"Would it make any difference if I were to say that I was as innocent of
the crime for which I was convicted as any of these frightened women?" I
suggested.
"They all say that," was the colorless retort. "The point is, Weyburn,
that you was convicted. There ain't no gettin' 'round that. You've worn
the stripes, and you'll just have to make up your mind to live it down
before you can expect people to forget it."
If I hadn't been the wretched victim of this paradox it might have
provoked a smile.
"How am I ever going to live it down, Mr. Bucks, if nobody will give me a
chance?" I asked.
"I know," he agreed readily enough. "But I'm losin' money here, every
day, as it is, and I can't afford to make experiments. I'm sorry for
you, honestly, Weyburn; but you see how it is."
"Yes, I see," I returned. "You think I ought to be given a chance, but
you prefer to have somebody else give it to me. I don't blame you.
Perhaps under similar conditions I'd do the same thing myself. Pay me
and I'll disappear."
He did pay me, and tried to give me two dollars more than the agreed
weekly wage, generously putting it upon the ground of the lack of notice.
I shall always be glad that I still had pride enough left to refuse the
charity. Even at this early twisting of the thumb-screws I was beginning
to realize that self-respect would be the first thing to go by the board,
and the fight to save it was almost instinctive.
Before leaving Bucks I tried to find out how he had learned my story;
this though I was definitely charging the exposure to the town marshal as
being the only person who could have spread it abroad. To my surprise,
the grocer defended the marshal promptly and warmly.
"That shows how little you know Cal Giddings," he retorted. "He's the
last man on top of earth to go 'round givin' you a black eye of that
sort."
"May I ask what reason you have for thinking so?" I inquired.
"Sure you may. I've known Cal ever since we was little kids together.
I've seen him every day this week, and he knew you was workin' for me.
If he'd 'a' told anybody, it would 'a' been me; you can bet your hat on
that."
"Then where did you hear the story?" I persisted.
"Why, I dunno just where I did hear it first. Everybody in town seems to
know it," he asserted; and with this unsatisfying answer I was obliged to
be contented.
The next attempt was made in a small industrial city on the opposite side
of the State. This time I went to the chief of police as soon as I
arrived, and after making the required report, I had it out with him in
plain speech.
"I am going to try to get work here in your city," I said, "and I'd like
to know beforehand how much leeway you are going to give me."
The portly thief-taker leaned back in his chair and regarded me with a
coldly appraisive eye. He was a coarse-featured man with a face that
would have fitted admirably in any rogues' gallery in the land.
"You're in bad, young fellow," he growled. "We've got plenty and more
than enough of your kind in this town, without takin' on any more."
"But I am keeping my parole," I pleaded. "I have come to you like a man
the first thing, and have made my report according to the conditions.
Somebody has got to give me a chance."
"You'll earn it, damn' good and plenty, if you stay here to get it," was
the gruff response. "What kind of a job are you lookin' for?"
It was hard to confide in such a man, even casually, but I had no choice.
"I am willing to take anything I can get, but my experience has been
mostly in office work," I told him; adding: "I suppose I might call
myself a fairly expert bookkeeper."
"Umph!" he grunted, shifting his cigar from one corner of the hard-bitted
mouth to the other. "That means that you want to try for a job where you
can work the till-tapping game again."
Not having as yet learned my lesson line by line, I was incautious enough
to say: "I have yet to work it the first time."
"Like hell you have! See here, young fellow--you needn't spring that
kind of talk on me. I know you and your kind up one side and down the
other. You say you've put three years in 'stir' and that settles it."
At this point he broke off short, righted his chair with a snap and
reached for a bill-spindle on his desk. After a glance at one of the
impaled memoranda he sat back again, chewing his cigar and staring into
vacancy. A full minute elapsed before he deigned to become once more
aware of my presence. Then he whirled upon me to rap out an explosive
question.
"What did you say your name was?" and when I told him: "Aw right; you
come back here this afternoon and we'll see whether you stay or move on.
That's all. Now get out. I'm busy."
I went away and killed time as I could until the middle of the afternoon.
Upon returning to police headquarters I found the hard-faced chief tilted
in his chair with his feet on his desk, looking as if he hadn't moved
since my visit of the forenoon. When he saw who it was cutting off the
afternoon sunlight he straightened up with a growl, rummaged in a file of
papers and jerked out a typewritten sheet which he glanced over as one
who reads only the headings.
"James Bertrand Weyburn, eh?" he rasped. "I know all about you now, and
you may as well can all that didn't-do-it stuff. Forget it and come down
to business. You say you want to hit the straight-and-narrow: how would
a job in a coal yard fit you?--keepin' books and weighin'-in the coal
cars?"
I told him, humbly enough, that I was too nearly a beggar to be a
chooser; that I'd be only too glad to get a chance at anything at which I
might earn a living.
"Aw right," was the curt rejoinder. "You hike over to the Consolidated
Coal Company's yard on the West Side, and tell Mullins, the head
book-keeper, that I sent you, see? Tell him to call me on the 'phone if
he wants to know anything more about you. That's all. Pull your freight
out of here and get busy--if you don't want to get the 'move on' out of
this burg."
Notwithstanding this crabbed speech, matching all the other things this
man had said to me, I left police headquarters with a warm spot in my
heart, thinking that I had lighted upon a diamond in the rough and hadn't
had discernment enough to recognize it.
Yet there was a small mystery thrusting itself into this second interview
with the chief. What was the content of the typewritten sheet he had
consulted, and who had written it? If it had been a telegram I might
have concluded that he had wired the warden of the penitentiary for a
corroboration of my story. But it was not a telegram.
I was still puzzling over the mystery half an hour later when I found the
coal yard and the bookkeeper, Mullins, a red-faced Irishman who winked
solemnly when I told him that Chief Callahan had sent me.
"Know anything at all about the railroad end of the coal business?" was
the first inquiry shot at me; but it was not made until after the
book-keeper had shut himself into the telephone booth, presumably for a
wire talk with Callahan.