Читать книгу The Turn of the Balance - Brand Whitlock - Страница 10

The county jail was in commotion. In the street outside a patrol wagon was backed against the curb. The sleek coats of its bay horses were moist with mist; and as the horses stamped fretfully in the slush, the driver, muffled in his policeman's overcoat, spoke to them, begging them to be patient, and each time looked back with a clouded face toward the outer door of the jail. This door, innocent enough with its bright oak panels and ground glass, was open. Inside, beyond the vestibule, beyond another oaken door, stood Danner. He was in black, evidently his dress for such occasions. He wore new, squeaking shoes, and his red face showed the powder a barber had put on it half an hour before. On his desk lay his overcoat, umbrella, and a small valise. The door of the glass case on the wall, wherein were displayed all kinds of handcuffs, nippers, squeezers, come-alongs and leather strait-jackets, together with an impressive exhibit of monstrous steel keys, was open, and several of its brass hooks were empty. Danner, as he stood in the middle of the room, looked about as if to assure himself that he had forgotten nothing, and then went to the window, drew out a revolver, broke it at the breach, and carefully inspected its loads. That done, he snapped the revolver together and slipped it into the holster that was slung to a belt about his waist. He did not button the coat that concealed this weapon. Then he looked through the window, saw the patrol wagon, took out his watch and shouted angrily:

"For God's sake, Hal, hurry up!"

Danner's impatient admonition seemed to be directed through the great barred door that opened off the other side of the office into the prison, and from within there came the prompt and propitiatory reply of the underling:

"All right, Jim, in a minute."

The open door, the evident preparation, the spirit of impending change, the welcome break in the monotony of the jail's diurnal routine, all were evidenced in the tumult that was going on beyond that huge gate of thick steel bars. The voice of the under-turnkey had risen above the din of other voices proceeding from the depths of hidden cells; there was a constant shuffle of feet on cement floors, the rattle of keys, the heavy tumbling of bolts, the clang and grating of steel as the shifting of a lever opened and closed simultaneously all the doors of an entire tier of cells. These noises seemed to excite the inmates, but presently above the discord arose human cries, a chorus of good-bys, followed in a moment by those messages that conventionally accompany all departures, though these were delivered in all the various shades of sarcasm and bitter irony.

"Good-by!"

"Remember us to the main screw!"

"Think of us when you get to the big house!"

Thus the voices called.

And then suddenly, one voice rose above the rest, a fine barytone voice that would have been beautiful had not it taken on a tone of mockery as it sang:

"We're going home! We're going home!

No more to sin and sorrow."

Then other voices took up the lines they had heard at the Sunday services, and bawled the hymn in a horrible chorus. The sound infuriated Danner, and he rushed to the barred door and shouted:

"Shut up! Shut up!" and he poured out a volume of obscene oaths. From inside came yells, derisive in the safety of anonymity.

"You'll get nothing but bread and water for supper after that!" Danner shouted back. He began to unlock the door, but, glancing at the desk, changed his mind and turned and paced the floor.

But now the noise of the talking, the shuffle of feet on the concrete floors, came nearer. The door of the prison was unlocked; it swung back, and there marched forth, walking sidewise, with difficulty, because they were all chained together, thirteen men. Two of the thirteen, the first and last, were Gregg and Poole, under-turnkeys. Utter, Danner's first assistant, came last, carefully locking the door behind him.

"Line up here," said Danner angrily, "we haven't got all night!"

The men stood in a row, and Danner, leaning over his desk, began to check off their names. There was the white-haired Delaney, who had seven years for burglary; Johnson, a negro who had been given fifteen years for cutting with intent to kill; Simmons, five years for grand larceny; Gunning, four years for housebreaking; Schypalski, a Pole, three years for arson; Graves, the employee of Ward, one year for embezzlement; McCarthy, and Hayes his partner, five years each for burglary and larceny; "Deacon" Samuel, an old thief, and "New York Willie," alias "The Kid," a pickpocket, who had each seven years for larceny from the person; and Brice, who had eight years for robbery. These men were to be taken to the penitentiary. Nearly all of them were guilty of the crimes of which they had been convicted.

The sheriff had detailed Danner to escort these prisoners to the penitentiary, as he sometimes did when he did not care to make the trip himself. Gregg would accompany Danner, while Poole would go only as far as the railway station. Danner was anxious to be off; these trips to the state capital were a great pleasure to him, and he had that nervous dread of missing the train which comes over most people as they are about to start away for a holiday. He was anxious to get away from the jail before anything happened to stay him; he was anxious to be on the moving train, for until then he could not feel himself safe from some sudden recall. He had been thinking all day of the black-eyed girl in a brothel not three blocks from the penitentiary, whom he expected to see that night after he had turned the prisoners over to the warden. He could scarcely keep his mind off her long enough to make his entries in the jail record and to see that he had all his mittimuses in proper order.

The prisoners, standing there in a haggard row, wore the same clothes they had had on when they appeared in court for sentence a few weeks before; the same clothes they had had on when arrested. None of them, of course, had any baggage. The little trinkets they had somehow accumulated while in jail they had distributed that afternoon among their friends who remained behind in the steel cages; all they had in the world they had on their backs. Most of them were dressed miserably. Gunning, indeed, who had been lying in jail since the previous June, wore a straw hat, which made him so absurd that the Kid laughed when he saw him, and said:

"That's a swell lid you've got on there, Gunny, my boy. I'm proud to fill in with your mob."

Gunning tried to smile, and his face, already white with the prison pallor, seemed to be made more ghastly by the mockery of mirth.

The Kid was well dressed, as well dressed as Graves, who still wore the good clothes he had always loved. Graves was white, too, but not as yet with the prison pallor. He tried to bear himself bravely; he did not wish to break down before his companions, all of whom had longer sentences to serve than he. He dreaded the ride through the familiar streets where a short time before he had walked in careless liberty, full of the joy and hope and ambition of youth. He knew that countless memories would stalk those streets, rising up unexpectedly at every corner, following him to the station with mows and jeers; he tried to bear himself bravely, and he did succeed in bearing himself grimly, but he had an aching lump in his throat that would not let him speak. It had been there ever since that hour in the afternoon when his mother had squeezed her face between the bars of his cell to kiss him good-by again and again. The prison had been strangely still while she was there, and for a long time after she went even the Kid had been quiet and had forgotten his joshing and his ribaldry. Graves had tried to be brave for his mother's sake, and now he tried to be brave for appearances' sake. He envied Delaney and the negro, who took it all stolidly, and he might have envied the Kid, who took it all humorously, if it had not been for what the Kid had said to him that afternoon about his own mother. But now the Kid was cheerful again, and kept up the spirits of all of them. To Graves it was like some horrible dream; everything in the room–Danner, the turnkeys, the exhibit of jailer's instruments on the wall–was unreal to him–everything save the hat-band that hurt his temples, and the aching lump in his throat. His eyes began to smart, his vision was blurred; instinctively he started to lift his hand to draw his hat farther down on his forehead, but something jerked, and Schypalski moved suddenly; then he remembered the handcuffs. The Pole was dumb under it all, but Graves knew how Schypalski had felt that afternoon when the young wife whom he had married but six months before was there; he had wept and grown mad until he clawed at the bars that separated them, and then he had mutely pressed his face against them and kissed the young wife's lips, just as Graves's mother had kissed him. And then the young wife would not leave, and Danner had to come and drag her away across the cement floor.

Johnson was stupefied; he had not known until that afternoon that he was to be taken away so soon, and his wife had not known; she was to bring the children on the next day to see him. For an hour Johnson had been on the point of saying something; his lips would move, and he would lift his eyes to Danner, but he seemed afraid to speak.

Meanwhile, Danner was making his entries and looking over his commitment papers. The Kid had begun to talk with Deacon Samuel. He and the Deacon had been working together and had been arrested for the same crime, but Danner had separated them in the jail so they could not converse, and they were together now for the first time since their arrest. The Kid bent his body forward and leaned out of the line to look down at the Deacon. The old thief was smooth-faced and wore gold-rimmed spectacles. When the Kid caught his mild, solemn eye, looking out benignly from behind his glasses, a smile spread over his face, and he said:

"Well, old pard, we're fixed for the next five-spot."

"Yes," said the Deacon.

"How was it pulled off for you?" asked the Kid.

"Oh, it was the same old thing over again," replied the Deacon. "They had us lagged before the trial, but they had to make a flash of some kind, so they put up twelve suckers and then they put a rapper up, and that settled it."

"There was nothing to it," said the Kid, in a tone that acquiesced in all the Deacon had been saying. "It was that way with me. They were out chewing the rag for five minutes, then they comes in, hands the stiff to the old bloke in the rock, and he hands it to quills, who reads it to me, and then the old punk-hunter made his spiel."

"Did he?" said the Deacon, interested. "He didn't to me; he just slung it at me in a lump."

"Did Snaggles plant the slum?"

"Naw," said the Deacon, "the poke was cold and the thimble was a phoney."

"Je's," exclaimed the Kid. "I never got wise! Well, then there was no chance for him to spring us."

"No."

"It's tough to fall for a dead one," mused the Kid.

The other prisoners had been respectfully silent while these two thieves compared notes, but their conversation annoyed Danner. He could not understand what they were saying, and this angered him, and besides, their talking interfered with his entries, for he was excessively stupid.

"They gave me a young mouthpiece," the Kid was beginning, when Danner raised his head and said:

"Now you fellows cut that out, do you hear? I want to get my work done and start."

"I beg your pardon, papa," said the Kid; "we're anxious to start, too. Did you engage a lower berth for me?"

The line of miserable men laughed, not with mirth so much as for the sake of any diversion, and at the laugh Danner's face and neck colored a deeper red. The Kid saw this change in color and went on:

"Please don't laugh, gentlemen; you're disturbing the main screw." And then, lifting his eyebrows, he leaned forward a little and said: "Can't I help you, papa?"

Danner paid no attention, but he was rapidly growing angry.

"I'd be glad to sling your ink for you, papa," the Kid went on, "and anyway you'd better splice yourself in the middle of the line before we start, or you might get lost. You know you're not used to traveling or to the ways of the world–"

"Cheese it, Kid," said the Deacon warningly. But the spirit of deviltry which he had never been able to resist, and indeed had never tried very hard to resist, was upon the Kid, and he went on:

"Deac, pipe the preacher clothes! And the brand new kicks, and the mush! They must have put him on the nut for ten ninety-eight."

"He'll soak you with a sap if you don't cheese it," said the Deacon.

"Oh, no, a nice old pappy guy like him wouldn't, would you?" the Kid persisted. "He knows I'm speaking for his good. I want him to chain himself to us so's he won't get lost; if he'd get away and fall off the rattler, he'd never catch us again."

"Well, I could catch you all right," said Danner, stopping and looking up.

"Why, my dear boy," said the Kid, "you couldn't track an elephant through the snow."

The line laughed again, even the under-turnkeys could not repress their smiles. But Danner made a great effort that showed in the changing hues of scarlet that swept over his face, and he choked down his anger. He put on his overcoat and picked up his satchel, and said:

"Come on, now."

Utter unlocked the outer doors, and the line of men filed out.

"Good-by, Bud," the Kid called to Utter. "If you ever get down to the dump, look me up."

The others bade Utter good-by, for they all liked him, and as the line shuffled down the stone steps the men eagerly inhaled the fresh air they had not breathed for weeks, save for the few minutes consumed in going over to the court-house and back, and a thrill of gladness momentarily ran through the line. Then the Kid called out:

"Hold on, Danner!"

He halted suddenly, and so jerked the whole line to an abrupt standstill. "I've left my mackintosh in my room!"

"If you don't shut up, I'll smash your jaw!"

The Kid's laugh rang out in the air.

"Yes, that'd be just about your size!" he said.

Danner turned quickly toward the Kid, but just at that instant a dark fluttering form flew out of the misty gloom and enveloped Schypalski; it was his wife, who had been waiting all the afternoon outside the jail. She clung to the Pole, who was as surprised as any of them, and she wept and kissed him in her Slavonic fashion,–wept and kissed as only the Slavs can weep and kiss. Then Danner, when he realized what had occurred, seized her and flung her aside.

"You damn bitch!" he said. "I'll show you!"

"That's right, Danner," said the Kid. "You've got some one your size now! Soak her again."

Danner whirled, his anger loose now, and struck the Kid savagely in the face. The line thrilled through its entire length; wild, vague hopes of freedom suddenly blazed within the breasts of these men, and they tugged at the chains that bound them. Utter, watching from the door, ran down the walk, and Danner drew his revolver.

"Get into that wagon!" he shouted, and then he hurled after them another mouthful of the oaths he always had ready. The little sensation ended, the hope fell dead, and the prisoners moved doggedly on. In a second the Kid had recovered himself, and then, speaking thickly, for the blood in his mouth, he said in a low voice:

"Danner, you coward, I'll serve you out for that, if I get the chair for it!"

It was all still there in the gloom and the misty rain, save for the shuffle of the feet, the occasional click of a handcuff chain, and presently the sobbing of the Polish woman rising from the wet ground. Danner hustled his line along, and a moment later they were clambering up the steps of the patrol wagon.

"Well, for God's sake!" exclaimed the driver, "I thought you'd never get here! Did you want to keep these horses standing out all night in the wet?"

The men took their seats inside, those at the far end having to hold their hands across the wagon because they were chained together, and the wagon jolted and lurched as the driver started his team and went bowling away for the station. The Pole was weeping.

"The poor devil!" said the pickpocket. "That's a pretty little broad he has. Can't you fellows do something for him? Give him a cigarette–or–a chew–or–something." Their resources of comfort were so few that the Kid could think of nothing more likely.

Just behind the patrol wagon came a handsome brougham, whose progress for an instant through the street which saw so few equipages of its rank had been stayed by the patrol wagon, moving heavily about before it started. The occupants of the brougham had seen the line come out of the jail, had seen it halt, had seen Danner fling the Polish woman aside and strike the pickpocket in the face; they had seen the men hustled into the patrol wagon, and now, as it followed after, Elizabeth Ward heard a voice call impudently:

"All aboard for the stir!"