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Title: Three sevens
        A detective story

Author: Perley Poore Sheehan

Release date: February 23, 2026 [eBook #78011]

Language: English

Original publication: New York City: Chelsea House, 1927

Credits: Tim Miller, Carol Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE SEVENS ***




                             THREE SEVENS




                             THREE SEVENS

                          _A Detective Story_

                                 _By_
                         Perley Poore Sheehan

                            [Illustration]


                               NEW YORK
                             CHELSEA HOUSE
                              PUBLISHERS




                             Three Sevens

                   Copyright, 1927, by CHELSEA HOUSE

                        Printed in the U. S. A.

    All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
                languages, including the Scandinavian.




                               CONTENTS


                  CHAPTER                      PAGE

                     I. “SOLITARY”              11

                    II. PROVIDENCE AIDING       21

                   III. HEADQUARTERS            29

                    IV. BY PROCESS OF LAW       38

                     V. “YOUR WORK!”            48

                    VI. JUST AND UNJUST         58

                   VII. THE PROMISE             63

                  VIII. IN SAN PEDRO            74

                    IX. OLD RAGS!               83

                     X. SANCHO                  94

                    XI. LIVE FREIGHT           104

                   XII. THE SECOND VERSION     112

                  XIII. SHIP AND BEACON        117

                   XIV. AUNT KATHERINE         124

                    XV. QUARRY                 131

                   XVI. MERE RUMORS            138

                  XVII. GATHERING STORM        148

                 XVIII. TOWARD SUNDOWN         156

                   XIX. THE LULL               164

                    XX. THE MAGNET             170

                   XXI. PARLEY                 176

                  XXII. THE UNDERWORLD         184

                 XXIII. THE LETTER             191

                  XXIV. IN THE THROES          202

                   XXV. GHOSTS                 213

                  XXVI. RIGHT AND LEFT         224

                 XXVII. TIGERS’ DEN            234

                XXVIII. TWELVE                 242




                             THREE SEVENS




                               CHAPTER I

                              “SOLITARY”

It mattered not at all to Craig that he had at least another ten
years of prison ahead of him, nor that at least another month of
this unexpired term would have to be passed here in the “cooler.”
He had already considered these facts through long hours, and had
found them as unproductive as stones. But the cat was a brand-new
fact. He stroked her fur. He tickled her under the chin. In a sort
of tremulous delight he wondered how she got here--where she came
from--who owned her.

At this last phase of his happy speculation it was as if his mind
gave a slight start of surprise. Did she come as a heritage, so to
speak, from Chi Slim?

Here in San Pedro Prison, the punishment cells were a row of
boiler-iron boxes, each of them approximately a five-foot hollow
cube--six of them in all, ranged along one side of a dark subcellar.
In each cell there was an iron door with two openings in it--one near
the top, through which the guard could flash his light, when he made
his rounds, and thus see what the inmate of the cell was doing; and
the other at the bottom, through which things could be pushed, such
as food and water pans, without the door being opened.

They took no chances with a prisoner, once he was in his cell. There
he stayed. The door wasn’t opened until his time was up, and then
there would be plenty of guards on hand to handle him--if he still
required it, which wasn’t likely. He could groan. He could claim that
he was sick. He could plead until he was hoarse. He could hammer on
it, as had occasionally happened, until he was a senseless pulp. That
door remained shut.

It did, that is, unless the inmate died. And that was what had
happened to Chi Slim. So they took Chi out and put Craig in.

“Welcome to our club!”

Craig knew all about it before he had been in the cell five minutes.
The other cells were occupied, all of them, and there was a waiting
list, whence the allusion to the club. The prisoners talked when the
guard was away. And they told Craig that he ought to feel honored.
He not only had the cell with the biggest rivets in the floor, thus
making it impossible either to sit down or lie down without torture,
but he was the successor to an aristocrat.

That was right, too. For Chi Slim, notwithstanding his youth, had
been one of the most famous crooks in the United States. And, more
than that, he had died untamed.

As Craig stroked the cat’s soft fur he wondered at the hidden side
of Chi Slim’s nature that had made it possible for him to tame the
creature, win its trust. For Chi Slim had been bad--all bad. He had
been a thief and a killer. He was never worse than when the odds were
against him. As in prison, for example, where, twice, he had maimed
his guards and made clean get-aways.

Chi had been famous as a jail breaker, scoffing at the trial judge on
the bench, mocking the wardens, shrieking vengeance at the guards who
mistreated him when they thought they had him safe, and then somehow
or other, getting away in spite of them all.

Of course he had never, or hardly ever, accomplished his get-aways
single-handed. Chi had been a man of many friends. It would have been
hard to find a prison in the United States where some friend of his
was not, or some friend of a friend equally ready to aid and abet
any plan Chi Slim might evolve, from the murder of the warden to the
bribery of a guard.

But San Pedro had got him and held him--right here in this same
boiler-iron box, from the day of his reception to this, his last and
cleanest get-away of all.

Craig meditated all this as he toyed with the cat, and prayed
fervently that she wouldn’t leave him. It wasn’t surprising that a
cat should have found her way into the dark subcellar. The place was
swarming with rats. And even the rats had been useful in giving the
inmates of the dark cells something to think about and talk about.
It was almost like work to get a rat into a cell and then to get it
out again. It was a guarantee against madness, anyway. But that a cat
should have picked out Chi Slim for a companion, that was surprising.

That the cat hadn’t visited the other cells Craig made sure. No, she
was Chi Slim’s cat. Chi had made blasphemous recommendations to the
other prisoners neither to touch the animal nor speak to her nor
attempt to feed her. His! His! And, finally, the feline had accepted
Chi’s proprietorship.

Why not? He himself was a man cat, as ever was. Later on, not much
later, Craig was to discover evidence that Chi Slim might have done
a little rat-catching on his own account. Like that, perhaps, had he
first come into pussy’s good graces.

But, first of all, there came that other discovery. Not a discovery;
a revelation!

It came just as a hiss here and there from the other cells warned the
six inmates of the “punishment block” that a guard was at hand. All
the time that Craig was hearing the stealthy grating of the key in
the outer lock, and the slight sibilance of hinges as the door of the
subcellar was opened, and the later sibilance as the guard approached
in his felt slippers, pausing before each iron cell to flash his
light into it, he sat there blinded by another sort and greater light.

The cat, by this time, was against his knees, stretched out
luxuriously on the iron floor that was torture to him, while
Craig continued to caress her and prayed that the guard wouldn’t
see--wouldn’t suspect.

He raised his face. The light that flashed in upon him was like a
bath of cold fire. It came so unexpectedly, although he had been
expecting it. He had longed for it a while back. But now he had
dreaded it and would have dreaded it even if it hadn’t blinded him.

“Father, have mercy,” he said piously.

It seemed as if the light were still there even after it was
gone, and after the guard himself was gone, locking the door of
the subcellar back of him and climbing up the stone stairs to the
guardroom at the top of the stairs.

For, as Craig was running his fingers gently over the cat’s neck he
had felt a roughness. A scar, perhaps; an unhealed wound. And he had
avoided the spot. But he had found a similar roughness back of the
animal’s ears.

Then he had gently investigated. That was strange. The cat was
wearing some sort of a collar.

It was right then that he got his revelation. It all came to him in
a flash. Prison will do that for men--turn them into half-wits or
develop them into quick and subtle thinkers. And in that flash he
understood why Chi Slim had tamed the cat, and let it be known, no
doubt, in certain other quarters of the prison that the cat visited
him, and thus might be used as a courier of sorts.

The cat was wearing a collar, all right. It was a collar of five fine
steel saws.

There was one good thing about this club of darkness to which Craig
had been elected against his will. Its membership included no stool
pigeons, no informers. And only six members in all. There would be no
saw work without their knowing it. Their ears were as nicely tuned to
the small noises of this living tomb in which they dwelt as were the
ears of the rats themselves. But this did not mean betrayal.

“Boys,” whispered Craig. “Is he gone?”

There was a longish silence, while the others listened.

“He’s gone,” said Jim Bartow, of No. 1 cell--which was nearest the
foot of the stairs. “I heard him close the door at the top.”

“Because,” said Craig, “I have something to tell you.”

And he did tell them.

“The saws came from Solly Wells,” whispered some one from the other
end of the cellar. “Solly’s in the hospital, expectin’ to croak. He
didn’t know Chi’d beat him to it.”

There was a riot of subdued excitement. All speech took place in
whispers, for there was no telling when some sneak of a guard might
not take the trouble to come down and listen at the keyhole, but it
was loud enough for the brethren of the lodge. Some of them lamented
that the saws had fallen into the hands of a greenhorn, but the
general temper was high.

“How’ll I use them?” Craig inquired.

It was Jim Bartow who instructed him. First of all, he was to take
his time. He wasn’t to get excited. Otherwise, he would be spoiling
those saws, one after the other, and nothing would be accomplished.
He could get one hand through the top hole in his door, couldn’t he?
Yes. Well, he could start sawing there.

“And oil it with your soup,” some one whispered.

“Yeh,” said Bartow, “and paint a sign board so as the guard won’t
overlook nothing! He’ll have to do the job cold and dry--and, at
that, this boiler iron ought to cut like cheese.”

Craig set to work. Overhead and all about, San Pedro Prison was a
factory. Like a factory it began its day, and that was signaled to
those who dwelt in the darkness of the punishment block by certain
signs and sounds. It was then that there came to them the muted
whirring of the engine room and, fainter yet, the rumbling tremor of
the westbound train. There were those among them with senses so fine
that they could tell whether the train had stopped or not, whether it
was going fast or slow. Then came the noon hour, with another shake
rather than a sound, which meant that the prison whistle blew. Then
night, with the finest tremor of all--that given off by the dynamos
of the lighting plant.

But through all these other periods of the dark dial that was their
only clock, came the intermittent visits of the guards--the whispered
tread of the felt shoes, the blinding flash that was the light they
hungered for and which could be so cruel.

There was one thing about this light ration served the men of the
punishment block--it was blinding more or less to the guard, as well.
He could peer well enough at the creature who cowered in the cell, or
stared and swore; but he wasn’t likely to see anything so fine and
small as that lengthening streak, no wider than a fine black thread,
that fell from a corner of the upper hole in the door of cell No. 3.

“You rat!” snarled Craig.

“I’ll see that you get a week extra for that,” said Copton, the guard.

It was because of Copton that Craig was in the dark cell. Copton, a
week ago, had almost crushed in Craig’s ribs for no special reason
other than that he was in a bad humor, and Craig had struck him. He
had whirled on him right out of the lockstep, lifted him with an
uppercut to the chin, and dropped him with a jab to the stomach. And
then Copton had done practice on Craig with his club.

But it wasn’t because of all this that Craig had called Copton a rat.
He had expected a lengthening of his sentence, and had needed it.
Now, just one day more--two days.

He was following Bartow’s advice. Slow work it was, and killing work.
So the beaver gnaws a tree. So one of the big prison rats would draw
water from a thick lead pipe. But, like beaver or rat--or a caged
badger scratching forever at a knot hole, so this evolved animal of
a man shoved forward his fine saw and drew it back again, shoved
it forward, drew it back again. Not like cheese this boiler iron,
certainly; but easy to cut, as such things go.

Whoever had furnished those saws to Solly Wells had not risked the
great chance on inferior goods. Otherwise, moreover, Solly would
never have sent them to Chi Slim. The saws were good saws.

Was the spirit of Chi Slim there directing Craig now? He often felt
that this was so, for queer fancies come to a man who works in the
dark. Half the time he felt that not only was Chi Slim’s ghost there,
but a whole regiment of other ghosts--the ghosts of those who had
preceded him in this cell, and in San Pedro generally. For Craig had
seen things since coming to San Pedro that made him sick--sick as he
hadn’t been even with the big sickness of his arrest, his trial, his
conviction.

It was this latter element of his experience that was with him all
the time, even when the ghosts were there--one might almost say
especially when the ghosts were there. For it was this that vibrated
in Craig’s mind, day and night:

Now that he knew about the horrors of San Pedro---- _Saw! Saw!_

Now that he knew there were some men here who ought to be free----
_Scrape! Scrape!_

Now that he knew that he himself, his immortal soul, had already
atoned its sin a thousand times over---- _Rasp! Rasp!_

His fingers were bleeding. His knees were lacerated. His muscles were
become but a part of some machine that was killing him. But none the
less, Craig had that vision of a bigger thing to sustain him--a wider
liberty, a greater joy, a more stupendous prize. For he had joined
the small number of the great.

Who were the great? They were the men who, like himself, had fallen
into the cruel, huge power that drives the world ahead, and who are
thus marked to pass on that power to others, as Napoleon did, as
Cæsar did, and Moses.

The saw he was using snapped close to his fingers, as if this
tempered steel itself were unable to stand the strain. It was the
third saw that had snapped like that, despite his infinite pains and
the profane recommendations of his brethren. But Craig didn’t worry.
Not greatly. He would have enough saws to see him through. He knew he
would. This was too great a thing to fail because of a mere saw or
two.

Else, why had he been sent to San Pedro, of all prisons, when there
was a man at the head of it by the name of Green? And this man Green,
whom he had scarcely seen, and who had scarcely looked at him, so
closely woven into the scheme of Providence thus far revealed,
didn’t know anything about it? Or, did Green know? It didn’t matter.

Providence was running this. It was Providence helping him to extend
that invisible cut--invisible to the dull-witted guards who came from
top hole to bottom; and when this work should be complete, could he
doubt but that Providence likewise would show him the way?

Not that Craig failed to receive much advice along these lines also
from his fellows of the dark lodge. They were all willing to help.

Jim Bartow, cell No. 1, volunteered to throw soup in the guard’s
face, thus creating a diversion until Craig could get him from behind.

Whitey, cell No. 2, had a stiletto made from a wire he had once
removed from the rim of a tin plate and had since managed, the Lord
knows how, to keep concealed through numerous searchings and changes
of raiment. He thought he could hold the guard’s attention better
than Bartow. Anyhow, Craig could have the weapon the moment he was
out of his cell.

In cell No. 4 was a half-wit who sang, all the time that he wasn’t
weeping; and in cell No. 5 was Bangor--a six-footer who had once
sailed his own trawler--eager to help, but reduced by a fever.

It was from cell No. 6, the last in the row, that Craig got most of
his counsel--got this by a word here and a word there, and in long
silences, as if the inmate of cell No. 6 were speaking to him in a
sort of vocal Morse. For the inmate of cell No. 6 was an elderly
yegg, or safeblower, named Eddie; and Eddie had spent most of his
long life in prisons, had talked a lot with chaplains and reformers,
had read many books, had become, in short, a philosopher and sage.

“A great opportunity,” said Eddie softly, when he was sure that all
except Craig and himself were asleep. “Oh, I do hope, sir, that you
will make the most of it. A chance to do good!”

This from Eddie who had blown safes, and shot at the citizens of
villages on dark nights, and was down here in the punishment cells
now for calling Warden Green bad names in the presence of visitors.

“_Saw! Saw!_” And Craig was almost through.




                              CHAPTER II

                           PROVIDENCE AIDING


There had been a change or two in the population of the cells since
the work began. Bartow was gone. So was the half-wit of cell No. 4.
And these changes, while regrettable to the extent that they caused
some doubt and consequent delay, were useful in bringing the calendar
up to date, so to speak. For some time there had been a discussion
as to whether the following day would be Friday or Saturday. The
newcomers decided it.

Not only would the next day be Saturday, and hence the next day
Sunday; but the following day also would be a holiday--Monday.

“What holiday?” asked Craig.

“Lincoln’s Birthday, you crazy stiff,” laughed the man who had taken
the half-wit’s deserted lodgment.

There came a groan from cell No. 1. A soft voice succeeded it:

“Mah name’s Geawge Washington, but I guess no Lincoln ain’t goin’ to
set me free.”

Then, in the blackness and the humming silence of the place, Craig
felt the door of his iron box yield, snap open. Himself he found
staggering forward until he almost lost his balance. He was as dizzy
as a man standing on the edge of a precipice--a precipice imagined
rather than seen. It was the wall of the cellar that saved him from
falling completely.

“He’s out,” thrilled the whisper.

“_Tommy!_”

That was his prison name--Thomas Masters. Not even the judge who had
committed him, not even the chaplain, knew that his name was Craig.
That, at least, he had kept untarnished out of his past. He had
dreamed of the time when he could use that name again.

“_Hey, Tommy!_”

There were other whispers. There for a space, the subcellar was
shaking with a vibration like that of a passing train or the engines
of the power house. Then Craig was getting the upper hand of himself
and of the crowd.

“Every one shut up,” he said; “and let me think.”

He had plenty of time to think. It would be almost an hour yet before
the night guard made his first round. So he gave himself to thought,
panted back his strength, and suppled himself there in the darkness.
Then he pawed his way down the line to the iron box wherein Eddie was
locked like a thing of great price, and he and Eddie talked--in the
all but silent lip speech that the others couldn’t hear.

“Yes,” said Eddie. “Meet him at the door, and then, if there is a
slip----”

“There’ll be no slip.”

“Many a good man has said as much, then slipped. If there is a slip,
you’ll still have a chance to slam the door and make the guardroom at
the top of the stairs----”

“There were three guards there the day they brought me down.”

“There’ll be that many there, now, if not more,” said Eddie, to whom
the prison was an open book. “They like to assemble there, especially
Saturdays at this hour, for their evening pinochle. That’s your
chance. They’ll be playing pinochle, and you can grab a gun.”

“I don’t want to kill any one if it can be helped,” said Craig.

“’Tis a thought that’ll bring you luck,” said Eddie. “But the numbers
will be on your side. They’re no marksmen, and will be afraid of
shooting each other. You can bluff the gatekeeper----”

“If I get that far. But I’m telling you, Eddie----”

“Tut! Tut!” said Eddie. Or, at least, he dropped a silence to that
effect. “Yourself first.”

“But it’s not that that I’ve been working for,” said Craig. “I’d feel
like a hound, if I beat it and left the others.”

“A thought that’ll bring you luck,” said Eddie. “But, once you’re
outside, there are the messages you can write, the politicians you
can see, so’s mebbe San Pedro will be reformed.”

“Hey, Tommy,” came the voice of him who had announced that Monday was
Lincoln’s Birthday, “turn me loose with a gun. I’m a killer, I am.”

And Whitey, from cell No. 2, was begging him to come and get his wire
stiletto. Whitey had cherished his stiletto so long that he loved it
greatly, spoke of its virtues. He said that it was lucky, that he had
done things to it that would lead the point of it straight to any
stiff’s heart.

Through all this--not that it was noisy, not that it was
obstreperous, for they were all listening as men listen when their
lives depend on small sounds and the significance thereof--Craig and
Eddie debated and quested out into the great unknown and came back
again, to the very present problem of handling the night guard when
that worthy should arrive.

Finally Craig said:

“Eddie, have I got your sacred oath?”

“By all that’s holy!”

“Because I’ll need help after a while. And, whatever we do, we’ll be
trying to do good.”

“’Tis a thought that’ll bring you luck.”

“_Sh!_”

Some one had heard, or thought that he had heard, the door open at
the top of the stairs. It wasn’t time yet for the night guard to
begin his rounds. But you never could tell. Perhaps the guard would
be coming early, eager to get back and sit in at the opening round of
the pinochle game.

As Craig crept away from Eddie’s cell and found the wall in the
darkness, then crept along this wall in the direction of the door by
which the guard would enter this sunless hole of human misery, he
felt as if he had died and were emerging from the grave, going up for
judgment. What would that judgment be?

A rat squeaked, and the cold sweat was on his brow. He stood still.
He forced himself to breathe deeply. He sought steadiness from the
rocks and mortar of the wall against which he leaned. Again he moved
forward.

“_Hey, Tommy!_”

The call brought out his sense of leadership.

“Not another word from any one,” he whispered, “until I give
permission.”

“Are you goin’ to leave us here?” whined the killer.

No answer. But there was a response in Craig’s mind. He wouldn’t
leave them here. What good would it do him if he did leave them here?
Would he enjoy himself if he did--trailing a memory of them around
with him as long as he lived, in the bright springs, the wide summers
of the plains, the colored autumns of the woods, the blue and snowy
winters--the memory of these who had but a single season?

No! He would remain, or die, or kill in the name of justice, rather
than desert these comrades in misery.

Like that he came to the closed and locked iron door at the foot of
the stairs. There he bent his head and listened. For a long time he
could hear nothing. Then, gradually, he was aware of a slight sound
of breathing. Not his own breathing. He timed himself. The breathing
came from the other side of the door.

The guard was already there--spying, listening. And then, as Craig
drew back, he could hear the guard stealthily slip the bolt, begin
cautiously to open the door. Not only in Craig’s heart, but as if in
every other sinew and fiber of him, he felt the prophetic thrill of
predestined victory.

It was the feeling that was in him when he shot out his left arm and
got a strangle hold on the guard from the back, using his right hand
for the more dangerous, but scarcely more important, work of twisting
the guard’s own right arm up and back. The guard had been armed with
flash light and truncheon. These he dropped. Also, he wore a gun--a
pistol in a holster against his breast. But not from the first moment
had the guard had the slightest chance to fight back at all.

He resisted, but he resisted blindly. It was plain that sheer terror
was all that spurred him on. He couldn’t have known what had him,
even--what sort of a terror had been distilled from the darkness.
For, with most men, superstition is always there just under the
surface as close and potent as a nightmare during sleep.

He saw Craig standing over him.

“Well, for----” the guard began.

“Not a word above a whisper,” said Craig.

The guard scrambled up to a sitting position, was for jumping to his
feet. He felt a hand, not very heavy but firm, on the top of his head.

“Stay where you are. Undress!”

“The hell----”

“You’re under orders. Quick!”

All the time that the guard was pulling off his coat, then his vest,
then the straps of his holster, his cap, the felt shoes, relieving
himself of every last detail of his accouterment, he was staring into
the muzzle of his own gun. He was like a man who was hypnotized.

Even so, it probably wasn’t the deadly danger of that pointed gun
that awed him most. It was the presence of the impossible. Something
had happened that he couldn’t understand. He looked up and down the
punishment block--the six iron boxes, like safes, where horror was
stored. He looked curiously at the sawed door of cell No. 3.

“Now, get up,” said Craig, “and raise your hands, and walk down to
No. 6.”

There was the beginning of a rustle and a subdued riot of emotion
from the cages.

“Hurry up, Tommy!”

“Tommy, let me out, quick!”

Craig spoke from the side of his mouth.

“I’m going to let you all out of the cells as soon as I can. But
you’ll have to wait a while. Get me? This is no ordinary break.”

Maybe there was a touch of wonder on the prisoners as well as on the
captured guard. What was it all about?

It was Eddie’s cell that Craig opened first, and Eddie came crawling
out of this like an ancient rat that had just been changed into a man
and was overcome by the miracle and also somewhat by the joke of it.
Eddie had a pointed, rather ratlike face when it came to the contour,
but his wonderstruck smile was human, and the lines of suffering in
his grizzled cheeks. Like Lazarus coming out of the tomb, had Lazarus
been old, dressed in prison rags, badly in need of a barber.

He seized the revolver Craig handed him, and his eyes showed bright
comprehension and appreciation. Eddie was at home in prison affairs,
even in affairs like this.

The guard recovered his voice to some extent.

“I got a family, boys.”

“We ain’t going to hurt you,” whispered Eddie. “Get into the cell,
you bum. We ain’t going to hurt no one; are we, Mr. Masters?”

Somehow, Eddie had got the idea that Craig was a gentleman. And, when
Craig answered that no, they weren’t going to hurt any one if that
could be helped, Eddie said that ’twas this thought that would bring
them luck.

Himself, Craig hoped so. He was going to need luck--all the luck in
the world. He was telling himself so, and telling the darkness so,
and infinity in general, as he took the gun from Eddie, gave him the
final instructions, and started for the head of the stairs.

The luck had run all right so far. The guard was in the cell and
locked up. Eddie had shown himself a man to be trusted. As for Craig,
he had on the guard’s uniform--not much of a disguise in his own
unclipped and unshaven state, but it would have to do. And he had
that deadly weapon in his hand--a badge of power to transform almost
any man, even a convict, into something of a commanding general.

“Send me luck!” whispered Craig silently, from his heart.

He repeated the petition at every step--stone steps--of the stairway
leading to the guardroom up there where Eddie had told him there
might be as many as half a dozen guards assembled for the Saturday
night pinochle.

In any case, he got the luck he wanted. There were the half dozen
guards that Eddie had said would be there, and their game was already
under way. They were so intent on it that they never even looked up
as Craig pushed the door open, and entered. His stolen felt shoes
had made no sound. Even his heart was as if silent--normal; and his
breathing was soft.

Craig stood there for a full three seconds surveying them in that
stark and white-washed room flooded with raw, artificial light. Then
one of the guards, glancing in his direction, started to move or
speak. All this in the most fleeting interval. And Craig spoke to
them.

“Move or cheep,” he said, “and I’ll kill you--so help me God!”




                              CHAPTER III

                             HEADQUARTERS


Just a whisper, but it was enough. He had the drop on them. He not
only had the drop on them, but the guards, anything but intellectual
giants in other respects, were pretty good judges of certain men in
certain circumstances. They knew that this man meant what he said.

“Lift your hands,” said Craig. “Steady!” He himself was as steady as
concrete, but his nerves and his brain were nimble. He could see in
all directions at once--or felt as if he could. “Now,” said he, “get
up slow and easy--that’s right--and face the wall.”

They obeyed. They were not cowards precisely. It was just Mr. Death
pointing his finger at them, that was all. Not all of them were
brave men, either--one in particular. This was Copton, the guard
responsible for the break that had sent Craig to the dark cells,
_after_ a session in the hospital. Copton had gone flabby and white.
He shook. To look at Copton was to see that he believed all this to
be a measure of vengeance aimed solely against himself. Copton was
sure of this when Craig spoke commandingly to him.

“Copton,” said Craig, “step backward to the table and put your gun on
it, then your billy, then turn your pockets wrong side out--quick!”

Copton jumped. He did as he was ordered, as quickly as his flabby
nerves would permit him to, expecting a shot in the liver from one
moment to the next. But he picked up a bit of courage when Craig
spoke to him next. And it was just as well that he did, too. For,
even now, there wasn’t a second to be lost--no telling at what moment
some other guard might come drifting in, or the principal keeper
himself, thus spoiling everything.

“And now, Copton,” said Craig, “disarm the others. Holsters off with
the guns! Billies and handcuffs with them.”

He had picked on Copton because the man was so deadly frightened that
there was no danger of his disobeying. Just then, Copton would have
murdered his own grandmother, if so ordered. He was that kind. And
plus this fear of his, was his gratitude for being permitted to live
yet a little longer. He had mistreated Craig. Now Craig had him in
his power. Copton was sick with fright.

There was a guard named Tweed--a big, young man, without much sense,
with something of the blind courage of a young buffalo. Craig saw,
just in time, a premonitory flexing of Tweed’s arms.

“Steady, there, Tweed,” he said.

He made Copton handcuff Tweed right there, with his hands still up.
But there were signs of wavering elsewhere. So Craig made Copton take
a gun from the pile and drill it on his comrades, and the guards were
more afraid of this frightened renegade with a gun, one would have
said, than they were of Craig himself.

As a matter of fact, as measured by the ticking of a watch, all
that had transpired since Craig’s first appearance here in the room
upstairs, must have been at breathless speed, leisurely but fast,
as is the way of big events, like the piling into each other of two
racing locomotives, or the fall of a big redwood tree. And the danger
was all over by the time that “Eddie, the Yegg” came crawling up from
the subcellar.

Eddie quietly took one of the piled-up guns.

“I counted the hundred you told me to, sir,” he said in his prison
whisper. Craig had ordered Eddie to wait that long.

“Good,” said Craig. “Now, take the gun from Copton. And”--he raised
his voice slightly--“I’ll remind you gentlemen that no one will be
hurt if you obey orders. One false move, and we’ll bag the lot of
you.”

The six guards were marched with Eddie, sidewise, at their head and
Craig at the rear down into the subcellar. There, Copton aiding,
these keepers also were stripped--five of them, not including Copton.
For Craig had other work he wanted Copton to do--work in which
Copton would need his uniform. And Copton was willing. His gratitude
at being spared was now greater than his fear that he wouldn’t be
spared, and he would have murdered all five, and the one already in
the cell, had Craig but spoken the word.

But now Craig turned out the feverish Bangor, and put two of the
guards in that small box which had been Bangor’s sick room for upward
of a week. Then he delivered an oath to George Washington, and George
swore, while the other convicts, those still in the cells, uttered
oaths of another sort and made obscene jests at the keepers’ expense,
until Craig spoke to them.

Even in this short time Craig had grown in power other than the power
of a gun and a commanding position. He told them to shut up for their
own good, and they obeyed him. After having seen what they had seen,
who wouldn’t have been ready to believe anything?

In George Washington’s cell, Craig also put two of the stripped and
humiliated keepers, being careful to assure them, most politely,
that, in a short time, he would see that every one got more
comfortable quarters. But as to what all this was about, not a word,
except such words as he had already spoken to Eddie, and Eddie to him.

Then the remaining keeper he had brought down from upstairs, always
excepting Copton, he placed in the cell with the first night guard
taken. Thus, while the night was still young, were six guards
disarmed, disuniformed, locked up in cells where no amount of
shouting would do them any good, and yet one other guard cowed, till
no more dangerous than a rabbit in the presence of a rattlesnake.

“What are you going to do with him now?” asked Eddie, with his weak
and tragic face reflecting a species of horror as he looked at the
stricken Copton.

“I am going to ask him,” said Craig, “to go fetch us the P. K.!”

“Oh, Tommy!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, think a moment, Mr. Masters!”

This from the cells where the remaining prisoners still were. And why
not? They had reason to dread Mr. Stievers, the principal keeper.
Almost every prisoner who had ever gone through San Pedro did.

“It’s merely to put him into safe-keeping, too,” Craig announced.
“Cheer up,” he added. “It’s to be a square deal for everybody--you
keepers, included.”

There was a groan and a curse, and a general muttering from the
cells. But old Eddie, the Yegg, had his say. Said he:

“’Tis a thought that’ll bring you luck.”

And these words sounded sweet in the echo of Craig’s brain as he
once more made his way up the stone steps and, this time, on through
the guardhouse and out into the sparkling pure night of the San
Pedro Prison yard. So long it had been since he had seen the open
night--smelled it and tasted it, as he was doing now--that he could
have fallen over backward for sheer agony of joy.

This he had had taken away from him! The sky was clear. The stars
were out. Well down in the southwest rode the crescent of a brand-new
moon. And the air was of that crystalline blue purity of wild places
far from cities.

It was in the midst of an unpeopled region that San Pedro stood. It
wasn’t much of a prison, as modern penal institutions go. It had been
under a curse from the first, so one would have said who knew its
history.

First of all, there was its location--as unlovely a place as ever
was, except on a night like this, such as would have glorified any
place. But ordinarily a region that was sterile, as bleak as Baffin
Land in winter, as dusty hot as Death Valley in summer--a freak of
nature--the bed of some long dead and dried-up sea, so the professors
said. And it pushed up in the midst of other hills, north, south,
east, and west, which were verdant, heavily timbered.

It was the worthlessness of this dead region that had made it the
chosen site of San Pedro away back in the early history of the State.
For the politicians had bought it in for a song, and then resold it
to the State, in the good, old-fashioned way.

Not even the railroad had been built past San Pedro at that time.
The railroad came only when the State began to grow and prosper so
fast that a newer and greater prison was built elsewhere, and the
railroad’s advent was all that kept San Pedro in existence at all.
For, even then, San Pedro was a place of evil repute. The initial
scandal of how and where and by whom it had been built--this had been
like a mother hen for the breeding of other scandals--generations of
them.

But, finally, the old prison had seemed to settle down. It became a
secondary prison--a sort of disciplinary prison to which the scum
of the other jails and penitentiaries were sent, or those prisoners
who had shown themselves contumacious in court--as had one, Thomas
Masters, who had refused any facts about himself even to the lawyer
appointed to his defense, when said Masters was tried for shooting a
man, with intent to kill, and so forth, in a labor camp.

So San Pedro each year had sunk a little lower in public esteem,
become a little more a place for honest citizens, as well as
lawbreakers to shudder at whenever its name was mentioned.

But San Pedro--a mere parallelogram of shimmering brick on a milky
plain--was a thing of beauty on a night like this. It was, even, to
others than to Craig--he who had looked at it a while back with the
fervent eyes of the liberated, whose eyes would have seen beauty in a
construction camp. For, so others had looked at it, too.

Ordinarily, train No. 93 didn’t stop at San Pedro at all. It was a
fast express, westbound, composed mostly of sleepers, and scheduled
to pass the prison at thirteen minutes past midnight. But, this
night, No. 93 stopped, as it was bound to do on signal. San Pedro was
an institution of the State, and for the time being, at least, the
State, not the railroad, was supreme.

The engineer looked down with surprise from the lofty cab as his
great Mogul rode by. He wasn’t used to seeing a crowd like that at
San Pedro, not at this time of night. Generally, when he made this
run, San Pedro lay as still and as dark and as apparently deserted as
the desert around it.

The Mogul panted to a stop; and, looking back, the engineer made out
that most of this crowd had been passengers. He caught a word here or
there:

“Governor’s orders---- Home for the holiday---- Good behavior----
Good-by---- Good-by----”

“Poor devils,” said the engineer, without anger.

And he began a mental calculation where best he could pick up the
time he had lost. It was a problem; but, at that, he felt better all
along the run, at the idea of snaking them away--farther--farther
yet!--those poor devils from the hell they had this night put behind
them.

It was the conductor of No. 93, though, who had had the real
surprise. What did the warden of San Pedro mean by dumping a load of
ex-cons like this on a first-class train at midnight? Twenty-four of
them--all in their new prison clothes--most of them smoking “State,”
as the tobacco of the prisons and poorhouses was called, and smoking
this in raw, new pipes!

“Quick, men! Into the smoker!”

But their passes were in perfect order--passes that would later
be turned in as vouchers to the State for payment--each pass duly
stamped and signed by “_Copton, acting_.”

“Isn’t Copton that pie-faced little guard that used to deadhead out
with us and get us to slow down so’s he could jump off?”

The conductor looked at his brakeman and the brakeman looked at the
conductor.

“Sure,” said the brakeman, who was slow of speech. “That’s him.”

“Well, how in the devil,” pursued the conductor, “did they ever come
to make a hit like that----”

The conductor paused again, as if he might have had some ill-defined
doubt or other in the back of his brain.

“He’s merely acting,” said the brakeman. The brakeman also took time
for thought. “I remember now,” he continued slowly. “I understand
that there’s some sort of a shake-up coming off in San Pedro--that
the governor’s going to appoint one of these swell reform guys, or
something.”

“We should worry,” droned the conductor, “even if they are going to
the end of the division. Only--better make out a report--to get that
car another sort of fumigation at the end of the run. Did you notice?
Looked like the majority of those fellows had been sick.”

The thought of all these convicts going free was in the brakeman’s
mind as he finally made his way to the rear platform of No. 93.
He wasn’t much of a poet, but--going home to celebrate the day of
the Great Liberator! And the thought, with something of its poetic
significance, lingered as he looked out through the starlight at the
receding prison in the distance.

Then the brakeman strained his eyes, while another sort of thought
took vague form in his mind. Just now it seemed to him that he had
seen something else putting the prison behind it. He wasn’t sure. The
starlight was dim. But it appeared to be one of the San Pedro auto
trucks ghosting off to the south. No, it couldn’t be. What would a
prison auto truck be doing out at this time of the night?

The starlight swallowed up the thing he had seen--or thought that
he had seen. And presently the starlight swallowed up dim San Pedro
itself. But all the time the brakeman was there by himself on the
rear platform of No. 93--trimming his lights, recoiling the end of
his bell rope--he was run through by a vague uneasiness, a hint of
something impending. Or, was all this but an afterthought?

He turned.

A man was crouching there in the doorway of the car. Over the lower
part of the man’s face a bandanna handkerchief had been tied. He
held an automatic pistol, as if he loved it, close to his breast,
but pointed at the brakeman. All this the brakeman noticed in the
first dazed sweep of his eyes; then something else. The stranger was
dressed in a stiff new suit of clothes, such as San Pedro furnished
to those it set free.




                              CHAPTER IV

                           BY PROCESS OF LAW


“Twenty-four away on the westbound express,” said Craig, “and
thirty-two thus far gone by truck, and that makes----”

“Fifty-six,” said Warden Green.

The warden was a large man with a beard, and the warden had a great
reputation as a laugher. Like many large men with a good digestion,
the warden laughed easily when prisoners complained of mistreatment,
laughed when they howled and cursed under punishment, laughed as he
censored their letters to the outside world. But he wasn’t laughing
now.

He sat there in the corner of his office, unarmed, with shackles on
his hands and feet, and a heavy desk shoved up close in front of him
further to hinder his movements in case he should care to make any.

“By truck and train,” Craig figured, “we ought to get at least a
hundred more away by sunup--fifty in that box car to be picked up
by the accommodation freight--and they can drop off here and there,
wherever they please--fifty more on the next run of the truck back
into the mountains----”

The warden blurted out something that was in his heart.

“Why don’t you turn ’em all loose right off and be done with it?” he
demanded. “What are you stallin’ for? You got all the keepers under
lock and key. You got me. I’ve opened the safe for you, haven’t I?
And I’ve give you my promise, haven’t I?--fair and square, not to tip
off the rest of the State until you’ve all had your twenty-four-hour
start--longer, if you say so.”

“You still don’t understand,” said Craig. “But me--as I told the boys
down there in the punishment block when this thing began--I believe
in prisons. I believe in law and I believe in punishment. I was
brought up that way. But also, I believe in justice!”

The warden laughed in his beard.

“I do,” said Craig, with a touch of controlled heat. “I believe in
justice.”

“You don’t seem to.”

“Those we’ve sent away already--those we’re going to send away still,
as soon as we can, without a hearing or, at least, without a trial,
have been punished enough, or more than enough, or are innocent.”

This time, the warden did laugh--mirthlessly, though.

“Innocent, like you are!”

“Green, if you knew all the facts, you’d change your tune.”

“You shot a feller, didn’t you?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Shot him in the back--Beekman----”

“If you knew all the facts----”

“I knew Beekman, and you shot him in the back.”

“If I told you----”

“What? You had a fair trial. The court found you guilty.”

Again the warden laughed, not because there was anything humorous in
the situation; although there may have been, at that, according to
his way of looking at it. The warden himself had received a quiet tip
to the effect that his days at San Pedro had been numbered, anyway.
The tip said that there was going to be a new warden. The new warden
was going to have enough to worry about.

Said Craig: “Green, if you knew all the facts you’d never laugh
again.”

“Maybe I know more than you think I do.”

“Let it go at that.”

“But you oughtn’t to blame me if my keepers laid on the rubber hose
a little heavy now and then. I couldn’t keep my eye everywhere. San
Pedro ain’t a Sunday school. I’ll tell you what. You pick out those
keepers that was rough and give ’em a taste of their own medicine.
That’ll square accounts.”

Craig felt his mental feet slipping from the eminence to which he had
climbed during those days and nights of toil and prayer. He hadn’t
intended to speak to Green more than was necessary. He needed all the
strength that remained to him. Green, and the thoughts Green stirred,
were a source of weakness.

“I am innocent!” hissed Craig, with a flash of color. “I’m innocent
myself and you--you----”

The warden did change his tune this time.

“What was that,” he demanded soothingly, “you said about trials, and
so forth? Are you really aiming to----”

“Hold court? Yes.”

“Where?”

“Here in the prison.”

“With you as judge! Look here, Mr.--Masters----”

“Stop,” Craig ordered softly. “There’ll be a jury. Say what you have
to say to them.”

That perfect night of great events in the isolated little world of
San Pedro Prison had dissolved magically, into a perfect dawn--a rift
of pink clouds high up in the sky where the stars still lingered, and
then a shifting of purple light to blue, and, after that, a gradual
transfusion through this blue light of a billion motes of gold, of
crimson; and then, there was the first slant of the sun itself. It
was as if all that had happened was the first act of a play, staged
by a master stage director; or, better yet, it was as if this dawn
had been designed especially for the isolated little prison--not only
a Sunday dawn, but a Dawn of Glory.

So it must have seemed to many in San Pedro this day. For the rumor
and quiver of great things had been running through the prison all
the night, and the expectation of still greater things impending. It
was curious--the silence! Silence, despite the fact that the night
itself had brought permission for the prisoners to talk all they
wanted, to sing--play such musical instruments as they might possess.

But the silence was such that almost the only thing heard at all
as the sun came up was the clang of the chapel bell like a call to
church; and afterward, the moan and chant of the chapel pipe organ,
where Zabrewski, a musical genius gone wrong, improvised, and tried
to express, and did express, the resurrection of his soul.

Only a few of the former keepers were on duty. The places of most of
the others had been taken by men selected from among the prisoners
themselves--old men mostly, and yet with something unfamiliar about
them. And armed--all of them armed. There wasn’t going to be any
prison riot to spoil everything--not at this stage of the game.

This new force of guards went about the usual work in much the usual
way. They announced that there was to be a new deal, that each man in
the prison would get a new hearing. Also they announced, in divers
speech, but all of it clear, that the inmate who tried to start
anything on his own account was apt to be buried at the starting
place.

Gradually, however, the situation revealed itself. Inmate No. 3777,
“Three Sevens” they called him for short, had made a successful
break. But, instead of turning this to his own account, he had
decided to let them all in on his good thing. There were forty-eight
hours in which to carry the plan through--what was left of it, that
is, for much had been accomplished already--committees appointed and
sworn in, the first big detachments of parole men sent away. “Parole
men” because they had given their word to do nothing to arouse
suspicion, were under parole to break no law, to do their best to
become regular citizens again--in short, not to abuse the liberty
given them.

“Favoritism!”

There were already some whispers of favoritism. Not many, though.
And they grew less as the day advanced. There was something too
impressive, too suggestive about all this of the final Judgment Day.

     And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and
     the books were opened and the dead were judged out of those
     things which were written in the books, according to their
     works.

That was the spirit. And Zabrewski, the musical genius, was
expressing this on the pipe organ, too, whenever there was a
lull--whenever the jury was debating whether it ought to send a man
back to his cell again or turn him loose. All these sinners assembled
there and trying to do justice in the sight of the Lord on this
Sunday morning--it would have been enough to make an angel weep. And
then, right in the midst of it all, it was as if an angel was there.

The chapel was filled with convicts at the time. The guards were
around. On the platforms sat Three Sevens, otherwise and just for
himself alone, Daniel Craig. To one side of Craig, the jury--furtive,
wise, and wonderstruck. To the other side, the prison clerk with the
prison books and records, showing who was who, and the crimes each
man was charged with at the time of his sentence.

There was dim light in the chapel, although the windows had been
opened for the first time in twenty years and the sunlight was
pouring in. And there, quite suddenly, right in the full drench
of one of these slanting bars of gold light, the angel. No! Not a
regular angel, but a girl who looked like one--bashful, baffled, yet
fearless.

Perhaps she may have shed a tear or two, at that. She was very
human--very feminine, too, although dressed in riding clothes--short
skirt, spurred boots. But her hair was down her back, in a single,
heavy schoolgirl tress. She had been wearing a flat-brimmed Stetson,
but she had taken this off as if in deference to her surroundings,
and her hair was yellow and it shimmered in the sun. A wonderful
picture she made standing there, with her profile tilted up--blue
eyes, pink lips slightly parted.

So intense had been the interest in that greater picture of what was
unrolling in the chapel that for what seemed a long time she had
remained all but unseen. For there was a prisoner at the bar.

It was an old man whom the other prisoners had nicknamed “Uncle
Josh.” So he looked, even with his hair and whiskers shorn, upward of
sixty, sloping shoulders, a kindly but belligerent eye.

“Turn the old geezer loose.”

This from juryman No. 6.

“He maimed a neighbor for killin’ his hogs,” whispered the clerk.

“He won’t do it again.”

“Neither will his neighbor.”

The jury took a silent vote, signaled the vote to the judge.

“Free!” said the judge.

Uncle Josh reeled a little. His mouth snapped open, then shut, then
open again, like a turtle taking the air, but not a word, not a
murmur. He brought a gnarled knuckle to his eye. His head drooped.
And, all this time, that genius Zabrewski wringing the heart out of
the organ with _tremolo_ and _vox humana_.

Then, just as a friend or two started to lead old Uncle Josh away,
about every one saw her--the girl.

There was a gasp, like that of an air brake on a train; and it was
as if a real air brake had been applied to the march of things. For
there was a dead halt. Even Zabrewski saw her. His back was turned.
But there was a little mirror hung up in front of him that gave him a
slanting view of the hall.

It was Craig who spoke up. He was the man to do it. He felt as if the
whole court--or congregation--centered its voice in his.

“Who--whom was it you wished to see?”

The words spoken at the great crises in the affairs of men are
usually small and banal like that.

The girl’s voice rang out sweet and clear, but with a slight
huskiness of emotion in it.

“My father!”

There was a craning of necks. This was interesting. Who of the
inmates of San Pedro, pray, could have a daughter like this? It was a
question even more interesting than those of how the girl had come to
be here, where she came from.

Eddie, the Yegg, wearing a uniform several sizes too big for him,
here shuffled forward, dragging one foot slightly, as is the way of
one who at some time or other has worn a cavalry saber or a ball
and chain. But Eddie knew the way of courts. He tried to speak as a
regular court attendant should.

“If it please your honor----”

It was terrible to hear Eddie speak aloud. He had conversed so long
in whispers, inside of prison and out, that his voice sounded fragile
and shaky, like big, mere balloons of speech, blown up by the breath
of the man.

“What is it?” Craig asked.

“I was watchin’ the gate,” labored Eddie. “She come--asks fer her
dad----”

Eddie stopped. He had done his part--all he could, at least. Craig
had turned to the girl. There was a whisper among the jury.

“We turn her old man loose, whatever he done.”

And Craig felt easier for having heard this.

“What is your father’s name?” he asked.

For the first time the girl showed a hint of alarm, of fright. She
threw a quick glance about her, brought her eyes back to the man on
the platform as to the one thing, the one person, to which she could
cling.

“Gracie,” she said. “I am Miss Gracie.” And, without further ado,
there was the prison clerk looking through the books for the name
of Gracie, but quite sure that there was no such name there--unless
it was the name of a dead man, or some one who had been transferred
elsewhere more than a year before. An awkward situation.

“He was to have got here this morning,” said the girl.

“Oh!”

But Craig was forcing his mind to stick to the facts.

“This is Sunday,” he said.

“I know.”

“And they were bringing him here, to-day?”

Did the girl understand? There was something she didn’t understand.
She gasped the one word:

“Yes!”

“But they don’t receive inmates----”

Craig was going to say that they didn’t receive inmates on Sunday, or
visitors either, but the girl cut in on him:

“Inmates!”

“Yes, but----”

“My father’s the warden,” she said.

“Warden Green?”

“Warden Gracie! The newly appointed warden. The governor--isn’t this
San Pedro? What has happened? _Where’s my father?_”

Her voice was lifted on what, for want of a better word, may be
called a turbulence. Not much of a turbulence, at the start, but a
swirling riot of sounds subdued--a flow of speech, a resumption of
breathing, the sounds of movement. On this, for a moment or so, her
voice had as it were floated like something bright on the rising
water of a muddy overflow, then sank in it.

“_Gracie, the reformer!_”

“_He’s on the way wit’ a bunch of fresh bulls!_”

“_Good night!_”

And other expressions that were incoherent. Not violent as yet,
but hinting of danger as if the muddy overflow might rise, take on
strength of a current, and become a flood.

Craig caught this feeling. So, most likely, did the girl. She turned,
somewhat as if she would have left the place. But others may have
caught the feeling, too--that feeling that was neither enmity,
precisely, nor yet desire for evil. A subtle feeling that a change
was coming over the face of things--a change for the worse. A crack
in the iron chain of discipline. Caged jungle beasts that have got a
whiff of blood.

The girl shrank back. The turbulence assumed something of the nature
of a growl.

“Fellers,” a shrill voice intoned, “we’re in danger here.”

“Order!” shouted Craig.

But he was too late.

“And I moves,” shrilled the voice, “we take this gal as a hostage!”




                               CHAPTER V

                             “YOUR WORK!”


It was right then that Eddie had his moment of greatness. It comes to
every man once in his lifetime, and blessed is he who is ready for
it when it does come. Eddie was ready. Eddie may have wondered what
his own particular schooling was for those nights when he had stood
with revolver ready, watching, waiting, every nerve trained for quick
violence. This was it.

“_Bang!_”

A flash, a report, a strand of smoke; and there was the owner of the
shrill voice lunging up like a man who reaches for a butterfly.

There was the picture of Eddie himself--_Rip Van Winkle_ awaking
from his sleep, but shorn of hair and beard; _Rip_ as Joe Jefferson
presented him, mostly eyes, tragic, but stirred and amused.

“The court,” said Craig, “is adjourned. The guards will maintain
order.”

All this as if it hadn’t been swift, as if it had been arranged,
a little stiff and formal, yet dignified, and called for by the
circumstances. The butterfly chaser now collapsing, supported by his
brethren. Eddie still revolving the dark searchlight of his eyes.
Other guards flexing their arms to bring their weapons into play.

And Craig, taking his time about it, just as a regular judge would
have done, stepped down from the platform, turned to the left, gained
that side aisle at the other end of which the girl stood. He came up
to her.

So much while the heavy blow of Eddie’s shot was still reverberating
in the air, or, at least, in the minds of the convicts good and bad,
who happened to be present.

“I think you’d better get out of here,” said Craig softly to the
girl, as he came close to where she stood.

She shrank from him slightly, with horror in her eyes. He smiled
at her soberly. He could feel that his own face was bloodless.
Curiously, some voice in his brain was telling him that this was on
her account, not his own. Otherwise, he was as cold and steady as
he had been those ten or eight hours ago--or ten or eight years, so
it seemed--that he had come creeping up to the guardroom from the
punishment block.

This coldness he threw about him as they say an iceberg chills
the air at sea, when he turned and looked at his fellows. But the
coldness was of the nerves, not of the heart. He saw what was needed.
These men were like children, with brains that were stunted, or
crooked, or dulled. This was a new game. They didn’t understand it
very well. And yet the playing of it, like some new exercise, or like
some new system of education, might mean the salvation of a number of
them, at least.

“The jury,” Craig announced, “will select another judge, so that
there will be no loss of time. Are you with me for maintaining order?”

There was a shout, mostly of approval. But this first shout was
followed by another shout, a scream:

“_Shot me!_”

It was the voice of the butterfly chaser. And there he was, the man
that Eddie had wounded, threshing about and spitting blood. Those
who had been holding him up were beginning to look vengeance, while
Eddie backed away, ready to fire again, and fresh shouts and screams
went up.

There was another shot, and this spawned howls with the awful
fecundity of most elemental things. Some one howled into the face
of the girl, and Craig bashed straight into the open mouth with his
fist, although he was armed; and then he was striking this way and
that, with elbows and fists, the center of a sudden mob, only one
thought in his head at all, and that to protect the girl.

He did protect her, but himself he couldn’t have told how--not in
detail; mostly by the smashing of heads, a roughing of it with
shoulders and knees, in the midst of jaggedness--call it that--as
applied to speech and action. Then, he and the girl were outside the
chapel.

“This way!”

Even now, there seemed to be no great speed in what was taking place.
Every one was groping, as through a thick darkness--as, indeed, they
were. But Craig and the girl were up a flight of stairs, bringing
a nightmare vision with them of men who ran toward the chapel--men
armed with shotguns--so armed by Craig himself, who had put them
under oath.

Craig paused to swing a grilled gate shut back of them, and to make
sure that the lock had caught. Up the stairs were the principal
offices of San Pedro--the telegraph and the telephone; the records,
personal and otherwise, which were still there other than such books
as had been taken to the chapel. But at the door of the offices they
paused--Craig and the girl. They looked into each other’s eyes, as
people sometimes will when they both listen for the same thing. That
was what they were doing--listening--waiting--remembering the guards
they had left below and those other guards who had been seen coming
on the run.

Shots! Almost a volley! Then silence.

At that, the girl began to sob--silently, spasmodically--while the
tears came into her eyes. But she was still looking at Craig.

“Go in there and wait,” said Craig. “You’ll be safe here.”

“And you?”

He pointed below.

“No!”

He put out a hand to support himself against the side of the door.
He saw that his hand was covered with blood. He didn’t want the girl
to see, so he lowered his hand. So doing, he almost lost his balance
and lurched against the jamb like a drunken man, hung there with
his shoulder. A slight haze swept across his eyes. Nothing much. He
sought to explain:

“I’m--out of--training.”

Also it was meant for an apology. He hated weakness. He didn’t want
to appear weak. But, after all, it had been bad for him--that beating
he had received from Copton, his stay in the hospital, his removal to
the dark cell while he was still more or less mauled up. And since
then! How many days and nights had there been without sleep--or
almost without--while he was sawing, half-dozing, half-awake? He
didn’t know. He didn’t care. But he didn’t want to appear weak--not
in the presence of this girl.

He let her lead him, none the less, to an office chair, and there he
slumped--making efforts all the time to summon his strength. He was
needed back in the chapel. There he would have to go.

“Take off your coat,” she said.

“No!”

“Take off your coat!”

She was removing it for him, quick and deft.

He had objected merely because this would have been another evidence
of weakness, also more delay. Had the girl already suspected? Not
only suspected, but known--his shorn, but unkempt head, the prison
pallor of his skin. Still, she may not have noticed these things when
there was so much that had clamored for her attention. But she knew
for a certainty, when his coat slipped off, when she saw his canvas
shirt. There was a spreading blood stain on his shirt. The blood was
spreading over the grossly stenciled letters: “S. P. P.”

The initials of San Pedro Prison--the brand of bondage as much
as stripes would have been. She comprehended. She comprehended
everything--everything, that is, that she had seen and experienced
since her arrival here this otherwise bright and lovely Sabbath
morning. And no one could have told from her voice--not even herself
perhaps--what her feelings were as she murmured:

“Your work?”

“My work,” he answered. His voice rose. He was struggling to his
feet. “_My work!_”

That was his last flare of strength. It was, for some time. He
collapsed. It was the loss of blood that was doing for him--a
knife wound on his breast, another on his shoulder. He didn’t lose
consciousness, although he sat there with his head lolling about,
like a man who is asleep or a man who is drunk. So far as mental
symptoms went, he was a little of both, slightly delirious.

He wasn’t trying to go to the chapel any more because, as a matter of
fact, he thought he was there.

“_You’re free--free!_”

This was when he thought he was still the judge.

“_Order! Order!_”

He yelled it so loud that the cry brought him a fresh spasm of pain,
so acute that he was wide awake again, and there was the girl back
at his side with gauze and medicaments. The hospital was just back
of the offices, on the same floor. It proclaimed its presence with a
smell of creosote, a smell of ether and iodoform. It had needed no
sleuth to find it.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She humored him, repeated the information that she had given in the
chapel, with additions. The governor, informed of some of the things
that transpired in San Pedro, had induced his friend, Major Jerome
Gracie, to become head of the institution, there to put into effect
cherished theories of his as to what a prison should be--discipline,
fair treatment, self-government, education.

“But where is he? Where is he?” the girl broke in. “He was to
have been here with his commission, at dawn. I was coming up from
Fairhaven to join him here. The car broke down. A farmer offered me a
horse--twenty miles----”

It was a broken narrative. She was skilled in first aid. She was
treating his wounds with rough but efficient knowledge, unsparing of
the iodine. Her talk was lulling. It killed the pain. Perhaps she
knew this. She couldn’t have been telling him all this merely for
his information. To Craig, that golden head of hers, so near his
eyes, was another sort of dawn. The pain he felt was not the scalding
iodine, but a regret, a stabbing yet curative hope.

“He never broke an engagement in his life--taught me that----” the
girl continued, as her clean, strong hands manipulated the tape.
And all the time she was doing this, intent at once on this convict
patient of hers and on the subject of her father, she kept casting
glances--almost of appeal, one would have said--at the telephone on
the desk at one side of the room.

Then the telephone bell began to ring sharply, as if to proclaim that
the message was important.

“I’ll go,” said Craig.

“Stay where you are,” the girl said.

“Stand back,” said Craig.

“It’s my father,” she completed desperately.

She tried to leap to the telephone ahead of him. But, wounded and
only half-bandaged as he was, he flung himself ahead of her. He
picked up the instrument, faced her.

“I’m warden here as yet,” he flung at her over the whirring of the
bell.

“Let me speak to him, you--you----”

“I’m responsible,” he said more gently.

“Responsible for the riot and the killing!”

“For everything,” he said, with unconscious dignity. He lifted the
receiver. “Hello! Hello!”

There was a pause, while the girl stared at him--her slender frame
tense, her fingers working.

“Yes, this is San Pedro Prison. No matter who this is. State your
message. Ben Jarvis escaped? Committed an assault?”

“Ben Jarvis!” whispered the girl, with a movement of recoil, as Craig
hung up the receiver, put the instrument down. “Ben Jarvis, the
outlaw?”

Craig nodded.

“And you set him free?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But he was here. I know. I’ve helped my father go over the records.”

Again Craig nodded. There had been a cessation of noise from the
chapel, but the noise had broken out in another part of the prison.
The prison bell clanged a few times, as if in response to an
inexperienced hand.

Craig stumbled to a window. The sun was shining. The sky was
cloudless. In some respects it was the picture of a world that
he remembered--as an adept may remember a day or an epoch from an
earlier avatar.

But he saw that the auto truck had returned from another trip, that
it was being loaded by all the men who could gain a handhold or a
foothold on it. The stronger were compelling the weak to remain
behind. The voices of the mob came up to him. Vaguely, like hasty
shadow sketches, he saw figures and faces which he recognized as
those of men who should never have escaped.

He heard a gasp from the girl. He turned. She was facing another
convict--a man who was lithe and graceful, who might have been
handsome, in a darksome way, if it hadn’t been for the snarl on
his face, a snarl compounded of greed and all other evil. Craig
recognized the man, San Pedro’s only member of the nobility. He was
an international thief and trickster of great reputation, known as
“Count Wolf.”

Wolf saw Craig and decided to go elsewhere.

There was all the reason in the world why Craig should regain
control of the prison. But the sleepiness and the loss of blood were
combining against him in a fresh attack. It was all that he could do
to keep back a whimper.

The girl surveyed him. He was young. His face was almost boyish.
It might have been the face of a student. There were ambition and
purpose in the broad, high forehead, in his gray eyes.

There was an accusation in her own eyes. It seemed to be trembling on
her lips. But all she said, just then, was:

“You’re bleeding again. Quick! Let me finish that bandage.”

Again Craig was fighting off a desire to sleep, an intrusion of
dreams. This intrusion of dreams was curious in that his whole
life in prison was like a dream. He had never been arrested, never
been tried, never been handcuffed. So it seemed it had all been a
nightmare. Now he was waking from it. He had been sick. Who was this
girl? He must have muttered something of this.

“Who are you?” she asked in turn.

“Daniel Craig.”

“Craig? Craig? I remember no such name in the San Pedro list.”

“No one knew,” he announced with a glimmer of triumph. “Here, I was
Thomas Masters--Three Sevens!”

“Why did you kill that man?” She had suddenly remembered.

“I didn’t.” He laughed. “The kid shot him on his sister’s account.
Poor little----”

Craig jerked back his head, awake again.

“Tell me,” said the girl.

“What?”

“You didn’t kill him, but----”

A one-armed convict with a face like a weasel, or like an ermine,
rather, his face was so white, came limping into the room with a
grin. He was small and wizened. He carried a sheet of flimsy yellow
paper in his hand, and this stirred Craig to the knowledge that here
was the prison telegrapher.

“Been lookin’ for you, boss,” he said in a high, nasal voice. “Looks
like some of the boys----”

He stopped and stared at the girl with a malicious grin.

“Give me the message and go back to the key,” said Craig, as he put
out an unsteady hand.

But when the telegrapher was gone, Craig looked at the yellow tissue
paper the telegrapher had handed him; he was unable to read what was
written thereon.

“Something the--matter--with my eyes,” said Craig.

The girl took the message, read:

                                      “BANNER JUNCTION.

     “Train No. 93 robbed ten miles east here by masked men,
     supposed escaped convicts, San Pedro. Party boarded train
     on signal at your station last night----”

“Shall I go on?” the girl faltered.

“My work!” breathed Craig ghastly. “Go on! Go on!”

She read:

     “Conductor, brakeman shot, and three passengers also
     wounded. Leader of band partly identified Bud Gaspell
     supposed to have been in San Pedro serving life
     imprisonment. Wire details.”

There followed the name of a famous sheriff.

“My work! My work!” breathed Craig.




                              CHAPTER VI

                            JUST AND UNJUST


There was a sound of cheering from the prison yard, and this brought
the two of them again to their feet. Craig was stricken. In his
own mind he was like a crazy man. He was a man who had committed a
stupendous crime. There was no righting of it. Glimpsingly, he looked
back on himself as he had been in the cell, and found that it was
then he had been blessed without knowing it--serving a term on behalf
of another, on behalf of a lad he had scarcely known, but whom he
had pitied. Then, his conscience had been clear. Now, he was already
seared with the fire eternal. And this, or most of it, must have been
in his eyes as they met hers.

Craig picked up the revolver he had discarded when she had begun to
bandage him. He handed this to her.

“Take this,” he said. “As soon as I’m through that door, lock it.
There’s the telephone. Use it as you will. You can. The exchange in
Pine City will help you.”

She took the revolver. She understood the possible necessity of it.
She shuddered.

“Where are you going?”

“Out there.”

“You may be killed. They’re out of hand.”

“They’re out of hand,” he said. “That’s why I go. There’ll be
wholesale murder next. The old warden--the guards! Locked up! Men who
have sworn to kill----”

There was another outburst of cheering. No, cheering is not the word.
It was the howl of a mob.

“Fire!” the girl gasped.

Through the window that overlooked the yard there had come a curl of
smoke. There slanted across the yard a shadow as from a cloud, and
she knew that the sky was cloudless. She hurried across the room to
look out. She turned. Craig was gone.

How strangely she had remembered the facts of his case as soon as
he had mentioned the name of Thomas Masters. She and her father had
looked up this case particularly when the major was still making up
his mind whether or not he should accept the almost martyrdom of an
appointment to San Pedro--exchange his residence, well equipped,
luxurious, even, for the squalid quarters which were all that San
Pedro would have to offer; exchange the society of his friends for
the society of Nature’s misfits and throwbacks, her human failures
and freaks. But San Pedro had offered an appeal all its own--that
ancient riddle of Evil, and of Good.

“No man is consistently evil; no man is consistently good,” Jerome
Gracie had said. “Now, here is the case of this Thomas Masters.
See! They have him at San Pedro--twenty years--for murder. Now, I
happened to be present at his trial. He might have saved himself
had he spoken. He didn’t kill that man, Beekman, for robbery, nor,
apparently, for revenge, nor yet, certainly, for sheer wantonness.
What was the motive?”

What was Joan Gracie’s motive now when, instead of locking herself in
this room where she would be safe, she ran out to follow Craig? Him,
the all-but-nameless convict? Him, whose work this was?

No answer, except, perhaps, that she was her father’s daughter.
So Jerome Gracie himself would have done. Or, that simpler answer
yet; that she was feminine--that this convict had fought in her
defense and that she had nursed his wounds, and that, therefore, by
the oldest law of the world--but one which she would have instantly
denied--this man to some extent was hers and she was his.

She sped down the stairs. The iron gate that guarded the bottom of
them was still closed and locked. She went back through a corridor.
Here was an open door. This way he had passed. She found another door
and stumbled through it into the brightness of the yard.

How fast he had gone! She saw him crossing the yard--a gaunt and
shaky figure in bandages. He was making toward a band of men who
turned to greet him. And once more, unaccountably, the girl felt for
him a spasm of pity; of more than pity--of sympathy, of anguish and
admiration.

But Craig himself had moved with a strength that was not his own.
So he himself would have testified. So far as he was concerned, his
prayers had been answered, and he had died, and this thing that he
called himself was the mere ghost of the Daniel Craig who had once
lived, and moved, and had his being in the vast freedom of the world.

Like that he moved upon the merrymakers who had started the fire. It
wasn’t much of a fire as yet, but smoky--the paint house, happily
detached. Had Craig been a ghost in all reality not otherwise
would the cheerful bandits have looked at him. For Craig had that
supernatural look about him that most men have when they have passed
above natural fear.

“Choke off that fire, you fools!”

Not loud. He didn’t have to raise his voice.

“Shut the door,” some one cried softly.

The door of the paint house was shut, and they that had set the fire
now ran this way and that like rats out of a demolished barn.

In this the groping convicts had been able to act swiftly, at
last. There were a few who had lingered, after the scene in the
chapel--lingered with some idea of loot, some hankering for revenge,
but it was Freedom that was calling to them the loudest. They had
begun to scatter. The scatter had become a rush. No longer than it
had taken Craig to get the girl to the office, and the girl there to
bandage his wounds, and the brief time required for such other things
as had there transpired, than the prison had begun to be abandoned.

Only the former officers remained, locked up; and only a few wretches
who had been hurt in the rioting.

Craig and the girl went here and there about the prison.

They found Eddie, the Yegg, of the tragic eyes, unhurt. He whispered
that he had sequestered the horse on which the girl had come riding
to the prison.

“You could have taken it and ridden away,” said Miss Gracie.

Eddie had no word for that. He wasn’t used to speaking to women. He
merely looked at Craig with a haunted smile.

“He knew that he wouldn’t get far,” said Craig.

Eddie nodded.

“Few of them will,” said the girl. “It’s always that way. They’ll be
rounded up--almost all of them----”

She broke off and communed with herself, as one will who has got hold
of a thought that leads off into channels not yet clearly seen.

“I did this,” said Craig, “as an act of justice--justice! In the
world I was living in there was no justice! The innocent suffered
with the wicked! I knew that it shouldn’t be! I wanted to set things
right!”

He was half out of his head.

Perhaps they all were out of their heads a little bit. There was a
grotesquerie in the world itself that wasn’t rational at all. This
was a beautiful Sunday, now warming to late afternoon, yet it was
shot full of nightmare. This was a prison. In it the only prisoners
were those who should have been the masters.

The three of them--Eddie, Craig, and the girl--succored the wounded.
They gave water to the men whom Craig himself had caged. Craig would
have let them out, but the girl prevented him, Eddie abetting. There
were those among the guards who would have killed Craig and Eddie,
too, as their first act on getting out.




                              CHAPTER VII

                              THE PROMISE


The girl said a number of things in the course of this day that were
to remain with Craig always, just as would the presence of her as she
said them--soft-voiced, clear-eyed, brave. She was only eighteen or
so, but she had talked so much with her father that she talked like a
man plus a woman’s instinct to soothe and heal:

“You’ve had a dream that turned out bad--but that is no reason why
you shouldn’t dream again. Half the tragedies of this world were
caused by dreamers, but so also all of the world’s progress. My
father’ll set things right here in San Pedro. The courts’ll put you
in a cell for life if you stay here. You can be of more use outside.
Outside you can offset the evil you’ve let loose.”

She was urging him to flee.

“If I should bring them back?” said Craig.

“Bring them back?”

“Ben Jarvis, Bud Gaspell----”

Among the papers that had been left on the chapel table by the
convict who had acted as clerk of that curious, improvised court of
the morning, was a little red memorandum book. The girl seized this.
She meditated. She looked at Craig.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “The small and the weak--they don’t matter.
They’ll be herded back here like sheep, when the posses get a start.
It’s the men like Bud Gaspell, train robber and highwayman, and Ben
Jarvis, who kills for pleasure, and ‘Trick’ O’Ray.”

The two of them worked over the records like a pair of students in
a library. They added name after name to the list in the little
red book. There were those on the list whom Craig had never seen
nor known. But the girl knew them, by reputation. She had been her
father’s secretary--and, for that matter, almost his sole companion,
since her mother’s death two years before.

Sinister, cruel, perverse; men who were as deadly as moccasin snakes,
and as ruthless, as concentrated in the satisfaction of their own
needs and appetites. Wild men, like “Sancho Red,” “of the arid hills,
who tortured as well as killed”--their names, and, when necessary,
their descriptions, all went into the little red ledger, put there by
this girl with blue eyes and the shimmering hair, written out in a
schoolgirl hand.

There was no time to waste. Craig himself had now sent the news
of what had happened in the prison by telephone and haltingly, by
telegraph, to the outside world.

Craig had told the girl the purport of that first telephone message
that had reached him after he and she had left the chapel when the
riot began. Major Gracie himself had been wounded by Ben Jarvis.
Nothing much. A mere scratch. Father and daughter had later talked
together over the telephone. And now Major Gracie had resumed his
interrupted run by special train and would be here in less than an
hour.

Craig had told the girl about his past--all of it. There was no more
formality between them than if the two of them were on a life raft on
a stormy sea at night. But at that, she was taking much for granted.
She trusted him. She understood what he meant when he said that he
would bring back to prison the enemies of society he had unwittingly
set free. It was she who referred to the little memorandum book as
his ledger--the one in which they had written out his debt.

When he would have faltered on her account, it was she who bravely
encouraged him.

“You started out to do a great thing, and an original thing. Do it
yet. In the meantime I’ll get my father and I’ll do it myself. We’ll
prove your innocence, get you a pardon.”

Night was closing down. Back of the prison, a quarter of a mile away,
there was a dry gully with a few stunted willows in it. She had
noticed this when she was riding to the prison. To this place she
sent Eddie with the horse. Craig was to ride this horse. He was to
leave it at a certain place where the farmer who owned it could get
it later.

She thought of everything. She lived in Fairhaven. Four or
five miles out of Fairhaven, she had an aunt--a Miss Katherine
Middleton--eccentric, but with a heart of gold, who lived in a
cottage near some big woods.

Her voice came fitfully, or so Craig, his head momentarily skipping
and whirling, heard her. He broke in:

“You’re getting yourself into trouble, helping a convict!”

“Don’t say the word,” she cried. “You’re not a convict--not in your
eyes, or mine. Don’t you suppose I know what you tried to do? Hasn’t
my father been trying to do the same sort of thing all his life--only
in a different way with different luck? You’re a brute to make me
talk this way--when I’m trying so hard to--see straight, do right----”

Craig was stricken with pity and awe. This girl had been acting like
a soldier, like a man. For nothing at all she again had tears in her
eyes, had a quivering lip.

“Forgive me,” he said, without knowing what it was he had to be
forgiven for.

The girl steadied herself, looked at the little red book. She had
covered several pages of it with her writing.

“This is the list,” she said.

He put out his hand.

“Wait,” she said.

She wrote something else in it:

     This book is given to Daniel Craig by Joan Gracie.

She looked at him with an expression that was not a smile exactly,
although he always remembered it as a smile. In pain and danger, and
in the blackest despair, he remembered this look she was giving him
now as the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. It was a look of
illumination, vision, faith.

“There,” she said. “If they find it now, there will be no doubt as to
where it came from.”

And she quoted her father again--something to the effect that a lot
of suffering in the world was due, also, to the fear so many people
had of appearing to be foolish, of not seeming respectable.

“Joan,” said Craig.

“Daniel,” said she, and it was the first time that he had heard
himself so addressed for more than two years; it stirred his heart
within him.

“May God and His angels bless you,” said Craig, his own eyes
reaffirming the words.

“Just promise to do your best,” said the girl. “You’re going out to
battle. You’re going out to fight for your country. That’s what my
father says. Every criminal’s a traitor. You’ve got a debt to pay. So
has every one. Yours is written out in the little red ledger. And
when you’ve settled that, there’ll be other debts.”

“I’ll pick out the worst man first, and turn him in----”

“No, not that,” the girl interrupted him. “Take them as you find
them. Oh, be careful!” Her thought crystallized. “All the time,
you’ll be between two fires. Don’t you see--the law on one side, the
outlaws on the other----”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Craig.

“Listen,” said the girl, now speaking more out of her heart than
out of her brain. Her eyes wavered, came back to his. “You’re on
probation. You’ve got to report to me. I don’t know how. But you’ve
got to report.”

“You’ll hear from me--‘Three Sevens,’” said Craig. “Until my debt is
paid, I’ll be Three Sevens.”

Then, through the vast silence of the prison and the San Pedro
country there sounded the hooting wait of a rushing train. The might
and the majesty of retributive law!

To Daniel Craig, riding away from San Pedro on the horse that had
been furnished him by Joan Gracie, along the road that she had
indicated, there came a feeling at once so sad and so joyful that he
could have cried aloud. No words could express the feeling. It was
too overwhelming for words.

Ticketed and wrinkled, but clean enough, he had found the clothing
that he had worn when the sheriff had brought him to San Pedro two
years ago from the city where he had been tried and sentenced. But he
was no longer the man--or the boy--who had worn that clothing then.
As surely as it had happened to that certain man of Bethany, he also
had died, been entombed, and now was alive again.

His wounds hurt him. The bandages might have been burial cloths. He
had an agonizing sense--still as Lazarus might have had--that this
new lease of life was too good to be true, could not last.

He took off his familiar old felt hat. He raised his face to the
night.

Thus his mind surveyed the past.

Mostly poor, introspective, oversensitive, often unhappy--that had
been his lot up through boyhood, as he perceived it. Yet always some
lurking faith was there in a happiness to come, a happiness to be
fought for and won. Was this the beginning of the final campaign?

He had no family. Even the stern and pious old grandmother who had
reared him was dead. He had started to work his way through the State
University. He was going to be an engineer. No other calling seemed
big enough. There were deserts to water, swamps to drain, chasms to
bridge. Then came his expulsion--one of those tragedies of college
life that seem too small to the outside world. It had all started
as a joke on a certain crabbed old professor, a chance to steal his
examination papers, and Craig accused of cheating.

There swept in upon him even now the old sense of having been
disgraced for life, a whiff of that morbid sickness that had almost
driven him to suicide.

It was with this mental sickness upon him, and a willingness to die,
that he had tramped into a strange labor camp and there found that
other boy whose tragedy surpassed his own--a sister crying her heart
out back home, the boss of this camp “the guilty man,” a boyish sense
of honor calling for retribution. Then the shot in the dark, Craig’s
promise to say nothing, the flight of this other youth, Craig himself
arrested for murder.

There was no wise old friend to tell him that he was a fool for
feeling the way he did at what had happened in college, that the
world forgets, that no man is perfect, that every one goes wrong
some time or other, and that now he was by way of committing suicide
indeed. Anyway, he had thought that the real slayer would return; he
had thought that he would be let off. He had believed that maybe this
was an intended atonement for his “sin” in college. He had thought
many things.

But now, Craig, with his hat in his hand, and his face still up, got
a message out of the night that Joan Gracie understood his tale of
folly and suffering.

How strange it had seemed to him before that he had been sent to
San Pedro--San Pedro of all prisons! But now, hadn’t a part of the
plan--the Plan--been revealed to him since it was at San Pedro that
he had met Joan Gracie? Wasn’t there, after all, an immutable truth
in what the great and gentle Emerson had written about compensation?

On a ridge, only a mile or so from San Pedro, he had paused to watch
the arrival of the special train. It wasn’t much of a train, merely
a locomotive and a caboose--a few twinkling lights, and a flash of
firelit steam. Faintly, through the puffing of the engine, Craig
heard a sound of excited voices. There was going to be some quick
action. He was sure of that. Still, his soul was tranquil. He felt no
need of hurry. Whatever would happen was bound to happen, whatever
should happen was bound to be good.

He recalled a dozen times in his life when black despair had clawed
and gnawed at his heart like a bloody-fanged vampire.

No more. He had gone down into the gates of hell and had come out
again. And, even in the gates of hell, there had still been hope, had
he only known it. He knew it now. He would always know it--that men
were fools to worry, to succumb to fright.

Suddenly, he heard a soft cry, saw a dim form surging up in front of
him. Then, as Craig snatched at his revolver:

“Boss! Don’t shoot!”

It was George Washington, late of the dark cells.

He was a big negro, counted bad, in more than one jail and labor
camp. Even now, he was checking that first movement of recognition,
drawing back for a possible attack. He was armed.

“Is it you?” he queried in his soft voice.

“Me--Three Sevens,” Craig answered.

“Bless God!”

The negro came up to Craig’s bridle. Craig told him something of what
had passed. Washington had been one of the first to get away, but he
had slept the day through on the warm earth.

Craig saw in the negro a possible ally. He would need an ally for a
while. George Washington was willing. He also needed an ally. Toward
morning they tied the horse in the corner of a field, where the owner
would find it. Then they came to a stream--Craig staggering--where
they drank their fill. There were wild hills all about them. They
picked their way up a rocky gulch where even a hound would have had a
hard time to trail them. They came to a platform of rock, where they
could command a view for miles back in the direction whence they had
come.

Craig slept.

It was late afternoon when he awoke. And now he felt not so much like
a man who had come back from death as one who was going to die. The
negro was gone. But just when Craig was beginning to realize what it
might mean to him to be all alone here in the hills now, tracked,
weak, without food or the means of acquiring it, there was his black
friend again. He had a hatful of eggs.

“Where’d you get them?” Craig asked.

The negro told him. Five or six miles from where they were there was
a big stock farm. There, George had found a barrel with bran in it,
and he was so hungry he was going to eat a mouthful of bran. But when
he had shoved his hand into the bran, he found that the bran was full
of eggs, put there by some thieving farmhand, no doubt, to keep them
fresh until he should have enough of them to make it worth while to
take a trip to market on his own account.

They ate the eggs, raw.

Night found them on their way again, out across the houseless,
treeless prairie that appeared to be a deserted cattle range. The
night like the one before, was radiant and clear, with a waxing moon.

They talked about religion. They talked about justice. Then Craig
asked George if he didn’t think that prisons were right, and George
said that, yes, he did think that prisons were right if they were
good prisons, and that was why he had sworn his oath, when Craig
asked him to, not to abuse the liberty that he was going to receive.

“How much longer did you have to serve?” asked Craig.

“One more year.”

“If you knew that, during this year, you’d get good treatment, good
food, and time off for good conduct, would you go back?”

“White man, what you aimin’ at?”

Craig told him. He showed George the red ledger.

“You got me frighten’,” said George.

“You needn’t be frightened,” said Craig, “except of all the people
you’ll ever pass in the road, and each time that you lie down to
sleep, and every time that you want a mouthful of food----”

“Man! Man!”

“I’m talking for your own good, George. I’m trying to help you
because I’m going to need your help.”

“What you want me to do?”

“I want you to swear another oath--here under the stars.”

George swore. And Craig had not only an ally, but a deputy. There
were a dozen names set down in the little red book that Joan Gracie
had given him. Twelve names, each like a sum charged against him by
society. He would have to pay off each sum by returning the escaped
convict to prison. There could be no delay, for with every day of
delay there would be an increment of interest.

These men that the daughter of the new warden of San Pedro had
charged up against Craig in this little red ledger were not likely
to remain idle, now that they were free. They would be hungry before
long. They would begin their quest for prey, as two of them already
had done.

“Man! Man!” said the negro, as Craig discussed his plans.

“I’m going to arrest them myself and bring them back or see that they
are taken back,” said Craig. “When I organized the revolution I meant
that none of them should get away--none except those who, like you,
had been punished enough and who would take the oath to do no wrong
when the jury turned them loose.”

“And when you done bring these men back?”

“I’ll return to San Pedro myself,” said Craig. “You can’t fool with
the law, George. The law is too big, too old.”

“Ain’t you breakin’ the law now?” asked George, with native cunning.

“Not the higher law,” said Craig. “I’m working for the law. I’ve made
a mistake. I’m going to try and right that mistake. I will right
it--so help me God!”

But it was of Joan Gracie that he thought.

Softly, his black deputy repeated some of those names from the red
ledger, fearsome names, repeated fearsomely in the black man’s mellow
voice:

“Bud Gaspell! Trick O’Ray! Sancho Red! Man! Man! They’s bad. And Ben
Jarvis! Count Wolf!”

“I’ll get them,” said Craig, with his thought on the girl.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                             IN SAN PEDRO


As for Joan Gracie, there in San Pedro awaiting the arrival of the
train that was to reëstablish her connection with the world as she
had always known it before that surprising day, she also had felt as
if she had been through a miracle--something painful, a miracle of
new birth, enthralling, like a grip on new life.

“Why? Why?” there came a question in her heart. Why had she dressed
this man’s wounds and helped him to get away, when it would have
been so simple to do what he himself had told her to do--lock
herself in the prison office and await developments--telephone for
help--anything other than what she had done?

True, in her mind’s eye, she could see him again as she had first
seen him, there in the chapel, a man with one of the most astounding
dreams that had ever entered the brain of a man--so futile, and yet
so beautiful--a mortal portrait set to organ music! And then when he
was fighting for her and she had thrilled with a true perception of
just how great her danger was!

He had fought like a hero--fought for her. What else could she have
done than to care for his wounds? And, once she had heard his story
and recognized it was true, for no man would have invented a story of
such exalted folly, what could she do but guide him as a sister or a
mother would have guided him?

Three short blasts from the rushing special. Her father was coming
on that train. What would he say?

Now the train was so close that she could hear the thunder of the
wheels and the escaping steam. She left the man Eddie in charge of
the hospital, where she had lingered to the last instant. She rushed
away to meet her father at the prison gate.

It was true. His wound had been a mere scratch. Fifteen miles back
Major Gracie’s auto had been held up by three highwaymen--one of them
recognized as Ben Jarvis. It was Jarvis who had fired in a free way
he had, seeing how close he could come to his victims without killing
them. The bandits had stolen the auto and fled.

There had followed for the major and the three men who accompanied
him a tramp to the nearest railroad station, the call for the special
train. Now, here he was, master of a prison that was all but emptied.

All this on a Sunday when the whole world had been as still as a mill
pond, apparently. But out of space, like a meteorite out of the sky,
something had fallen into the pond with a splash that was to echo
far, send out its widening circles no one could tell how far.

The newspapers not only of this State, but of other States, were
going to have a rare sensation on the following morning.

As the story dribbled out, it was Masters whose renown outshone
that of all the others. The journalists dug back into their files
for the story of his trial. Nothing but a dozen lines, and yet, in
these dozen lines, a satisfying hint of mystery--a doubt as to his
identity, and where he had come from, and why he had killed Beekman,
the foreman of the Stonehill construction job.

That was enough. They could imagine the rest. Overnight, a new
Napoleon of the underworld had swam into the public ken.

There were details that set the whole world talking: Masters, after
the break, had organized a convict Thanksgiving. Masters had timed
his revolt to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday, whereby he had shown that
he was not only a killer but a dreamer.

Now, curiously enough, all this was accepted as the truth not only in
many fine houses, and crowded trains, and offices in big buildings;
but also in those quarters where knowledge of crime is real and
intimate: in the police stations, in the dives and backrooms where
the professionals of crime are found.

“Three Sevens!”

The name, and the fame that went with it, spread like magic, although
often heralded in whispers. Single-handed, Three Sevens had cut his
way out of an iron box and captured a prison.

“What manner of man is this!” It was an exclamation paraphrased in
all the haunts of drugs and cheap cigarettes, dim lights and bad
liquors, in the “jungles” and “hangouts” of thieves and tramps out
along the railroad lines; as well as in the offices of police and
marshals--especially when the governor himself let it be known that
he would pay one thousand dollars’ reward for the privilege of seeing
this man.

Joan Gracie trembled when she heard of this offer of a reward. She
trembled a little, also, when she heard Samuel Green, the deposed
warden of San Pedro, swearing that he would devote his life to the
tracking down of this man who had humiliated him. The ex-warden had
sought for and obtained a commission in the State constabulary.
It was a roving commission--and one that he expected to turn to
financial profit, as well, for Three Sevens wasn’t the only fugitive
from San Pedro with a price on his head.

One week passed, then another.

Joan was in her father’s office one afternoon when the telephone
bell rang. She was at her father’s side. She herself picked up the
instrument. There was a “Hello!” Even at that first word she had a
thrill. She recognized that voice. She knew that it was a voice that
she had been waiting for.

“This is the warden’s office.”

She wondered if she had been mistaken. Again, she wondered if some
one else were recognizing her voice. There came the answer:

“This is Daniel Craig.”

Joan turned to her father. She dared not say more than she had said.
She surrendered the instrument to her father’s outstretched hand.

“It’s--he,” she said.

And to save herself from she scarcely knew what--just embarrassment,
perhaps, self-betrayal, disappointment, sorrow--she hurried from the
room.

Was he giving himself up? What had happened? Wouldn’t the papers
gloat! She went to an open window. It was the window where Craig and
she had stood together on that surprising, somewhat unearthly day of
her arrival in this place.

Craig himself had learned of this sudden and extraordinary fame of
his before he had been away from San Pedro a week. During this week
he and the big black man who had become his follower and friend
had traveled much of the time at night far from the usual lines of
traffic.

In the daytime they camped. They had plenty of food of sorts. George
Washington, like so many members of his race, was a natural hunter,
with no dependence on the inventions of the white man. This life
in the open developed his native qualities, made of him more of a
primitive than ever. The waxing moon became a hunting moon for him.
The ’possums were out. The rabbits danced. The poke-weed was like
asparagus. In the quiet places of the streams the big suckers fanned
lazily.

Nature was preparing her annual banquet, and they were the first
guests to arrive. Under this régime of such food as he had craved for
months, and the open air and the long sleeps--and more yet, perhaps,
in response to the stimulus of a great construction job ahead of him,
which was the reconstruction of his own life, Craig got back his
health and strength with an amazing celerity.

Then, one night, after careful consideration, Craig, bidding his
friend and ally to await developments in case of a misplay, had made
his way into a camp they had discovered near an abandoned mine.

There were a dozen men seated about a camp fire. He had recognized
one of them as Solly Wells, that late inmate of the San Pedro
hospital who had sent the saws to Chi Slim with the aid of which
Craig had effected his escape from the cell.

Solly was shriveled and bent. He was now heavily bearded. It was
chiefly Solly’s cough that had given Craig his clew to Solly’s
identity, and knowledge that Solly could not be long for this world
that decided Craig to resume Solly’s acquaintance.

It was from Solly that Craig learned of the fame that had come to
him. Solly didn’t say so right out. In fact, while others were about,
no sign of recognition passed between Craig and Solly at all--none
that any one but themselves could have noticed.

Solly had been talking to a grizzled tramp who intermittently
hammered at the heel of one of his old shoes with a set of metal
knuckles of a kind known to the profession as “London dusters.”

“What do you know about Three Sevens?” Solly asked.

“Him?” said the tramp. “He’ll be our first president when us grafters
comes into our own. I’m on my way to the hobo congress now, if I can
ever get this damn heel fixed.”

And he hammered away again at his cobbling with his London dusters,
as any honest man might do.

“Who’s this man Three Sevens?” asked Craig.

His own advent in the crowd about the camp fire had attracted only a
mild notice. For the most part they were just ordinary tramps. But,
at this question of his every one looked at him with astonishment.
The cobbler paused in his work. Solly coughed and laughed and almost
strangled. Where’d he hail from? Where’d he been keeping himself?
But the cobbler put down his knuckles and brought a sheaf of old
newspaper clippings from an inside pocket of his ragged coat.

Craig took off his hat and scratched his head. It was the signal for
George Washington to come in from the shadows. There was a reason
for this. Solly had found occasion to slip another sort of signal to
Craig. The old tramp was not what he seemed.

“A dick,” said Solly, meaning a detective.

The three of them--Solly, Craig, and Washington--had crept out of the
camp as soon as the others appeared to be asleep.

“And he knew me?”

“Sure. Before I did. He might have jumped you, at that, if you hadn’t
called George in. He’ll forget all about Bud Gaspell, now that he’s
picked up your trail.”

“Bud Gaspell?”

“It was him this dick was tailing--ever since Bud held up the
express the night of his get-away. Bud passed this way two days ago.”

“Where is he now?”

“I know where he was headin’ for,” said Solly.

“Where are you heading for, Solly?”

Solly coughed. He said that all he wanted was to die in the open air,
and that could be none too soon to satisfy him.

“You’re foolish,” said Craig. “You ought to go to a hospital. You
could live a long time yet.”

“It’s a hospital that done this to me,” said Solly, coughing.

“Maybe I can work a pardon for you.”

“How?”

“By your helping me to turn Bud Gaspell back to San Pedro.”

Solly averred that San Pedro was a shade worse than the place where
he hoped Warden Green and all his underlings would go when they died.

“But there’s a new deal there,” said Craig. “If I’d known what was
coming off, I wouldn’t have started this thing you helped me to
start. Take you, for example, and George, here. Both of you would
be better off back there with the new warden than out here getting
chased through the woods.”

“How can we work it?” Solly asked. “What’s the lay?”

Fame, scoffed at by certain philosophers ever since some Nimrod of
the Stone Age killed the last dinosaur, nonetheless has remained
alluring to the hearts of men, and with a reason. She comes with
gifts in her hands, as Craig was quick to discover. The gifts are
money, power, and privilege. He enjoyed all these gifts within the
next three days.

He was traveling alone, then. Solly and the faithful George he had
established in a hidden camp in the woods. To them there he sent an
emissary with food and other things for their comfort. He could have
sent them a thousand dollars--a thousand dollars apiece--if he had
wanted to.

Thanks to Fame. For Solly had told him about a certain neighboring
town, and a certain notorious citizen who lived there. Craig called
on the notorious citizen--a man who had once served a term in prison
on his own account, deservedly--and had changed nothing much but
his name on getting out. This man conducted a sort of employment
agency, for want of a better term, for those still under the shadow
of the law. He could furnish men to either side, or both, in a
labor-and-capital dispute, or a political campaign, or could keep
a stolen painting hidden for a dozen years--he was an amateur of
painting; all this besides financing a first-class gambling house and
other enterprises.

“Three Sevens!”

This man was almost for treating Craig as an equal. They could be of
vast and mutual benefit to each other later on. So Craig borrowed as
much money as he guessed he would need. But best of all, he got the
private address of Bud Gaspell, found that Bud was at that address
now, and that the place was less than five miles away.

Early the next morning, a trifle before dawn, to be exact, some
dwellers in this town that Craig had visited in the night, may have
sworn a little when they were awakened by the passing of a junk cart,
its passage advertised by a string of jingling sleigh bells. They
didn’t know that this junk cart was the property of a “fence”--a kind
old gentleman who lent the wagon at times to clients of his. They
would never have suspected that the kind old gentleman had now lent
the wagon to that most famous of all modern criminals, Three Sevens,
the new “Napoleon of the Underworld.”

But while the sun was still red in the trees, Craig, to the music of
the jingling bells--music of the bygone clean and frosty days and
nights of his boyhood--discovered the house he had been looking for.

Bud Gaspell was there, as Craig could tell from the blue smoke that
streaked up from the chimney. He drew a long breath.

He had come to the first debt set down in the red ledger. What would
the payment be?




                              CHAPTER IX

                               OLD RAGS!


There were a scattered score of buildings in the neighborhood, most
of them like the one to which he had been directed, dilapidated
cottages once put up by a communistic colony of intellectual
insurgents against the general scheme of things. Long since, the
intellectuals had disappeared. Their property--which they disclaimed,
anyway--had gradually become the home of insurgents of another
strain, anarchists, mostly, enemies of society all.

A queer place for a junk dealer to come to, as Craig guessed. He
looked neither to the right nor the left as the old horse drew his
cart up the rutty road into the settlement, but he knew that he was
watched. He also knew as well as if some one had told him so that
not without guile would he ever be able to bring Bud Gaspell away
from here. Bud also had fame to some extent, also money, and also,
therefore, friends who would be willing to take a chance on his
account.

“Old rags!”

Craig let out his call as he halted the old horse in front of the
little frame cottage he had come to find.

He waited an interval. He got down from his cart. The horse nodded,
flicked a fly, prepared to drowse. There was no danger of a runaway.
Craig went around to the back door of the cottage. He knocked three
times.

There was no answer from within. He dared not wait too long. He knew
that there was a tunnel from the cellar for a quick escape in case of
surprise.

“Any old rags?”

He would hate to have Bud get away from him now, with George
Washington and Solly Wells waiting for him in their own hiding place
twenty miles away.

Then the door opened. Without waiting, Craig slipped through.

Neither did Craig wait, once he was inside. There was just time for
the tenant of the cottage to get out a gasp, for Craig had drawn as
he entered. He found himself facing a blurred figure in the sudden
twilight as he kicked the door shut back of him. The blurred figure
resolved itself into that of a man who might have been an overgrown
baboon--not very tall, hunched shoulders, but thin through the waist,
agile and strong--Bud Gaspell, all right.

“What in the----” Bud began.

“Put ’em up. We’ll talk later.”

Craig stuck out his left hand cautiously, as Bud raised his own
hands. Bud had a dirk in a sheath at his belt. Craig took this.
Bud would also have a gun somewhere. Bud had been edging backward,
inch by inch. And Craig had never ceased to strain his ears. There
had been no way of telling, thus far, whether Bud had been keeping
bachelor hall or not.

A draft, a badly balanced pan, a jumping rat--it must have been one
of these things--caused a clicking sound off to one side. At the
same time, Bud Gaspell let go his pent-up muscles as he might have
released a spring. In a moment he and Craig were locked.

Bud had caught Craig’s gun hand under his left arm. At the same time,
Bud had circled his right arm about Craig’s neck, got a grip on
Craig’s chin. They went down in a heap, with a softly solid chug,
like the fall of a single tightly loaded sack of wheat or flour.
Then, silence for a while, as if both were listening for something,
then a whimpering of breath and complaining speech.

It wasn’t a pretty fight. There was scarcely anything to see. No
favorite describer of prize fights, no medaled war correspondent,
could have made much of it.

But to one who would have known all the facts of the fight, this very
static quality of the struggle would have added to the interest of
it. It was like one of those struggles so common elsewhere in nature
where two antagonistic growths meet and fight to the death--the
strangling liana and the jungle tree, the starfish and the oyster,
the king snake and the diamondback. This fight also was silent,
deadly, and possibly as important to the final evolution of the
world, a part of the same endless struggle for the survival of the
fittest.

Which was the fittest here? No telling. Nature and man have different
standards, apparently. Nature favors the weeds, man the wheat; nature
the wolf, man the hound.

With that twisting, neck-breaking grip that Gaspell had on Craig’s
neck and jaw, a calm observer--had there been one--would have said
that the odds favored Gaspell. Craig was helpless. He couldn’t even
kick, for the train robber had locked his legs into Craig’s with the
same sort of a bone-cracking effort.

But in Craig’s mind there was no doubt. He couldn’t lose. He was in
the right. Consciously, or unconsciously, there poured into his heart
a knowledge and a purpose that Gaspell couldn’t have known. There
was Joan Gracie back there in the outside world. The world was new.
The world was to be his, Craig’s, and all that it contained. With a
perfect sureness of what the result would be, Craig had shoved his
left fist up between himself and Gaspell.

It was like trying to force his fist between two logs in a jam. But
his fist won a little way, a little way more.

Silence, all this time, except for that occasional whimper--from
which one of them probably neither of them knew--for the working
knowledge of each of them was concentrated in this small compass of
their two bodies.

Then Craig’s fist had reached Gaspell’s chin. It kept pushing. It
went another inch, yet another inch.

Craig was still confident even when he discovered that he could no
longer breathe, when he felt that his blood had become a boiling
torrent in his head. He felt a certain confidence even when he
guessed that it might be like this that he was going to die. For,
after all, what did it matter whether he died or not so long as he
was doing what was right? And then, as swiftly as possible the shock
of death itself might have come to him, he was aware that Gaspell’s
hold on his neck was relaxing and that his own fist was still pushing
up--and back--under Gaspell’s jaw. And straightway it occurred to
Craig that the result of the battle could never have been in doubt at
all--not in the least.

With no great relaxing of the tension, he worked his arm slowly from
under Gaspell’s arm. But there was no occasion either to strike or
shoot. Craig saw that he had fought better than he knew. Perhaps
there was an inspiration in fighting--as there was, or as there was
reported to be, in the writing of great songs. Anyway, he saw it
now--he had been pressing, not Gaspell’s chin so much as Gaspell’s
throat, the vital cartilage of his Adam’s apple.

Thus, in the brief time that the fight had lasted, Gaspell’s thick
and hairy hawser that moored him to the shores of life had been
reduced to a single, fragile thread.

Those furtive neighbors of Gaspell’s had heard no sound. Presently
they had seen the junk dealer come from the cottage alone. He led
his old horse and cart with no great haste around to the back of the
cottage. Again he entered. When he emerged the next time, it was with
something wrapped in burlap--a staggering load--one that might have
been the body of a man, or a dozen mail pouches done into a package,
or nothing at all but a mattress.

It was evident that nothing had happened--nothing of consequence. The
smoke still rose peacefully from the chimney. And Gaspell was not the
man to receive visitors unless he cared to.

They suspected nothing amiss on the following day, when the chimney
showed no smoke, nor later, when it gradually became known by the
underground telegraph that served them for much of their social
interchange that Gaspell had departed.

Neighbors were continually drifting away like that. It wasn’t
considered unneighborly that he hadn’t said good-by.

But, in the meantime, Craig had joined Solly Wells and the black
deputy in the woods where he had left them. And then, there began one
of the strangest treks in the history of any men. For Craig held on
to the old horse and wagon. To some extent he remained the old-rag
merchant. He was famous. Or, at least, Three Sevens was famous;
and no detective, unless he possessed more than the usual lot of
imagination, was going to look for Three Sevens in a business like
this.

All the while he came back, closer and closer, to the prison from
which he and these others had escaped.

Bud Gaspell made the ride in the bottom of the wagon. All of the
time Bud was tied. A part of the time he was gagged. But they made
it as easy as possible for him. And, at that, he was but little more
uncomfortable than were George Washington and Solly Wells much of
the time. For there were periods when they had to play “old rags,”
too--face down in the bottom of the cart, a coverlet of old burlap
over them. With a touch of poetry, a touch of symbolism, to it
all--as if they were old rags, sure enough, bound for some paper mill
of the gods, where they were to be made over, belike, into something
clean, something new, so Craig told them.

However, it may have been when he was having that fight of his with
Bud Gaspell, and earlier yet, when that revolution in San Pedro was
first dawning in his mind, Craig did have his flights of inspiration
now.

In another way than any newspaperman had ever represented, he had
become a leader of men--leader of himself, for one, and of these
others for the rest.

He understood their waverings, their shudderings, their black haunts
and sudden panics as they drew nearer and nearer to their journey’s
end. He felt these things himself--down in the dark subcellar of
his being--which was like the punishment block of the old San
Pedro itself. For was not this where were sent the rebel thoughts,
the untamable, the fierce, the blasphemous thoughts, like so many
prisoners?

It was why, at a little crossroads store, with San Pedro not more
than ten miles away out across the arid country he remembered so
well, that Craig left the camp guarded by his deputies and went to
have a talk with the new warden of San Pedro by telephone.

For his own part, Major Gracie also meditated. Was this a trap? He
had talked to a man with a pleasant voice, a man of education, who
gave his name as Daniel Craig.

No, it could be no trap. Daniel Craig was suggesting that the major
bring as many guards with him as the major might desire--to a certain
gully not far from the prison where there were a number of stunted
willow trees.

What for? A conference.

“About the surrender of certain fugitives,” came the explanation.
“I am Daniel Craig. You have no record concerning me. I may ask you
to assure these men that I am bringing with me that they’ll not be
mistreated--that they’ll get a square deal.”

The major was honest. Said he:

“What if I should recognize you? And what if it should be my sworn
duty to arrest you.”

“I’ll be masked.”

Everything is simple when explained--almost everything. Event follows
event, like links in a chain, each event welded into the event that
precedes and the link that follows. There are no sudden gaps, no
miracles of results without causation.

The new warden of San Pedro, with some strain of the artist in him,
perhaps--that quality which gave him both a love for things as they
ought to be and for the picturesque--had ordered his horse saddled,
had ridden out into the sun-cooked plain that stretched from San
Pedro to the south. There, on a crest of rock near his place of
rendezvous, he had seen appear the single figure he was expecting;
and he rode forward to meet this man with a certain tingling of
admiration as well as of curiosity, although the man was masked.

It was good to be young. The man of the mask was young. He must be.
What older man would have undertaken this fool’s errand than he who
had tried, without warrant of law, to set the wrongs of the law
aright? For the major would not listen to the voice inside of him.
But this voice was persistent, all the same. What it said was this:

“You’re a pretty warden! Going out to meet a man with a mask on his
face! And this man with a price on his head! Three Sevens!”

But this inner voice of the major’s grew less insistent before very
long. The warden was listening instead to the voice of this man he
had come to see. This man was telling him how there was a colored
man named George Washington, who was not bad at heart, only a bit
undisciplined, and how George was coming back to San Pedro of his
own free will because he--George--believed in prisons, when prisons
were good. And, next, the man was telling about Solly Wells, who
had wanted to die in the open air, but also was returning to prison
because--well, maybe the law had been vindicated in Solly’s case, and
there would be a pardon. And then, there was Bud Gaspell.

“And how about Bud?” asked the major.

He had dropped the bridle over his horse’s head, dismounted, and now
he and Craig were squatted side by side in the bright sunshine like
a couple of friendly rangers. Off up the gully three or four hundred
yards away, only partly hidden by the stunted willow trees, the major
saw an old horse hitched to an old wagon. Also the major had seen
those lurking figures back of the wagon--a small man heavily bearded,
a big colored man. But the major’s glance had been casual.

His glance was casual now, as he glanced at the man at his side. The
gray eyes were calm and bright. They gazed away.

“Bud’s a hard case,” said the man who had given his name as Daniel
Craig.

Maybe the major was thinking of the reticences of his daughter
when she had spoken of the man who had organized the San Pedro jail
delivery. The major had not sought to question too far. He had faith
in his daughter. He had faith in humanity in general. To the major,
privately, this was Thomas Masters, late convict No. 3777. To the
major, as warden of San Pedro, this man at his side was Daniel Craig,
a man whom he had never heard about, a man who was innocent of all
wrongdoing--even if he did have a handkerchief tied over the lower
part of his face.

It was a confusing situation. Major Gracie solved it by sticking to
the essentials of the present situation.

“Bud’s a hard case,” said Craig, “but even so, I don’t believe I’d
ever have brought him back if I hadn’t known that San Pedro had
changed.”

“It’s changed all right,” said the new warden.

“That’s what I kept telling the boys, but I’m glad to hear you
confirm it. That’s going to make me feel a lot better when I go about
the rest of the work I have to do--which will be plenty.”

“A good deal has been left to my discretion,” said the major. “I may
come asking board for myself some day.”

It was curious to hear them talking like this, friendly and intimate.
It would have been still more curious to one who looked at them--this
man with a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face seated
there on the ground at the side of the governor’s friend.

They talked a while about Bud. He was a hard problem as Craig had
said. Bud hadn’t wanted to come back to San Pedro. It was only after
long persuasion that he had confessed where he had hidden his loot
from train No. 93.

“And you----”

“Yes, we brought that with us, too.”

“And what is your idea now, Daniel Craig?” asked the major.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Craig. “I thought that maybe you would
think it a nice thing, and something in favor of these boys, if you
just let them come back to San Pedro without escort--saving the
State the expense of the rewards, and so forth. This is where they
belong--prison’s where they do belong, but let it be somehow, as if
they were coming home!”

That part of it turned out as Craig and the major agreed that it
should before they parted. And, somehow or other, a part of the
story did leak out and get into the papers, where it was treated as
bordering on the miraculous.

Two of the fugitives from San Pedro, said the papers, had appeared at
the prison one day bringing Bud Gaspell, the train robber, with them,
and also an old horse and wagon, with Bud’s most recent loot in it.

All very mysterious--and rightly so, for any one not in possession of
all the facts. But, even in possession of all the facts, could one
have explained that glow of excitement and pride in Joan Gracie’s
heart when she heard of the adventure? Excitement and pride on her
father’s account, of course. But then, why should she have ridden out
into the desert space back of San Pedro, that day of her father’s
conference, and gazed and gazed away into the distance? Not even she
herself could have told.

She was on the top of a rising bit of ground when she saw an old
horse appear trailing a shaky old wagon. Driving the horse was a man
who coughed. Seated in the back of the wagon was a man who seemed to
have his hands tied. Back of the cart a big negro flat-footed along
with a step not devoid of the singing quality of his race.

Then she saw another man. He had come from a hollow. He shook hands
with the driver of the cart. He shook hands with the negro. He
watched them go. He stood there until they were out of sight.

Then, for the first time he saw the girl who had been watching him.
There must have been a good half mile between them. But who can tell
what tricks other than that of mere telepathy the mind can play?
There for an interval it may have seemed to both Joan Gracie and
Daniel Craig that they were once more face to face.

She waved her hand. He answered her. There were tears in her eyes as
she wheeled her horse and started back to San Pedro. Still, she must
have known that they were to meet again and again--until the debts of
the little ledger were paid.




                               CHAPTER X

                                SANCHO


Craig, taking thought, knew that the power was in him--a queer
feeling that all men and women may know some time. There was
something more than a signal of good fellowship in that salute the
girl had given him. It was an exaltation. This was the power.

He had a general knowledge as to what part of the world Sancho Red
had fled to. Not back to the arid hills of the Southwest that Joan
Gracie had indexed after his name, had Sancho fled. No. But Gaspell
had given information in that connection. Bud and Sancho had resolved
to make a team of it. That was while they were still in prison.
And Sancho had told Bud that he was too much wanted in his native
Southwest to make that part of the map attractive. Texas, Oklahoma,
Arizona--they all wanted Sancho. In all these States he had done
murder, and possibly some other things a trifle worse.

No wonder the girl had shuddered a little when she wrote out Sancho’s
record.

“I’ll have to get him next and quick,” said Craig in his heart. “The
others can wait a while. They’re apt to hide out long enough for me
to get to them before they increase their debt to society--and mine.”

Not so, Sancho. It made Craig, himself, shudder a little now, when he
thought of what Sancho might be doing this very day, might have done
already in the brief liberty that had thus far been given him.

Craig made for the Mississippi, and started south, working as a
deck hand on one steamer after another, working on no one steamer
long, stopping off wherever towns or new labor camps gave promise of
information.

Once or twice he guessed that he was followed, but this didn’t worry
him greatly. The river was a maze--a maze of wide days and unlighted
nights--spread out between the frontiers of the States, each State
jealous of its rights, plantation owners and steamboat men all
jealous of their labor--labor scarce enough without prowling deputy
sheriffs making it scarcer yet by unsolicited activity.

Perhaps there was something in that thing the newspapers had said
about his being the “Napoleon of the Underworld.” There was an
underworld even along these river boats--in levee saloons and dance
halls, in show boats and shanty boats, on raft and barge and freight
deck, wherever the vagrants of the big river assembled. And in all
these places Craig found that he could be certain of both friendship
and honors by the simple announcement of his name, his prison name,
Three Sevens.

No one disputed him. Maybe there was that look about him that
advertised the fact that here was the man who had done all that had
been reported of Thomas Masters, late of San Pedro. Some one, filled
with river gin, tried to dispute it one night--it was in the bar of a
floating blind tiger--but they threw the heretic overboard, and Craig
himself was the only one who would rescue him.

This heretic was a small man, cross-eyed, given to grinning. He was
not one that Craig, or any man, would have looked to for gratitude.
Perhaps he meant no gratitude. Perhaps the service he rendered Craig
in return was altogether selfish.

But he told Craig about a new lumber camp over in the cypress of the
bayou country where labor was so precious and scarce, and the lumber
company so powerful, that the only thing a sheriff would arrest a man
for, over there, was the crime of leaving the job.

“How about the Federal marshals,” asked Craig, “and the detectives
and sheriffs from other States?”

“Settin’ around the company’s fence like buzzards,” said the
cross-eyed man. “They know the reservation’s full of their meat--men
from the chain gangs of a dozen States. The company treats ’em fine,
these officers. Likes to have ’em there. Keeps the boys on the job.
But, no sir! Let one of them Yankee marshals try to take a man away,
company’d leave him out in the woods as quick as it’d leave an
ordinary man who tried it.”

The cross-eyed man was headed for this place. As yet he didn’t say
why. But he had a skiff--he called it a pirogue--and knew the way. He
begged Craig to go along for company.

Craig accepted. Perhaps it was the fascination of Pahkaville that
was luring Craig’s friend. The little man talked about Pahkaville.
It appeared that Pahkaville was also part of the lumber company’s
domain--founded complete on a mud island far out in the deep swamp
of the cypress country, as a further inducement, no doubt, for labor
to come and remain. For it would take more than mere sheriffs and
marshals to keep men at the killing work of the cypress slashings
even at high pay, without other inducements.

It was late one night, when they had drifted and paddled all one day
through a forest that couldn’t have been wilder in De Soto’s day,
that they got their first glimmer of the lights of Pahkaville, far
off through the blue gloom of the water. A little later, there came
the faint strains of music--fiddle, drum, and guitar.

“Saturday night,” said the cross-eyed man. “I reckon they’re having a
ball.”

“And I reckon that’ll suit you?” said Craig.

“I reckon I won’t stop.”

“Stop now,” said Craig pointedly.

The little man sat motionless. They were on a rather broad stretch
of water. There glinted through Craig’s mind the odd thought that
perhaps this little man with the cross eyes was a detective after all.

“Who are you, anyway?” asked Craig softly.

“My real name is Sanders.”

“What’s your business?”

There was no use conducting a conversation like this without a show
of proper authority. Craig’s hand was at his side.

“I’m a paper hanger,” said Mr. Sanders. “I had a brother who was a
sheep-herder.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

There was a long pause. An owl hooted. Underneath this big sound,
like fireflies under the moon, there came the tinkle and drub of the
Pahkaville orchestra. It was to this accompaniment, and the even more
fitting accompaniment of the silence, that the little man spoke.

“Stranger, I’ll tell you. I ain’t prying into your business. If
you’re a detective, yourself, you can’t say I didn’t tell you what
the company’s apt to do to detectives that try to interfere with
their men. If you ain’t a detective--if you’re a man that’s had an
accident----”

“How do you mean?”

“--and are a man who has shed human blood--you can’t say I didn’t
tell you what a good place Pahkaville and the slashin’s are to hide
out in. No offense, stranger!”

“Go on.”

“Four years ago a man killed my brother, and I started out to kill
_him_. I didn’t have the nerve. Then this man got put in jail, and
I laid off. But last week I heard he had broke jail and come to
Pahkaville. When I saw you and heard you was lookin’ for this same
man, I ’lowed I’d turn the job of gettin’ him over to you. I brought
you to Pahkaville hoping you’d kill Sancho Red. I know it’s my own
sacred duty, but”--his teeth began to chatter--“I’ll tell you honest,
I’m skeert!”

“Well, well, well,” said Craig.

“Are you a detective?”

“Sort of.”

“And you _are_ after Sancho Red?”

“Yes.”

“Then kill him,” said Mr. Sanders, “before he kills you. Neither he
nor the company’ll ever let you arrest him otherwise nohow.”

“Mr. Sanders,” said Craig, “if I take this job, or the equivalent of
this job, off your hands, are you willing to help me some?”

The cross-eyed man raised his right hand in the blue gloom.

Those who knew Sancho Red best said that his mother was an Apache and
his father a Mexican. His looks supported this theory of descent,
granted his father was one of the big Mexicans--of which there are
not a few. Sancho was big. Nor was this bigness a mere matter of
height, although he was all of six feet. He was big of bone and
breadth. He had stupendous shoulders. His face was big, although when
you looked at it, or remembered it, you were chiefly impressed by his
small, glittering eyes and the extremely wide, cruelly curved mouth.

Also like the cottonmouth snake, it was in the nature of Sancho
neither to run nor to toil. His way was to bask, take things easy,
with no activity outside his restless, small eyes and the restless
small brain back of these eyes, until such time as a victim should
come his way. Then a blow--and gluttony--and more luxurious repose.

There was something peculiarly fitting in the fact that since coming
to the secretive kingdom of the Pahkaville Lumber Company he had
established a small gambling joint--with another and nimbler man to
operate it, himself to rule it and take the profits.

Pahkaville was what they call wide open. There were all sorts of
attractions there of a kind strong men hanker for. It was like what
must have been one of those old towns of the Caribbean, when the
Buccaneers were running things--all colors here and there, white
and yellow, tawny and black--a sprinkling of Chinese, Malays, and
Filipinos, from the Gulf Coast; Creoles, Spanish, French, and
Portuguese; blond squareheads from the big woods of the North, black
refugees from chain gangs and turpentine camps, white adventurers
waiting for some new Skagway to call them, and men like Sancho, drawn
to a place like this as are snakes to a water hole when the summer
droughts begin.

Craig looked Sancho over, without himself being seen. Craig had no
difficulty in lining up a job for himself. There was engineering
enough for a regiment of engineers out among the big trees of that
swamp--tracks to lay, cables to rig, these changing and extending
from day to day as the slashings bit deeper into the wet jungle. Each
night Craig came back to the spendthrift hilarity of Pahkaville,
joined the crowds in the “plaza,” the town’s one public square and
street. A primitive place as ever was--filled with primitive people,
man and woman--and Sancho Red in his element.

Sancho’s gambling joint was an open front shed, with a faro layout at
the rear. Back of this, in another shed, entirely closed, Sancho had
his personal den.

“Fire would drive him out,” said Craig to himself.

But fire also might drive all Pahkaville out as well. All the
buildings in it were built of raw lumber--most of it so filled with
turpentine that it would have burned in a rainstorm, almost. To avoid
fire, the company had long since abolished kerosene and lamps. There
was electric light for all who wanted it, and arc lamps hung from the
serpentine branches of the live oaks over the plaza at night.

There was not only an abundance of artificial light in this city of
darkness. There was no lack of police, either--here where outlaw
games and drink ran their course and outlaw men found shelter.
Nights particularly, Pahkaville was patrolled by the company’s own
police--men with a talent for killing, who prowled about, watchful
but restless like hungry cats.

One of these men had good-naturedly relieved Craig of his gun. It was
the night of Craig’s arrival. Mr. Sanders had no gun. They had left
their pirogue in a creek that ran around back of the island on which
Pahkaville was built.

“So no one’s apt to do any shooting around here,” said Craig.

The policeman smiled grimly. “If there’s any shootin’ to be done,”
said the policeman, “the company likes to do it itself. You see, we
don’t like to lose our hands.”

“Suppose a couple of the hands get unfriendly.”

“That does happen. Not often. We generally manage to keep order. We
don’t like to lose our men.”

“What’s to keep them from hurting each other with razors and things?”

“Nothing! Nothing! They do get at each other, now and then, with an
ax, or a cant hook, or a stick of wood. Only, we discourage it. We
try to keep every one good-natured. Fellow who starts anything like
that generally disappears before long.”

The policeman drifted away, lean and watchful, like a cat.

“We’ll have to be careful,” said Mr. Sanders.

“Mighty careful.”

“Even if we done somethin’ to Sancho, and they found it out----”

“They mustn’t find out,” said Craig. “The thing for you to do is to
forget what you’re here for. They’ll be glad to have you work in the
store. Both of us will sleep in the bunk house with the rest of the
men for a while, and we’ll eat in the mess house.”

“I ain’t aimin’ to find out,” said the little man apologetically,
“but what did you say was the name I’m to use in addressin’ you, sir?”

“My own name, Daniel Craig; and not ‘sir.’ We’re partners.”

The two of them fell into the life of this queer city of the woods
without attracting attention. Newcomers were not rare. Nor was it in
keeping with local etiquette to ask questions. The town drowsed by
day, flamed into life at night with the return of the swampers.

Each night Sancho sat impassive in the back of his den, while his
little black eyes flicked at all who came and went. Days, he slept
and ate. He had an inordinate capacity for food and sleep. He was
growing bigger.

It was in the daytime, while Sancho slept, that Craig and Mr. Sanders
finally took up their quarters in a new small cabin that had been
built for them beyond that of Sancho, right on the edge of the
island. Close under the cabin they had moored the pirogue that had
brought them here. Day by day they accumulated stores in their cabin
of a kind and quantity to last them a long sojourn in the woods, once
they should care to leave.

Sancho Red, himself, had not looked on this advent of a neighbor
without disfavor, but he was mollified when he saw Mr. Sanders and
learned that he was clerk in the company store.

He was more mollified yet, when Mr. Sanders let him know that there
were nights when there was as much as ten thousand dollars in the
company safe, and that he possessed the combination.

For things had been occurring to bother Sancho--things that he could
not understand, things which gave him a nostalgia for the arid hills
of his home range and the completer safety that the solitude of those
hills promised him. It was all very well here in the crowd for a
while, but his nature called for solitude, especially when he sensed
this danger that he could not understand.

Twice, now, he had found the print of a bloody hand on the sack of
moss he used as a pillow. There was blood on the latch of his door.
Then, one night, toward dawn, when he had just fallen asleep, he was
jabbed through with such ferocious pain that he jumped out of his cot
sure that he had been bitten by a snake. It wasn’t that he saw when
he turned on the light. It was more blood. There was blood everywhere.

There was nothing nervous about Sancho. He wasn’t even very
superstitious. Even so, had he been an ordinary man in other
respects, Sancho might have deserted his cabin then and gone to sleep
in the company barracks. But this was the one place that Sancho did
fear. To go to sleep in the presence of strangers, any one of whom
might be a deadly enemy, was almost impossible; the thought gave him
a shudder, anyway.

But the prodding of the blood and the pain in his cabin, and the lure
of partnership with a defenseless small man in a ten-thousand-dollar
job succeeded in getting Sancho--not so much like a snake now, as an
overfed bull alligator--from this swamp hole of his.

Later, when new tenants came to occupy Sancho’s deserted cabin and
the deserted cabin next door, on the edge of the bayou, they were to
speculate on a crude tunnel, half filled with water, that connected
the two shacks, and the electric-light wires that ran through this.
The tunnel came up in the corner of Sancho’s cabin right where his
floor cot had been. It was thus that the tunnel was found. The darky
making over the cot had got an electric shock.

But meantime, other things had happened to Sancho. He had watched one
night while Mr. Sanders brought the last satchel from the cabin on
the edge of the bayou. It was in the deep dark, before dawn. Then the
two of them had entered the pirogue, which Mr. Sanders silently rowed.

They went away across the dark waters that lay amid the cypress.

“I can kill him when I feel like it,” said Sancho to himself.

There was a touch of luxury, as fine as any Sancho had ever known,
in thus letting his victim work for him--the victim helping to rob
himself, helping in the murder of himself.

Sancho must have smiled in the dark. It was his sort of a joke.




                              CHAPTER XI

                             LIVE FREIGHT


But Craig had learned his lesson when he was fighting Bud Gaspell,
and he had reflected on it often since. The moment he had clinched
with Bud, he and Bud were on the same level--with the chances in
favor of Bud, for Bud would have been most willing to kill, while
Craig himself was loath. It was a lesson that abided with him when
he confronted the problem of taking Sancho Red in tow. A fight with
Sancho would have been like a fight with a snake or a ’gator, in very
truth, and all the chances, this time, on Sancho’s side.

And Craig didn’t want to die. Never had he taken such thought of
life, never so regarded it as a definite and limited trust, or
heritage, to be used to its utmost value.

He knew it--that he was as willing as any man to risk his life or
give it outright, should the time ever come when this would be
necessary. But to risk it uselessly----

He let his thought taper off, as he heard a splash of oars.

He was standing there in the pitch darkness on the edge of a narrow
cut a good mile from Pahkaville. The cut was so narrow that he could
have jumped across it had he cared to, or had he been able to see the
other bank. But the water in it was deep enough to float the pirogue.
He heard soft voices as the pirogue entered the cut.

“Are you sure you know the way?” That was Sancho.

“Sure!” That was Mr. Sanders.

“Why don’t you stick to the open water?”

“I’m afraid we’ll be followed.”

“They won’t find out what you done till to-morrow.”

“Maybe some of the company’s shoo-fly cops have got wise.”

“They’d ’a’ pinched you.”

“No, they’d have doped out a better plan.”

“What?”

“Laid for me out in the woods, so’s to shoot me and get the swag for
themselves.” There was a silence.

Craig wondered if that rudimentary brain of Sancho’s wasn’t occupied,
just a little bit, with the bloodstains on the wall, the shooting
pains that had disturbed his sleep.

He heard the sheep-herder’s brother speak again:

“I think they’ve been suspecting me, anyway.”

“You never told me so,” said Sancho softly.

“I was skeert you’d back out,” said the little man. “No one likes to
get a bullet through his chest.”

“Shut up!”

“It makes him spit blood.”

“Not so loud.”

“Like a brother of mine.”

“Where?”

“New Mexico.”

“Shut up--and pull.”

“I’m pullin’; but I can’t forget him as I found him in the rocks at
daybreak. Some one had flashed a light in his eyes----”

“Hah!”

Right then there was a flash of light in Sancho’s eyes. It struck him
and bathed him like a bath of cold fire. It held him as he groped
up with his hands in a blinded effort to shut the light out. At the
same time the little man who had been rowing the boat swung over
with an oar and brought it down, crashing on Sancho’s head. And that
settled Sancho for a while.

“I told you not to hit him so hard,” said Craig.

“I couldn’t help it,” said Mr. Sanders. “I was thinking about my
brother.”

“You may have killed him.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be fine! God bless you!”

“Hold on,” said Craig. “I think he’s coming to. Now, bring his other
hand up behind him like this. Now his feet.”

They trussed up Sancho Red as Craig had once seen alligator hunters
truss up a big bull of a saurian they had taken alive--not only his
hands and his feet were tied, but half-hitches every few inches were
thrown over his arms and legs.

It was just as well. Sancho made some unreasoning efforts to free
himself, as soon as he had his consciousness back. He doubled his
great body and flopped about like a fish. He had the same sort of
life in him that all such animals have, low in the scale of creation.
Life, and the instinctive struggle for life was implanted in every
cell, not all concentrated in the brain, as happens when the top of
the ladder of creation is reached.

Once they were sure that the cords would hold, they let him flop.
They watched him curiously. Dispassionately they listened to his
blasphemies. It suited them that he should weaken himself.

They had brought him far beyond the last of the cypress slashings, to
a camp Craig himself had established. It was on a little knoll, or
hummock, right in the midst of the deep swamp--a place of mystery and
charm, full of slanting light and green shadows, perfumed with wild
orange, gay with bird song, and touched with the spectral passage of
silent butterflies.

Here Craig slept four hours, and let his spirit go out in his dreams
over the long, back trail to San Pedro, and the girl who was there.
Then he watched four hours while Mr. Sanders slept. It was going to
be watch-and-watch like that all the time that they were on the trail
with this wild animal captive of theirs. But they would tame him.

Sancho, however, was to display his enormous resistance. For almost
two whole days he even refused water--gurgling and cursing when they
poured water into his mouth. He would take no food. He would lie
quiet for hours, then they would see his great body writhing again.
Once, in that first forty-eight hours, Craig loosed Sancho’s bonds,
and Sancho almost escaped. So Craig drew the ropes tight again.

The pirogue brought the three of them out of the cypress country at
last. It was not more than a week later when a small man, cross-eyed,
appeared before the station agent of Bayou Crossing and told him a
story. He said that he had a mule of value that he wanted to take
back home, to San Pedro, some five or six hundred miles to the north;
and, to this end, he wanted to hire a box car.

“That’s easy,” said the station agent. “All you’ll need is the price.”

The little man was evidently well supplied with money. He ought to
have been. What money had been Sancho’s was now his, and he was using
it--for Sancho’s own good. The store had not been robbed.

“And I’ve got a friend who’s goin’ with me,” said the little man.
“We’re goin’ to travel and sleep in the car.”

There _was_ a mule. It was a mule that the little man had bought in a
neighboring parish. A fairly good mule, but it made the station agent
laugh a little when he saw it. Funny what exalted values the owners
of live stock put on their animals at times--almost as if the mule,
or the horse, or the cow, or whatever it happened to be--was a member
of the family. But, shucks! Hadn’t he seen fairly good men shot in a
dispute over the possession of a mere houn’ dog? He had.

He billed the car and the mule through to San Pedro. He didn’t see
that other bit of live stock that was put into the car that night.

The idea that there might have been some such thing never occurred
to the station agent at all--not until almost a week later, when a
couple of strange detectives who had been hanging around Pahkaville
showed up and asked him questions about a man who might have looked
like the famous bandit, Three Sevens.

On the strength of what the station agent told them, the detectives
began to use the telegraph.

It may have been that ex-warden Samuel Green of San Pedro came the
nearest of any one to solving the mystery that enveloped Three
Sevens. Once the big man with the beard had had a daughter of his
own. He no longer claimed her as his own, wasn’t sure, as a matter
of fact, whether she was still alive or not. But this he knew, that
there had been no change since Solomon’s day of the way of a man with
a maid.

A word here and a word there, and he had come to imagine, or see
with the eye of his mind--something of what had passed that day
when the new warden’s daughter and convict No. 3777 had been in the
prison practically alone. A word here and a word there, and he had
got a glimmering of the truth concerning the return of those other
convicts--George Washington, Solly Wells, and Bud Gaspell.

The warden, all by himself, through a mental process all his
own--never having read a book in his life--had found an adage of
his own to take the place of that famous phrase in French criminal
procedure: “_Cherchez la femme!_” Mr. Green’s version was: “There’s a
woman in it!”

To be quite frank about it--as the ex-warden was frank with
himself--he hoped for the worse. Wouldn’t a bit of scandal like that
be great? Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that blot out, as with a thick cloud,
his own ignominious wind-up at San Pedro?

Then, just a little too late, the ex-warden got a tip. It was a tip
given him by a railroad telegrapher at Banner Junction with whom
Green had conserved friendly relations.

The telegrapher showed him a telegram he had received, which told of
a certain box car that had been billed through to San Pedro.

The warden’s mind began to work--began to play, first of all,
around that pet theory of longing of his of some sort of scandalous
relationship existing between the present warden’s daughter and this
fugitive. Three Sevens was taking this means of coming back to see
the girl.

But there was something the matter with this theory, too. If the girl
was in love with the fellow, she would have run off and joined the
fugitive where they would have been safer. Girls were like that. He
knew. Didn’t he have his own daughter, Amy, to go by?

There was something else the ex-warden didn’t understand. He knew
Masters and he knew Sancho Red--knew them in certain aspects better
than any man did. And, there was no denying it; the two men weren’t
mates, never could be. Maybe they both were man-killers. That made
no difference. They were not the twain to go riding around the
country together, trusting each other, helping each other to outwit
detectives.

Then there crept into Mr. Green’s mind an additional ray of light. He
recalled that interview of his with Three Sevens the day of the big
get-away--what Masters had said about freeing those only who deserved
to go free.

He saw the truth. He saw it even when, like many another man
confronted by the truth, he wouldn’t admit that it was the truth. No!
No! No! The idea that convict No. 3777 should now be risking his skin
merely to turn in another convict, and this convict one of the most
dangerous of them all--that, too, was absurd.

Nonetheless, the ex-warden got busy. He was not without friends and
influence in the county where he had lived so long and turned over
petty graft and favors of a sort for so many years. He organized a
posse all his own, by phone and telegraph.

What was the big idea? Was he expecting another jail delivery? Why
should he want the boys to surround San Pedro so secretly, and wait,
and wait? Green wouldn’t explain. He himself started for San Pedro.

Less than an hour ago the accommodation freight had, sure enough,
dropped a box car at the San Pedro siding. The car was still there.
From the half gate guarding the open door of the car a mule stretched
out an intelligent, interrogating head.

The ex-warden was sitting in a small and rusty auto which he used for
his longer jaunts about the country, although he preferred a horse.
He was a fine figure on a horse--much finer than when crumpled up in
his little automobile. But he had no thought now for his appearance
at all. He sat in his auto and looked at the freight car and the
mule. There they were, as if confirming all those suspicions and
half-formulated theories and longings that were squirming in his
heart and brain.

While the ex-warden of San Pedro looked and looked, so did Craig.

He was still in the car. In the end of it, near the roof, there was
a little square window. The wooden shutter of this was tilted up an
inch or so. Under this he could see the wide, gray prospect of the
prison wall, and then, pasted against this like a poster, the dusty
little auto with the big ex-warden in it.

For a moment or so there seemed to be a great silence--a silence so
intense that it seemed to Craig as if he were back in the dark cell
again, listening to the reverberating hum of the prison power plant.

Wouldn’t it be strange if the dark cell should receive him again?
Yet, didn’t the bright dream of every life after a manner, end like
that--in the grave?




                              CHAPTER XII

                          THE SECOND VERSION


There were two versions of the capture of Sancho Red, as told by the
remarkable Mr. Sanders. Perhaps this was because the little man,
on his arrival at San Pedro, finding himself so easily and swiftly
behind the steel and stone portals of the prison, was a bit confused.

He told a keeper, and later told the warden himself, that he was an
honest man, and that, as such he had discovered Sancho Red at liberty
and had simply decided to bring him back.

“You?” demanded Major Gracie.

“Me!”

The man was so small, so nervous, that there was a tragic humor in
his claim. His crossed eyes glinted. He grinned.

“I had intended to kill him myself, but----”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” said the major.

“He had killed my brother,” said Sanders.

Gracie had led the little man almost straight to the warden’s office
from the prison gate. In the warden’s mind now there repeated itself
various details of that amazing message of warning and inquiry he
had received that same morning from the detectives who had gone to
Pahkaville. The detectives had stated that there were two men. True,
they had sent but vague descriptions.

“And you took him single-handed?”

“Almost.”

“How do you mean, ‘almost?’”

“There was a friend who helped me.”

“Will you tell me his name?”

“Yes, sir. He told me to tell you his name was Daniel Craig.”

“Ah!”

The little man looked about him, made sure that there was none to
overhear.

“He said--Mr. Craig did--that I could trust you and tell you the
story as I have told it, and ask you to let it go at that.”

The warden nodded. He remembered the youth with the handkerchief over
his face, remembered the clear eyes, remembered certain things his
daughter had said about the man who had led the San Pedro revolt and
then had defended her against a possible mob when the convicts were
getting out of hand. And that was about all until they had brought in
Red himself, trussed and gagged.

The version continued:

“But why this? Why the mule car?”

“I had no extradition papers,” said Sanders. “We--that is I didn’t
want to muss with detectives. It would only have resulted in some one
getting killed and in Sancho’s getting away.”

“You’ve almost killed him, yourself.”

“He’s in good condition. He’s tough. He’ll get over it.”

Sancho let out a roar. They had brought him into the prison office.
He couldn’t stand, but his voice was strong--so strong that at first
there was no telling what he said. Then he was shrieking murder, and
asking them to let him go back--just for a moment--long enough to
kill the blankety-blank and so-forth scoundrel who had brought him to
this, Three Sevens!

“He thinks I’m Three Sevens,” suggested the little man, grinning.

“You lie----” and then more incoherency.

Sanders began to tremble, show nerves again. It had been a long
strain. He was under a strain still. He said that he would go and
water his mule, which was in great need of water.

Various other reports also had been coming into San Pedro from far
and near. Major Gracie reviewed these reports in his mind all the
time that he was hearing the words that this strange and shaky little
volunteer shouted over the sudden uproar of Sancho Red. They bore Red
away.

Not until Sancho Red was gone did Joan Gracie appear. She knew all
about those reports her father had been getting--especially that last
report of all from the detectives who had gone to Pahkaville. She
also heard what the little man had to say about watering his mule.

A keeper just then came back to the office with a white smile. Sancho
Red was making up for lost time in the matter of violence, the keeper
said. Would the major come and give advice. The major hurried away.

Joan and the little man were alone.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The man who managed this.”

“I--I--you mean----”

“You can speak openly to me. Quick! There’s no time to lose. I’m his
friend.”

“He’s in the car.”

“There’s a posse going through the country all around the prison.”

“He knows it.”

“Why did he come so far?”

“He didn’t want to leave me alone with Sancho.”

“He could have wired for help.”

“We’ve been suspected all along the line for the past fifty miles.”

“What was his plan?”

“To wait till night and then ride away on the mule.”

“He’ll never make it.”

“You don’t know him, not the way I do--the way he caught old
Red--gentled him as much as he could--kept me from killin’ him----”
And herewith came the second version, the truth this time, from the
start to the finish, even the fact that the little man was not named
Sanders, but Jones.

He had changed his name because he had expected to kill or get
killed, and didn’t want the name of Jones dishonored again. “He’s
helped me a lot--has Mr. Craig. I don’t want him took.”

“Hurry,” said Joan. “Tell him that the chief danger’s outside the
prison, not in. But he’ll know that.” She put a small fist against
her lips, let herself go in thought. “Go back to the car,” she said.
“Get word to him that everything’s all right. I’ll send a squad of
men with orders to push the car into the prison yard.”

Mr. Sanders suspected a trick.

“I’d rather go to the pen myself,” he faltered. “If it wasn’t for
him----”

“Can’t you see that I’m also his friend?”

“Yes, ma’am; but----”

She was still trying to formulate her plan while she was already
getting the first part of it out. There were so many complications in
the way of clear thinking--loyalty to Craig, loyalty to her father,
and a whole flock of memories, a flock of hopes, too, perhaps, and
both hopes and memories beating about like supernatural birds in the
golden blaze of a new sunrise.

Then an old trusty--old Eddie Yarmouth, who himself was some sort of
a living shadow of Craig--had opened the door, and looked in.

“This way, sir,” said Eddie, speaking to a visitor as yet unseen.

Joan looked up, some swift intuition informing her that a shadow had
announced the coming event. Her breath was caught. Her heart was
palpitant. Or was it merely the odd expression on Eddie Yarmouth’s
face that caused her to feel like that? There had been a curious,
haunted look on Eddie’s face. There still was, now, as Eddie stepped
back to let the visitor pass. It was Craig himself.




                             CHAPTER XIII

                            SHIP AND BEACON


Craig was the first to speak. Perhaps it was because he had already
done his thinking, had decided to accept the one course that appeared
to be clear to him.

“I’ve come to see your father,” he said.

He dared not address her otherwise. All that old equality of theirs
was gone, so far as Craig was concerned. In a few minutes now he
would be the prisoner again. So he was telling himself. He was
telling himself that he was the prisoner already.

“My father?” breathed Joan.

She was looking at Craig. But also she was seeing Eddie Yarmouth. On
Eddie’s face was a look that was stricken, yet not minus hope, for
Eddie, emboldened by the need of the moment, was giving her a signal
of distress, an appeal to stand by. So was Sanders.

Joan spoke rapidly to these latter.

“Eddie,” she said, “you and this gentleman may go and see about
having the car pushed into the yard. Get some men to help you.” She
drew an inspiration from their misery, sought to comfort them. “I’ll
arrange everything here. Everything will be all right.”

She scarcely knew what she was saying. She scarcely heard the sound
of her own voice. If Craig had been like a ship driving along a dark
coast, she was suddenly become the beacon--shining, doing the right
thing, and not questioning beyond this present necessity. The right
thing was not to involve others. And everything would be all right.

She saw Craig changed. She saw him free. She saw him very much a
man--a young man, tall and strong, roughly dressed. He was dressed as
any young engineer might have been dressed when engaged on a rough
job, for he had outfitted himself down there in the swamps. It made
her head reel and her heart gasp like a fish, the mere thought of
taking this man and locking him into a cell.

“You mustn’t see my father,” she said.

There were tears in her voice, none in her eyes. They were liquid
clear.

“I must.”

“Why?”

“To give myself up.”

“Why must you give yourself up?”

“I’ve let myself in for it--the only thing I can do.”

“You mean because your presence is suspected here.”

“By Green and others.”

“They’ve seen you?”

“No.”

“Then----”

“But they’ll see me if I try to get away.”

“Still you can get away.”

“Not without their knowing that either you or your father have helped
me. Joan--Joan! I am willing. Where is your father?”

“No, no! You mustn’t see him.” She ran over to the door through which
her father had disappeared. She stood there for a moment listening
and still trying to get a grip on her thoughts. “Why--why----”

Craig read her thoughts.

“I wanted to show you how strong I was, how clever I was,” he began,
with a touch of self-contempt. But his mood softened, even toward
himself, as Joan left the door and came toward him. “The real reason
was I couldn’t forget that you were here.”

She made a movement of wilting self-abandonment.

“I know. I understand.”

“I wanted to look at this place again, if only from a distance--watch
one night under the stars, and feel that I was near you. Heaven
forgive me!”

He broke off abruptly. He had said more than he had intended to say.
But Joan also spoke impetuously.

“You shan’t sacrifice yourself,” she said. “I shan’t let you.”

“Nor will I let you sacrifice yourself or your father.”

“I’ve told my father as much as he wants to know. He suspects that it
was Three Sevens he saw out there the other time you came back. That
was all right. His conscience could let him let you go again. But it
would be different if he saw you here. No, no! He mustn’t see you
here. He wouldn’t be happy if he did. Think of his happiness. Think
of mine.”

This last was a cry from the heart to which Craig’s own heart gave a
responsive hail. He was telling himself that this moment was worth
all that he had been through. Neither of them could have told how
it happened, but the fact was upon them: Joan had surrendered her
hands to Craig, Craig was pressing her hands against his breast. They
looked at each other. Both of them now were fighting in the same
direction--mind fighting through the storm and the darkness toward
the ultimate salvation.

“I could bluff Green--frighten him,” said Craig.

“I’ll hide you until it’s dark.”

“And get yourself into trouble.”

“Do you suppose--oh, what is any trouble of mine compared to yours!”

“Leave it to Eddie,” said Craig. “Eddie’s the only one, besides
yourself, who knows I am here. He’ll relieve the gate watch to-night.
Flag the midnight train. Jones--Sanders will go on that. There’ll be
a diversion. I’ll take my chances with the posse.”

“You mustn’t take your chances, none that you don’t have to take. I
didn’t want to tell you--I didn’t want to raise false hopes--but I
will. You’re to be pardoned. I don’t know when. But I’m sure of it.
There’s the debt in the red ledger. You can’t pay that off while
you’re here, and if something happens to you, what good would a
pardon do?”

“When I look at you,” said Craig, “and when I hear your voice, I feel
the strength and the faith to defy the world--live--die! Take heaven
or hell by storm!”

But Joan, womanlike, was inspired by this devotion of his to merely
practical ends.

“You remember that Aunt Katherine I spoke of?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got to go to her house.”

“And then?”

“Stay there until this storm blows over--until I can get word to you.
We live in Fairhaven, not far from there.” She read the gathering
objections in Craig’s eyes. “You’ve got to do what I ask you,” she
panted, half in command, half in appeal. “It’s for the welfare of all
of us.”

They heard a distant voice, a distant step. Then the great steam
whistle of San Pedro quavered into a mighty blast--like the whistle
of any other factory--to indicate that another day of toil and
suffering was drawing to a close.

All that evening ex-Warden Green had lurked and watched about this
isolated empire where he had once been the absolute monarch. The
more he studied the situation, the less he understood of it. And with
his deepening mystification came the sense that some one was trying
to make a fool of him--Major Gracie, for example, and again, Three
Sevens, for example.

He was there when a gang of trusties came out of the railroad gate of
the prison and pushed the box car with the mule in it into the prison
yard. What were they doing that for? Was this a subterfuge to get
Three Sevens into the prison without his being seen? But, even so,
what was the big idea? Why should Three Sevens have wanted to come
back to San Pedro at all? And why should Three Sevens have intrusted
himself to the keeping of that small man with a squint in his eye?

The ex-warden had seen Sanders or Jones, all right. That was when the
trusties had come to push the car into the prison yard. Previously,
the ex-warden had seen the keepers come and remove the bound prisoner
from the car, and there for a while the ex-warden was excited with
the thought that this was Three Sevens himself.

No; it was Sancho Red, as the warden could make out later by the
well-known bulk of the famous bandit.

There followed bitter hours when the ex-warden became convinced that
the tip was all wrong in the matter of Three Sevens, and that Masters
had not come anywhere near San Pedro at all.

Seven or eight friends of his had responded to that call Green had
sent out for a posse--ex-keepers mostly from Banner Junction and
Clear Rapids, as eager as Green himself was to get revenge on the man
who had held them up and imprisoned them and ultimately caused them
to lose their places. Green and his posse conferred. It was decided
that it would be well to keep an eye on all those who came to the
prison and went away in the course of the ensuing night.

The sun flamed down. Camp fires began to twinkle over the San
Pedro plain. The original posse had grown--for no special reason,
in response to no special appeal or report, except those of the
deep-seated instinct that all Americans feel for the chase and the
frontier life.

Some sort of a chase was on. Some sort of a vague unrest was in the
air. There was a presentiment abroad that something was going to
happen, no one knew what.

There were rumors enough.

But only a distant shot in the silence of the desert plain, and
a faint babble of voices off in the same direction, rewarded the
listeners during the night, as they sat around Green’s camp fires.

But the plain around San Pedro, when the night was deep, was like
that desert of Egyptian mythology across which the souls of the
dead are conducted to the land of ghosts. There were moving shadows
about. No one could tell for certain just what had happened except
that the ex-warden of San Pedro had fired at a man on a mule and
happily missed him, it having turned out that the man was but another
volunteer member of the ex-warden’s own posse who had ridden over
from his own home on a steed like that because he didn’t have a horse.

Also, it was known that train No. 93 had been flagged, had taken on
a passenger from San Pedro for the West. Not Three Sevens, that. It
couldn’t have been.

Altogether, the night was destined rather to add to than subtract
from the reputation of the late warden of San Pedro.

Green was furious. He was furious with the small, concentrated fury
of the large man whose soul is small. He was all by himself as he
started to ride away along toward dawn. He swore in his beard. He
recalled ugly souvenirs of his official life in San Pedro. He wished
he were still warden there now. He would have done things to relieve
his spirit--things that would have made preceding occurrences there
pale by comparison.

He was on the trail that led vaguely in the direction of the
Fairhaven pike when he heard the honk of an automobile back of him.
His horse shied a little. The auto swept past. It was a big touring
car that the ex-warden recognized. It was the car of a rich young
lawyer of Clear Rapids, a young man named Gary Lee.

Green had reined in his horse. He sat there at the side of the trail
for a long time after Lee and his car were gone. He knew that the Lee
and the Gracie families belonged to the same social status--a sort
of country aristocracy to which he himself had never been able to
attain, not even when he had become warden of San Pedro.

What had Lee been doing over at San Pedro, Green wondered--over there
sparking the new warden’s daughter, perhaps?

“They’ll all run after a gal,” he meditated in his bitterness.

And little suspected that he was just then echoing a thought that was
in the mind of the youth who had passed him so fast in the night in
that big touring car.




                              CHAPTER XIV

                            AUNT KATHERINE


It was a trip that had been made in silence. Gary Lee had seen to
that. He hadn’t told Craig to keep silent, but he had hinted that it
would be better not to talk, and Craig had always been a man to take
a hint. Still, he would have told Lee everything, had Lee wanted him
to, or had even permitted him to. But Lee was a lawyer.

He had come up to Craig in the dark prison yard where neither could
have distinctly seen the other’s face.

“I’ve been requested to carry you to a place of safety.”

That was about all. Craig had taken his place in the back of the car.
The prison gates had swung open. And again the night had become the
shoreless gulf of dreams and hopes. Again Craig would have spoken.
He would have said: “How wonderful is the night! How strange is the
destiny of man! What a pity that there are not more men like Major
Gracie in the world! How gladly I’d die for Joan!”

But the handsome, cool, skillful driver of the big touring car was
now ignoring him, had as if forgotten him, had spoken no word to him
at all except that time he bade Craig hide himself. That was when
they passed the ex-warden of San Pedro seated on his horse at the
side of the trail.

Dawn came when they reached a wooded crest beyond which lay
Fairhaven. And then the big car had trodden as softly as a cat into a
sylvan lane.

“I leave you here,” said Lee briefly, without giving Craig a glance.

Craig remembered now. Lee had not looked at him once except in the
shadowy twilight of the prison yard where he had presented himself.
It occurred to Craig that thus would Lee be unable to identify him if
ever called upon to do so. Sensible that, and yet there was something
about it to make Craig color.

“I am sorry to have occasioned you all this trouble,” said Craig.

Lee had a half smile. “I’ll introduce you,” he said. “Wait here.”

There was a cottage at the end of the lane, isolated in a garden of
flowers. The late moon had gone, long ago, but the early daybreak
was as soft and mysterious as moonlight would have been--a cottage,
a garden, woods all around, with even the road and the lane as if
private and hidden from the world.

Craig heard Lee knock at the door. There was a wait. Then he heard
Lee’s voice. Again a long wait. Then Craig saw Lee coming back
accompanied by a small old woman, spry enough but bent.

Craig took off his hat. He was ready to be presented. But as he
noticed Lee continue speaking without looking in his direction, Craig
turned and gazed away. He wished he wasn’t there. He remained there
until he heard a “Good-by, Miss Middleton,” and a snort from the
machine. He turned. Lee was intent on turning his machine, and when
the machine had obeyed him like a nimble elephant, was gone.

“I’m Miss Gracie’s Aunt Katherine,” the old lady said. “What has that
girl been up to now? Come on in. You can tell me about it while I’m
getting you a cup of coffee.”

There was a short path leading from the lane to the cottage door.
This path was crowded on both sides by ornamental shrubs--a hundred
varieties of them, a riot of them, disordered and lusty, greedy for
attention. And among these, Aunt Katherine poked and tweaked while
she walked, no coddler, but a natural gardener, breaking off a twig
here, a leaf there, pushing back one clamorous spray to give air and
light to something else, rough and kindly.

Before Craig had finished his coffee, Aunt Katherine was treating him
like that. She had some bitter aloes growing in a little hothouse.
She was like those bitter aloes--stiff and rough, but salutary.

She pried into his wounds and she pried into his story. She turned
him wrong side out. Many a woman, with age, gets the strength of a
man without losing anything of her womanhood--becomes the human being
complete and perfect, possessed of all human knowledge worth knowing,
and all human experience.

“You’re a tough nut,” she said. “Joan and Jerry--that’s her
father--have been sending me human specimens now for years, and I
thought I’d about exhausted the lot of them. But you’re new. Most
of you boys are all alike when you’re just out of prison, crazy to
square yourselves, but just common and ordinary.”

“I’m like that,” said Craig.

“I’d die before I admitted it,” she said.

“I’ve got to work.”

“You’ll work as long as I have you.”

“I can’t stay here. The posses are probably out again right now.”

“I’ll guess no posse’ll bother you here.”

“It may get you into trouble!”

“La, I’m too old to let that worry me. I’m seventy-four and a
woman--if you know what that means--which you don’t.”

Craig slept the clock around. There was a back porch to the cottage,
and a part of this had been partitioned off and made into a
detached room, two sides of which were lattice, covered thick with
morning-glory vines--fragrant, airy, filled with the small noises of
the garden and the neighboring woods. This was his room, all his own;
and the last time that he had a room of his own--so long ago that it
seemed like something remembered from another life--was the airless
iron box in the dark subcellar of San Pedro.

In the meantime, it had been as Joan Gracie had predicted that first
day that she and Daniel Craig had ever seen each other.

The former population of San Pedro was drifting back again. There
had been other posses out scouring the country here and there. Also,
there had been raids on cheap lodging houses in big cities here and
there. Now and again some railroad detective or other had “swapped
shots” with a fugitive. Portraits and descriptions of those who had
fled the old prison still adorned the walls of depots and telegraph
offices along the railroads, the windows of country stores and
village post offices.

Still, as the girl had foretold, all this had been but as a net for
the taking of the smaller fish. The big ones, like the two that Craig
had himself thus far taken, had broken through.

Craig, cutting firewood out in the thick forest that extended for
miles in almost every direction from his place of refuge, sat on the
barrow he had loaded and looked at the little red book. Not even here
would he know peace until that debt was paid. He read the names, like
the items of an account that had been written against his own name:
Trick O’Ray, safe blower and robber; Count Wolf, international thief
and swindler; Ben Jarvis, highwayman; Taylor Leamy, promoter of fake
mining companies; Harry Gosse, otherwise “Harry, the Goose”----

The signature of Joan Gracie looked up at him, as she had written it,
linked with his own. He kissed the place where her hand had rested.
Could he keep on dawdling like this, waiting? Waiting for what!

It was as if some similar spell had come over the woods, as well.
There, for the time being, no bird chirped nor leaf stirred in the
breeze, no squirrel ran, nor even a locust sang.

Then, through this silence, came a slight vibration of sound that
brought a chill with it--as the whir of a rattlesnake does, however
faint and far away. This was no rattlesnake, although there were a
few in the open, sandy places. But, all the same, the sound was one
that caused Craig to clasp the red book to his breast, caused him to
hold his breath, with open mouth, as he listened.

There was something in that sound that had recalled the prison--why,
how, he could not tell.

He knew that the chase had never stopped, never would stop so long as
he or any one else who had escaped from San Pedro should be on earth
and still unaccounted for. He knew that much about the law, both
man-made and natural, that it never forgets.

But he hadn’t expected it so soon. Then he had left the barrow behind
him, was running through the woods in the direction of the cottage.
He went with all the speed he could manage--while making no noise.

He came out of the woods at the back of the garden. He vaulted the
fence, sped up the back path and around the side of the house with
the silent certainty of a shadow. How grateful he was now that Aunt
Katherine had kept him here, and his strength was with him again!

Just before he turned the corner of the house that would bring him in
view of whoever it was out there in front, talking to Aunt Katherine,
he paused once more, drew a deep breath.

Yes, he had recognized that voice. He had heard it once, heard it in
the dark. It was the voice, sneering and cruel, that he had heard
from dark cell No. 4, the voice of him who had boasted that he was a
“killer.” And the name of this creature was in the little red book,
put there in the blessed handwriting of Joan Gracie.

“Well, ain’t you goin’ to give me no money?” This from the killer.

“No. I’ve fed you, now be on your way.”

Craig turned the corner. There was Aunt Katherine, with a grim
expression on her face, plucking off a dead leaf here, tucking a
branch up there, rough and nervous, but all as usual.

Beyond her was the former occupant of No. 4, and there was joy in his
face. It was a face that was pasty and concave. The joy was a greed.
It was a fearful thing to see, or to guess the presence of--as if
there had been another face, or another something, back of a sheet,
showing itself only through those glittering eyes.

Craig took a step forward--a step as stiff and ponderous and yet
as silent as the step of a mastiff stalking a cat. And, curiously
enough, he was aware at once that Aunt Katherine knew he was
there--that she had seen his shadow--while the man from No. 4 could
see nothing, for the moment, but this fascinating, hypnotizing victim.

An old woman! All alone! Rich, most likely! Not even a neighbor
within a quarter of a mile!

Then pasty face looked up.

“Hello, Harry,” said Craig softly. He repeated it, what was written
in the little red book, and to himself it sounded as if Joan were
there repeating it for him, word for word, as she had written it:
“‘Harry Gosse--Harry the Goose--married a girl and murdered her.’”

The thing looking through the sheet, the dirty drab sheet, of Harry’s
face flickered and changed.

“Why, Tommy,” he began.

Then Harry had dropped his hand into the side pocket of his coat. He
didn’t stop or hesitate or try to pull his hand out again. He fired
through the cloth.




                              CHAPTER XV

                                QUARRY


There was a shout from the road. And the shout spoiled any intention
Harry, the Goose, may have had for a second shot. Yet he knew
that his first and only shot had gone wide of the mark. With that
peculiar, microscopic interest that all men have for little things in
the midst of big events, Harry had seen a blood-red rose, well off
to one side of Craig, drop as if the stem of it had been snipped by
invisible shears, and knew that it was there his bullet had passed.

Besides, Craig had him--had seized his two wrists, the one that was
in his pocket and the other in the air, and was squeezing them fit to
pulverize the bones.

It would have been all over with Harry, the Goose--was, in fact, all
over with him, anyway--if it hadn’t been for that shout in the road.
For both he and Craig had twisted so that they could look in that
direction. And, for a static moment, so they remained--a picture of
two brothers embracing each other, ready to kiss.

A group of men, also momentarily static, were out there at the head
of the lane.

Harry, the Goose, let out a whimper.

“They were follerin’ me!”

It was true, as Craig himself divined. Harry, the Goose, was no
top-liner, like Count Wolf, or even Trick O’Ray, to fool the sleuths
for very long, not even the country sleuths. Over beyond the woods,
somewhere, he had held up a country school-teacher--a girl--and
robbed her of fifty cents besides almost frightening her to death.
Then a farmer who came up had got busy on the telephone.

There they were now, a dozen farmers, some of them mounted--some
armed with pitchforks, most of them armed with guns.

These, though, Craig saw as more details of the landscape. There
was a central figure to the landscape, and him alone could Craig
distinctly see. It was his former master, big and bearded--ex-tyrant
of San Pedro, ousted, disgraced, smarting with the pain of it all,
lustful of revenge: Warden Green!

At sight of him, Craig felt the strength go out of his arms. His
heart stood still. What if these men should arrest him here, find out
that he had been working for Aunt Katherine, near relative of the new
warden of San Pedro.

What of her? What of Joan Gracie and her father? What of Gary Lee,
the aristocrat, who had brought him here?

He was willing to take the chance of the posse out there capturing
Harry Gosse.

He whirled and stooped. He ran crouchingly, to keep the cover as much
as possible of these friendly flowers he had come to love. He rounded
the house, back the way he had come, through the back garden, over
the back fence, into the woods.

He wasn’t frightened on his own account. Aunt Katherine’s worries
were all that worried him. These woods he knew. No Indian captive,
with a hostile tribe at his back, could have gained these woods with
a greater assurance of escape.

A sinking in his heart told him that this was so even when a complex
bellow told him that he had been discovered again, that the crowd was
starting in pursuit. That was Warden Green’s voice booming through
the others as a horn booms through the lighter instruments of an
orchestra.

“Git’m, boys! The first one! Three Sevens himself! Thousand dollars’
reward!”

“I’m running,” said Craig, “with a price on my head.”

It seemed strange that this should be so, yet another major link in
his chain of great events. Stranger yet it seemed to him that he
wasn’t frightened.

He wasn’t frightened until, as he was about to slacken his pace in
a mossy little dell where the water dripped all about and queer
little bell-like flowers grew, thick and waxy white. Here where he
had dreamed so often, since his second escape from San Pedro, he
heard a thudding footfall back of him, a rending of brush, a gasp of
exhausted lungs.

Some one had almost overtaken him. And it was then that it occurred
to him how easy it would be for this other to shoot him in the back.
This other was armed. He was not. He dared not stop. He dared not
turn. The panting pursued him. Each gasping breath might mean that
the runner would stop running, in despair, and begin to shoot.

Back there where the race began, a number of the men, Warden Green
among them, had paused for a moment to inquire of Miss Middleton if
she had seen any other than these two about.

She said yes. She said they knew her--how she always gave work and
a mouthful to eat to every one who came along, and how one of these
boys had been lingering around here for quite a while, and that she
had been expecting him back at any minute. She rambled on, until they
lost patience with her, and also a fraction of invaluable time--which
is always enough to win or lose a race.

So they murmured among themselves and scattered at top speed, and
Aunt Katherine picked up the blood-red rose which, as one might say,
had been shed in her honor. A hard old woman, and as much a man as a
woman in some respects, but Aunt Katherine was all woman, right at
that particular moment, with the tears dropping down her wrinkled
cheeks.

“God save you, Danny!” she whispered, under her breath--she who had
always treated this ex-convict, who had been thrust upon her, with a
certain wholesome bitterness.

Craig ran. He plunged downhill. He jumped into gullies. There was no
shaking off the pursuer who was at his heels. The worst of it was, he
was no longer free to go where he willed on another account.

That gang of guns and pitchforks who had accompanied the ex-warden of
San Pedro were themselves woodsmen to some extent familiar with the
lay of the land. They were spreading out, as they would have done in
an old-fashioned fox drive.

Twice, now, Craig had all but run into one of them, had swerved just
in time, brought fresh danger to his trail. And, sooner or later, the
pack would begin to close in. Even the stag has to give up at last in
a chase like this. And he himself was almost winded.

He determined on a last, desperate play. He knew where there was a
dry watercourse full of small boulders. He made for this, while he
dragged those footfalls back of him like a curse. He toppled over
the bank of the watercourse there where he could have at least some
cover. He picked up a boulder in each hand.

His lungs were laboring. So was his heart. But he had strength and
the will for almost anything rather than surrender.

He had just turned, just drawn back his right hand with the stone
in it, when the bushes swerved, and a man stumbled through. It was
Harry, the Goose!

It was Harry who had followed him like that through the woods, Harry
who had borne up during the long chase. It was fear that had given
him the strength, even as it had added to the strength of Craig. But
the race had been unequal. It was always easier to follow than to
lead.

But, if it had been unequal in this respect, it was balanced in
another. Craig still had strength. Harry had none. He stumbled to his
knees. He went over on his side. He lay there like a wounded man,
gasping, his mouth wide open, unable to move, his ugly face set to
the lines of exhaustion.

Craig crawled out of his waterway. He took Harry’s pistol from him.
Then he sat at Harry’s side, and pumped the air into his own lungs.

At the same time he listened. This double trail that he and Harry
had made would be easy enough to follow, but now he saw that he had
an advantage, after all. The pursuers knew that at least one of them
was armed, must have believed them both to be armed. There could be
no blind plunging through the woods for them. They would have to go
slow, examine each tree and bush.

There is something about a habit of environment in the matter of
thought. Since his second escape from prison, these woods had become
a thinking place for Craig--a sort of temple, for resolutions, hopes,
and prayers. And the habit declared itself now, strange as it may
seem--with a murderous pack warm on his trail, and an enemy here at
his side who but a few minutes ago had made a cowardly attempt on his
life.

“They’ve got us,” gasped Harry.

“Shut up,” said Craig.

“Gimme a drink!” panted Harry.

“I’ll give you water in a minute,” whispered Craig fiercely.

“Give me water!”

“Yes!”

“You got nerve!”

Harry was for sitting up. He must have been muddled on the
circumstances--must have thought that Craig was as frightened as
he was, that the chase had made them brothers again. Wrong. Craig
flattened him with a push of his open hand.

“Stay there and keep quiet,” said Craig.

Harry, the Goose, sat up.

“I’m going,” he announced, in a snarling whisper.

“Stay where you are. I’ll tell you what you’re to do and what you’re
not to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know whether to tie you up----”

“You tie me up!”

“--and leave you for the posse, or try to take you back myself.”

“Where?”

“San Pedro.”

There for a moment terror and rage were battling for possession of
Harry’s drab face.

It was clear that he thought he had to do with a maniac, and a maniac
who was dangerous. Fear won. His mouth sagged open. It dribbled out
black blasphemy like the drooling of a wounded puff adder.

“If I leave you,” said Craig, “you might get lynched.”

“You’re crazy.”

Harry twitched his eyes this way and that.

“They’ve got a new warden there,” said Craig, “who’s going to give
every one a square deal--even you.”

“You dirty snake!”

And Harry had his hand again in his pocket. He had been so overcome
that it wasn’t until then that he learned his pistol was gone. He saw
it in Craig’s hand, pointed at him.

“Don’t get noisy,” said Craig. “Say what you want to”--he himself
was using the almost silent lip speech that he had learned in San
Pedro--“but say it like this.”

Harry tried to argue.

“They’ll pinch you, too.”

“Maybe!”

“And give you life for what you done. I had no share in it.”

“Maybe!”

“You’re after the reward.”

“That’s also why I’m taking you back myself.”

“Sellin’ me!”

“Giving you away,” smiled Craig. “If I left you to these farmers, the
county or the State would be that much poorer, so I will not do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to pay back to society what I owe.”

This was beyond Harry, the Goose. He sought to mollify his captor,
the while his eyes shifted.

“For Heaven’s sake, Tommy! Me and you ought to be friends.”

“We are! San Pedro’s going to be a place to do you good.”

“And you, you louse!”

“I’ll go back, too--when I’ve finished.”

“But, Tommy!”

“Sh! Some one’s coming. Listen, Goose. Would you rather take a
chance with me, or an old-fashioned lynching bee? You know the
kind--rope--limb--shots--maybe a fire.”

Harry, the Goose, broke down and began to blubber.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “Can’t you have pity on me poor old
mother?”




                              CHAPTER XVI

                              MERE RUMORS


A part, at least, of what Craig had seen with the eye of his mind was
right with regard to Joan Gracie. Intuitional, passionate, with both
the passion native to youth and a nature made that way; but loyal!
Loyalty was the crown of her character, topping off the complex all
of it as did the yellow hair on top of her complex, strong, and
likewise beautiful physical presence.

This was part of what had been in Major Gracie’s brain that afternoon
he had sat out there with Daniel Craig--one-time Thomas Masters,
convict No. 3777--at the side of him and yet raised no hand to
capture him. The major himself was loyal. But with him also--as it
must have been with his daughter--this loyalty had not been so simple
as he could have demanded.

Loyalty to the State! Loyalty to this man--this mere boy who had thus
far so badly bungled his life!

The major hadn’t forgotten that stark terror that had been in his
heart the day that the delayed special was rushing him to San Pedro.
What had happened to Joan? And what might not have happened to her if
it hadn’t been for this same Daniel Craig.

He understood Joan’s feelings. It hadn’t been necessary for her to
give him much of a report on what she herself had done--not at first.
They had learned to take each other for granted.

The fuller report had come that night, late, when she and her father
were alone, and when she knew, and he knew, that Daniel Craig was
miles away on the borrowed horse. It was only then that she brought
out Craig’s photograph--“Thomas Masters, manslaughter, No. 3777”--and
told her father the reasons that had inspired her in helping him to
his precarious liberty.

The major heard her through.

A tall and thoughtful man was the major, with a curved and heavy,
but short, gray mustache, a tuft of gray hair under his lower lip,
short-clipped gray hair, tossed back near one temple in what used to
be called a “cowlick.”

“You did this on your own responsibility?” said the major.

“Yes, sir,” said Joan, standing very straight in front of him, as she
always did when talking business.

“You committed a crime.”

“It was a crime that was--right.”

The major himself had written a work on “Crime and Moral Turpitude.”
But he did not smile.

“Why didn’t you trust me with this before?”

“You were involved. Your hands were tied by your oath of office.”

“I might have won him a pardon for saving you.”

“And had the whole world saying that you had staged the thing to
disgrace your predecessor!”

The major saw the point. He never did have a head for politics. Joan
did. Few women that have not. But the major also saw something else,
dimly, a little more clearly, then more clearly yet. It was as if, at
the time, he had known there would come a day when he should want to
recall the picture. He was recalling it now:

A dingy courtroom where a boy was on trial for his life; a boy who
was upstanding, with a fine, strong profile, a melancholy but
soldierly gray eye; a boy who would speak no word in his own behalf,
or tell what his name was, or from whence he came. Some one else had
said that his name was Masters--Thomas Masters. Some one else had
said that he had been found in the dark near where the boss of the
camp was shot down; that from the place where he was there had come
the flash of the shot; that at his side was the revolver with one
cartridge empty, of a caliber that fitted the bullet.

The prosecutor had begged for a verdict of first-degree murder. The
lawyer appointed for the defense had mumbled a perfunctory address on
the lack of motive and the presence of a reasonable doubt. The jury
had brought in a verdict of manslaughter. And his honor the judge:

“Thomas Masters, what have you to say why judgment of the court
should not be pronounced upon you according to law?”

Still no word; no word at all from the boy through all of this.

The judge had harped on this silence in his discourse preceding the
sentence. He was one of those judges who are easily hurt and savage
in reprisal. “I shall therefore sentence you to twenty years in
State’s prison.”

Not the palatial penitentiary, nor the reformatory, but State’s
prison, San Pedro! The major himself had groaned a bit in his heart,
although he was no sentimentalist at all, where lawbreakers were
concerned.

“When he told me that he was innocent, I believed him,” said Joan.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the major, out of his
thoughtfulness. “Although any man in the prison would have said the
same thing, though not once in a thousand times would it be the
truth.”

“It was true this time. It must be true.”

The major’s mind slipped from his daughter’s words to what he had
heard from No. 8888--that little old-timer named Yarmouth. He also
had made a statement like this one almost word for word: “’Tis the
truth this time, sir. It must be true.”

Perhaps Eddie, the Yegg, also was intuitional. Eddie, almost as the
sole remaining prisoner outside the hospital at the time that the new
warden of San Pedro arrived, had reported in full all that had taken
place--his own oath, down there in the punishment block, an oath to
obey orders as given by Three Sevens, to kill no man, and to make no
effort to escape on his own account. Eddie recounted all of this with
touches of pride and imagination.

For, in the course of his professional career, Eddie had been through
a number of prison revolts and riots, and this had been different
from all of them, somehow mysterious and beautiful.

Said Eddie: “’Twas the thought back of it, sir, that ought to’ve
brought him the luck.”

Perhaps Major Gracie was of the same opinion.

Not so, Gary Lee. For, a couple of days after he had driven the
strange man away from San Pedro in his big car by night and brought
him to the refuge of Aunt Katherine’s, Lee had driven again to San
Pedro and there had called on Joan and her father--particularly on
Joan.

“Bad business, Joan,” he said, when he and the girl were alone.

“What?”

“Your having anything to do with getting this man away from prison.
I wish that you and your father had decided to remain in Fairhaven.
Confound it! When I think of you and him being mixed up with a lot of
felons!”

“Felons are people, Gary,” she answered. “I dread them, and hate
what they represent as much as you do. Still, you can’t generalize.”

She may have colored slightly. Her eyes failed to meet his.

“You know,” said Lee, “that there is nothing under heaven that I
wouldn’t do on your account, Joan. No risk that you could ask me to
take would be too great.”

“I’m grateful to you, Gary,” said Joan.

“I’m not referring, therefore, to anything that might have happened
to me if I’d been caught helping that convict to escape. It’s the
fact that you’d be willing to run such a risk, submit others to the
risk--your father, your Aunt Katherine. No convict is worth it--not
all the felons in the State.”

“I thought you said you were interested in reform.”

“I am.”

“This was humanitarian.”

“That’s the danger of this sort of stuff,” said Lee. “You let your
sympathies run away with you.”

“He was ready to sacrifice himself on our account--give up his own
chances of escape.”

“Noble, I’ll admit.”

“And undo the wrong he had committed. He didn’t intend to let the bad
ones out, and he’s promised to bring them back.”

Lee was torn between scorn and pity, anger and desire.

“I did what you wanted me to,” he said. “I even went so far as not to
look at him when it was getting light. I couldn’t tell him now from
Adam. I wouldn’t know him if I met him in the street. I did all this
on your account when my every instinct was to arrest him myself, or,
at least, so fix his face in my mind that I could identify him and do
my part as a citizen and an officer of the court--help put him back
where he belongs.”

“I’m sorry--sorry!” said Joan.

“Then, marry me,” said Lee.

Her eyes finally met his.

“You said you wouldn’t ask me again unless----”

“You gave me some sign,” said Lee, with concentrated feeling. “Wasn’t
this thing sign enough? Your honor and mine are at stake. They’ll
arrest this cur. He’ll blab--tell what he knows--try to blackmail us
both.”

She met him squarely.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Joan, I’m a lawyer. I know these vermin.”

“Don’t! Don’t!” she said. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t just.”

“Marry me,” he whispered, with a touch of desperation.

She looked at him in silence. Almost in silence he left her.

There was a danger in this situation which neither Gary Lee nor
Joan Gracie had mentioned, but which both had recognized in their
several ways. They had not mentioned it, although, in many respects,
that same degree of almost brutal frankness existed between them as
often exists between brother and sister. Like brother and sister,
they were of the same caste, had known each other intimately since
childhood--had squabbled, played, studied together, gone to the same
parties.

That was in Clear Rapids, the principal city of the State, where
Joan’s mother herself had passed her girlhood. Then, when Mrs.
Gracie died, Major Gracie had returned to the home of his own youth,
Fairhaven, near which place Aunt Katherine Middleton had her home.

The danger was this:

Gary Lee must have things his own way. He had always been like that.
Generous, courtly, as long as his own will wasn’t interfered with, he
could be as ruthless as a tiger when things went wrong.

A little strain of madness, perhaps, such as all of us are reported
to possess--and, if the truth were known, the only thing that makes
life worth living, perhaps. It’s like the yeast, bad in itself, a
fungus, a ferment, that yet makes bread palatable; or the strain of
madness that makes the poet, or the general, or the savant who passes
a lifetime looking at bugs and worms.

When Lee read in the Clear Rapids _Sentinel_, incidental to the other
news that was still coming out of San Pedro, that Miss Joan Gracie
had returned to her home in Fairhaven, he felt a familiar surge of
heat in the region of his heart. It was a feeling he had known ever
since he could remember--when he was a mere infant, and the nurse
wouldn’t give him a toy, when he was a cub, and they wouldn’t let him
eat another piece of cake, when he was an adolescent and some girl or
other, Joan as often as not, showed preference for a rival.

There entered Lee’s mind a dark thought that this was a case
of rivalry now, that there actually was a rivalry between
himself--himself, Gary Lee!--and this felon.

But he conquered the thought, to some extent. Also, to some extent
he conquered that feeling of heat in the region of his heart. He was
aware of his weakness. As he grew older he had learned, as men must,
each year a little more self-control.

Yet there was no denying it. There was Joan in Fairhaven. Five miles,
not more, from Fairhaven was the cottage to which he himself had
carried that man in the dark of the night. His hand trembled a little
as he picked up the telephone from his office desk. He ordered his
car. His stenographer looked at him with a touch of concern.

“You’re to attend a directors’ meeting at two thirty.”

“I can’t be there. Tell ’em so.”

“You were to see Mr. Strouthers at----”

“Telephone him not to come.”

“Will you sign your letters?”

“Hold them,” said Lee. “I’m called to Fairhaven. Put everything off
until to-morrow.”

He descended to the street. The garage was near by. There was never
any delay when he ordered his car. The car rolled up to meet him at
the curb. He changed his hat for a cap, drew on a pair of driving
gloves, dismissed the chauffeur. It always helped him a lot, in a
mood like this, to drive as few chauffeurs would or could have driven.

He was standing there with his hand on the door of the car, when a
newspaper man whom Lee knew well happened along.

“Hello, Gary,” said the journalist. “Big news.”

“Hello, Jack,” and Gary, indifferent, entered the car.

“They’ve got him,” said the newspaper man.

“Who?”

“Three Sevens, the fellow----”

“They’ve what?”

“Just got the tip at the office. They caught the fellow who put over
the big play at San Pedro.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’re never sure till we know, but we got the tip from one of our
own men. Phoned over from Fairhaven----”

Lee had thrown in the clutch, was on his way.

       *       *       *       *       *

Major Gracie, at San Pedro, had got word also almost as soon as any
one that there were matters of interest to him under way over there
in the direction of his home. First that a farmer had recognized one
of the escaped convicts by the name of Gosse. Three hundred dollars’
reward, in this case, and the informant wanted to register his claim
for all that was coming to him. Then another informant telephoned.
Next came a claim by telegram. After that, the _Sentinel_ sent word
that it was not Gosse who had been seen, but Masters, the ringleader
of the big escape.

The major had sent word to his daughter to their home in Fairhaven.
It wasn’t a measure of discipline, exactly, but he felt sure that she
had been getting a trifle too much of this prison atmosphere lately.
She was too earnest, too devoted to her work as his secretary and
mentor.

There crinkled into his thought a crooked little flash of light--like
remote lightning, faint and devoid of thunder as yet, but possibly
prophetic of storm.

Did Joan have anything to do with this? He also ordered his car, was
off for Fairhaven.

Joan Gracie herself also had heard the news. It had been a day of
news.

First of all, her aunt had telephoned her, as she did daily. Aunt
Katherine was the volunteer probation officer of this convict she had
harbored at Joan’s request. She understood Joan almost better than
any one did. Joan had acted on impulse. Joan had been sure that her
impulse was right. But, since then, the girl had begun to worry.

“La, he’s all right. I’ll ship him off, as soon’s you say--_if_ he’ll
wait that long.”

Every day since Joan’s Return to Fairhaven Aunt Katherine had
telephoned things like that, except when Aunt Katherine was coming
to town, as she did two or three times a week, in the suburban bus.
It was the old lady who was furnishing the strength required by the
situation now, and there was also a grim humor in the situation that
had made its appeal to Aunt Katherine’s bitter but wholesome nature.

So far as she knew she had never harmed a human being in the course
of her long life, yet now she had become a lawbreaker by harboring an
escaped convict. The whole country was interested in the discovery
of a famous bad man. She alone was seeing him daily and finding him
gentle and good. There was a thousand dollars’ reward out for his
arrest. She had him.

But she wouldn’t let Joan come to her house, not while Craig was
there. Ah, no! People talk. She herself was safe from scandal.
Anyway, she was too old to mind any more. But not so, where a young
girl was concerned, Joan above all.

Then, at last, this day, after those earlier rumors of a bandit
chase through the woods north of town, there came a call from Aunt
Katherine for Joan to come out. No explanation--everything all right.

Joan met a friend at the gate, daughter of some county official or
other, and hence in touch with the courthouse.

“Have you heard!” she cried. “They say they’ve caught that famous
bandit--Masters----”

“Where?”

“Out near your Aunt Katherine’s.”




                             CHAPTER XVII

                            GATHERING STORM


Meantime that hunt through the woods for that king of big-game
animals, man himself!

The rumors that had thus far spread out as far as Clear Rapids and
San Pedro, and farther yet, as a matter of fact, for this developing
event in the neighborhood of Fairhaven was the news of the day for
the country at large, were like lions of magnetic attraction, an
attraction that ran straight to the innermost fibers of half the men
who heard the reports, calling them to drop other things, awakening
inside of them old atavisms of the chase and war. A man hunt was on.
It was free for every one. Grab a pitchfork or a gun.

That nucleus of a mob, with the ex-warden of San Pedro at its head,
was growing steadily.

A man in a Norman runabout saw a farmer with a gun on the highway and
asked him what was going on. The farmer told him. The Norman became
the chariot of a herald.

The driver of the rural bus carried the news into Fairhaven, and
there the word spread like a grass fire.

“Got him cornered!”

“Who?”

“Masters, of San Pedro.”

“Where?”

“Right outside of town--Dingledine Woods!”

There had already been a report that one of the escaped convicts
of San Pedro had been seen--Harry, the Goose--but this earlier
report merely went to strengthen the later one. Harry, the Goose,
was forgotten. No one had ever heard of him, anyway. Masters was the
man--the Napoleon of the Underworld!

“They got him cornered!”

“Ain’t got him yet. Bet he puts up a battle!”

There was a drift out of town by all who could go--the call of
excitement, the promptings of greed; but, most of all, the old lust
of the chase, the man hunt.

As a thousand little events go into the fabrication of the big event,
so the thousand little rumors swell the big rumor. It was that way
now. Two men shot! Got him in a barn--goin’ to set fire to it!
Murdered an old woman!

Loafers, day workers, high-school boys, farmers, politicians,
ex-deputy sheriffs; all the hands of a suburban paper mill, the
working force of a stone quarry; all the spectators and some of the
players from an amateur baseball game.

Here and there some one fired a gun--with what intent only himself
might know--just nervousness, most likely, but successful always
in starting a new swirl of movement, a new drift, a fresh batch of
rumors. The chase was at its height when it was added to by the
strangers and notables from other villages and towns.

Among these were Gary Lee, from Clear Rapids, and Major Gracie, from
San Pedro.

Finally they met at the Gracie home, where Joan and her Aunt
Katherine had preceded them. Both Joan and Aunt Katherine had decided
it would be better for them to spend the night together at the Gracie
home in town. The woods, particularly in the neighborhood of the
Middleton cottage, were swarming by this time. There was a crowd in
the usually empty lane and in the little-frequented road.

Here the Napoleon of the Underworld had been seen. No one had the
straight of it. They quested for information among themselves, each
telling the other as first-hand information what each had just heard
from somebody else.

There was a tense excitement even in the town itself, among those
whom duty or disinclination had kept from joining the chase.

What had happened out there? What was happening now? What was going
to happen?

More and more an ugly phrase was heard. Folks passed it on, half in
jest, certainly without stopping to think, in most instances, what
the words implied. But the phrase itself was fire, and the town was
becoming a powder mill. The phrase was this:

“_He ought to be lynched!_”

Joan, with a white face and shimmering eyes, completed the confession
that hitherto she had made only in part. She told her father that
not only had she originally recommended that convict No. 3777 cross
the valley on the farmer’s borrowed horse--which she herself had
later returned, but, this time, had had Gary Lee carry the fugitive
on to Aunt Katherine’s, there to remain until he had recovered his
strength, and people were no longer so bent on capturing him.

“If this story comes out----” said Major Gracie, after a terrifying
silence.

“That is what I said,” Gary Lee remarked.

They were in the Gracie parlor at the time. The windows were open,
the curtains stirring slowly in the breeze. The breeze was scented
with clipped lawns and newly sprinkled streets, for the house
stood far out in a residential section of the town that was almost
suburban. And it was very quiet. There were none of the noises
associated with towns at all, except the occasional grind of a
passing auto, the hammers and voices of carpenters at work on a
house, the clang and clank of the railroad yards a quarter of a mile
away.

But gradually there overcame these sounds a sort of surging
murmur--something that they seemed to have noticed for quite a while
before they paid attention to it.

“What is that sound?”

“Yes, I’ve been hearing it for some time.”

“It sounds like cheering.”

“There it is again.”

They looked into each other’s eyes. They knew all about that man hunt
that had called its hundreds into the woods to the north of the town.

Gary turned to Joan.

“It sounds to me,” said he, “as if they had caught that friend of
ours, sure enough.”

He saw the whiteness and the tensity of her face.

“Joan!” he whispered.

She disregarded him. She faced her father.

“What are you going to do?”

“Get to the sheriff as soon as I can--see that there’s no lynching.”

“I’ll go with you, sir,” said Lee.

“Stay with the ladies,” said the major, giving orders. “And you,
young lady”--he turned to Joan--“I’ll ask to remain in quarters.”

“Please!” she cried.

“What!”

The major didn’t intend to, but he himself went a little white. For
the first time within his memory, Joan had questioned an order. The
orders, to be sure, had been few and wise.

“I tell you, this poor creature saved my life.”

“And he’ll make the most of it,” muttered Lee.

But Joan had thrown her arms about her father’s neck. He looked
across the top of her head at his sister-in-law.

“You’re in charge of your Aunt Katherine,” he said.

He drew himself up. So did the others. There was no mistaking that
distant mob music. The man hunters were ready for the kill.

Those sounds of a growing mob had been frequent enough even before
Craig and Craig’s prisoner, Harry, the Goose, had left the edge of
their dry watercourse. The woods were being overrun.

Craig had only one thought, and that was to keep the chase going
until night. He saw that, even before night, he and Harry would have
a good chance to put the region behind them. There were only a few in
the crowd who could have recognized either him or Harry, anyway, but
he knew the instinct of the small-town crowd and the country crowd
for strangers.

He and Harry were strangers. That was enough. They would have to
keep out of sight until the sun went down, or, if seen, stave off
suspicion as best they could until they were out of sight again.
Violence would do no good. In most of the crises that Craig could
think of, he knew that the revolver he had taken from Harry would be
worse than useless.

One shot against a hundred. He would, indeed, rather spend it on
himself than on some innocent farmhand doing his best, according
to his own lights, to serve his country by running down an escaped
convict to earth.

He found a mossy hollow where there was water. He let Harry drink.
But he himself didn’t drink. In addition to his other worries he had
Harry to watch. He put no faith in Harry--no faith of any kind. Harry
was a coward. Harry was cruel. It would be just like him to think
that he was forwarding his own welfare by killing Craig--if he got
the chance.

They rested in a cedar copse until they heard a stealthy tread. They
could see an old party with chin whiskers moving through the beech
trees a little lower down. He carried a squirrel rifle. He might have
been hunting squirrels--he was so soft-footed, and he was looking
down, as a squirrel hunter might, for sign. Then sign of some sort
he must have found. He gave a slight start. His goatee snapped down,
then up. He turned and beckoned.

It was not until then that they saw that he was followed by two other
men. One of these was a mere overgrown boy, armed with an old horse
pistol of a type used long before the Civil War. But the other hunter
looked businesslike, a dark and stocky-bearded man with a shotgun
over his shoulder. These two hurried up. They looked at the sign the
old man had found.

“Hisn,” said the old man.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure’s shootin’. Them’s his shoes. I studied ’em right whar the
schoolmarm pointed ’em out to me.”

The overgrown boy with the horse pistol turned and stared at the
cedars so intently that Craig felt his own heart sicken a little.
Harry had been ready to break and run, but he had gripped him.

The two of them began to edge back together.

“They’re close,” the old trailer said.

The dark man with the shotgun threw his weapon forward.

Harry, the Goose, turned a white and sweaty face to Craig. His lips
moved with the all-but-silent speech of his prison days.

“Shoot! Shoot the stiffs--why don’t you?”

“Steady,” said Craig, also silently. “There’s some one over there
back of us.”

Suddenly, off not more than a hundred yards or so beyond the place
where the squirrel hunter and his friends had found the thing they
were looking for, a scream went up--a scream that was savage and
exultant.

“Ki-yi! Here he is, fellers.”

There was an interval when even the woods seemed to listen, then a
crash of branches, a shot.

“Stop! Stop!”

The squirrel hunter let out a whinny.

“Gosh dang! Somebuddy’s got him first!”

But the dark-faced man with the shotgun spoke never a word. He jerked
around in the direction of the noise. He was ready to fire. He
trotted off, and this time the others were following him--the old man
with the squirrel rifle, the boy with the horse pistol, each cocking
his weapon as he ran.

“Now is the time,” Harry chattered.

Now was the time, if ever! There where the original outbreak had
occurred there was a mixture of cries and laughter, whoops, whistles.
Some of the hunters had been in pairs, some in groups. It must have
been that all of these had arranged signals among themselves, or had
signals that they knew their friends would understand. Suddenly, the
chase was over. Those in at the blood were calling the other human
hounds.

It didn’t matter much now to Craig whether he was seen, so long as
it would be by no one likely to recognize him--like ex-Warden Green,
for example. Where was Green? But Craig had no fear of such pictures
of himself as might have been sent abroad. When these were taken, he
was smooth shaven. Now he had a fuzzy, nascent beard--not much of a
beard. Still, not for six weeks had his face known a razor. And when
those pictures of his were taken, moreover, he was new to prison,
ignorant of dark cells, ignorant of suffering, almost--suffering as
he had come to know it.

But, every now and then, out of those cries and other noises that
came from over there among the trees, he heard the voice of some one
who pleaded, who reasoned, who argued, who denied.

“Come with me,” he said to Harry, “and, listen! What I said a while
ago still holds. Try a break and I’ll maim you.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see who it is they’ve caught. Shut up! Go on!”

But hardly had they come to the edge of the cedars before the crowd
was breaking through the brush beyond the beeches. In the midst of
them they saw the man who had been caught by mistake.

Sick, haggard, frightened, unshaven, in rags--it made Harry laugh to
see him, made Craig want to weep, especially when he remembered the
music this man had made. It was Zabrewski, the organ player.

Then, to Craig, it seemed as if this storm that had been gathering
for so long flashed into lightning and thunder in his brain. He
couldn’t see Zabrewski frightened, mistreated like that. Zabrewski
was a genius, albeit a genius gone wrong.

Craig had flung Harry, the Goose, before him. He let out a cry that
made even the crowd go silent, stand, and stare. It was a snarl like
a lion’s:

“_Har!_”




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                            TOWARD SUNDOWN


There were still those who pawed at Zabrewski, poked at him with gun
barrels and sticks. There was no chance of Zabrewski’s getting away.
But that sudden cry of Craig’s--so loud, so determined, so filled
with something just a trifle more than human--had brought most of the
crowd to facing in his direction.

Craig spoke up:

“_He_ isn’t the man we’re after.”

There was a mixture of voices--surprise and dissent, questions,
scoffings. But to the hungry attention of Craig’s inner self there
came no sign that he himself was suspected.

“_Here’s_ the man,” said Craig. And he had his hand on Harry’s
shoulder, shoving him forward. Harry let out a yelp, blasphemous,
of rage and terror. He tried to turn, tried to beat Craig with his
fists. But Craig had a grip on Harry’s collar with his right hand.
With his left, he jerked Harry’s arm back and up. Harry spat and
gasped venom like a snared bobcat.

“Then, who’s _this_ feller?” the captor of Zabrewski demanded.

“A crazy organist.”

There was a laugh at that.

“What was _he_ hidin’ fer?”

Craig shoved the human bobcat to the front. There was no profit in
answering too many questions.

“_Here’s_ the man!”

He saw the dark-faced man with the shotgun, the old party with the
squirrel rifle, the youth with the horse pistol. They were a solid
group in the unorganized mob. Craig addressed them:

“Gentlemen, the reward is yours----”

“You hear what he says?” whinnied the goatee. And there was a look of
swift eagerness and pride on the part of the other two trailers.

Craig spoke to the crowd.

“This gentleman here”--referring to goatee--“will tell you the kind
of footprint our man makes.”

“A heel off one shoe!” whinnied the old party.

“Right! Right!” yelled those who jostled close to see, and the yell
flamed up into something like a cheer.

In the midst of all this, Harry, the Goose, had about as much chance
to plead his case as a rat among terriers. But the Zabrewski group
was sullen. Some one over in that direction called: “We ought to
string ’em both up!”

“None of that!” shouted Craig. “Gentlemen,” and he addressed the
squirrel hunter and his companions as he might have addressed
partners and old friends, “I’ll ask you to go with me. He’s your
prisoner.”

Harry, the Goose, babbled that this was an atrocious and sanguinary
frame-up--words to this effect. Here, holding him, bluffing them,
was Three Sevens--Thomas Masters--the man who was to blame for all
this--the eternally condemned child of evil parentage the whole world
was looking for.

Craig twisted Harry and looked into his face. No one but Harry, and
possibly Zabrewski, knew what Craig said. But Harry got the message
all right, from Craig’s scarcely moving lips:

“Shut up, or I let them lynch you!”

Harry stuttered into silence.

“I’m saving your life,” said Craig silently.

Whereupon Harry hysterically sobbed: “I never done nothin’ to you.
Save my life! Save my life!”

“There’s a reward for that man, too,” and this time Craig spoke with
directness to Zabrewski’s captor. “You’ll help us--get our men to
town.”

Other hunters were coming on the run.

“We got ’em! We got ’em!”

But there was nothing very definite. There was nothing definite at
all in Craig’s own mind. What lay ahead of him? He didn’t know. A
chance to break through the woods, perhaps. Time! Something might
turn up. There was one blur of knowledge in his mind. There was
lynching in the air. He had saved Zabrewski from being lynched. That
was all, so far. But, wasn’t that enough?

Somehow, they had all got into movement, with some semblance of
order. There was a scrambling procession--outrunners, late to arrive,
trying to get into positions where they could see and hear, others
lagging while they explained to friends and chance acquaintances.
And, certain as was the next minute and the contents thereof in
Craig’s mind his heart was informing him that, even so, he knew
more than any one else, and that knowledge was power--knowledge was
confidence, authority, a chance to survive.

No, he could desert neither Zabrewski nor even Harry, the Goose. How
long would it be before he himself was recognized? Where was Warden
Green? He looked at the sun. The sun was still at least two hours
high--high enough to bring them into Fairhaven, five or six miles
away. And, even as some generals are reported to have done, Craig
prayed for night. Craig may have prayed for a number of things,
without calling it prayer. Once, he put his hand into the inside
pocket of his coat and again touched the little red ledger. It was
as if he had touched the hand of her who had given him this book and
written out the contents of it.

The book of his indebtedness to life, the world, himself! When all
was said that could be said of his present situation, wasn’t he doing
his best to make payment?

“Yes! Yes!” clamored a thousand voices within himself.

They came into a little wood road, and this brought an advantage in
that it forced the crowd to straggle out still more, for the road was
narrow and deep, and the sides of it were thickly brushed, so that
the outrunners were forced to fall back.

A regular procession now, and, at the head of it, the two
prisoners--when would there be three, with himself as one of them?
There were Zabrewski and Harry, the Goose, held and protected by
Craig, and the four men who had accepted from him with hope of reward
their deputyship as they would have accepted commissions under the
seal of the United States, no less; and friends of these.

Craig had let it be known that he was from San Pedro Prison, as he
was; that he was working for the State, as he was; and that he had
the warmest sort of friendship for the new warden of San Pedro, Major
Gracie, which was likewise true.

To these deputies of his, Craig also privately imparted a stern
warning against letting these prisoners become victims of mob law.

“A disgrace to the State,” said Craig, “besides bilking you gentlemen
out of what is rightly yours.”

“B’ jinks!” said squirrel shooter. “Let ’em try it!”

And the old party and his friends tightened their grips on their
weapons.

In fact, everything was going as Craig himself could have desired
it--almost! But what about himself? He couldn’t escape. His own
identification lay just ahead. Then there _would_ be a lynching--not
of one, or of two, but of three.

But the sun would not come down any the faster for that. And they had
left the wood road and come into the highway. There were the first
houses of Fairhaven, and crowds--always more crowds. Not only crowds,
but noise--always more noise--each moment a little shriller, crueler,
more and more like a chorus of yelping howls.

It was this chorus, even more terrifying when heard at a distance
than when one was in the thick of it, that had electrified that
little party in the Gracie home. The major had hurried away.

And, already, so he was to learn, the local sheriff and chief of
police had seen trouble ahead. There, on the outskirts of the town,
a policeman or two had tried to preserve order and had been roughly
handled. There was laughter. There was ebullition. There was a
gluttony for emotion. The town had long been stagnant. Here was
something interesting. At the same time, it was something that no
one could understand, nor sought to understand, in the fullness of
it. Not even the sheriff nor the chief of police, until Major Gracie
clarified the whole muddy mixture with a drop of wisdom.

“A lynching!”

There was no local precedent for a thing like this, no local
experience.

Major Gracie turned to the sheriff.

“Swear us all in!”

There were some twenty citizens on hand besides the reserve
policemen, city judge, clerks, and others. The City Building, with
the jail in the back of it, a florid but puny building of brick,
was situated on Main Street--a street that was not very wide, but
traversed the town, the only street that led direct from the
outskirts to the center of the town.

The mob was headed for the center of the town two or three blocks
farther on from the City Building where there was a broad plaza,
Courthouse Square.

“_They’re goin’ to hang ’em in Courthouse Square!_”

Every one was saying it--apparently. Where had the information come
from? No one knew or cared.

“They got Masters, the San Pedro outlaw----”

“And his gang----”

“_Goin’ to hang ’em in Courthouse Square!_”

“Serves ’em right!”

“Fairhaven done it!”

“We’ll show ’em!”

“_Goin’ to hang ’em in Courthouse Square!_”

Joan heard it. There was a shudder in her heart. Her whole body
had become a shudder. But there was a degree of fierceness in her
suffering. This thing wasn’t right. What had this man done that he
should be treated like this? Had she followed the impulse that sprang
from the very essence of her being, she would have attacked the whole
world with her bare hands, beating on it with her small fists--and
then, how the rough old world would have laughed at the spectacle!

“Do something!” she appealed to Gary Lee fiercely.

“What?”

“To check this mob.”

“I’ll join your father,” said Lee, without grace.

He was as clean and good a citizen as one would have met in a week of
travel, but he was angry, hurt. That hot spot in the region of his
heart was clinking out sparks again ready to burst into flame.

“Do!” she said.

“But not on his account!”

He thrust out his jaw. She knew whom he meant. There was an
accusation in his words, not against the escaped convict so much as
against herself.

“I hate you,” she retorted.

“Just the same,” he said, “I’m----”

He was going to say that, just the same, he’d marry her. But Joan had
flung away from him. Was the prophecy also doomed to remain like that?

It was with a feeling that, over there only a couple of streets
beyond, a drama was already under way, that Joan Gracie left her
home. She had lingered for her aunt. Age had brought no dimming of
interest in the affairs of men to Aunt Katherine, even if the old
lady did spend most of her life among her flowers.

But that hint of the theater not built with hands, and of a play
already begun not written by man, in which both of these women, the
young and the old, felt a vital interest, was accentuated by the wide
silence about them, the roar of the multitude over and beyond.

“We can go to Mr. Cantrel’s office,” cried Aunt Katherine.

Cantrel was her agent. He had an office on Main Street, almost
opposite the City Building.

“If we can ever get there,” said Joan. “Listen to the crowd.”

“There’s a back way, through the alley.”

“Oh, hurry! Hurry!” panted Joan, and her voice was almost a sob.

There was indeed no time to be lost if they were not to miss the
final act of the thing that had begun back there in the woods. The
play was rushing to a climax, and that was sure.

Right across Main Street, near the City Building, Major Gracie had
drawn up a cordon of police and volunteers. Already, without the
publicity of the usual gongs and sirens, the firemen of the town were
taking up their stations in the side streets. There were a number of
exigencies that would have to be met, and the major had prepared for
them all as best he could.

The prisoners would have to be rescued at once. The mob would have to
be dispersed and kept dispersed. At the same time, life and property
would have to be defended to the utmost. There could be no shooting
down even of those deluded fools who were clamoring for the blood of
others.

Who these others were there no longer was any doubt. There was
ex-Warden Green, at last.

He had come in from the woods, a disappointed and yet an expectant
man. Even he didn’t know of the peculiar turn that things had taken.
But, from a vantage point, he had caught a glimpse, back there, of
convict No. 3777, the man who had won fame to the ex-warden’s eternal
disgrace.

So Green had joined the cordon that Major Gracie had formed. He
towered among the others. It was there that Craig, with the mob
all about him, but chiefly back of him, and with his two cowering
prisoners in front of him, saw the ex-warden of San Pedro.

To Craig, in the midst of the human whirlwind and earthquake
that threatened to engulf him, it was like a vision of San Pedro
itself--the old San Pedro--hell!

He cast his eyes up quickly and to one side. He saw Joan
Gracie--the mere glimpsing vision of a face at a window, but vivid,
compassionate--bidding him to live.




                              CHAPTER XIX

                               THE LULL


There was a lull in Craig’s mind, as swift, complete, final, and
impressive, as that which follows the accomplishment of any big event.

And this was a big event to Daniel Craig, the sight of Joan Gracie
up there at the window, so close to him, so _with_ him when he had
believed himself alone. Nothing could have been so unexpected, and
yet nothing could have seemed so inevitable--so predestined, as Craig
himself would have said.

There had been no lull for the surging mob, though.

Nor were the forces of law and order called together by Major Gracie
aware of any lull. In about thirty seconds there was going to be a
clash--a summons to halt--a volley in the air--and Heaven only knew
what immediately afterward. But, at the first shot, the firemen,
safely in the side streets by now, were instructed to turn the water
on. No mob likes water.

Nor was there any lull for ex-Warden Green. He began to take in the
situation from the moment that he saw Craig again. It wasn’t Craig
who was coming as one of the prisoners. The prisoners the ex-warden
recognized quickly enough--Harry, the Goose, and the organist
Zabrewski. Great guns! What was this that Masters was putting over
now? Even in these thunderous seconds he could see that, in some way,
Masters, the escaped convict, was really at the head of the mob, the
leader of it. It wasn’t he at all that the mob meant when it chanted
death. And the ex-warden began to vociferate the news.

It was almost sundown. The mob was facing west. Such light as there
was came slanting and red from straight ahead.

“Halt!” shouted Craig, his mind suddenly clear.

The command was repeated by the squirrel hunter and his friends who
were the chief guardians of Harry, the Goose, and Zabrewski.

“Hold up!” “Stop yer shovin!” “Plenty of time, boys!”

Those at the head of the disordered procession were holding back.
Even the noisy ones were aware that a crisis impended, stopped
yelling, began to call for silence.

Craig spoke rapidly to those about him.

“If you want to save your reward, you’ve got to save these men.”

He spoke with authority. There was no time for argument. He spoke
to Harry and Zabrewski. They had been half dead, but his words
galvanized them like hot needles:

“Beat it straight ahead!”

They stumbled forward in a shambling run--the two of them.

Zabrewski fell. He was on his feet again.

Twenty policemen, with nightsticks, sprang forward as the mob gave a
surge.

Some one, on the mob side, fired a wild shot, and this brought in the
trail of it a swishing roar and a chaotic babble of voices in another
key as the firemen answered the impromptu signal and turned the water
on.

Craig was no longer one of the mob surge. He was a man again, with
mastery of his mind, and his mind master of the circumstances that
whirled and changed around him. His mind was clear. It perceived
many things--that Zabrewski and Harry, the Goose, had been taken in
charge by Major Gracie’s forces, and that they were safe. Back of
him in the street through which he had just passed, the mob was like
a clay bank when attacked under hydraulic pressure. Joan Gracie had
disappeared from the window where he had seen her.

He fought. A flat and beefy face as full of rage as a Chinese mask
appeared in front of him. He jabbed his fist into it. He saw two
straining figures locked together in front of him. He pushed them
over.

He had instinctively turned to the right, in the direction of
that vision of his. There was a row of brick business buildings
there--stores on the ground floor, and offices above. Before he was
at the curb, he saw that all doors were closed, that there was likely
to be no escape in this direction. But neither was there escape back
of him, nor up the street, nor down the street.

He plunged against a wooden door--one of two that closed an entrance
way to an office building. Locked! And a roar just back of him.

“It’s him himself!” the voice of ex-Warden Green.

Then the door opened. Craig sprang inside and slammed it shut.

He shoved the bolt back into place, he even listened for some
fraction of a second before he turned. There at the side of him in
the dim light of the hall he saw her as if he had known that she
would be there, as if this were an appointed rendezvous.

She stood with her back against the wall, as if she were glad of the
wall’s support. Seen in this comparative darkness of the hallway, she
was little more than a glimmer of white and a pair of eyes. So, at
any rate, she appeared to Craig--unreal, unearthly, and yet a fact as
unshakable as the floor beneath his feet.

“Look out! He’s armed!” This from outside, muffled by the closed
doors.

Craig heard the words, but he only heard them with the surface of
his brain, so to speak. And the surface of his brain was telling him
that there wasn’t a moment to lose, that already some elements of the
mob and of the force that had been opposed to the mob were uniting
against him, would soon be storming this fragile fortress of his.

But he paused.

“You!” he whispered.

There was a look in the girl’s eyes of fright, relief, of something
else. It was like a look of pure emotion that could be divided into
all the elements of feeling, that embraced them all.

“Hurry,” she whispered.

She was no longer the masterly creature she had appeared that day in
San Pedro. She was more like a child. But if she was like a child,
so was Craig. He himself felt that way--a rush of carelessness,
happiness, such as he had not experienced since his remotest past.

It was a mood that came and was gone in a second. And what had
happened during this second? It was a question that was to haunt
pretty much the remainder of his life.

His memory of it was to remain expansive and complex, yet oddly
dreamlike, a jumble of impressions.

Then, Joan was running up the stairs to that office where she had
left her aunt, and Craig himself was ghosting back through the hall,
knowing that there was a way out, back there, and an alley that would
bring him to an unfrequented street, but with this other shred of
information in his brain overriding all other information, and as
necessary to his life:

He had kissed her!

He hurried, but he was as indifferent to the mob he had put behind
him, and all its various elements--police, Green, lynchers--as if he
had been a spirit and they with no power over him whatsoever. They
didn’t belong to his order. They were of a different and inferior
race.

It must have been Joan who had told him about the alley and the
street beyond, but he couldn’t remember her having told him. He
merely knew what to expect. That was all. He hurried through the
alley. He came to the street. He slanted across this--fast enough,
but not too fast to arouse suspicion--and came to an unfenced area of
unimproved land that had been used, betimes, as a ball field.

Every one seemed to be absent, as if this part of the town were
under a spell. Every one had hurried away, apparently, to watch the
excitement, the noises of which still reached him, indistinct and
confused. And beyond the ball field he saw a freight train trundling
into speed.

While this was taking place, Joan Gracie must, herself, have
experienced some such thing as had befallen the spirit of Daniel
Craig.

She fled up the stairs. At the head of the stairs, she stood for a
moment with her hand on her heart. She ran forward to the door of
the office she had quitted when instinct told her that Craig was
coming this way. At the door of the office she stopped again. She was
frightened--not frightened so much as touched with awe; and in her
awe there was a riot of something strangely like joy.

She entered the office, and there was no sign that any one had
noticed that she had been missing. They were all banked about the
windows. No one turned to look at her, not even her Aunt Katherine.
She was grateful. She guiltily told herself that not even did it
matter much that her own father was out there in the crowded and
disordered street.

As for Craig, he was still on the freight train when the night came
on, and he was rolling through a country that was strange to him.

A brakeman passed along the running board at the top of the cars, and
when he was safely gone, Craig came up from the bumpers and sat there
and looked up. He was like a prophet on a mountaintop, this mountain
rumbling along by some special magic. But he looked at the stars as
any prophet may have looked at them--with that feeling of prophecy
that comes to all men when out in the night alone.

One of the slowly accumulated heritages of the human race, no doubt,
this power to draw consolation and wisdom from nocturnal solitude.
To this men have always fled when they needed it most; or have been
driven to it even when they themselves didn’t recognize the healing
value of it. Back through the ages the stars have looked down on them
all--the dying warriors, the man lost in the desert, the drunkard
reeling home, the slave in the canebrake, the fugitive prince.

Toward dawn, the train was going through a region of flat pine woods,
and the weather had changed. It was coming on to rain. Faintly in the
distance Craig saw a white building that he took to be a schoolhouse.
This dawning day was Saturday, he reflected, and so the building
would give him shelter and seclusion. He was almost dead with fatigue.

He let himself off the train. He was rather more satisfied than not
when he discovered that his building was a church. He tried the door.
It was unlocked. The place was in keeping with his mood.

The escape, the kiss, the resolves and the hopes that these had
inspired, were the mental elements of another sort of dawn.




                              CHAPTER XX

                              THE MAGNET


A stout man, rather flabby and down at the heel, had been standing
for some time in the Cincinnati post office deeply interested,
apparently, in his copy of the _Times Star_. Also he appeared to be
rather nearsighted, to judge by the way he held his paper. Only some
one close to him would have seen that he wasn’t reading the paper at
all, and that his eyes, anything but nearsighted, watched furtively
all who came and went at the window marked General Delivery.

The day was hot. The post office was airless. Now and then a bead of
sweat rolled down the flabby man’s face. Now and then a fly sought,
and found a landing place on his stubbly cheek. He let the sweat
roll. He let the fly hum and forage.

An old colored mammy of the “befo’-de-wah” type waddled past the
window, then an anæmic, half-grown girl, and an Italian laborer.
These gone, the flabby man with the newspaper cast a final glance
about the room. No one visible. He drew a long breath. He stepped up
to the window with alacrity.

He spoke a name. The clerk sifted through a handful of letters,
tossed one of these aside.

“Where were you expecting it from?”

“Chicago.”

The clerk shoved the letter through the window, turned his back. The
flabby man also turned, slowly. He was still the only one in the
neighborhood of the wicket. He had chosen the right time.

He was safe in the room of a small office of the neighborhood before
he opened his mail. The envelope, addressed “James R. Henderson,”
contained a brief note with no address at all. It read:

     Fishing good and plenty of bait at the old grounds.

The flabby man read this with great satisfaction. With an even
greater satisfaction, however, he read an inclosure from the same
envelope. This was a newspaper clipping with a San Francisco date
line. It stated that the body of a man found in the harbor there had
been identified as that of Taylor Leamy, recently escaped from San
Pedro Prison, and once known as the king of the slick engineers, one
of the most notorious mining swindlers the country had ever known.

The flabby man had lost some of his flabbiness when he had completed
his reading. He closed his eyes. He raised his face with a beatific
smile.

“Well, well, well,” he droned. “I feel pretty chipper for a drowned
man at that!”

His mood changed. He glanced about him at the sultry and meager
little office. One would have said that the office was personal. He
spat at it. His erstwhile flabby face took on a look of ferocious
triumph.

“Good night for you!” he gritted. “I’ll show ’em whether I’m dead or
not. Money! Suckers! A million dollars’ worth of stock! And Taylor
Leamy hisself again!”

       *       *       *       *       *

About the same time that this monologue was in course of delivery,
there was a dialogue in progress in the back room of a saloon in
East St. Louis. It was a sordid place, where this dialogue was
staged--dank and dark, acrid with the effluvia of stale beer and
the smell of cold tobacco smoke--but it suited admirably the parties
to the conversation. There were sleeping rooms upstairs that could
be reached by a flight of stairs from the room itself. The windows
of most of these rooms were convenient to the houses next door.
Underneath, there was a cellar, also available through an interior
stairway, but with a semisecret exit through an adjoining cellar and
thence into a vacant lot.

“It’s a neat little dump,” said one of the speakers ironically, with
a glance for the squalor about him.

He was rather a dandified youth, dark and well barbered; but
dandified only according to certain standards. The new cap he wore
was pressed down too close to his ears. His necktie, also new, was
green and purple.

The man across the table from him was not so neat, although the
clothing he wore still had the creases of the store it had come
from. It was the man’s face, though, that would have kept almost any
one from remarking what he wore--a face that was white, exceedingly
bitter. It was the face of a monkey that had been bleached and
otherwise mistreated.

“It’s better’n stir,” protested monkey-face, getting the other’s
irony. “And how in hell am I goin’ to change it wit’ the bulls and
the stools of the whole world layin’ fer me?”

The other brought from his pocket a paper which he carefully unfolded
and flattened on the table. The paper was a poster. It was headed
“$300 REWARD.” Then there were a pair of portraits, full face and
profile. Under this was the information that the portraits were those
of Edward Rogers, alias Trick O’Ray, safe blower, escaped from San
Pedro, et cetera, et cetera.

The other compared the portraits with the face of the man opposite
him. He refolded the paper complacently.

“He thought of that, too, Trick,” said he.

“Who?”

“Three Sevens!”

“Was it him that sent you?”

“Who else? He says to me: ‘There’s only two birds in the country that
I’ll trust with this job. One of ’em’s Eddie Yarmouth, and he’s still
in stir out in old San Pedro,’ he says. ‘The other’s Trick O’Ray.’
Get me?”

“It’s all right fer you to talk, Mike,” said Trick, with a gust of
temperament. “But you seen for yourself.” He was referring to the
poster.

“’At’s what I’m telling you, Tricky. Three Sevens, he says, ‘Bring
Trick a fake birthmark, bring him some woman clothes--some of
Violet’s’, he says. ‘She won’t need her old ones any more.’”

“For the love of----”

Trick had suddenly clenched, not his fist, but his whole body. A
spasm of black passion came into his face.

“What?” he whispered.

“I thought you knew,” said Mike.

“What?”

“Everybody’s wise.”

“Wise _me_!”

“About Violet’s takin’ up with Benny Jarvis.”

“Him!”

“Sure, he comes to Chicago, sees her. Mebbe he don’t know she’s
yours.”

“Cut it!” said Trick hoarsely. “He was my pal in San Pedro.”

“What’s the answer?”

“I’m comin’ to Chi to kill him.”

“But first,” said Mike, “you’ll turn this job. What use’ll Violet be
to you, anyhow, if you’re broke?”

       *       *       *       *       *

By a coincidence which was not strange if all the facts were
known--Chicago had become the magnetic pole for yet another late
dweller in San Pedro, within the same week. The thing befell when the
steamer _Chihuahua_, from Vera Cruz, had barely made her berth in the
North River, New York.

A small messenger boy beat the first ship-news reporter up the
gangplank and began to bark a name. He didn’t pronounce it very well:

“Seenyore Edwardo Cortinnys Y. Ottero!”

A tall and slender man with classic features and a black beard who
had already joined the line of passengers waiting to leave the boat
called the boy.

“I am,” he said, with a slow and precise English, “Señor Cortinez.”

“Seenyore Edwardo----” the boy began again, studying the address.

“Si, Señor Eduardo Cortinez y Otero!”

“Sign here,” said the boy.

The tall man with the black beard made a mark on the book that might
have been a signature or not, staggered the boy with the gift of a
Mexican peso which later turned out to be bad, gave a glance about
him, opened his message, and read it at a glance.

It took him but a glance to read it, for the message consisted of but
two words, and one of these words was presumably the signature:

                             Official Max.

The message must have been clear, though, as well as brief. As
soon as the gentleman of the black beard had read it he crumpled
it into a tight ball. He dropped it into the muddy, churning water
between ship and piling. He did this casually, one would have said
absent-mindedly; but, at the same time, his eyes were flicking hither
and yon, and the muscles of his cheek were twitching, even as a cat’s
tail twitches at a moment of high tension.

Fear also can serve as a magnetic force, as much as love, or greed,
or jealousy.

The recent Count Wolf could have attested to that. Max was to have
met him here in New York. And there must have been a reason, good and
sufficient, why Max should have wired him from Chicago. As a matter
of fact, the reason was amply stated in that one word: “Official.”
In the vocabulary of both Max and the count, otherwise Señor Eduardo
Cortinez y Otero, that one word meant police, Federal agents, judges,
prison.

Count Wolf had had enough of “official” for a while. He was going
to Chicago as swiftly as he could. He prayed heaven--or hell--that
nothing should delay him.

As a matter of fact, all these men--Leamy, Trick O’Ray, Ben Jarvis,
and now Count Wolf, were fleeing as lovers elect to keep some mystic
rendezvous. Always it happens like that in the affairs of men.




                              CHAPTER XXI

                                PARLEY


That first Sunday out of Fairfield, Craig had earned his dinner by
pumping the organ in that church where he had slept--making it a
night and a day to recall his stern upbringing, and awaken the faith
of his ancestors.

After that, he had struck north, for no other reason than that he
knew that from Chicago came Ben Jarvis, and that Ben’s name was next
in that red ledger of his. He would have to take Ben. But his plans
were vague.

They were, until he came upon the deserted section of a Chicago
newspaper--part of a Sunday edition--and found therein two pages
devoted to himself. Three Sevens! Napoleon of the Underworld! He was
becoming legendary now. There was not only a lurid, but fascinating,
story of the great San Pedro revolution, and a corresponding account
of what had happened in Fairhaven, but all sorts of crimes and orgies
had been attributed to him as well.

He was reported to have broken the heart of an heiress in New York.
He was supposed to be the real brains back of a certain big bank
robbery in New Orleans. He owed his immunity not only to his own
unfailing wit and courage. An army of lesser crooks were ever at his
beck and call.

Craig didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. There was one thing,
though, that he had salvaged from the wreck of his career in college,
and that was a rudimentary knowledge of how to think--how to round
up a problem and get it started as a first step in its solution. He
did this now. Here was the problem: To use this fame of his to the
squaring of the red ledger.

His mind was like a spider, working day and night, spinning on a web
the design of which he had no preknowledge, and yet with the spider’s
persistence--with something also, had he only known it, of the
spider’s close adhesion to some universal law.

Thinking, perpetually thinking!

It was like the thinking he had done immediately after his disgrace
in college, again when he had permitted himself to be condemned
for another’s crime, again when he was in the dark cell. From one
dark cell he had merely escaped into a bigger one. The bigger dark
cell was composed of these present circumstances in which he found
himself. But, out of this cell also he would think his way and work
his way to the final freedom.

There were thoughts like this in his mind one afternoon while he was
piling cordwood in a wood yard far out in the outskirts of Chicago.
It was a large yard, covering a couple of acres, surrounded by a
board fence, with an office and a wide gate at one corner of it. The
place had seemed so open and safe, the work of a kind calling for
so little mental effort, and the world in general so friendly and
peaceful, that he had let himself go in his thinking altogether.

He was so occupied with the spinning of his mind that he never
noticed that a small and muddy auto had arrived at the gate of the
wood yard, that a man had got down from it, and that this man was
ex-Warden Green of San Pedro. The ex-warden had gone into the office.

“Why, let’s see,” said the proprietor of the place. “Yes, there was
a fellow I hired this morning that answers your description.”

The two of them had gone to the door.

“There he is. What did you say he’s wanted for?”

Green didn’t say. There was a dance of death inside of him, but his
exterior was stolid enough--big, bearded. He looked across the yard
shimmering in the June sunshine. There was the man who had shackled
him, made him the laughingstock of the country. He drew back.

Finally he went out to the muddy little auto and got a sawed-off
shotgun.

“You ain’t going to shoot him, are you?” demanded the proprietor of
the yard.

“Not unless I have to.”

“But you can’t shoot a man like that.”

“I’ve got a license and a warrant,” said Green. “He’ll come, all
right. Don’t you worry about that. But I haven’t followed him, foot
by foot, all the way from Fairhaven to let him get away from me now.”

Craig, still busy with his thought, turned a corner of the woodpile
on which he was working. As he did so, he was almost knocked from his
feet by a thrust of steel against his breast.

“Don’t move!”

He saw the double muzzle of the shotgun. Those black holes were
ready to spout fire. He saw Green looming just back of the gun.
It was Green who had spoken. Green wasn’t so stolid any more. The
hands that held the gun had a tremor in them, but it was the tremor
of restraint. The hammers of the gun were back. There was a finger
on the triggers. Just a little pressure, and Green would have that
vindication he was panting for.

Curious; but, even so, Craig was aware that his brain was spinning
again--placidly, as if aware that even this was part of the accepted
plan.

“If you shoot me,” said Craig softly, as if speaking with the
internal voice of his mind, “you’ll shoot an innocent man.”

“Stick ’em up,” said Green.

Craig did so, slowly, not very high. He heard voices and a sound of
running. In a couple of minutes there was going to be an audience. He
was willing. Green was the man to shoot him here back of the woodpile
so long as they were alone. He was not the man, perhaps, to do it if
there were others there to see.

“Green, you’re a fool,” said Craig.

The fire blazed in the other’s eyes. He mouthed an epithet through
his beard, as if to justify in his own mind the act he secretly
meditated.

“The truth will come out.”

“You’re damn right!”

“About--some one--dear to you.”

“I’ll make you keep your trap shut, you----”

“And you’ll wish you’d shot yourself instead. Do you know----”

“Turn round, and keep your hands up!”

“--why I went to prison?”

“Yes.”

“Ask your soul if you’re certain.”

There was no telling what response may have come back to Green from
his soul. It was something that caused his hand to shake. He was
remembering, moreover, in this connection, certain queer remarks,
certain unforgettable hints, that convict No. 3777 had dropped that
day of the great delivery. Curiosity, secret dread--these things
existed in the soul of Green as much as, and maybe a trifle more,
than they exist in the souls of most men who go up and down the earth.

“Stallin’, are you?” demanded Green coarsely, and he forced his
laugh. “Turn round, you pup.”

“You’ll never laugh again,” said Craig, himself remembering what he
had said on a former occasion. “Murder--such black murder! When the
truth comes out.”

Was this fellow referring, somehow or other, to Amy? The man with the
shotgun wondered. Strength was dribbling from him as from a leaky
pail. But he summoned his strength into solider shape--something
frozen and cold, like ice.

But Craig himself was as an intelligence disembodied, all mind.
There had been a score of men at work in the yard, mostly about some
coal piles on the other side. A couple of these cautiously appeared
from around a woodpile back of Green. A teamster climbed on the pile
itself at the side of Craig.

“Keep ’em up, and turn round,” said Green.

“Murder,” Craig repeated, and didn’t move. The audience was growing.
He had spoken just now for the others.

“What’s this?” demanded the teamster on the woodpile.

“I’m an officer of the law,” said Green.

“Prove it,” said Craig.

He could see without looking that the teamster on the woodpile was
gripping a stick of cordwood. The teamster might have been as pure
as the driven snow, but, again, he himself might have served a
prison sentence. He was a type of man Craig recognized--impulsive,
whole-hearted, especially when it came to serving the underdog, brave
as a lion. Maybe the ex-warden of San Pedro also recognized the type.

“Men----” he began.

Right then the tension broke. There had been a slight unflexing of
the hand controlling the triggers. Craig struck--down! There was the
suspended flash of fire, a roar. But the charge had passed Craig’s
knee, kicked up chips and dust on the earth as he sprang back.

Even so, Green might have got him with the other barrel, but the
teamster banged down his stick of wood just as the gun roared again.
Then Green was snatching at his revolver.

Craig went. He took the fence. He followed the fence around to a
corner where he saw a couple of men running toward the wood yard from
a corner saloon. Up the unbuilt street he saw a policeman turn and
stare.

There was a path leading down through deep weeds to a belt of marsh
partly filled in with ashes and other débris. Craig went through the
weeds and looked back. He saw that others were scaling the fence and
looking about them. Before he could get out of sight, some one saw
him, let out a whoop.

He ran out across the filled-in land and plunged over the edge of it.
For a while he was following the slope of it. He couldn’t turn back.
He dared not try the bog. It looked too treacherous. But, at the same
time, from the sounds that reached him, he knew that the chase had
begun, and that some of his pursuers were headed to cut him off.

He took a chance and stepped out into the bog where it looked as if
it might be solid enough to hold him. The first step sent him down
into the mud almost to the knees, but he floundered on.

Now it was a little better, now it was worse. But with every step
he was losing seconds. He heard shouts not far back of him, then
something that sounded like a command.

There was a shot--a revolver shot, this time. But whether it was
Green or the policeman who was using him for a target he didn’t stop
to investigate. He struggled on.

That first shot had been sent high, most likely. He hadn’t heard the
bullet. He was hearing bullets now. Some of them plumped in the mud.
Some whined past his head. He gained a bit of ground that was solider
than that through which he had just passed. There was an old log of a
fallen tree. He crawled back of this for a breathing spell.

He saw that he wouldn’t have much farther to go before reaching the
edge of a muddy stream--whether river or drainage ditch, canal or
open sewer, he didn’t care. The stream was an ally.

Beyond the stream there was a level acreage of railroad tracks, these
covered with cars--freight cars and passenger cars. Once across the
stream and among those cars he would be like a mouse in a wheat field.

With only a glance and scarcely a thought for those back of and
to either side of him--they were all distant--he plunged on ahead
through the remainder of the morass. Again the bullets “plopped” or
whined. But there was only one thing that worried him, now, even for
a moment. It was the fear that the mud on the edge of the stream
would be so soft and the water so shallow that he wouldn’t have a
chance to swim.

Even this fear was no sooner flickering in his mind than it had
flickered out. On the bank of the stream nearest him was a derelict
barge. He gained this, slid out into deep water.

       *       *       *       *       *

The papers carried a bit of this story also that evening. The stories
and the headlines differed with the different papers, but what was
in one was typical of them all--“Wild West Scene in Chicago Suburb!”
“Rube Sheriff Uses Shotgun!” “Masters, Famous Bandit, Swims to
Freedom!”

Craig read this and much else in the corner of a crowded saloon
well within the frontiers of the big town of the lakes. He had come
to Chicago on a criminal chase of his own. But now he knew that the
police of Chicago were looking for him. He himself had heard here and
there while on the road that here in Chicago were the favorite haunts
of other such men as Trick O’Ray, Ben Jarvis, and even the famous
swindler, Taylor Leamy.

But what were any of these compared to himself--his mythical
self--Masters, Three Sevens, the man who had cut himself from an iron
box and accomplished the greatest jail delivery in all history!

He kept his eye on the crowd about him--tramps and other hangers-on
of the railroads, mostly. Was he doomed to pass his life among such
as these? Then he perceived a small difference in one part of the
crowd--something that was hard to define. It was as if the interest
in the room, say, had been fluid, but in this one particular place
had coagulated or solidified.

He heard a sibilant whisper:

“Me mither’s ghost! If it ain’t Three Sevens himself!”




                             CHAPTER XXII

                            THE UNDERWORLD


It was Jim Bartow, the man who had occupied cell No. 1 of the
punishment block, back there in San Pedro. Not a bad sort. He had
tried crime as an experiment. The experiment had failed.

Craig answered a signal, and without haste, with all that elaborate
but stealthy watchfulness which Craig himself had learned was as
much a part of the lives of the hunted in big towns as it was in the
jungle, he and Bartow were outside.

“This way,” said Bartow.

He led the way down a narrow passage at the side of the building they
had left. They came into a dark yard. Here Bartow listened long. He
beckoned Craig to follow.

There was much of the jungle beast about this guide, Craig reflected.
His shoulders sloped. His strength and agility were disguised by an
apparent looseness and weakness of build. It was the head that made a
difference. Bartow’s head also contained a sort of thinking machine,
said Craig to himself, and it was working now.

“I came there to warn another pal of mine,” said Bartow, after a
while. “I got the tip straight that the bulls were out to-night for
an old-fashioned clean-up, all over the town, on account of that mess
you was in to-day over at the wood yard. You’re great.”

From the back yard of the saloon they had come into the rear areaway
of a block of tenement buildings. They went through the basement of
these into a shabby and shadowy street. They crossed this to a vacant
lot. At the next street they stopped. Not more than a couple of
hundred yards away a patrol wagon had halted near the curb. Policemen
were piling out of it.

“The tip was straight,” breathed Bartow.

Craig didn’t speak.

Bartow, by a roundabout course, had brought Craig to a tumble-down
shanty in the corner of a vacant lot. There he lit a lantern and
started to make coffee over a smelly oil stove.

“Me, I’m no good,” Bartow explained indulgently. “I got started
too late. The live ones, like in every other line, are specialists
these days. Am I right or am I wrong? The yeggs are yeggs. The
Dutch-house-men are Dutch-house-men. But you--holy smoke! I been
reading what the papers been printing about you--you’re an all-round
genius.”

“I hope you lay off the crooked stuff, Bartow,” said Craig, out of
his reflection.

“Sure.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Night watchman.” And Bartow vaguely indicated the cabin and the
vacant lot beyond. “It’s a political job.”

“Political?”

“Sure.” He gave Craig a survey of the situation. Almost every one
would be taken care of, until after election. The election was going
to be close. The reformers were getting together. “All any one has to
do to get a job,” said Bartow, “is to see Artie the lawyer.”

“Who’s he?”

“The man who hands out all the jobs and looks out for the ’bos and
the crooks.”

“That’s me,” said Craig.

Bartow laughed. “I guess you won’t be broke for long,” he said.
“Still, you’d better see Artie if you’re thinking of staying in
Chicago for a while. He’ll see that the dicks leave you in peace, at
least until after election.”

It was early morning when Craig found the Jake Exchange Bar, which
Bartow had informed him was the throne room of the lawyer he had come
to seek. The bar was a heavy and glittering oasis in the midst of
a crowded but dull and squalid neighborhood. And, early as it was,
Artie was there, like a good magistrate, ready to straighten out the
human tangles of the night.

Craig looked at him with interest--a small man with a keen but
degenerate face, a sagging lower lip and flapping ears, a big, soft,
pendulous nose; only his eyes were hard, glittering hard, and small
and cynical, and yet with something very human back of them--his vast
fund of purely human wisdom, perhaps.

Artie was leaning against the bar in a disconsolate attitude as
Craig drew near him. Artie hadn’t raised his head, but Craig knew
that he had been observed. Craig even felt a certain liking for this
chancellor of the underworld. At least, here was an intelligence.

There _was_ an underworld, Craig told himself, a little later on.
Artie had given him a card with a name scribbled on it, and this was
to serve him as a passport should the guardians of the law try to lay
hands on him.

He passed through crowded streets. He saw the cars crowded with
those who were going to work. Other crowds were about him--intent,
clean, human, faithful, brave. And these were the people on whom
that underworld battened--these girls and boys, men and women,
who worked--worked--worked! They didn’t know it, but he would be
fighting for them, from now on, forever. So he told himself. And it
was from this thought that his courage came.

Then Craig took an elevator to a small anteroom on one of the upper
floors of a skyscraper. From beyond the door there came a click of
typewriters, a vague smell of paper and ink. An office boy, with an
eye for Craig’s old clothes, asked him whom he wanted to see.

“The man who wrote this,” said Craig, and he showed the pages of the
Sunday story he had read.

“What do you want to see him for?”

“To give him a better story.”

“You got to see the Sunday editor,” said the boy, “and he ain’t here.”

Craig was about to turn away, when a tall young man with sandy hair
and hazel eyes stepped from the elevator. The young man looked at
Craig with a friendly but frank curiosity.

“Who is it for?” he asked.

“The Sunday editor,” Craig answered for himself.

“What do you want to see him about?”

“I had a story.”

“What sort of a story?”

“About”--Craig smiled--this man not much older than himself was easy
to talk to--“well, all about this matter of San Pedro, and the mob at
Fairhaven. You see, I’m the man----” Craig paused. “May I ask who you
are?”

The office boy almost fainted--twice: once when he heard Craig’s
statement, again when he heard Craig’s question.

Said the young man with the gray eyes and the sandy hair: “I’m
Courtney.”

“Connected with the paper?”

“Why, yes. I happen to own it. Come on in.”

It wasn’t merely an inheritance of great wealth that had made
Richard Courtney a man of prominence in the newspaper business, any
more than it was the good salaries he paid that made his paper a
power in politics. A year or so of journalism made cynics out of most
men. It had made no cynic of Courtney. His interest in humanity had
survived a half dozen years of exceedingly active politics.

With an air of nonchalance he conducted Craig through a large
room where young men sat in their shirt sleeves hammering at the
typewriters Craig had heard.

Some of them looked up, then went on with their work. It was nothing
new for the chief to come in with a man in old clothes. He was always
doing that. He had all sorts of friends. And some said it was a pose.
But stories often resulted--queer stories of obscure tragedy, or
humor, or of the underside of movements in mines and wheat fields,
forests and shipping.

The chief and his caller disappeared into the former’s private
office. They hadn’t been there long before the buzzer rang. The
office boy who answered the call came back and summoned the boy in
the anteroom. The boy from the anteroom entered the private office
and stood at awed attention. The chief and the ragged caller were
smoking, had the appearance of friends.

“Benny,” said the chief, “what did this gentleman say about himself
just now at the door?”

“Nuttin’,” said Benny, with prompt intuition.

“You’ll make a good newspaperman, Benny,” said the chief seriously.
“If any one asks you, tell them the same thing. Go tell Mr. Barden
that I said he’s to raise your pay. That’s all. And now----” The
chief had turned again to Craig.

“I’d feel better about this,” said Craig, after a time, “if I were
earning my own money. I want to work. I’m crazy to work. I’m an
engineer--or expect to be one. I don’t want gifts.”

“Gifts,” said Courtney. “Are you aware what a story like this will be
worth to a property like mine?”

“No, I was thinking only of its value to the community and myself.
Meanwhile, I want to work.”

Courtney regarded his visitor thoughtfully. He said:

“Work for me for a week or a month. There’s no time to lose, if we
are to get Wolf up from Mexico, locate Leamy, and bring him back.
Anyway, to do the thing right you’ll need more money in the next
thirty days or so than you could ever earn and be honest.”

“How do you know”--Craig hesitated for a moment before completing the
question--“that I am honest?”

“How do you know”--Courtney also hesitated--“that I’m honest myself?”

“It’s a case of trust,” said Craig. “When I came here, I was merely
trusting myself and people in general. I was going to tell my story,
tell what I was trying to do, what I had done in the past, and
expected to do in the future.”

“That was a good scheme, too,” said Courtney. “It always is, if a
fellow’s straight. But so few of us are straight enough. And, anyway,
you can always do that later on if things don’t go the way we expect
them to. Is it all understood?”

“I think so.”

“Let me repeat: First, to the cashier with your order for funds.
Second, what you need in the way of clothes and things. Third, a room
at the Ritz-Astor----”

“As Daniel Craig.”

“As Daniel Craig, and fourth, a conference to-night--formal dress--in
suite No. 53 with the district attorney. From this time on none of
us must ever be seen together.”

Those friends were right who said that all of Richard Courtney’s
brains were not under the hats of high-priced editors. Craig felt
that this was the truth as he stepped into the street. He had
Courtney’s money in his pocket. In exchange for this Courtney
had only his word. Yet Courtney had somehow divined that he,
Craig--escaped convict, “Napoleon of the Underworld”--held that given
word more precious than his eyes.




                             CHAPTER XXIII

                              THE LETTER


As Craig looked at himself in the long mirror of his own room in the
Ritz-Astor, that evening, there was no vanity in him, but he was
satisfied with the appearance that he made. Any man would have been.
He was the figure of a man to stir the admiration of men as much as
of women--tall, supple, narrow-waisted, broad and flat as to the
shoulders.

He had dined in his room, at Courtney’s suggestion. He glanced at
the small electric clock on the mantel. Eight thirty. Time for the
meeting in suite No. 53.

Craig had the comfortable feeling that neither did Courtney find
anything amiss with his appearance. Courtney was just a bit relieved,
perhaps. The district attorney was frankly surprised. He was an
elderly man, nervous and alert, and was also groomed to perfection.
His gray hair was curly and parted in the middle, the smooth waves
of it giving a rather effeminate air to his shaven face. Also, his
voice had a prettiness of accent and intonation that would have been
reckoned effeminate perhaps--except by those who knew his record or
had heard him in court.

“Mr. Craig, Colonel Bird.”

The two shook hands.

“Mr. Craig,” said the colonel, without loss of time, “Mr. Courtney
has told me about you. I dare say things will turn out nicely. Has
he told you about political conditions here in the county? No? Well,
it will require but a word. I happen to have the honor to be the
candidate again of the coalition. You’ve heard about that. No? Well,
I detest the word, but it will perhaps make it clearer to you when I
call them the Reformers--the better elements. How about it, Courtney?”

“Right! That’s why I’m backing you.”

“Thank you, sir. And opposed to me I have the other part of the
community, particularly the criminal elements, both little and
big--and with excellent reason. Am I overstating it, Courtney?”

“Not at all, colonel; not at all.”

“And, as occasionally happens in even the best of communities, I have
established, in my own mind, that the police and the crooks are again
in collusion. You will understand, sir, that I have devoted a large
part of my life to fighting corruption. If I err, Courtney, I’ll be
grateful if you set me right.”

“You haven’t erred yet, colonel.”

“The point is, as I take it, to establish this collusion in such a
striking way that the great masses of citizens--I detest the term,
but the proletariat, let us say--the great majority of whom are
always honest, will be impressed. Nothing does impress them unless it
is hammered into their skulls. I do not wish to exaggerate, but they
must see that this collusion actually and as a matter of fact does
exist.”

“Yes, sir,” said Craig.

“You are pledged, I apprehend, to the taking of certain well-known
and notorious offenders.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In that case, it is one of my prerogatives to assist you in every
way I can. Let us suppose that you were to assemble these offenders
in a certain place, at a certain time, when they will have had reason
to believe that they had bought immunity from the police--not all the
police, mind you, the great majority of whom are always honest--but
the principals. I believe there are such, Courtney.”

“You said it, colonel.”

“Then, let us suppose that my men should accomplish the arrest
without the cognizance of the police, and that this should occur just
about a week before election.”

“Two weeks,” said Courtney.

“Two weeks,” amended the colonel. “But, of course, the criminals
arrested should have to be of a certain eminence, a certain
notoriety.”

“How would Leamy do?” asked Craig.

“Excellent!”

“And Trick O’Ray, the safe blower?”

“Excellent! Most excellent!”

“Then, Count Wolf?”

“Really! Really! Courtney, is this possible?”

“Worth trying, colonel. It’s got to be big, or we can’t win with even
you on the ticket--not even with your record!”

“And Ben Jarvis,” said Craig. “I think that I can get him, also. I
understand that he’s hiding out here in town, somewhere.”

“Ben!” exclaimed the colonel with warmth. “He was one of the first
men I ever sent to prison.”

“I hope to do most of this myself,” said Craig. “It’s a personal
debt. But I may need the help of your office and of Mr. Courtney’s
paper in getting a line on various friends and past performances of
the men we’re after.”

After Craig said good night to his rich and powerful friends a little
later he dared let his thought go, almost for the first time, openly
and without apology, to Joan Gracie.

He had returned to his room.

He thoughtfully undressed. He pulled on a bathrobe. His eye rested on
a writing desk. Paper, pen, and ink silently approved his longing,
bade him to write to her. He seated himself at the desk.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Joan Gracie received the letter that Craig had written her, she
was in an instant tremor.

She read his letter twice:

     DEAR JOAN:

     I think about you very often. It gives me strength. I want
     all the strength in the world, and I’ll have it, too. The
     red ledger is not a debt. It’s an asset. But I am fixing
     to pay off the debt in it, and become rich, and powerful
     and great, to justify your faith in me. Think of it! I am
     Daniel Craig again. I have a beautiful room here in the
     great and palatial Ritz-Astor. And I have friends whose
     faith also I’ll justify in justifying yours. It’s not in
     any ordinary way, and I know you will understand how I mean
     it, when I sign myself,

                             Yours truly,
                                        DANIEL CRAIG.

The queer thing was that she did understand. She understood in all
the ramifications of the word. Had she been Craig’s mother she could
not have understood better, nor if she had been Craig himself.

She had been sitting on the porch of her home in Fairhaven. Heavily
screened with vines, it had the seclusion of a room, and she wasn’t
expecting callers. She certainly wasn’t expecting the caller who came.

It was Gary Lee. Gary had, or thought he had, sufficiently quenched
the burning in his bosom to come and see Joan again. He wasn’t going
to apologize to her. Not that. On the other hand, it was absurd that
a mere convict could come between him and her. And, well--there went
that glow of heat in his breast again, as if he were jealous, as if
it were imaginable that Joan could possibly prefer a convict to the
only son of the Lees.

But, about a minute before Gary arrived, Aunt Katherine, who had
continued to live with Joan ever since the riot, while a gardener
cared for her flowers, called to Joan for some small service or
other, and Joan had bounced to obey. She wasn’t there when Gary came
up to the porch, but the disorder she had left was eloquent of her
recent presence and of her certain return.

Gary, perfectly at home, strolled toward the hammock. He was going to
stretch himself out in the hammock, light his pipe, and then, when he
heard Joan come, pretend that he was asleep. There’d be a laugh when
she saw him--no awkward embarrassment.

But there were a couple of letters in the hammock, tossed there,
ready for mailing.

Gary picked them up. He was as innocent as a new-born babe. By sheer
accident, or some devil inspiration, and still without thought of
evil, his eye fell on the address:

                          DANIEL CRAIG, ESQ.

He gasped.

Then the Maltese terrier began to bark, and he heard Joan coming.
He had time to drop the letter back to the hammock, but not time to
readjust his expression, let alone to escape. The flame was in his
heart. The heat of it was in his face.

Joan saw that something was up instantly. She had been glad to see
him. Now she stopped short.

“Well?” she said.

There was no use bluffing. Anyway, that was foreign to their
natures, especially in their own relationship.

“I saw your letter by accident,” said Gary.

“That’s all right, Gary.” She had an urge to consolation. “Sit down.”

Gary sat down. He wanted to master himself, but his desire to protest
was the greater.

“Writing to him?” he said.

“Yes.”

“‘Daniel Craig, Esquire!’”

“If you’ve come here to quarrel with me----”

“I came here to call--make up--ask you to take a spin, and I find----”

He stopped. His voice was getting husky. He was trembling with rage.
Joan felt sorry for him. Her family and his had been friends. He and
she had been playmates. His temper was a disease. She tried to reason
with him.

“Gary, you have everything in the world--a good name, a good family,
wealth, a fine brain----”

“Bah!”

“Every one says so. Don’t you think it would be the nice thing, and
the noble thing, to be a little charitable?”

“Pleading for him, are you?”

“I’m pleading for you,” she said gently.

“I need it more than he does.”

“You’re here. You’re hurt.”

“I know I’m hurt. I’ll admit it. You know I can’t tolerate this--this
felon intruding himself into your life. You don’t care. You encourage
him.”

“I want to encourage him,” said Joan steadily, “but not the way you
mean.”

“What, in Heaven’s name, is your father thinking about?”

“He himself is now convinced that Craig was never guilty of the crime
for which he was punished.”

“You persuaded him.”

Joan slowly shook her head. “There’s a man in San Pedro now who heard
a boy in Chicago tell about the shooting--a boy who takes drugs. The
boy says he himself shot the man Beekman.”

“This letter writing, I mean. What does your father think of that?”

“He doesn’t know anything about it.”

“He doesn’t?”

“For two reasons. He’s always trusted me in such matters. And this is
the first letter I’ve written.”

“Then tear it up.”

“No.”

“Tear it up! Joan, tear it up!”

“Gary, you’re unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable! I love you. I’m going to make you marry me. I find
you writing to an outlaw, an escaped convict--dazzled by his fame,
Napoleon of the Underworld! Bah! And I tell you--you call me
unreasonable----”

He hadn’t been speaking very loudly, but he had gradually been
letting his passion get the better of him. He went incoherent. His
voice was strangled. He seized the letter from the hammock and
lacerated it with his fists.

It was all up, all over. There was never going to be a marriage of
Joan Gracie and Gary Lee. Knowledge of this possibly came to both of
them right then and there. Perhaps neither of them, in spite of Lee’s
declarations, had ever suspected before just what a large place this
possibility had had in their lives. It had been a mountain in the
mental landscapes of both of them, even in Joan’s. Now the mountain
was gone.

The surprising discovery was not a signal for fresh passion, not
of emotion, even. The resultant coldness between them, as they
stood there and faced each other on the porch, could not be called
emotion. It was a vacuity; still, with that hint of an ache in it
which vacuity so often entails.

“I--didn’t--mean to go so far,” said Gary.

“Sit down,” said Joan.

He reseated himself. He lit a moody cigarette. His eyes were on the
floor of the porch. There was a passage of seconds before he found
that he was looking at the letter he had twisted. He picked it up. He
returned it to the hammock. Joan also had seated herself. She made a
blind movement to pick up a bit of sewing.

Her eyes were down. He looked at her.

“You know how I feel,” he said.

She gave him a bright look. It was manifest there was no anger in her
at all.

“I think I do, Gary.”

“Then what’s the trouble all about?”

“It’s because,” she hesitated, “I don’t want you to think me unjust.”

“Say it.”

“It’s because you don’t seem to know how other people feel.”

He meditated.

“We might as well beat this thing out.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve known me all your life--known my family, my family history.”

“We’ve quarreled and made up,” said Joan. “If your sister, Alice--you
know how she and I loved each other even when we were mere babies--if
Alice had lived, she couldn’t have taken a greater interest and pride
in you than I have, Gary.”

“Yet you let this convict--that’s what he is; there’s no use in
mincing matters--wreck our friendship.”

“It’s you who are wrecking it, Gary.”

“In what way?”

“By your injustice--by trying to dictate to me.”

“I won’t stand by and see you ruin yourself and your father. This
fellow isn’t worth it. All the jailbirds in the country aren’t worth
it. If you’re blind I’ll show you the light.”

“In what way?”

“First, by putting him back behind the bars, where he belongs.”

“And if he doesn’t belong there?”

“But he does. He broke jail. That’s a felony in itself. He compounded
the felony by turning the others loose.”

“But there is evidence that he is innocent, that he should never have
gone to prison.”

“That’s irrelevant. I know where he is. It’s my duty--my double duty,
in the light of all that I know, and have done, to get him back.”

He got up. His anger was warming again, but this time his brain was
in control.

“Gary!”

“I’m going to send a telegram.”

“Stop! You mustn’t.”

“Why?”

“In a little while--just a little while--he’ll be pardoned. And in
the meantime he is trying to pay a debt.”

Gary laughed.

“There’ll be high times,” he said, “when women are running things:
sentimentality for justice, intuition instead of logic.”

It was his tone more than his words that made Joan flare. All of her
carefully suppressed feeling of a little while ago began to show
through her reserve like little tongues of flame.

“You’re silly.”

“Am I?”

“You’re making yourself unhappy, and you’re making others unhappy. I
don’t care. Do what you want to.”

“It’s just because you don’t care that I’m going to straighten this
thing out.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll wire the governor. There is
just about time to get the requisition papers through. Our man ought
to be on his way back to San Pedro by to-morrow night.”

He picked up his hat. She blocked his way, panted into speech.

“You talk about caring. You! What a mockery it was! You, who
pretended to love me, who talked of my marrying you! What a mockery
it was! You!”

“I started out to say something along that line,” he said tensely,
but quietly enough. “You turned me off. I offered you everything I
have and am. You seem to prefer this outlaw.”

“I’m not considering him as an outlaw.”

“Perhaps you’re considering him as a friend.”

“What if I should?”

“I dare say he’d be delighted.”

“Do you want to read the letter that he wrote me?”

“No, I do not.”

“There’s nothing in it that any one might not read. You’re wronging
him, Gary.”

“By heavens, Joan,” he exploded--still softly--“you’ll end by making
me think that you’re in love with this brute.”

“He’s not a brute.”

“You do love him.”

“Maybe I do.”

“The daughter of Major Gracie in love with----”

“Keep quiet! Don’t talk to me! Love! You don’t know the meaning of
the word. You babble it as if it were a plaything or an acre of land.”

“I loved you long enough.”

“You never did. You wanted me for yourself! You meant to take me for
yourself! And you called that love!” Her voice faltered a little. She
bit her lip. She turned her face away. But immediately she was facing
him again, her eyes darker than usual, blue and liquid fire. “And
it’s giving--not taking--that is love.”

For a moment longer they were facing each other, each of them a frail
human dike to the big emotions storming back of them; or, rather,
perhaps, the head of an arrow in a bent bow.

Their eyes were clashing, but neither spoke, as Gary passed the girl
and descended the steps.




                             CHAPTER XXIV

                             IN THE THROES


From that first interview of his with the field marshals of the
reform movement, Craig had slipped back again into the camp of the
enemy. There was that girl named Violet, whom Bartow had incidentally
mentioned to him as a friend of Trick O’Ray. Through her he had
learned of the hiding place of Ben Jarvis.

Dangerous business, with danger lurking around a dozen corners; a
nether region, sure enough, where all was darkness, figuratively
speaking, and the nerves of the inhabitants thereof were what might
be expected of the nerves of those who live in the dark. Each one
uncertain as to what the next minute might show; each one ready to
strike his neighbor; with friends and foes all intermingled; no man
or woman fully trustful of any one but himself or herself.

Something of an event, though, the arrival of this distinguished
stranger known and honored as Three Sevens.

It didn’t matter very much where he came from, or what his remote
ancestors were. He was young. He was good to look at. He apparently
had all the money in the world. He was famous. He had emptied a
prison single-handed. Here he was, still at large, defying arrest,
with all the audacity of a pirate walking the streets of old
Charleston.

It wasn’t only the audacity, though, that appealed to Violet’s heart.
Here was a gentleman. Where did she get it--that hankering for
politeness and consideration? Where did the flower, her namesake,
get its hankering for sun and air? Violet was young. Violet was
comely.

There was another lady--a lady, perhaps, the other way round. That is
to say, well-bred, educated, beautiful, costumed like a Fifth Avenue
heiress. The lady who was the friend of Max, who was the friend of
Count Wolf. And yet, so they said, a lady who would have poisoned
one’s wine as quickly as anybody, should that be necessary--either
on her own account or on account of any one with sufficient power or
sufficient money to get her to act.

“_La Marebello_”--the Marebello--some even called her the Princess
Marebello!

With her also Craig became acquainted. In her also it is just
possible that Craig may also have awakened some faint murmur of
long-forgotten voices. How strange, when he was so young, that he
should hold so aloof from flattery, from wooing.

It was she who told Craig not only about Max and Count Wolf, and
where the latter could be reached, and most hastily brought to
Chicago; she gave him also queer bits of information from high
official sources, things that ensnared his reputation, gave him
moments of uneasiness, made him hasten his plans.

For example, she told him that Artie, the lawyer, had been arrested.

“By the police?”

No, not by the police, but by the detectives attached to the district
attorney’s office, and that the maneuver had thrown a scare into
certain persons.

“The crooks?”

No; the police; especially the head of the police system; to be
particular, into the stout person of Captain Fleyenhall.

“Who’s Fleyenhall?”

Didn’t he know? What a baby he was! Ah, my dear little Three Sevens!
Why, Fleyenhall was the real ruler of the police department, the
minister plenipotentiary--the Marebello could use words like that--of
all the crooked politicians.

There was even a third woman, a retired little widow in a retired
little street, who had lost all her money once in a crooked mining
scheme, with the crookedness whereof the widow, needless to say,
had nothing to do. And it was to her house that the once wealthy
and powerful Taylor Leamy, reported dead in San Francisco as the
result of a drowning accident, but none the less very much alive, was
directed to seek lodging. Lodging the widow gave him. It was a quiet
retreat--just such a retreat as Leamy loved when lying low, waiting
for the big money to come his way again.

Complicated, yet simple, the problem that confronted Craig. He was at
times like a keeper in a cage of wild animals--one of those so-called
“happy families,” where polar bear and tropic snake, the big cats and
fear-crazed apes are congregated under the will--the cruel will and
the fateful will--of the animal god, man.

Craig felt himself such a keeper, more than once, with full knowledge
that a little flinching, a slight misstep, would spill his blood in
the sawdust.

More often, though, when he closed his eyes, he saw himself at the
center of a whirling vortex. It was like one of those photographs of
a tailless comet, or of a spiral nebula where a brand-new world is
taking shape.

And now into the whirling nebula of this new universe that was
forming for him, there had entered the greatest force of all
forces--greater than the forces that swing the stars through
space--love! Otherwise, would the nebula have been there at all?
Probably not in his case, at any rate, nor in the case of any man.

He carried Joan’s photograph with him wherever he went. She had sent
it to him. It was his fetish, his lucky charm.

It made him sure of himself when he was luring Count Wolf up from his
retreat beyond the Mexican border, enticing Leamy from his hiding
place in Cincinnati, getting Trick O’Ray to crawl out of his rat hole
over there in East St. Louis, and then preventing Trick from taking
the life instantly of the too gallant Ben Jarvis, who had held up and
shot the new warden on the very day of his escape from San Pedro.

Craig actually was accomplishing a work that no ordinary detective
could have accomplished.

Those men he was after knew that their days of utility to the real
ruler of the underworld were past. Prison had soured and embittered
them. They were no longer the gay and gallant creatures they had been
in the past: older, shrewder, wickeder, more avid and desperate of
success. They were flecks in the nebula, and they themselves were
electric and as devoid of mercy as shooting stars as they neared the
vortex. It took a power like Craig’s to set them in motion, direct
their orbits to the lines of eventual order.

No stool pigeon could have moved very far in this business without
getting shot or dirked.

Nor, as Craig was increasingly aware, were these criminals he was
after the dominant elements in this tightening whirl of movement of
which he was the vortex.

There was the political campaign which had come to be, to a large
measure, a part of the same labor of creation. It was a hot campaign.
It was vital. So several million human beings were regarding
it--themselves like stardust in motion--part of a planetary movement
in which they were all engaged, but over which they had no control.
You could see it by the way they read their papers as they swung
from workshop to home, from home to workshop, or pressed around the
soap-box orators in the streets at night, or jawed each other in
saloons and clubs.

Caught in the same movement were others whose presence in it had not
been divined by either Craig’s friends, Courtney and Colonel Bird on
the one hand, or Craig’s enemies--the crooked politicians, and big
Captain Fleyenhall--on the other.

The governors of two sovereign States were wrangling--still in
secret, so far as the public was concerned--as to whether or not
Craig should be extradited. Not Craig, but Thomas Masters, No. 3777,
on the rolls of San Pedro.

Ex-Warden Green, of San Pedro, had himself been arrested by an
officer of the district attorney’s office, and had then been released
on his promise to go home, with his double-barreled shotgun; but it
was only to be picked up again in a friendlier fashion by another
detective, from police headquarters this time, who advised him to
stay in town.

Green also was whirling around that vortex, which was Daniel Craig.
He was to whirl faster yet before long.

It was Artie the lawyer who was going to see to that. Artie himself
was whirling to a certain extent, as if he himself had been caught
in the drag of some planetary current that was spinning him to an
unknown destination.

Yet Artie wasn’t altogether blind as to what was going on, either. In
fact, it was his knowledge of what might be going on a little later
that had caused Artie to cast off the moorings of a lifetime and join
the aforesaid whirl.

Secretly Artie was getting ready to abandon the crooks and all their
works. Not merely because Artie had had a bad hour with Colonel Bird.
Nor was it merely because Artie believed that the reformers were
going to carry the present campaign. Often enough in the past he had
followed the boss into temporary retirement. Such retirements always
were temporary. There had always been compensations, moreover, for
any reversal that might befall at the polls. It was nothing so big as
a political campaign that could have shifted Artie from his safe and
comfortable berth at the Jake Exchange.

No, it was a little thing. After all, it isn’t the storm that wrecks
the ship tied up at the wharf. It’s the dropped match, or a rat, or
an inch of faulty insulation.

The little thing in Artie’s case was a certain young man he had
always known as Brewster, who had come to him first as a shivering
but fairly decent country boy, confessing that he had killed a man,
on his sister’s account, and asking what he should do. He had advised
the boy. Now the boy was a wreck.

The whole scene had come back to Artie one night while he was sitting
in the presence of Captain Fleyenhall sipping champagne.

Artie was no fool; not in the ordinary sense of the word. That night,
as he had sat there sipping champagne, a certain fact had kept
knocking at the door of that inner chamber of his consciousness where
he kept so many secrets locked in. But he had to find out for sure
the boy’s real name.

There were great forces in motion, assuredly. And even more than
Craig himself perceived, was he the vortex of them. So far as he was
concerned, he had directed some of these forces with wisdom and care.

It was coming toward five o’clock, at a season of the year when this
meant early twilight. In the corridors of the office building the
lights had already been turned on, but the only light in the office
itself was that of the afterglow that came in through the western
windows. Craig turned from one of these windows in response to a
knock at the door. Who was it? He had a hand on the revolver in the
side pocket of his coat as he stepped over to the door and threw it
open.

At first all that his eyes would tell him was that a girl was
standing there. Beyond this he could scarcely believe his eyes. He
had been thinking of Joan. Here she was. It was too much like magic.

“Joan!”

He stepped back. She entered. It was she who closed the door. She
looked at him for a moment in silence. She was as if short of breath.
But almost instantly she smiled slightly. She put a hand to her
breast.

“I was frightened,” she confessed.

“Come over and sit down,” he said. She followed him toward a chair.
His mind was in a riot. So it was really she. This was no magic after
all, other than the magic of all natural events. “I didn’t know that
you were in Chicago.”

“We just arrived,” she said.

“You and your father?”

“Yes.”

“I shall be glad to see him.”

“We came on your account.”

“On my account? How did you find me here?”

“You were in danger,” gasped Joan.

“I’ve been living in danger.”

“I know.”

“And your father?” Craig asked.

“He was delayed. I think he may have been delayed for a purpose. I
was in the room waiting for him when the telephone rang. I answered.
It was some one who said he was--it sounded like Artie----”

“Artie the lawyer.”

“He wanted to talk to father. I told him who I was. He said: ‘For
Heaven’s sake, get word to Craig that----’ He was speaking so rapidly
and softly, as if he were in a hurry and afraid that he would be
overheard--that Banson--Benson----”

“Bannister?”

“That was it; that Bannister was coming to kill you.”

“Here?”

“He gave me the address. That was all I could remember distinctly;
all I prayed not to forget.”

“Where were you and your father?”

She named a hotel.

“How did Artie the lawyer know you were there?”

“Father has been in communication with him.”

“About?”

“Your pardon. There’s a man in San Pedro who told us about the boy
who shot Beekman; said that we could get confirmation from this man.”

Craig spoke softly and reverently. “Heaven bless you and your father
for the greatest people in the world! I love you both so I’d die for
you. Only, never has life been so precious to me, Joan; all sky,
Joan, like the view from this window. Let me tell you now, while
there’s yet time. I’ve been counting on a pardon--just how I wasn’t
sure. But I have friends who believe in me, and there’s a whole
empire down in the Southwest that they’re going to send me to, an
empire to conquer, reconstruct. It’s mostly sky, and rock, as yet.
But in my mind I’ve seen it transformed. You and I--Joan, do you love
me?”

“I--I----”

He knelt down in front of her. He took her hands. She lowered her
face like a bashful child. One of his own hands crept up her arm.

“Now,” said he, “nothing can happen to me. I’m as safe as Achilles,
and even the heel is immune. Hurry back to your hotel before your
father has a chance to worry about you. Tell him what has happened,
of course. Tell him that I shall hope to see him to-night, or
to-morrow morning.”

“You’ll not come with me now?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“This is the time, almost the hour, when I am to wipe out the rest of
the debt in the red ledger.”

“No, no! Come with me!”

“Joan!”

“But I’m frightened.”

“You need not be. What have I just been telling you? Aren’t you my
guardian angel? Haven’t you just put me on my guard?”

“But this Bannister!”

“Will be surprised.”

“You know him?”

“Count Wolf, late of San Pedro.”

“Count Wolf, of the red ledger?”

“The same.”

“Daniel, let us call the old debts off.”

“Joan!”

They had been standing in the twilight, the deepening twilight,
lit ineffectually by the glimmer that came in from the hall and
the last green glow of the west, where a single white star blazed.
Craig drank in the poetry of the girl’s presence here with him at
an hour like this. They were like cave dwellers, with a cave far up
a mountainside. Here in the heart of the big city the noises that
reached them were hushed and small. The voices of the multitude and
of the machines--trolleys and motors, trains and ships--were but as
the chirping of crickets and the booming of frogs.

Craig put out his hand, and the electric light was on. As if it also
were in response to his touch, a door leading into an inner office
opened and a strongly built young man appeared. He blinked at Craig
and Miss Gracie.

“I beg your pardon,” he began.

“That’s all right, Smith,” laughed Craig softly.

The man called Smith disappeared. Craig smiled at Joan.

“That ought to assure you,” he said. “Mr. Smith is of the district
attorney’s staff. I have help at hand in case of emergency. But I am
to do this myself--to give Courtney his big story----”

“Courtney?”

Craig explained. It was Courtney who had put these offices at his
disposition. They were directly over the offices of Courtney’s paper.
A special stairway had even been cut from that inner room to the
floor below.

“My trap,” said Craig. “Let Wolf come. But you, Joan----”

“You mean that that bandit was coming to see you here, anyway?”

“Yes, and others.”

“But he intends to kill you.”

“He must have got wind of what was going on. He’ll not kill me. But
hurry, Joan.”

“And leave you?”

“You must. I shan’t be alone--not for long. Count Wolf, who has been
going under the name of Bannister, was to meet Leamy here, with the
idea of robbing him. Wolf expects to rob Leamy, Leamy expects to rob
the supposed Bannister. Trick O’Ray’s coming to crack this safe.
Ben Jarvis comes to blackmail me. But I’ve been working with the
district attorney. Listen!”

In response to his abrupt command they both turned and looked in the
direction of the door leading to the outer corridor. They heard the
faint rasp of a key in the lock. Then, before either of them could
move or utter a word, the door slowly opened.




                              CHAPTER XXV

                                GHOSTS


It was as if the voice were a harbinger of the rather more ghostly
things that were to follow. As a matter of fact, the voice was one
that Craig recognized. The recognition brought dismay with it rather
than fear--perhaps disgust rather than dismay. It was the voice of
the ex-warden of San Pedro. It was followed by Green himself. He came
into the room slowly. His eyes had never wavered from Craig, but he
had also seen that a girl was there. Craig hadn’t moved.

Said Green:

“Try anything this time, and a wild bullet may hit this little friend
of yours.”

That would hold him.

“What do you want?” asked Craig.

“What do I want?” And Green’s voice was shaking with his pent-up
emotion. “Oh, Heaven! Now, what do I want!”

“Don’t!” cried Craig.

There was fear in his cry this time, all right, but it was fear for
Joan. She had stepped between Craig and the big ex-warden as calmly
as a mother would have stepped between a child and a vicious dog.

“Get back!” panted Green. “Or, by thunder----”

He stopped as he saw who it was. The rage and the triumph in his face
took on an infusion of dirty mirth.

“What do you want?” Joan demanded in turn.

“A pretty howdy-do!” droned Green through his beard. “You and
this here con together, eh? Just as I suspected! Warden’s gal!
Highfalutin’ society folks! Why, now I have got you to rights, both
of you, and damn me if I wouldn’t just as leave shoot one as t’other,
or both--and good riddance. Stand aside.”

“Green!”

The ex-warden gave a slight jerk. Craig’s voice had snapped like a
pistol shot.

“Hold up your hands,” said Green.

“First, I’ll remind you of your own daughter,” said Craig, softly and
rapidly, between closed teeth. “Have you forgotten about her?”

“You shut up. Are you goin’ to resist arrest?”

“Would you like to see her again?”

“Shut up!”

“She’s here.”

“I’ll show----”

There was no telling what Green would have done next. Those private
dreams of his were dancing in his brain. He was asking himself if
this wasn’t “resisting arrest.” Only, there was a witness--and such a
confusing witness! Again, he knew himself to be somewhat unnerved by
that surprising reference that Craig had made to a family secret. But
surprise is dangerous to a man of Green’s type--apt to startle the
mad tiger of his nature into a premature leap.

“She’s here,” said Craig steadily.

Then, there was another ghostly voice--it must have sounded ghostly
to Green, all right, to judge from the way he took it.

“Father!”

She came in from the middle office. Courtney had seen that she should
be there, Green’s lost daughter Amy, she who called herself “Mrs.
Beekman.”

Green had the look about him of one who has been surprised in the
dark by a flash of light or an unexpected noise. He still held his
weapon presented. He still kept his eyes on Craig. But he had heard
that voice. The Lord only knows what memories it may have awakened!

“Amy!” he gasped.

Craig, watching his opportunity, and knowing that death was still,
so to speak, an invisible onlooker in the room, ready to take a hand
at any moment, stepped swiftly forward and in a flash secured the
warden’s weapon.

“You won’t need it,” said Craig.

But it is doubtful if the warden heard him. Green was looking at
this apparition of his daughter, Amy--Mrs. Beekman. Almost any one
would have found that lady ghostly, not to say ghastly--white-faced,
unhealthy, stricken with her own tragic memories. She tried to smile
at her father. Her flat breast heaved. Any one could see that a sob
or a few tears would have been of the greatest relief to her, but
neither came.

“How’d you git here?” asked Green.

Such is the language of real emotion.

“Mr. Courtney--he’s the gentleman I’ve been working for--thought I
ought to tell you----”

The ex-warden of San Pedro here got a fresh grip on himself. He
turned from the pale girl roughly. Perhaps it was too much for him
to see those twin dreams of his fading so rapidly. His voice was a
throaty growl as he spoke to Craig:

“So you’ve dragged my daughter into this, too, have you? Thought
to save yourself! I’ll show you! I’ll show you!” He spoke to his
daughter. “And you! Stayed away from me all this time only to show
up now to fight for this dirty crook! What do you mean by lettin’
him use you? Hadn’t you fallen low enough already--brought enough
disgrace on me--you--you----”

No one else was speaking or trying to speak. Craig, with a dawning
knowledge of what might have been on the way, himself was spellbound.
So was Joan Gracie. She also may have guessed. Certainly the daughter
of Samuel Green must have known. Only the father himself was
altogether blind, altogether unsuspecting.

Through the door from the inner office came Artie the lawyer. Craig
remembered certain hints that Courtney had dropped from time to time.
And Artie was followed by a youth even more pallid than this sister
of his. It was she who whispered his name.

“Brewster!”

Green echoed the name with his mouth open.

“Brewster!”

He slowly turned. Father and son were looking at each other, the
father numbed, transfixed, the boy merely nervous and diffident.

“Hello, governor!”

The boy tried an assumption of nonchalance. He pulled himself
together. He made a step forward briskly to where Green stood, ready
to shake hands with him, ready to embrace him--do anything filial.

But whatever his intentions were they were to be deferred. He hadn’t
taken two steps before his wandering, rather embarrassed, furtive
eyes found Craig. Craig had backed against a window, Joan at his
side. All this was a very fast little drama, with something about it
that neither the speech nor the action quite conveyed. Somehow, as
an imaginative witness would have said, as if there were actors and
elements there that were invisible, that were ghostly, the ghost,
perhaps, of the murdered Beekman.

And there was something ghostly in the face of Daniel Craig. He
looked at the boy Brewster, and the boy Brewster looked at him.
There was no great difference in their ages, but suddenly it was as
if Brewster were shriveled and old, Craig towering. But Craig was
towering with an odd mixture of both triumph and pity. He choked out
a whisper:

“You don’t have to tell!”

“What?”

It was a cry from the heart of Green, as if he were beginning to
comprehend. Brewster was mute. He let his sister speak.

She told how she had met Mr. Beekman, and gave a flitting glimpse of
their romance--he the handsome stranger coming to town on some local
contracting job, and how he had sympathized with her. Said this pale,
hollow-eyed girl: “He was the only man that ever understood me.” And
then the local job was done, and Mr. Beekman had gone over to the
Stonehill construction work, and forgot his promises, and forgot to
write to her, and everything.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” queried Green hoarsely, through his beard.

“I was afraid of you,” said the girl.

“When I tried to bring you up God-fearin’----”

“You always laughed whenever I cried----”

Green wasn’t laughing now. He recalled what Craig had said about
Green’s never laughing again.

So Amy had confided her story to her brother, Brewster, and Brewster
had conceived that he was acting as any man should when he filched
one of his father’s own revolvers----

“They might ’a’ thought it was me,” said Green, looking at Brewster.

The boy sniffed and worked his shoulders, meaning thereby to indicate
that he would have looked out for that end of it all right. And
Brewster went over to Stonehill merely intending to frighten Mr.
Beekman and make him come back.

Green, shaken, as if emptied of his bigness and strength, turned to
where Craig stood. At last Green was seeing the story whole, putting
into it those several things that Craig had said to him on occasion.

“And you knowed my boy done it?”

Craig nodded.

“Why--why----”

Said Courtney: “It looked like the hand of Providence.”

It must have looked like Providence to Craig--some sort of divine
intervention--when he saw entering the office just now from the same
door by which Courtney had come, two men whom, of all the men in the
world, he just then most desired to see. One of them was Colonel
Bird, the district attorney. The other was Major Gracie. Old friends
they were, and now brought together in a cause that had become vital
to both of them. They had called to see Courtney, had learned that
Courtney was here. His private secretary had seen that they found him
without loss of time.

There was a momentary interruption when they came into the room.
Gracie was surprised to see his daughter. She ran to greet him. Bird
and Courtney exchanged a word.

But that other drama--the drama of the former warden of San Pedro
and his family, a drama in which Craig had been destined to play so
bitter a rôle--was tumbling forward, clumsily yet swiftly, of its own
momentum, and would know no interference.

Green himself was as a man who has been stricken with paralysis of
brain as well as body. He put out his hands as if he didn’t see very
well. His big back was bowed as if he were expectant of a lash. Then,
suddenly, he tried to bully it through.

“It’s all a frame-up--a lie,” he proclaimed hoarsely.

His daughter Amy slowly and sadly--and, one would have said,
accusingly--shook her head.

“You’re tryin’ to save a dirty convict,” coughed Green.

“He saved me!” said Brewster, with a touch of the dramatic, as he
pointed at Craig.

“But he put you up to it!” snarled Green.

“Yes, he did not!” said the boy, his voice going shrill with a touch
of hysteria. “He tried to steer me right. But I shot Beekman!”

“Yes,” said the girl, in her commonplace accents, “Brewster came back
and told me what he had done, and then we both decided it would be
better to run away----”

That was about all, except a confirmatory detail here and there from
the boy, and from the girl, and from the ex-warden of San Pedro
himself. Green had suffered a paralyzing shock, one perhaps destined
to win him back his immortal soul. Green was beginning to heave. He
shambled as he walked. He groped for a chair. He sat down in it. By
and by he dropped his face into his hands. He was silent.

As if by degrees, and without the cognizance of the others in the
office, the ex-warden’s daughter and his derelict son joined him
where he sat, thus forming a little family group of their own. Later
the boy was to stand trial, and be acquitted. Almost any lawyer could
have got him off; and Courtney had hired a good one.

But at this present moment, the others there in the office had divers
things to think about. Major Gracie and his daughter had to have a
word of explanation on their own account--how she happened to be
there, where he had been. Artie the lawyer had reports to make to
Courtney and Colonel Bird.

And, there for an interval, Craig was as if all alone. He had turned.
He faced the sky. He had heard his innocence proven here in the
presence of the only friends he had on earth or cared to have. It
made his own breast heave.

Then it was as if the strength of a storm had been confined in
him, had become a mere potentiality of strength, as he turned from
the window, and faced the others. He was sober. He felt a certain
solemnity. He had a strange sense that this was some higher, better
Daniel Craig who had now taken possession of himself--his mind and
his voice.

“I am still Three Sevens,” he said pleasantly.

“You are Daniel Craig,” said Colonel Bird, with a combination of that
pettiness and strength that characterized him.

“I still have a debt to pay,” said Craig.

Here Courtney spoke up, almost as if an accusation had been brought
against him:

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Craig, old man; but if you
refer to--why, confound it--he’s helped us put the scoundrels on the
run; hasn’t he, colonel?”

Craig smiled. His smile took in Joan Gracie without singling her out,
which might have been embarrassing. But of all those there, Joan was
possibly the only one besides Craig who guessed the nature of the
debt to which Craig referred. It was Major Gracie who spoke next:

“You’re Daniel Craig, sir; and I have the honor to tell you so,
officially.”

Craig took time to think. Perhaps he was seeing wrong. Perhaps all
debts were balanced. But there was no conviction in his mind too
great for thought.

“I’ve got to finish what I started out to do,” he said.

“Oh, you mean the plan to trap those crooks!” said Artie.

“Yes.”

“Nothing doing.”

“They got the tip?”

“Not about what you were going to do.”

“But your own tip that Wolf was coming here to kill me?”

“That was because the Wolf was being trailed by a New York detective
and was feeling ugly and thought you might have squealed.”

“But the others?”

“Like the count himself. Captain Fleyenhall,” said Artie, taking the
rest of his audience into his confidence, “learned what Mr. Craig,
and you, Mr. Courtney, and Colonel Bird, were planning to do here
to-night. It was Fleyenhall’s plan to nip your plan by arresting your
men himself, downstairs, and thus turn the tables on you----”

“Clever,” said Courtney.

“But not clever enough,” said Artie. “Fleyenhall couldn’t pull
anything like that. He’s nothing but a big, thick-headed cop. Every
crook in town knew what he was up to the moment he called in his men.”

“And you mean?” said Colonel Bird.

“The crooks have scattered.”

“And our pet plan spoiled,” said the colonel.

“Fleyenhall’s also,” said Courtney. “That’s one satisfaction--in
spoiling our plan--Craig’s plan--they spoiled their own.”

Craig had looked from one to the other. Wasn’t that the spinner in
his skull at work again?

But now Craig was looking altogether at Joan, and she was looking
altogether at him. Let the others think what they would. She
understood. Craig spoke again:

“Not the highest gift of Heaven will do me any good unless I’ve
settled the account in full. Later on, I’ll pay back the money that
Courtney has advanced. There are other small debts here and there
that I’ll have to pay. But there are still these four men of prey at
large--Leamy and Count Wolf, Trick O’Ray and Ben Jarvis. I’ll go and
get them.”

It was not with the voice of the old Craig, but with the voice of
this newer Craig, that he spoke now as he turned to Courtney:

“You’ll have your story, and you’ll have it here!”

“You mean----”

“----that since my men haven’t kept their appointment, I’ll go out
and fetch them.”

“Can you?”

“I will.”

“They may be gone.”

“I know where.”

“It’s now six o’clock.”

“I’ll have the last of them here--by midnight!”

Craig heard himself saying this. What was he promising? It wasn’t a
promise. It was a prophecy.

He turned to Colonel Bird.

“Now that the police aren’t likely to interfere----”

“I’ll put the screws to them if they try it,” said the district
attorney. “What with Artie’s affidavit.”

Craig had a quick smile for Artie. He completed what he had to say to
Colonel Bird:

“You may have your own detectives there in the back room, as we
originally planned----”

All this as if there was some higher intelligence using his voice,
using his brain, as there unquestionably was, but, nevertheless and
always, this higher intelligence his very own.

It was a little vision of Joan as he had last seen her--hands
clasped, a light in her eyes--that stood out in the jumble of other
visions that were with him as he left the room. He comprehended the
emotion of hers, a commingling of fear and faith, of tenderness and
awe. And he comprehended all this as if they were already one--as if
they already had been married--as possibly they had in the alchemy
of souls.

He went down in the elevator and noticed nothing and heard no sound
not necessary to what lay ahead of him. His concentration was
perfect, as in the case of a man possessed. He called a taxi, gave an
address.




                             CHAPTER XXVI

                            RIGHT AND LEFT


There had been a shiver and a scamper in that nether world of
which Craig for a period had been the unwilling “Napoleon.” There
was no doubt about that. The word had been passed: “Lay low.”
There was nothing new about this. Every now and then some such
warning went out--following some big crime, preceding some special
investigation, and especially around election time. But to a number
of the denizens of this underworld had the signal come with special
violence--particularly to those who had recently been in touch with
Three Sevens.

Count Wolf, with the nagging New York detectives on his trail, had
suddenly decided to put over his designs of vengeance on the man he
believed had betrayed him. Taylor Leamy suddenly wished he were back
in Cincinnati.

When the district attorney and the police got together for a real
clean-up, the millstones were turning--grinding. It was “Good night!”
to the weevils in the wheat.

Especially disquieting was that report that Three Sevens had been
taken and, in exchange for benefits, present and to come, had decided
to tell all that he knew. No one knew where this rumor originated.
No one knew how much it contained of truth. But there it was, with a
quality about it to furnish a shiver and a scamper even to those who
had believed themselves to be most immune.

It was the very fact that so little was known about Three Sevens,
himself, apart from that amazing delivery he had put over in San
Pedro, that this new rumor concerning Craig assumed the quality it
did. No one knew what he knew and what he didn’t know. A good deal
was taken for granted. Here was a man who could bargain with not only
the police, but the finicky and uncompromising district attorney.

“You can tell it to the whole world,” said Trick O’Ray, “I ain’t
scared of him, nor no other stiff.”

“It ain’t no disgrace to lay low for a while, though, Tricky,”
grinned Jarvis.

Jarvis knew that Trick was talking for the benefit of Violet rather
than for the mere enunciation of pure truth.

“The first chance I gets,” said Trick, “I put him in the morgue.”

Jarvis laughed genially.

He was perfectly willing to have Trick try. He was perfectly willing
to have almost anything happen to Tricky, too. He was, at any time,
especially now, with Violet’s not ungraceful shape occupying so much
of his physical and mental vision.

There was nothing dark and mysterious about this lair of the
well-known pair. It was just an ordinary little flat, far out in the
suburbs. There was even a touch of home about it. There was a red
tablecloth on the table at which the men sat. On this the lighted
lamp shone warmly. In the corner stood the cook stove radiating heat
and sausage smells, and the woman at the side of it might have been
the bride of any well-paid workman. Well-paid workmen were what Trick
and Jarvis might have been--if one didn’t examine their soft hands,
look too long at the inner hardness of their faces.

But, in general, they were very human--Jarvis, the man of the world,
and the superior of the two, listening tolerantly to an inferior whom
he secretly intends to dupe.

“Why didn’t you do it the last time you seen him?” demanded Violet,
with a touch of disdain.

Secretly, she also was dreaming of romance, not of the romance that
was in Ben Jarvis’ thought. Something more splendid by far. Once, not
so long ago, she had thought of forsaking Trick for Ben. But no more!
No, there was another. She thought of him now as she stood there
frying sausages, her thoughts skyrocketing--as they had done more or
less ever since she had met him--Three Sevens himself!

Why not?

She could recall every moment of their meeting, from the first
instant that she had seen him. What a thrill! Had she thrilled him
like that? Two fortune tellers and a trance medium had thus far
assured her that she had. And hadn’t he looked her in the eyes, and
spoken to her as if she were a lady, and held her hand the shred of a
century when they parted?

“I wasn’t born for this,” said Violet to herself as she fried the
sausage for the two thieves at the table, “I was born for something
better. My Gawd, I could love him so!”

She emptied the sausages into a plate and put this on the red
tablecloth. She reached down a loaf of bread from a shelf and added
this to the repast. Her ideas of domestic science were primitive. Her
thoughts were elsewhere.

Trick had taken a knife from his pocket. He opened this, showed he
was housebroken by wiping it on the tablecloth, then cut himself a
hunk of bread. He parted this and thrust a piece of the hot sausage
into the opening with the point of his knife. On his monkeylike face
had come a banquet look.

“Git us some coffee,” he commanded.

“What’s the matter with a can of suds?” Ben asked.

Ben had also helped himself. He had broken off a piece of bread and
folded this over into a sort of tongs with which he secured his meat.

Not like this had Three Sevens eaten, Violet reflected. He had joined
her and Trick and Ben in the rear room of a saloon which was also a
restaurant of sorts, and they had regaled themselves together. She
herself had been scarcely able to eat--pretending she had a headache.
It was so she could watch Three Sevens, be ready to meet his eye
whenever he should chance to look at her. And he had looked at her.

“Sure, a scuttle o’ suds,” said Trick.

Trick was in a quiver of eagerness. His mouth was full. He was eating
with a sort of ferocious delight.

Ben was but little less absorbed, but he had a glance for the girl
as she took a tin bucket from the window sill. She went out of the
little flat without a word.

Neither of them was ever to see her again.

Craig saw her, at the bottom of the dark stairs, three flights down.
He spoke to her.

“Hello, Violet----” the merest whisper.

She suppressed a cry. Then Craig was speaking to her rapidly.

“Keep right on going, but give me the key to the flat. You can give
me the bucket, too, if you want to.”

“Where----” she began, stifled.

“You’ve got a brother in Waukegan.”

“How did you know?”

“I found out.”

“Was it--did you----”

“Think about you? Yes. Go to him. Later, go West.”

“What’s the matter? What are you going to do? Will I----”

“Violet, do what I tell you, now! Agreed?”

He got her affirmative without a word from her. She had passed him a
key. There was a shyness and a confidingness about her, somehow, and
all of a sudden, that made it seem to Craig that he was talking to a
little child--as if, here in this somber and also sinister hall, a
kindly fate had moved the years back for Violet and made her a child
again.

It was in that sort of a spirit that Craig put his hands on Violet’s
shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. It was a fraternal kiss.

That was their leave taking. And that was the sum and climax of
Violet’s romance. After all, many a woman and man has had to be
satisfied with less.

Craig didn’t look back of him. He didn’t have to. He had that species
of omniscience--small and human, but none the less a variety of
omniscience itself--that permitted him to know that Violet had fled
away through the night, to fairer fields and happier, he hoped.

With a thought like that he came to the door of the flat where the
two fugitives gorged and waited for their beer. Craig didn’t need the
key. He had the signal that would have caused them to open. But it
would be easier with the key. He smiled as he fitted the key to the
lock.

He was smiling as he pushed the door open. He was smiling still as
the silence fell. He smiled because he was thinking of Violet, and
then of what old Eddie Yarmouth used to say:

“’Tis a thought that’ll bring you luck.”

Eddie was right. The surprise was perfect. Craig spoke softly.

“How’ll you ride?” he asked. “Taxi--or an ambulance?”

       *       *       *       *       *

There were a dozen places in any one of which Taylor Leamy might have
sought refuge, and all of these Craig had visited while the night was
still young, as Taylor Leamy himself was to discover. And in each one
of these Craig had left an impression that was at once ensnaring and
disquieting.

Leamy, that night, had eaten his dinner in a quiet little restaurant
back of a brewery. He was almost the only customer in the place. The
quiet had appealed to him. Also, it had given him time to reflect.

Getting a little old, a little fat, a little soft. No, it wouldn’t do
for him to make any more false plays. The idea of prison nauseated
him--the hardness, the violence, the ugliness of everything. He hoped
that Craig would prosper. Perhaps he could get as much as ten--as
much as twenty--thousand dollars out of Craig. For Craig also must
hate prison. But what had been the meaning of that tip he had got
from Bender to lay low, let Craig alone for a while?

Bender was a shyster lawyer. In times past, Leamy had paid Bender
thousands of dollars. Was Bender now giving him a straight tip? Or
had Bender accepted a fee from Craig himself?

The message had come to Leamy at his lodging house, a quiet place,
kept by a respectable widow.

He had taken to living much at night, since his return to Chicago,
sleeping mostly in the daytime. It wouldn’t do for him to stumble
into the wrong sort of person and get recognized. And yet he couldn’t
be too cautious, either. His funds were running low. Now, if he could
only blackmail Craig out of a comfortable sum!

The waiter who had served him hastily approached from the other end
of the hall.

“Beg pardon,” said the waiter. “Are you Mr. Finch?”

It was the name that Leamy had adopted since his return. He was Finch
to Three Sevens.

“Yes,” he said cautiously. “I’m Mr. Finch.”

“Just before you came in,” said the waiter, “a gentleman gave me this
card for you. I almost forgot.”

Leamy took the card. It was a plain card. There was a message written
on it as follows:

                                 Y 630
                        Report before midnight.
                                 3777

Leamy lingered a little longer picking his teeth. He made of it an
elaborate operation. But all the time that he was doing this he could
feel the blood draining back to his heart and leaving something of a
weight and a coldness there. He remembered that “Y 630.” How well he
remembered it--his own private mark on the books of San Pedro!

He would have to get rid of this feeling. So he told himself when
he was out in the street. He went to a small political club of the
neighborhood where he had been wont to slay a few of his heavy hours
with a game of billiards. And he played there now, indifferently,
albeit with a passion of forced attention, until a certain marker,
just back from an errand, noticed him and handed him a card:

                                 Y 630

Heigh-o! He pocketed the card, put up his cue.

Leamy yawned. All right, he was willing to let it go at that. A man
of his age appreciated a good night’s sleep. He paid his reckoning.
He thought with appreciation of the quiet room that was awaiting him
at the widow’s house.

A little later he let himself in with a pass-key. The hall of the
widow’s house was dimly lighted. Leamy started for the stairs. He
stopped short.

Odd, but there for a moment he was almost certain that the woman who
stood there in front of him was a certain other widow who had once
confronted him, telling him that he had robbed her of her last cent.
Then Leamy pulled himself together. It was no one but his landlady.

“Goodness, Mrs. Travis,” he exclaimed, with a touch of the jocular,
“you almost frightened me.”

“Maybe it was because I was frightened myself,” said Mrs. Travis.

She was a woman who had lost all sense of humor if she had ever
possessed any.

“I should have rung the bell,” said Leamy.

“It wasn’t that,” said she. “It was the gentleman who was just here
looking for you. He was a fine-looking gentleman, but there was
something in his face I can’t forget.”

Leamy felt a thin, fine quiver in his spine.

“To see me? What did he want?”

“He didn’t say. He said you’d know. He said: ‘Tell him Three Sevens
said’--what does that mean?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Travis.”

“But he said you would. He said: ‘Tell him Three Sevens orders him to
come to his office, without fail, before midnight.’”

“Oh, yes,” said Leamy, “I remember, now. It’s something about our
lodge.” And Leamy turned and left the house. He was in need of air.
As a matter of fact he had been in need of air--although he hadn’t
recognized the necessity at once--ever since Mrs. Travis had reminded
him of that other widow.

It was an hour later before Leamy succeeded in getting Bender, the
shyster lawyer, on the telephone. Bender, it appeared, had been
dining with friends and was in a jovial mood.

“What did you mean by that message?” Leamy asked, as soon as he had
established his identity.

“See you to-morrow.”

“Listen,” said Leamy passionately. “I’ve been standing here in the
stuffy telephone booth for an hour----”

“--’s what I’m telling you----”

“Bender, let me see you to-night.”

“See you to-morrow.”

Leamy caught the strain of music.

“Listen, Ike! Three Sevens----”

For the first time since the attempted conversation began, Bender’s
voice came clear and cold. It was a question:

“Did you ever hear of some one listening in?”

There was a rasping click, and Leamy knew that Bender had “hung up.”

“I’ll do what Three Sevens said,” Leamy agreed with himself. “After
all, there was that deal he was going to let me in on. I was to have
seen him at six. Bender steered me off.”

Bender was a shyster. On the other hand it was perfectly true
that Bender had valuable relations with the police and certain
magistrates. And Leamy hesitated after he had signaled the car that
would have carried him past the Courtney Building. For a second the
conductor was frowning at Leamy. Then the conductor jerked his bell
and the car rumbled on.

It was another car he took, and one that went in the opposite
direction an hour or so later, and in that hour the coldness and the
weight about Leamy’s heart had grown like an icicle under a glacial
drip. Two more of those cards had been added to his collection now.
One he had picked up at the Sagamore Buffet, where the bartender was
an old and trusted friend of his, and the bartender had looked at him
with pity. The other he had picked up at the Hotel Columbine.

Leamy rode and rode, until he noticed how a man who stood beside the
motorman kept staring back at him. Then Leamy got off and found that
he was in a part of the city that was unfamiliar to him.

He was near a stream of water. He saw the dancing reflections of
it through blackness. And there came to him a peculiar jolt of
consciousness that there may have been a bit of truth in that
death notice of Taylor Leamy he had read, after all; and that this
shimmering dark water was what he had come to find.




                             CHAPTER XXVII

                              TIGERS’ DEN


Just eleven, by the illuminated dial of some obscure factory, when
Leamy raised stricken eyes for a look about him. Still time! But he
was getting old, getting a trifle fat and soft. The water beckoned.

“Just eleven,” said Craig to himself, as he looked at that same dial
from the north. “Still time.”

But his thought was of Count Wolf, and he regretted the time that he
had given to Leamy thus far. Not that he had given very much. After
all, Leamy had been incidental to his search for Wolf. It was Wolf
who was going to require a test of strength. Wolf also he had traced
from lair to lair--tireless, unceasing, with the look and the feel
about him that he had brought away from the office where, in the
presence of all the world he and Joan Gracie had plighted themselves
as surely as if they had written out their troth on white parchment.

The taxi sped. The eleven o’clock dial was left behind. Over the tops
of the houses Craig saw the stars, quiet, reassuring. They recalled
other nights. But this was the night of nights. He breathed deep.

There had been one interruption in Craig’s search for the master
sinner who went by the name of Count Wolf. That was after Craig had
learned that the count was at Madame Marebello’s. A ball, if you
please! That was the count’s style! A ball for the count on the eve
of Waterloo. Or was it Waterloo?

Craig had gone to his hotel and decked himself in his finest--had
shaved himself for the second time this day, manicured himself and
made himself immaculate in every respect, nor counted the precious
minutes lost that he had devoted to this end.

For, all the time that he was doing it he was telling himself that
if, peradventure, he should have to die it would be well to die
clean. It was odd how that thought of death kept beating at the
shutter of his mind, like Poe’s _Raven_. And finally, as had the
poet, so Craig had thrown the shutter open, let the sable bird come
in. For, after all, what was there so terrible about death? He could
imagine a thousand things worse.

Just five minutes after eleven, and the taxi that had brought Craig
from the center of the city into this quiet and eminently respectable
street, had stopped before an imposing house surrounded by an
imposing garden. The house was shuttered. For all except the front
door it was dark. For all except a muted hum of music and laughter it
was silent.

Craig directed his chauffeur into an alleyway at the side of the
garden. He was grateful now for the presence of this man, a detective
lent him by his friend, Colonel Bird.

But no raven was croaking in Craig’s mind as he mounted the Marebello
steps. The power was still in him, plus a certain knowledge that
whatever should happen to him, that thing would not be bad.

He didn’t have to ring the bell. A butler saw him coming, opened the
door. That was a point about this house. No raiding party of police
would ever have to scandalize this neighborhood by chopping down the
outer door. Inside--if it ever came to that--there would have to be
some chopping, perhaps. For, if reports were to be believed, the
stately rooms and cozy alcoves of the Marebello’s house concealed a
labyrinth.

Said the butler:

“Whom shall I announce?”

Said Craig:

“The gentleman from Frisco.”

Craig was glad that he had the password right. They changed the
password rather frequently in houses where Count Wolf was an honored
guest. He heard the door close behind him with a metallic click. The
butler was helping him off with his coat. A few moments later he was
saluting his hostess.

She was a tall woman, very dark, very richly colored--with a color
that was all her own. Craig smiled at her. But his smile was of the
lips only.

“This is indeed a pleasure,” said the Marebello.

Her voice was a rich and vibrant contralto, very soft, very musical.
It had a caressing touch about it like the hand that the lady placed
on Craig’s arm.

“The pleasure is mine,” said Craig.

It was easier to lie when the time-worn old phrases of polite speech
were used.

“I was afraid that you had forgotten me.”

“No man could ever forget you,” said Craig truthfully, this time.
“You are very beautiful.”

It was a phrase that the Marebello must have heard ten thousand
times, but there was a soberness about Craig as he said it that gave
the familiar words a quality of freshness.

“You’re a charming boy,” she retorted meltingly.

“You are so beautiful,” said Craig softly, “that I’m going to tell
you something right now before I fall under your spell.”

“You almost frighten me.”

“You may well be frightened,” said Craig, with that odd sobriety of
his, “but not of me.”

They had been standing in the broad hall. From an adjacent room there
came the sound of an orchestra creeping and strumming into the first
bars of an exotic, voluptuous dance, a babble of voices, the popping
of a champagne cork.

“What do you mean?” the woman asked, with an accent of alarm, genuine
this time, even if it was subdued.

Craig whispered the rest:

“It’s what I say--or murder!”

He made it brutal. He knew where he was. He was a trainer in the
tiger den. He had shown the red-hot iron.

The woman didn’t flinch. She had an excellent nerve. No one perhaps
had a wider experience with the varieties of passion. In her world
the raw and the primitive were never covered with more than a thin
veneer. She knew the value of keeping her head. On the other hand,
she must have known that here was a crisis where there was no time
to be lost. And, in a way, she was prepared for meeting violence
with violence. That butler who had helped Craig off with his coat
was a heavyweight slugger. There were other servants in the house
like that. There were a number of guests who would have been equally
efficient in putting a man to sleep.

“You forget where you are,” she said.

“Listen closely,” said Craig pleasantly and softly. “For you, it’s
peace or war.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ve come to get Count Wolf.”

“Can’t you wait ’til he leaves?”

“No.”

“You will ruin me.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll tell him to come away with me.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“Do you know who I am?”

She gave him a melting look, still tried to argue. “Be a nice boy.
Why can’t we all be friends?”

“All I ask of you,” said Craig steadily, “is no interference--from
your servants or your guests. The D. A.’s office and the police know
where I am. They’re waiting for me. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re waiting for Wolf.”

Craig was alone as he strolled into the big room where the
dancers were. There were a dozen couples on the floor. There were
other couples and groups about the walls. It was an ornate room,
brilliantly lighted. There was nothing much to differentiate it
from any private ballroom; nor, for that matter, was there anything
superficial to differentiate these guests from the guests, say, at
some large but intimate house party. The girls were attractive. Most
of the men were quiet.

Men only interested Craig as he looked about him. He saw the one man
he was looking for. Count Wolf stood with a small party, men and
women, almost opposite the broad double doors by which Craig entered.
Almost at the same instant Count Wolf must have seen Craig.

Craig was fair. The count was dark. Craig was shaven to the tinted
marble of his face. The count wore the pointed black beard that had
become his treasure and his pride, as well as his principal disguise,
since quitting San Pedro. Both Craig and the count were supple,
straight, and strong. If it came to a physical encounter, all other
things equal, it would be a pretty guess as to which might win.

But Craig, from the first, had resolved that there should be no
physical encounter--not if he could help it--not in the usual sense.
He was still in the tiger den. He knew that. It would be folly to
take his chances with fang and claw.

His entrance had attracted notice. He was aware of this. It was the
great Three Sevens who stepped across the room.

Craig never wavered. He stepped up to Count Wolf and squared himself
in front of the count. Craig said:

“So there you are, you cur!”

He lifted his open hand. He gave the count a smart slap--not very
hard, but swift.

The count let out a snarl. But the attack had been so swift, so
surprising, so completely devoid of anything like fear or hesitation,
that the count was defeated while Craig’s fingers were still against
his cheek.

Craig had something in him that the count didn’t understand, that
was as much a mystery to him as the power of an animal trainer is
mysterious to a slinking, but deadly, black panther. Perhaps the
black panther says to itself in its own way: “I am deadly. I can
kill. But here is one creature who ignores that fact. What has he got
that is greater?” Had there been a thought like that in the count’s
mind, as there was, most likely, Craig could have made a satisfactory
answer.

Right then and there, Craig was answering some such problem for
himself. He had all the power of civilization back of him. The count
didn’t.

There had been a swift recoil, a tensing of nerves and muscles. It
was a tension not only of the count, but of those who had been with
him--a youth with a snout like a boar, a man of uncertain age who in
the passing fancy of the moment might have been a polar bear. The
women were drawn back--coiling, one would have said, like cobras and
pythons.

There came an added touch to the scene.

The orchestra was not very far away. A moment ago the orchestra
had been playing its music for this human menagerie. There was a
jangling succession of discords. The music stopped.

“You talk of killing me,” said Craig. His voice was so cold and thin
he could hardly recognize it as his own. He looked about him, and
took his time about it, but not too much time. “I’ve come to get this
man,” he explained. He snapped his eyes back on the count. “Come on
with me. Get out of here. Or I’ll kick you out.”

“You’ll answer for this,” said the count.

But his threat was a mockery. He knew it was a mockery. The trouble
was that the count couldn’t think--couldn’t think at all except about
that thing that Craig had that the count himself couldn’t understand.
After all, it’s the mystery that counts--mystery that has always
frightened both animals and men, and made the old kings and gods what
they were.

“Outside,” said Craig, and he stood aside.

The count was like a man in a vacuum, only it was not mere air that
had been pumped away from him; it was that finer thing that all men
breathe when in the society of their fellows--sympathy, accord. The
count was aware that this crowd, suddenly, was not “with him.” He was
a man who had just had his face slapped. And the crowd also was in
the presence of this something that it couldn’t understand--a greater
strength, a greater skill, a greater fame.

The count drew himself up. He made a last play for dignity.

“We’ll settle this outside,” he said, and started for the door.

But Craig was watchful. His eyes, including the third eye in the top
of his head, were everywhere. He was as strong and yet as delicate as
a seismograph, ready to note the slightest vibration of the unsettled
world about him.

He was watchful in the hall, while that heavy-shouldered,
light-handed butler was helping the count into his things, then Craig
himself. In the midst of it all, Craig caught an impression of the
Marebello smiling at him tropically, from the shadow of the stairs,
whereupon he thanked God that he was putting this place back of him
forever.

And then, the moment that he and the count were on the steps, and
the door clanging back of them like the bronze gates of hell,
Craig seized the count in such a crushing grip that the count
believed--must have believed--that his end was at hand.




                            CHAPTER XXVIII

                                TWELVE


But all Craig wanted to do was to get a hold on the count that the
count couldn’t break. Then he was running his prisoner off through
the dark garden in the direction of the alley where the taxi was
waiting. There Craig and the chauffeur searched the count, not as
thoroughly as they should have done, and handcuffed him, not as
carefully as they should have done.

There was a dial on the front of the cab--eleven thirty. The
chauffeur was speeding. Craig, with the black mass of the count at
his side, watched the dial, watched the count, watched the flickering
lights and shadows. He was like a man who had been under water, was
under water still, but who feels himself rushing up to air and safety.

He sought to disregard that recurrent whisper:

“Not yet! Not yet!”

It was a whisper that must have been making itself heard back there
in the offices of the Courtney Building whither Craig had already
sped with two other prisoners, Trick O’Ray and Ben Jarvis. They were
still there, guarded by half a dozen detectives from Colonel Bird’s
office.

It was in the front office where the whisper must have been heard.
There Colonel Bird himself sat in apparently complacent converse with
his friend, Major Gracie, the volunteer warden of San Pedro. Richard
Courtney was with them. At Courtney’s orders, the first edition of a
great newspaper had gone to press with no hint of the big story that
would yet startle the world on the following morning.

“The story’s big enough to make a sensation now,” said Courtney,
satisfied.

And he used his unusual powers to make himself agreeable to Major
Gracie’s daughter, chiefly on Craig’s account. For Courtney felt
grateful to Craig, as a man feels grateful to any one who has come up
to personal expectations after years of disillusionment.

“He’s a great man,” said Courtney softly. “He’ll make his mark in the
world.”

Joan smiled.

From the window where she stood she also watched a dial--a lighted
dial that rode like a yellow moon over the roofs of some adjacent
buildings. The dial read eleven thirty. From the street--far, far
down--there came the tinkle and roar of traffic. Somewhere in this
human tide there was a swimmer battling for his life. His life was
her own. So Joan Gracie felt.

She could smile. She could talk a little. She could act as if nothing
mattered very much, as if she were possessed of a pleasant assurance.

Then, through her reverie, she heard an announcement:

“He’s drowned!”

There filmed a blackness across her eyes. It seemed an age before
she got the rest of the message. No, it wasn’t her own swimmer who
was drowned. Far over in another part of the city a night watchman
had seen a man throw himself from a bridge. This was the man who was
drowned. The news had been telephoned in to Courtney from a precinct
station by one of his own reporters.

The drowned man was Taylor Leamy. There followed an odd detail about
certain cards that had been found in Leamy’s possession:

                                 Y 630
                        Report before midnight
                                 3777

Major Gracie could interpret that. He knew what those numbers
signified. Then they all knew the purport of the message contained
in the rest of the writing. It was Craig who had ordered Leamy to
report. Leamy had preferred to report to his Maker instead.

They talked about that announcement of Leamy’s death in San
Francisco, of his having been drowned then and there. Was it this
that finally brought Leamy to the very fate he had imagined? Or was
it just fright? Anyway, Leamy was a debt which no longer existed on
that red balance sheet Craig had referred to.

But Joan hoped that Craig would come. Her soul was telling her that
he would appear with that last and most dangerous prisoner of all.
She had read that look in Craig’s eyes, and the quality of his voice,
and the way he had carried himself, better than any one else. He was
the Daniel of judgment and prophecy. No defeat, no misfortune, could
befall him.

But as the slow hands on the dial crept around toward midnight, that
whisper would repeat itself:

“Not yet! Not yet!”

There sounded a chime of bells from somewhere. There followed
what seemed to be a long period. Then another bell, very slow and
ponderous, began to strike twelve.

It was then that the thing happened--the thing they had all been
waiting for. Out in the hall there had come the peculiar hum and
click that meant the stopping of an elevator at his floor, a medley
of voices, a tramp of feet.

The door of the office was open. The distance from this door to the
elevators was not great. But the signal of those preliminary sounds
had been sufficient to bring every one up out of the tangle of small
interests into this dominating theme that had been in the minds of
all of them.

“It’s he.”

“It’s Craig!”

Instantly, every one by a sort of telepathy, or a sort of premature
blossoming of hopes and expectations, knew that Craig was bringing a
prisoner with him.

Joan Gracie had been the last to run to the door, although her
interest had been the greatest. As a matter of fact, she was all but
overcome. That period of suspense, following as it did on such other
killing excitement, had been all but too much for her.

Then, there she was at the door, looking out into the hallway, all
eyes, and yet scarcely able to see at all. What she did see was as if
in a series of dark flashes, more like the figments of hallucination
rather than anything real.

There was Craig, sure enough. And with him was Count Wolf. She
remembered Count Wolf from that never-to-be-forgotten look he had
given her back there in the office of San Pedro on the day of the
great delivery.

She saw that the count was handcuffed. Then, confusion.

The count had made a violent movement. He had not only wrenched
himself free. By some amazing trick of suppleness and strength he had
succeeded in getting himself free from those fine, strong shackles
on his wrists.

Joan saw the count strike this way and that. She heard an
imprecation. Then the count was running back toward the elevators.
And Craig was after him.

The elevator was gone. The steel door that guarded the shaft was
just sliding shut. The count thrust this back. He plunged into the
shaft--eighteen stories deep.

Joan’s heart stood still. Craig also had taken that leap.

Both Craig and the count had landed on the top of the elevator car
that had just brought them up. The eighteenth floor was the top floor
of the Courtney Building. Now the car had started down again. Did the
man who ran the car hear that double thud on the top of the cage? It
seemed so. A little further jolt on the lever, and away the car was
dropping down, dizzily swift.

As Craig landed on top of the elevator cage, there was a shout above
him. That was a shout from his friends. The shout was twisted into a
whine, the car was dropping so fast.

There was a great chain attached to the top of the car. It was shiny
in spots, although mostly coated with oil or graphite, possibly both.

“Cling to me,” said the chain.

How far had they fallen? What had happened to the count? But there,
for the first few seconds, the roar from the deeper consciousness
smothered every other voice: “Save yourself!” The floors went past, a
smear of shadows, of flicking lights, swept up by a hot wind stifled
in dust and oil.

There was a soft thud of a sickening suddenness, and the car had
slackened, had stopped.

Then a black shape squirmed up out of the red darkness and there was
Count Wolf again. The count also had escaped serious injury. He must
have. He struck a blow at Craig. Craig had been wavering, dazed. The
blow acted upon him like a deluge of cold water. So the game wasn’t
lost, after all?

He clutched the Wolf, and there for a nameless period of time they
swayed against the chain. Somewhere a bell shrilled. There was a
metallic clang. The platform jerked upward. Both Craig and the Wolf
knew what that meant, although neither of them was capable of speech.
The car was going up again. How far? To the top? There was a huge
wheel up there round which the chain sped as swift and silent as
light. Was it to be the destiny of one or both of them to be crushed
against the wheel?

There was no speech between Craig and the count--no speech requiring
breath--only the silent and far more eloquent speech of their eyes.
Their eyes were close. Their eyes were as dark and deep as this
endless tunnel stood up between heaven and earth.

Craig clung to the Wolf, the Wolf clung to Craig. Both clung to the
chain that had already lacerated them and saved them.

The lights flashed down. In one respect the situation was simplified.
At this hour of the night only this one car was running. And Craig
remembered now. He had noticed when he and the count had come up in
the car but a little while ago that the runner was old and a little
deaf.

Ah, when the car came to the floor where his friends were! It was
they who had signaled for the car to come back. Craig laughed, or
thought he did. His soul laughed as if his soul knew that it was
beyond hurt whatever happened to its enemy, his body. Those friends
would be seeing him now a crushed object--a thing--at the bottom of
the well five hundred feet down.

“Joan! Joan! For your sake!”

A cry from his heart, that. He gripped the count tighter, brought the
smudge of the count’s face against the steel chain, for the count
kept prodding him with something sharp--up against his ribs--was
trying to cut him.

They went to their knees in a heap.

The car had stopped. And, there for a moment, Craig clung to the top
of the car with iron hooks that had been his fingers. For the count
was trying to thrust him over and down, and Craig didn’t want to go.
He didn’t want the fight to end.

He caught a flashing view of the depth, as down an endless, vanishing
tunnel, ribbed with light.

To fall through that, drop through it, spinning, clutching at the
fleeting light, grasping at shadows that sped! Ah, no! Ah, no! Better
to end it here!

In the midst of cries that he did not understand, he had twisted
himself up, caught the count about the waist, jerked, tugged, told
him--or thought to tell him: “You go first!”

But the Wolf kicked as with a hoof of flint, then leaped.

He had sprung to the grating at the side of the car. This was like a
fence of steel pickets running from ceiling to floor, ornamental and
close set, shutting off the elevator well from the hallway landing.
In this fence, or grille, there were perhaps a dozen doors or gates,
one for each elevator.

Craig also leaped, although he was troubled by the knowledge of a
certain weakness. This was no time to show weakness, though. Let
nerve supply any strength that was lacking. Who was this Count Wolf?
A blackleg! A man whose face he had slapped. Craig caught the bars
and clung.

Where were those who shouted so? What were they saying? There was no
occasion for excitement.

He saw the count lift the lever of a gate, slip through.

As the count turned to thrust the gate shut, Craig had an arm
through. He followed his arm, while the count struck and struck
again. But Craig refused to go back. Ah, no! He wouldn’t go down that
elevator shaft alone. Too far! Too lonely! No one to meet him at the
journey’s end.

Ah, there were those who had shouted. A rush of figures. But now the
count was fleeing toward the stairway, the narrow, crooked stairway
of stone and steel, never used except by postmen and scrubwomen, that
squared down at one end of the hall beyond the battery of elevators.

Craig caught the count at the head of this.

“You got away once--twice--thrice! Now, never again!”

The thought was Craig’s. For a moment they were like dancers in the
circus--high up on a rope--balancing--death pulling one way, life the
other.

They went down with a rush.

When his friends found Craig, he was three flights down, and
apparently unhurt. They thought he was unhurt. They thought that
Count Wolf was dead. For Craig was standing up, with the count in
his arms, and had started back with him for the office on the upper
floor. And Craig smiled.

His clothes were in disarray. His face was white--all the whiter from
the contrast of his skin with a smear of oil and blood from temple to
chin.

“I’ll carry him,” said Craig. “He’s my prisoner. The red ledger
is--the red ledger--is----”

Courtney and Major Gracie started to take the prisoner from the
captor’s arms. But they dropped the prisoner as Craig reeled around
against the railing of the stairway, stood there panting, smiling
still. Joan Gracie, appearing like a white shadow to Craig, spoke
with a voice that sounded to him like a brook running over pebbles in
a woody solitude:

“Quick! He’s hurt!”

Well, that was good enough for Craig. Some final thread of resolution
snapped. He went to sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were other white shadows for Craig. He had come into a world
that was mostly of white shadows. It appeared that, apart from
other hurts, Count Wolf had managed to cut him rather severely with
a knife--a small knife, fortunately; although very sharp. One of
Craig’s sides, as a matter of fact, was pretty well ribboned to the
bone. But nothing too serious, for a constitution like his--clean
blood, a good family history, no doubt.

Only, there was one night when Craig himself believed that he had
opened his eyes on the white dawn of the Big Sleep. Everything white.
He was in the hospital then, and didn’t know it. No shape, no shadow
except the one big white shadow which enveloped him physically and
mentally--and spiritually, too, for he felt immeasurably clean.

With perfect peace he thought of all that he had been through. His
conscience was clear. That dark and scarlet world through which he
had passed had been a hard master to him, but he had worked out his
bond, was a freeman. There had been a red ledger. The red ledger was
no more.

But, with thought of the red ledger, there crept into this white
heaven in which Craig found himself a glint of poignant yearning, a
sense of loss, a loneliness and a nostalgia that was beyond endurance.

He knew that he was weak. He knew that it was wrong. But he just
couldn’t help it. That was all.

“Let me go back--go back!”

As if in response to his cry, a cool softness descended on his
forehead. The white shadow took on color and became infused with
lines and substance, evidently in response to the simple magic of
turning on the light, and he found himself looking up into the face
of Joan Gracie.

“Joan,” he whispered.

“Yes, Daniel.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a hospital--a private hospital--one of the best.”

“And you are really here?”

“I came to see how you were getting on. The nurse stepped out for a
moment, left me in charge.”

Craig’s breast rose and fell.

“You may talk a very little,” said Joan. “Tell me what was bothering
you just now. Maybe you’ll be relieved.”

Craig told her.

“I thought,” he said, “that I had died and gone to heaven, but when I
looked for you and found that you weren’t there----”

He was still under the effects of his recent fright. He reached up
and got Joan’s hand. He brought it to his lips and held it there.


                                THE END




                             TO THE READER


If you have enjoyed this book, you will be glad to know that there
are many others just as well written, just as interesting, to be had
in the Chelsea House Popular Copyright Novels.

The stories which we will publish in this line have never appeared in
book form before, and they are without question the best value in the
way of clothbound books that has been offered to the reading public
in many years.

                             CHELSEA HOUSE

  79 SEVENTH AVENUE                                   NEW YORK CITY




Transcriber’s Note:

Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. Four misspelled words were corrected.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations
were added. Extraneous quote marks were deleted.

The following items were changed:

  Deleted ‘been’ ... ‘His interest in humanity had [been] survived a
    half dozen years of exceedingly active politics.’
  Changed ‘lay’ to ‘way’ ... ‘His way was to was to bask, take things
    easy, ...’
  Changed ‘friends’ to ‘friend’ ... ‘they had caught that friend ...’




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