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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1917)
4 the Sunday fiction J magazine, October 21. 1917. Illustrated by Curt Gfroerer " j By JOHN BLUNT f NDREW GREEN beard his sentence with scant atten tion. His mind was of the slow type that is capable of centering cnly upon one thing at a time; and just then his thoughts were not 4n that court of Tustice at whose I ar. for the first time in his life, he stood i. prisoner. Something the Judge said concerning live years, with a reference to leniency for n first offense, he realized vaguely ;.m the point of this oration to which he v compelled, risen on his feet, to listen Five years? And "good behavior"-if remembered the term rightly would tut that down to but little more than three. Tt was going to be easy. Just as he had thought. " Andrew Oreen had no kick coming so h. felt, in his plodding way. A trial by I is peers had found him guilty; now he im being 'Vent up," to upend approxi mately one-twelfth of his natural life un der lock and key. Thix vi m what he had expected from II. a iriM.-nt the hand of the policeman dropped fin Ms shoulder, i rresting him in the act of what afterward was spoken of us "hurglarlou.s entrance." .Yet he had i onimitted no crime, as he saw it. A man owed birr money. An iictumn lated debt, that had Brown week by week till It amounted to quite a sum. lie had worked for it, wr.ntcd it. and when he de manded payment it was refused. Always v. Ith excunes. but they were proven lies. Tor one day the, man his employer v ithout wri-pln; had clr.sed the doors of bl. husines-. i" '.'ring himself bankrupt. It was Just a trick to heat all his cred itors, this r.ppnrent failure. Soon the man had been round, openly boasting of hi.s cleverneHs in swindling those he owed. And ho he had money, had he. to pay Andrew Green Ms back wages? Slowly. always. Andrew had sat down to think I I over. He wanted to be a good citizen; to act within the law. He had gone to a firm of attorneys to ; .scp. what could be done. There was 1 thing he could do so they told tym. Andrew Green had come back and r. ie some more thinking. Quite thor 1 ughiy ho hod thrashed the matter out. That incney was honestly and fairly due 1 in,. No two ways about it. When he ht.il satisfied his own mind that he was In the right, Andrew Green was ready to net. He had gone straight to the beat's 1 onie and taken what was his by force. That was his way of getting the justice lr himself that hud been denied him. Hut He was caught. That ended it, so far n Andrew 'ire.cn wus concernod. He knew how his rash move must lock in ihe. eyes of the power to which hs had appealed for help in vuin. He had flag rantly outraged the law. and for his of f nc that colli, austere divinity must I unirh him. All right, they could take him away; h k him up. He would pay the penalty, .'lift- then he felt but. little interest in the I' n:rth of his term. And still less In what- r orde? that imprisonment might I old in store. The future. That, wps all he was ('inking of. The world he would have 1 face after he had :ettle his debt. What war. it going to be like when he r ;.me out ? Hack in hi brain, dimly ranged, were jm ra ps of ttie icings he remembered to have re.nl ..f ex-jailbirds who had tried t-i go Mrnipht. , They had a hard time of it, those men, it was niuinrfil. Nobody wanted any thing to do with them. They- had been 1,1 prison. It was an indelible stigma, Miiirj- tl rip apart from their fellows--n.aklng of them outcasts, pariahs, in- '! 1 oi fate alwo to be his? I 1 ' ' ho uiip.t not let it be. When he. I .nl served hj-; time mi. "done his bit" na tlv more correct technical phrase -l.- must come out Into the world without rk Hiking, just as he bad gone from it. He could not afford to he classed as a hardened j-ritrlnn! shunned .for that reason. He would be hunting a job some three years hence- needing work badly, II was quite likely. Yet. if he could just make everybody see. that he was an honest man who in trying to get the rights which were de nied him had been unfortunate enough to make the blunder of being caught he must make them see It. There had to be 11 way. It was up to him to think it out." All through the long railroad Journey that followed within the hour, sitting In the stuffy day .coach beside the deputy sheriff to whose wrist he was handcuffed by six Inches of steel, Andrew Green Kept his slow mind working to plot out a course toward this sole end. Hy being perfectly docile, and doing everything they told him to. he would get ft clean record from the prison au thorities. This, he decided, would be the best way to show what he was. A model prisoner. That was It It was the name he would make for himself In these next few years. . Obedience Itself, he would be. No one should have a chance to And fault with him. Shortly after the prison Itself was reached. Andrew Green, received within Its portals, was given a bath, a hair cut and a complete change of clothing at the state's expense, from which he emerged also minus his name, to be . Identified i.enceforth by a series of numerals only. He was No. 11 08. II. A GUARD appeared to take the new comer to the doctor for examina tion while he was n the midst of an in spection of his new garments, which lacked the degrading stripes. This must be one of those "reformed" prisons of which he hazily recollected to have heard. No. 1106 told himself as he fol lowed the guard from the doctor's office to that of the warden. It was as a little white-haired, apple- cheeked gentleman, very dapper In his uniform of blue, that the chief officer of the prison revealed himself to this new est Inmate. He looked strikingly out of place In his grim surroundings. No. 1106 thought. . t The warden glanced hastily through the Jottings of the medical report. "Seems to be all right for McClln" tock's shop." he told the guard. "They're short-handed there, I hear. Have him put to work." No. 110 was led away. The room to which he was taken was, small, low ceiled and filled with many men. clad as was he, at work before a number of bare, oblong tables. The air in this "shop" reeked with a familiar acrid odor. A thick-set guard with an undershot jaw, relieving the other keeper of his charge, escorted the latest prisoner to a vacant chair at one of these tables and gruffly bade him get busy. No. 1106 looked down at the men al ready at this table no one of whom locked up at him. It seemed they dared not snatch even an instant from the He broke off so abruptly that bis whis per ended in, what sounded like a warn ing hiss. "Short, eh?" said a gruff voice behind No. 1106. It was the superintendent, arid No. 1106 rose to confront him. "Rotten work, too!" McClintock was pawing through the pile of lumpy, odd-shaped cigars that the new prisoner's bungling fingers had tried to make. Some of them were unrolling even then in the guard's hand. He-looked ty at No. 1106 with a queer glint in his small eyes. "Guess" we'll have to drill you some!" No. 1106 met his. gaze with anger in his own. "I want to see the warden," "he said shortly. teen minutes with the rest of nis shop mates, he was led back to the room with the long tables and the sickening smell ot tobacco, and there set to work as on the day before. ' He stuck to his task again till the gong rang without complaining. Of course, the cigars he tried to make showed no improvement over his pre vious efforts. And their number was but slightly less scant at quitting time. For this McClintock, when he made hif. tour of inspection among the tables, struck at him with his heavy first a sec ond time. But this was the rankest in justice No. 1106 did not go down under the blow as he had before. Instead, he saw it coming, parried, and struck back at his assailant. It was a glancing blow that just grazed the superintendent's cheek. But what happened after that No. 1106 remembered only as a wild nightmare. The guard blew his whistle. Other guards poured into the shop. AH of them leaped upon the prisoner and AlcClintock as they fought between the tables. No. 1106 felt his arms beaten helplessly down. There came a heavy rain of blows upon his unprotected face which bore him, still struggling desper ately, to the floor. A sharp pain in his side, as though from a heavy boot hurled against his ribs, apd after that, suddenly, all the lights had gone out for No. 1106. He did not leave his cell next day with the rest of the prisoners. He was too bruised and lame to be of much account. But this lay-off, as It turned out, was a lucky thing, after all. For this day the warden chose to make his periodical inspection of the cells an examination pursued for sanitary reasons.. ' As NO. 1106 saw the officer going past his door along the tier he sprang up, disregarding the protest of his aches, calling loudly after him. ' work over which they bent with a "sort of feverish haste. They were making cigars, the new comer saw. Their trained Angers ap peared fairly to fly at the task. Of course Jo. 1106 had never made a cigar. He turned back to the burly guard. "Why, 1 don't know how to do this!" The superintendent of the shop, giv ing an order to one of the workers at the next table, turned slowly. He looked No. 106 narrowly in the eyes for a moment or two in silence. Then he knocked him down. . ' The new prisoner got up, bleeding at the mouth. His hands were opening and closing at his sides, but his eyes held only an expression of blank surprise as h turned, reeling slightly from the diz ziness in his head, to look after the guard, who had already turned away. A sharp tug at the bottom of his Jacket pulled him down into that vacant chair at the table. No. 1106 looked half dazedly around. "Why " he began. "Shtit up!" mumbled the convict be side him, his gaze still on his work. "Un less yuh want to have it handed to yuh again, pon't let him catch yuh loafin'. Grab some o' that tobacco an' git busy, like yuh was told!" Dumbly, without reasoning. No. 1106 did as he was bid. After a while he could make something that was an apology, at least, for a cigar. For the rest of that afternoon, till the gong rang, he worked, clumsily, stolidly on. But always with a smoldering fire of Indignation glowing hidden within htm. He had been struck unfairly! "Good night fer yours, bo!" The prisoner in the seat beside him, his own w?rk stopped, nodded at the mall heap of misshapen tobacco rolls in front of No. 1106" s place. "Yuh're new here, so I'll tip yuh off," went on the convict in that same guard ed murmur. "This shop, like the broom, the chair, the overall factory an' the rock pile, works under eontrac. . Di IT runt folms on the outside buys our labor "We gotta toln out so much wolk ev'ry day. Else his nobs. McClintock, ain't goln' to drag away his little rake on at the end the year the bonus they give him on whatever we toln out over an' above the amount called for in the contrac". "Are yuh hep now? Yuh're s'posed to make so many cigars ev'ry ten .hours. Real ones, too, y'understand. Yuh fall below that number, an' well, yuh'll see, all right, what's goln' to drop onto you. Yuh ain't done a full half-day's ' woik here " The other shoved him rudely Into his place ut the end of the line of workmen thai now had formed, ready for depar ture, in the aisle betw een the tables. The order came to march, and the close drawn, single file of convicts wound from the shop. Outside in the corridor, as No. 1106, tailing the procession, swung to the right down the long, narrow hall toward a dis tant clatter of cutlery on crockery that advertised the whereabouts of the room in which the prisoners were fed, a hand descended upon ins shoulder. "Discipline," said the voice of McClin tock behind him. Two guards, who had -been watching the line as it passed, stepped briskly for ward and jerked No. 1106 from his place. , But now he felt his wrath giving way to curiosity. What possible punishment could be visited on a man who, in his very first attempt at such work, had failed to produce as much as the sea boned laborers? To discipline anyone for that it was a joke. Unresisting, No. 1106 allowed himself tc be borne away to his cell, where he was locked Up for the night. They were depriving him of his supper. Well, that didn't hurt. He had no appetite; the smell of the tobacco he had been cpn stantly handling for more than four hours had taken away all desire for food. But when he saw the warden in the morning That guard, McClintock, was a brute. He would prefer" charges against him right away bring about his Instant dis charge. Such a ruffian wouldn't be tol erated there a day longer when he was shown up. The big bully! Only and this thought made No. 1106 pause from the way that prisoner spoke who had sat beside him at the table in the shop, as though what had happened to him was a regular occurrence, almost - it was funny that the guard hadn't been reported before. But probably all the rest of the pris oners under his charge were too much afraid of him to make the "report. We'll, No. 1106 was not afraid." When they bpened the door of his cell next morning to lead him out he repeated , his demand of the night before that he be taken to the prison's head. A laugh was his answerj The turnkey who gave it. accompanied - the mocking guffaw with a push that sent him stum bling, at the peril of his neck, down a steep, dark flight of stone steps to the corridor below. ; ' , Here he was buffeted Into line with the other prisoners on their way to breakfast After he had been fed In fif- The little pink-and-whlte gentleman came back. No. 1106 told him his story. "Aren't you mistaken ?" asked the warden, but iu the tone of one addressing a fractious child, scared by its own in vented terrors. "I am sure nothing like that can happen, here!" "No?" said the, new prisoner eagerly. He pressed closer to the bars of the door. A turnkey who had been fidgeting outside with a muttered oath hastened forward. But he was too late to prevent No. 1106 from pulling up his jacket and undershirt, thus exposing to the warden's eyes the .great, angry welts that stood out on his flesh in livid ridges. "That happened here," the prisoner said grimly. The warden was hesitating, fingering his chin. Plucking his sleeve, the turn key nodded vindictively toward the man behind the bars. "Got into a bad mlx-up with some of his old pals on the way here," the keeper lied. "He's been givin" usall kinds of trouble since he came. Now he's tryin' to get the guards In wrong, if he can. You don't want to believe all he tells you, cap!" The warden looked relieved. "That's straight!" the turnkey nodded quickly, following up his advantage. He looked back at No., 1106 and shook his head. "He's a bad one, he is!" - iii. : 'T'HA.T. was the reputation the guards . X saw was fastened upon him. Though he settled down from then on, doing his work as he was bid, without remonstrance for the cuffs with which that unskilled labor was received, and offering no further show of resistance to whatever form his rough handling took, nevertheless he was branded and singled out as a "bad one" only temporarily un der control. ' His enemies were out to "get" him now, for he had committed the ultimate, unpardonable offense of "squealing." His every move was watched with catlike vigilance. Some day he would . make a' slip, do something for which he could be punished with a semblance of a ' reason; and then :. " But the weeks went by, anil the months, and still No. 1106 made no slip. He had remembered that he was going to be a "model prisoner." It was harder than he had tho'ught. doing this. Some times, smarting under the injustice of his treatment, he wanted to rise up and ant While the cigars which he made were ' perhaps- less perfect than, the best man in the shop could turn out, and the num ber he got done in a day established no record for his capacity, still he bad brought his required stint up to the ave rage. There could be no kick, coming on him as a laborer, anyhow. But always that sharp, unrelenting watch was kept on him. He would do J something yet that would give his watchers their chance. . Or-perhaps that chance might even be made to order. At the close of one day, as No. 1106' stopped work with th clanging of the big gong, to lean back in his chair to ' survey the results of his past ten hours of labor as represented by the stack of well-turned-out cigars on the table be fore him suddenly he started in sur prise. That stack seemed smaller than it should have been. No mistake about it it was smaller! No. 1106, impelled by what impulse he did not know, looked just then toward the heap of cigars in front of his com panion on the left. It was twice the size of his own mound. The hair at the back of his head bris tled like a dog's when some unseen men ace is near. McClintock was standing behind him. No. 1106 stealthily shifted his feet under the table, then he rose suddenly, to wheel on the guard. . The superintendent of the shop was looking down at the contrasting piles of cigars before No. 1106's place and In front of the other convict. And there was no mistaking the smile on the guard's face as he surveyed those differing piles. Slow thinking as he was, Jto. 1106 was still not so stupid that he did not under stand what had happened. To make his day's work fall below the required amount, the other prisoners had been stealing from him, surreptitiously but steadily, all day long. Doing it under McClintock's orders, too. It was a put-up job. Angrily No. 1106 took a step forward in the direction of the guard. That was all McClintock was waiting for, appar ently. Just this one hint of insubordina tion. The whistle leaped to his Hps. Again there came that short, shrill blast. In through the door, outside which they had obviously been waiting for Just tlds signal, two additional guards came on the run. They took hold of No. 1106, making him a captive in no time. McClintock strode up to where hs stood between the keepers. "You'll mutiny again, will you?" growled the superintendent, shoving his face into No. 1106's white, tense coun tenance. "Well maybe not, when we're through with you this time!" This time it started with solitary con finement. No. 1106 wat locked in a remote cell, o small that, by standing in the center of the floor and sweeping out his arms to their full length, he could touch all four walls. It was dark in here, too a stifling pitch-blackness in which he failed to see his hand when he held it only an inch in front of his face. Fourteen hours, without food or wa ter, No. 1106 was left in this hole in the ground alone. He became possessed, after a while, with the notion that he was never going to get out, see daylight, breathe free air again. After that, de spite the humid atmosphere of the place, he was kept nice and cool in the cold sweat that broke out all over him. After a while, though, he was re leased. His same two captors, accompanied by 1 McClintock, brought him into another cell. This was larger and much lighter, and No. 1106 could make out the furnish ings of the room in which he now stood quite clearly. They consisted, first, of a large, empty barrel, nailed to a sort of platform of boards on the floor by one end, the other tilted toward the ceiling at an angle of 45 degrees by a rope and pulley. Besides this strange-looking barrel contraption there was also a cask, smell ing vilely of brine, in which stood an odd-shaped paddle of leather and a num ber of plain wooden chairs ranged about the wal plainly for the accommodation of any audience that might be assembled to witness what was in the habit of going on in this room. No. 1106 was stripped to the waist and bound to the barrel with his arms hug ging It. In this position he found him self, unable to move so much as a muscle. Then, while the other two guards retired to the chairs against the wall, McClin tock removed the leather paddle from Its pickle. An Ingenious weapon, this. Its flog ging surface perforated with a number of little .open holes, wherever it struck the suction must inevitably draw into these perforations some of the victim's skin. No. 1106 received three lashes. There may have been more; if there were, hs did not know It. Mercifully with the third whistling descent of that cruel leather on his bare back he fainted dead away. When he regained his senses he was back in that inky-black cell from whence he had been taken to the torture cham ber adjoining. He was lying on the floor, his jacket tossed over his head and the upper part of his body-llke something useless thrown aside, to await carting off. He moved, and the pain made him scream a!6ud. The flinty surface of the stone scraping across his raw back "brought the Icy persplratbm Jetting from his brow to bathe his 'drawn, anguish twisted face. His broad frame shook with the dry sobs that. were literally wrung from him b;, an agony of mind more poignant than any mere bodily pain. Whipped! Bad enough to be beaten against odds and yet with his hands free to give some account of himself to adversaries. A man could stand that. ' But to be taken, held helpless like a dog, a beast, while His heavy body " heaved ,iwith the shudder that passed through It. This was the last straw. When No. 1106 was able to return to work one had only to look on his face to see that what had been said of him was true. He was a. "bad one." - . i For this reason he was given the con- fldence of the prisoner In the next cell to Mtf some little time later.- He wss an expert safe-cracker doing a trifling bit of twenty years as. the only possible solution to a number of puzzling bank lootings which had thrown the up per portion of the state Into a rsrltabJ panic something more than three years before. He was planning an escape. Friend and well-wishers on the outside had suc ceeded in smuggling in to him a few cun ning, little tools, and with these he had now sawed through all but one of the bars of his cell door. He also had hidden under the blanket in his bunk a bunch of skeleton keys. It was going to be a ridiculously simple matter to open any door on that tier once . he had contrived to get outside of his own.- Needing help in beating off any inter ference which might arise when he made his break, the cracksman had taken the occupant of the adjoining cell on the other side into hi.s confidence promised m Him, lutiaYtjip, inn liUAKjr pris oner, who would be a "hard nut" to han dle, a party to the escape. As No. 1106 also had a name for being ' a tough customer, he might come along, teo,.if he chose. Was he willing to make the try for liberty? No. 1106 was willing. At gray dawn, two mornings later, his cell door swung silently open. No. 1106 was ready, and he stepped out Into the corridor. He felt the muscles under his jacket swell with this first touch of free dom. A dim figure rose beside him. It was the safe-blower he recognized. No. 1106 felt something long and Heavy pressed into his hand. He looked down. It was it bar from the cell door of the cracksman already flitting away around a bend in the corridor ahead, following another shadowy form In gray. ' : No. 1106 stepped after. Round that bend In the corridor he came face to face with the same turnkey who had first told the warden he was a desperate char acter. No. 1106 swung his iron bar once. The turnkey went down in his tracks without a sound something like a telescope clos ing. Down the dark stone steps No. 1106 lumbered Into the ground-floor corridor and along It toward the big door thrt led to the prison yard outside now standing open, he saw, with the two prisoners ahead of him just slipping across the threshold. A keeper was lying on the floor beside the open entrance, his head pillqwed on his arm. Asleep. No. 1106 thought. As he came opposite the quiet form he slipped In something with which the ad- jamui imaging was wei tx uruwnimi ' pool. The keeper was not asleep. No. 1106 knew then. He stepped across the body and emerged- Into the yard. Straight in his path rose a guard. . It was McClintock, already raising the ) whistle to his lips. No. 1106 did not curse him. He did not open his mouth, which had again clamped grimly shut. With one wide sweep of -the hand that held the bar he passed on. Behind him the guard, covering his mutilated face with fils hands., shrieked once with the ' sudden pain. No. 1106, not looking back, broke into a loping run. Across the yard toward the wall where his companions were waiting he pounded. They had already scaled the top when he arrived. Catching the lowered 'hands that were reached down toward hirn. No. 1106 was drawn up, helping himself with his knees along the granite surface till he, too, rested an instant on the parapet. Over, then, on the other side, the three dropped simultaneously. And off across the spread of open country that separat ed them from the woods beyond they sped, bent double running as no one of them had ever run In his life before. They had gained that wooded cover before the first alarm sounded from the grim stone pile behind them. Out on the still morning air there boomed the warn ing cannon. They turned and plunged on through the forest. Suddenly their leader the cracksman stopped. "Right here. I guess!" He was down on his knees. Digging in the underbrush with his hands, he pulled out a long wooden box, .covered with zinc against all harm from the weather. Opened, the box disclosed its contents as a number of second-hand suits of clothing, shoes, hats, et cetera, of all sizes. "Help yourselves!" The safe-blower was tearing off his jacket of gray, and hastily wriggHng Into one of the coats from the box. "I guess my pals ain't forgot notbin' we need. Work lively, now!" ' That night. fri a local that plied a small branch of trijp main railroad, three men descended at the depot of a little up state town. They were shabbily dressed, it is true; but there was nothing in their nondescript apparel that would attract particular notice. They went straight to a cheap saloon, Inconspicuously located in the village, where, at a peculiar knock from their guide, the door was swiftly opened and as swiftly closed again after they had vanished inside. All took seats round a little table in the back room. Drinks were ordered and served. "Well." said one of the trio, a heavily built man with a brutal cast of coun tenance, lifting his glass with a laugh whose slight trace of nervousness hid nothing of Its exultancy "here we aref The cracksman termed forward with his elbows on the table. He.gave a quick cod. "Yes," said he, "and now we're here, hv. what's the matter with us rettin' busy? I've got a Job all spotted in this jerkwater burg. ' The rube bank, yen know-it's a pipe, and there may be a thousand apiece In it for us ail. We're Just the .rlghtnumber. - . r "You, Jerry,, can come along on the Inside and help me with the safe. And for lookout" he paused; turning toward the motionless, silent bulk of the third man, who sat slouching far down in his chair. -"Why. ..you'll do. pal. We can count you In on this, can't we? That is" - he gave a sarcastic laugh "that Is. un less you're afraid t hreakin" the law? The motionless one stirred. . "To Hadss with the law!" said An drew Green, but lately No. 1106, leanln forward across the table to Join the splratora. Whn ds we startr
