savage, which, in the best of us, lies but skin-deep under
the veneer of habit and the civilized conventions, leaped alive. There
was a fierce grapple in the interior of the darkened carriage--fierce
but silent--and the blood sang in my veins when I found that I was more
than a match for the scar-faced deputy. With fingers to throat I
choked him into submission, and when I had taken his pistol and
hand-cuffed him with his own manacles, the step that made me a criminal
in fact had been overpassed.
"One yip out of you, and you get a bullet out of your own gun!" I
warned him; and then I got speech with the driver, a squat, thickset
Irishman, whose face and brogue were both strange to me.
"Drive to the Farmers' Bank--side door--and be quick about it!" I
called to him over the lowered window-sash.
"I'm hired to go to the train. Who's payin' me for the side-trip?" he
queried impatiently.
"I am," I snapped; adding: "There's money in it for you if you put the
whip on."
He obeyed the order with what might have seemed suspicious readiness,
if I had been cool enough to consider it, and a minute or two later the
hack ground its wheels against the curb at the side door of the bank
building. With the pistol at his ribs I pushed the deputy out ahead of
me. My keys were still in my pocket--Runnels hadn't searched me for
anything--and I opened the door and entered, driving Simmons a step in
advance.
The bank was untenanted, as I knew it would be if Geddis should not be
there, since we had never employed a night watchman. At that time of
night there was nothing stirring in the town, and in the midnight
silence the ticking of the clock on the wall over Abel Geddis's desk
crashed into the stillness like the blows of a hammer. I made the
deputy sit down under the vault light while I worked the combination.
The lock had not been changed, and the door opened at the first trial.
Again pushing Simmons ahead of me, I entered the vault. It was a
fairly modern structure; Geddis had had it rebuilt within the year; and
it was electric-lighted and large enough to serve the double purpose of
a bank strong-room and a safety deposit. Shoving the deputy into a
corner I opened the cash-box and took out the exact amount of my
savings, neither more nor less. Simmons stretched his neck and leered
at me with an evil grin.
"You're the fine little crook, all right enough," he remarked. "They
was sayin' over at Jefferson that you was a Sunday-school
sup'rintendent, or somethin' o' that sort. Them kind is always the
flyest."
It struck me suddenly that he was taking his defeat pretty easily, but
there was no time for a nice weighing of other men's motives.
"I'm fly enough to give you what's coming to you," I said; and with
that I snapped off the electric light, darted out, slammed the vault
door and shot the bolts. For a few hours at least, during the latter
part of which he might have to breathe rather bad air, the deputy was
an obstruction removed.
My hurriedly formed plan of escape would probably have made a
professional criminal weep; but it was the only one I could think of on
the spur of the moment. In the next county, at a distance of
thirty-odd miles, there was another railroad. If I could succeed in
bribing the Irish hack-driver, I might be far on my way before the bank
vault would be opened and the alarm given.
The Irishman took my money readily enough and offered no objections
when I told him what I wished to do. Also, he claimed to be familiar
with the cross-country road to Vilasville, saying that he could set me
down in the village before daylight. Oddly enough, he made no comment
on the absence of the deputy, and seemed quite as willing to haul one
passenger as two. With my liberal bribe for a stimulant he whipped up
his horses, and in a few minutes we were out of town and rolling
smoothly along the intercounty pike.
For a time the sudden break with all the well-behaved traditions kept
me awake and in a fever heat of excitement. But along in the small
hours the monotonous _clack-clack_ of the horses' hoofs on the
limestone pike and the steady rumbling of the wheels quieted me.
Reflecting that I had had little sleep the night before, and that the
way ahead would be perilous enough to ask for sharpened faculties and a
well-rested body, I braced myself in a corner of the carriage and
closed my eyes.
When I awakened, after what seemed like only the shortest hand-space of
dreamless oblivion, a misty dawn was breaking and the carriage was
stopped in a town street and in front of a brick building with barred
windows. While I was blinking and rubbing my eyes in astoundment, a
big, bearded man whose face was strangely familiar opened the door and
whipped the captured pistol from the seat.
"This was one time when the longest way 'round was the shortest way
home," chuckled the big pistol-snatcher quizzically. And then: "Old Ab
Withers seems to know you better than most of us do, Bert. He told me
I'd better not risk you on the train with just one Glendale constable;
that I'd better send a rig and two deputies after you, if I wanted to
make sure o' seein' you. What have you done with Simmons?"