V
Dillon, Archie, Mandell and Squeak had left the city that morning. Dillon was gloomy and morose because Mason had refused to join him. He had been disappointed, too, in Curly, but not so much surprised, for Curly was so strange and mysterious that nothing he might do could surprise his friends. Cedarville was far away, in Illinois, and long before daylight the four men had started on their journey in a freight-train. Dillon's plan was to rob the bank that night. He had chosen Saturday night because a Sunday would probably intervene before discovery, and thus give them time to escape. But the journey was beset by difficulties; the train spent long hours in switching, in cutting out and putting in cars, and at such times the four men had been compelled to get off and hide, lest the trainmen detect them. Besides, the train made long inexplicable stops, standing on a siding, with nothing to mar the stillness but the tired exhaust of the engine and the drone of the wide country-side. At noon the empty box-car in which the men had been riding was cut out and left stranded at a village; after that, unable to find another empty car, they rode on a car that was laden with lumber, but this, too, was cut out and left behind. Then they rode in most uncomfortable and dangerous positions on the timber-heads over the couplings. Half-way to Cedarville they met the storm. It had been gathering all the morning, and now it broke suddenly; the rain came down in torrents, and they were drenched to the skin. Mandell, who was intensely afraid of lightning, suffered agonies, and threatened to abandon the mob at the first opportunity. Late in the afternoon, just as the train was pulling into the village of Romeo, the rear brakeman discovered them, called the conductor and the front brakeman, and ordered the men to leave the train.
"Stick and slug!" cried Mandell, made irritable by the storm. But Dillon repressed him.
"Unload!" he commanded. "Don't goat 'em."
Archie, on the other side of the car, had not been seen clearly by the trainmen, but the others had, and though Dillon made them all get off, he could not keep Squeak from stopping long enough to curse the train-men with horrible oaths. Then the train went on and left them.
At evening they went into the woods and built a fire. There were discouragements as to the fire; the wood was wet, but finally they achieved a blaze, and Dillon went into the village after food. When he returned the fire was going well, the men had dried their clothes, and their habitual spirits had returned. In the water of a creek Dillon washed the can he had found, and made tea; they cooked bacon on pointed sticks, broke the bread and cheese, and ate their supper. Then, in the comfort that came of dry clothes and warmth and the first meal they had eaten that day, they sat about, rolled cigarettes, and waited for the night. Then darkness fell, Dillon made them put out the fire, and they tramped across the fields to the railroad.
"We'll wait here for the John O'Brien," said Dillon, when they came to the water-tank. "We must get the jug to-night–that'll give us all day to-morrow for the get-away."
They waited then, and waited, while the summer night deepened to silence; once, the headlight of an engine sent its long light streaming down the track; they made ready; the train came swaying toward them.
"Hell!" exclaimed Mandell, in the disappointment that was common to all of them. "It's a rattler!" And the lighted windows of a passenger-train swept by.
They waited and waited, and no freight-train came. At midnight, when they were all stiff and cold, Dillon ordered them into the village. They were glad enough to go. In the one business street of the town they found a building in which a light gleamed. They glanced through a window; it was the post-office. Then Dillon changed his plan in that ease with which he could change any plan, and forgot the little bank at Cedarville. He placed Squeak at the rear of the building, Mandell in the front.
"Come on, Dutch," he said.
He took Archie with him because he was not so sure of him as he was of the two other men, though Archie felt that he had been honored above them. He followed Dillon into the deep shadows that lay between the post-office and the building next door. He kept close behind Dillon, and watched with excitement while Dillon's tall form bent before one of the windows. Dillon was groping; presently he stood upright, his back bowed, he strained and grunted and swore, then the screws gave, and Dillon wrenched the little iron bars from the windows.
"Come on," he said.
He was crawling through the window; Archie followed.
Inside, Dillon stood upright, holding Archie behind him, and peered about in the dim light from the oil lamp that burned before a tin reflector on the wall. The safe was in the light. Dillon looked back, made a mental note of the window's location, and put out the lamp. Then he lighted a candle and knelt before the safe.
Archie stood with his revolver in his hand; Dillon laid his on the floor beside him. Then from the pocket of his coat he drew out some soap; a moment more and Archie could see him plastering up the crevices about the door of the safe, leaving but one opening, in the middle of the top of the door. Then out of the soap he fashioned about this opening a crude little cup. Archie watched intently. Dillon worked rapidly, expertly, and yet, as Archie noted, not so rapidly nor so expertly as Curly had worked. Curly was considered one of the most skilful men in the business, but Dillon was older and could tell famous tales of the old days when they had blown gophers–the days when they used to drill the safes and pour in powder. Dillon's age was telling; his fingers were clumsy and knotted with rheumatism, and now and then they trembled.
Archie could see him plastering up the crevices
"Now the soup," Dillon was saying, quite to himself, and he poured the nitroglycerin from a bottle into the little cup he had made of soap.
"And the string," said Archie, anxious to display his knowledge.
"Cheese it!" Dillon commanded.
He was fixing a fulminating cap to the end of a fuse, and he inserted this into the cup. Then he plastered it all over with soap, picked up his revolver, lighted the slow fuse from the candle, and, rising quickly, he stepped back, drawing Archie with him. They stood in a corner of the room watching the creeping spark; a moment more and there was the thud of an explosion, and Dillon was springing toward the safe; he seized the handle, opened the heavy door, and was down with his candle peering into its dark interior. He went through it rapidly, drew out the stamps and the currency and the coin. Another moment and they were outside. Mandell and Squeak were where Dillon had left them.
"All right," Dillon said. "Lam!"
VI
A week later, returning by a roundabout way, Dillon and his companions came back to town. That night Dillon, Archie, Squeak, Mandell and Mason were arrested. When Archie was taken up to the detectives' office and found himself facing Kouka, his heart sank.
"Couldn't take a little friendly advice, could you?" said Kouka, thrusting forward his black face.
Archie was dumb.
"Where'd you get that gat?" Kouka demanded.
Still Archie was dumb.
"You might as well tell," Kouka said. "Your pals have split on you."
Archie had heard of that ruse; he did not think any of them would confess, and he was certain they had not done so when Kouka referred to his revolver, for no one but Jackson knew where he had got the weapon. After an hour Kouka gave it up, temporarily at least, and sent Archie back to the prison.
The next morning all five men were taken to the office of the detectives. Besides Kouka, Quinn and Inspector McFee, there were two others, one of whom the prisoners instantly recognized as Detective Carney. Dillon and Mason had long known Carney, and respected him; he was the only detective in the city whom they did respect, for this silent, undemonstrative man, with the weather-beaten face, white hair and shrewd blue eyes, had a profound knowledge of all classes of thieves and their ways. Indeed, this knowledge, which made Carney the most efficient detective in the city, militated against him with his superiors; he knew too much for their comfort. As for Kouka and the other detectives, they were jealous of him, though he never interfered in their work nor offered suggestion or criticism; but they all felt instinctively that he contemned them. When Dillon saw Carney his heart sank; Mason's, on the contrary, rose. Carney gave no sign of recognition; it was plain that he was a mere spectator. But when Dillon saw the other man he whispered to Mason out of the corner of his mouth:
"It's all off."
This man was a tall, well-built fellow, with iron-gray hair, a ruddy face and a small black mustache above full red lips; he was dressed in gray, and he bore himself as something above the other officers present because he was an United States inspector. His name was Fallen. He glanced at the five men, and smiled and nodded complacently.
"I thought it looked like one of your jobs," he said, addressing Dillon and Mason jointly. Dillon could not refrain from nudging Mason, and in the same instant he caught Carney's eye. Carney winked quietly, and Dillon smiled, and to hide the smile, self-consciously ducked his head and spat out his tobacco.
"Well," said Fallen, "I'm much obliged to you men." He included McFee officially, and Kouka and Quinn personally in this acknowledgment. "I'll have the marshal come for them after dinner. I want Mason there and Dillon"–he pointed fiercely and menacingly–"and Mandell and that kid." He was indicating Squeak. "What's your name?" he demanded.
Squeak hesitated, then said: "Davis."
Fallen laughed in his superior, federal way, and said:
"That'll do as well as any."
Then he looked at Archie.
"I don't want him," he said. "He doesn't belong to this gang; he wasn't there. There were only four of them. You can cut him out."
Kouka and Quinn looked at each other in surprise; they were about to protest. In Archie's heart, as he watched this little drama, a wild hope flamed. Carney, too, looked up, showing the first interest he had evinced. Something in his look deterred Fallen, held his eye. He knew Carney and his reputation; his glance plainly implied a question.
"You're wrong on that fellow Mason," said Carney.
Fallen looked at him, then at Mason; then he smiled his superior smile.
"Oh, I guess not," he said lightly. He turned away with his complacent, insulting smile.
"All right," said Carney. "You've got him wrong, that's all. He's been here in town for three weeks. Of course, it's nothing to me–'tain't my business." He plunged his hands in his trousers pockets and walked over to the window.
The men in the chained line shuffled uneasily.
"Do I get out now?" Archie asked.
Kouka laughed.
"Yes–when I'm through with you."
That afternoon Dillon, Mason, Mandell and Squeak were taken to the county jail on warrants charging them with the robbery of the post-office at Romeo.
Gibbs appeared at the jail early that evening, his blue eyes filled with a distress that made them almost as innocent as they must have been when he was a little child.
"I just heard of the pinch," he said apologetically.
"Didn't they send you word last night?" asked Dillon.
Gibbs shook his head impatiently, as if it were useless to waste time in discussing such improbabilities.
"Never mind," he said. "I'll send a mouthpiece."
"Yes, do, Dan," said Mason. "We want a hearing."
"Well, now, leave all that to me, Joe," said Gibbs. "I'll send you some tobacco and have John fetch in some chuck."
Gibbs attended to their little wants, but he had difficulty as to the lawyer. He had, from time to time, employed various lawyers in the city, being guided in his selections, not by the reputed abilities of the lawyers, but by his notions of their pull with the authorities. Formerly he had employed Frisby on the recommendation of Cleary, the chief of police, with whom Frisby divided such fees, but Frisby's charges were extortionate, and lately, Gibbs understood, his influence was waning. In thinking over the other lawyers, he recalled Shelley Thomas, but Thomas, he found, was on a drunk. At last he decided on Marriott.
"There's nothing to it," he said to Marriott, "especially so far as Mason's concerned; he's a friend of mine. He's in wrong, but these United States inspectors will job him if they get a chance."
Marriott wished that Gibbs had retained some other lawyer. The plight of the men seemed desperate enough. He thought them guilty, and, besides, he wished to go away on his vacation. But his interest deepened; he found that he was dealing with a greater power than he encountered in the ordinary state case; the power, indeed, of the United States. The officials in the government building were unobliging; Fallen was positively insulting; from none of them could he receive any satisfaction. The hearing was not set, and then one evening Fallen mysteriously disappeared. Marriott was enraged, Gibbs was desperate, and Marriott found himself sharing Gibbs's concern.
Dillon and Mandell and Squeak spoke only of proving an alibi; they said that Gibbs would arrange this for them. This disheartened Marriott, confirmed his belief in their guilt, and he shrank from placing on the stand the witnesses Gibbs would supply. And then, one afternoon at the jail, a strange experience befell him. Mason was looking at him, his face pressed against the bars; he fixed his eyes on him, and, speaking slowly, with his peculiar habit of moistening his lips and swallowing between his words, he said:
"You think I'm guilty of this, Mr. Marriott."
Marriott tried to smile, and tried to protest, but his looks must have belied him.
"I know you do," Mason went on, "but I'm not, Mr. Marriott. I've done time–lots of it, but they've got me wrong now. These inspectors will lie, of course, but I can prove an alibi. What night was the job done?"
"The twelfth," said Marriott.
"That was Saturday, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, that night I was in Gibbs's. There was a mob of sure-thing men in there that night–Ed Dean and the Rat and some others–Gibbs will tell you. I can't subpoena them–they couldn't help; nobody would believe them, and they dassen't show, anyway."
"Are they–" Marriott felt a delicacy in saying the word.
"Thieves?" said Mason. "Yes–you see how it is."
"Of course," said Marriott.
"But," Mason went on, "there was a fellow in there–I don't know his name–a reporter; he put a piece in his paper the next day about Dean. Dean was kidding him–Gibbs can tell you. I wish you'd see him–he'll remember me, and he can fix the time by that piece he wrote."
Mason paused.
"I've done nearly twenty years, Mr. Marriott," he said presently. "That was all right; they done that on the square; this is the first time they ever had me in wrong. Dillon was with me every time–we worked together–that'll go against me. And them inspectors don't care–they'd just as soon job a fellow as not. All I ask now is a fair show. But those United States courts are a fierce game to put a man up against."
While Mason was talking a great wave of sympathy swept over Marriott; a conviction came to him that Mason was telling the truth.
"But," he said as the thought came to him, "can't Dillon and the others help you?"
"Well," Mason hesitated. "They've got themselves to look after. I'd rather fall myself than to throw them down. You see Gibbs about that reporter."
Marriott was convinced that Mason was not deceiving him; he felt a reproach at his own original lack of faith in the man. As he waited for the turnkey to unlock the door and let him out, a sickness came over him. The jail was new; there were many boasts about its modern construction, its sanitary conditions, and all that, but when he went out, he was glad of the cool air of the evening–it was wholly different from the atmosphere inside, however scientifically pure that may have been. He stopped a moment and looked back at the jail. It lifted its stone walls high above him; it was all clean, orderly, and architecturally not bad to look on. The handsome residence of the sheriff was brilliantly lighted; there were lace curtains at the windows, and within, doubtless, all the comforts, and yet–the building depressed Marriott. It struck him, though he could not then tell why, as a hideous anachronism. He thought of the men mewed within its stone walls; he could see Dillon's long eager face, ugly with its stubble of beard; he could see the reproach in Mason's eyes; he could see the shadowy forms of the other prisoners, walking rapidly up and down the corridors in their cramped exercises–how many were guilty? how many innocent? He could not tell; none could tell; they perhaps could not tell themselves. A great pity for them all filled his breast; he longed to set them all free. He wished this burden were lifted from him; he wished Gibbs had never come to him; he wished he could forget Mason–but he could not, and a great determination seized him to liberate this man, to prevent this great injustice which was gathering ominously in the world, drawing within its coils not only Mason, but all those who, like Fallen and the other officials, were concerned in the business, even though they remained free in the outer world. And Marriott had one more thought: if he could not prevent the injustice, would it taint him, too, as it must taint all who came in contact with it? He shuddered with a vague, superstitious fear.
Marriott found Wales, who recalled the evening at Gibbs's, consulted the files of his newspaper, made sure of the date, and then went with Marriott to the jail and looked through the bars into Mason's expectant eyes. He prolonged his inspection, plainly for the effect. Presently he said:
"Yes, he was there."
"You'll swear to it?" asked Marriott.
"Sure," said Wales, "with pleasure."
There was relief in Mason's eyes and in his manner, as there was relief in Marriott's mind.
"That makes it all right, Joe," he said, and Mason smiled gratefully. Marriott left the jail happy. His faith was restored. The universe resumed its order and its reason. After all, he said to himself, justice will triumph. He felt now that he could await the preliminary hearing with calmness. Wales's identification of Mason made it certain that he could establish an alibi for him; he must depend on Gibbs for the others, but somehow he did not care so much for them; they had not appealed to him as Mason had, whether because of his conviction that they were guilty or not, he could not say. The hearing was set for Thursday at two o'clock, but Marriott looked forward to it with the assurance that as to Mason, at least, there was no doubt of the outcome.
VII
Although Fallen had told the police they could set Archie free, the police did not set him free.
"It's that fellow Kouka," Archie explained to Marriott. "He's got it in for me; he wants to see me get the gaff."
That afternoon Archie was legally charged with being a "suspicious person." The penalty for being thus suspected by the police was a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment in the workhouse for sixty days. Marriott was angry; the business was growing complicated. He began to fear that he would never get away on his vacation; he was filled with hatred for Fallen, for Kouka, because just now they personified a system against which he felt himself powerless; finally, he was angry with Archie, with Dillon, even with Mason, for their stupidity in getting into such desperate scrapes.
"They're fools–that's what they are," he said to himself; "they're crazy men." But at this thought he softened. When he recalled Mason in his cell at the jail, and Archie in the old prison at the Central Station, his anger gave way to pity. He resolved to give up his vacation, if necessary, and fight for their release. He determined to demand a jury to try Archie on this charge of suspicion; he knew how Bostwick and all the attachés of the police court disliked to have a jury demanded, because it made them trouble. As he walked up the street he began to arrange the speech he would make in Archie's defense; presently, he noticed that persons turned and looked at him; he knew he had been talking to himself, and he felt silly; these people would think him crazy. This dampened his ardor, crushed his imagination and ruined his speech. He began to think of Mason again; he would have to let Archie's case go until after Mason had had a hearing; he must do one thing at a time.
Archie had been able to endure the confinement as long as Mason and Dillon and Mandell and Squeak were there; the five men had formed a class by themselves; they had a certain superiority in the eyes of the other prisoners, who were confined for drunkenness, for disturbance, for fighting, for petty thefts and other insignificant offenses. But when his companions were taken away, when his own hope of liberty failed, he grew morose. The city prison was an incredibly filthy place. The walls dripped always with dampness. High up, a single gas-jet burned economically in its mantle, giving the place the only light it ever knew. A bench ran along the wall below it, and on this bench the prisoners sat all day and talked, or stretched themselves and slept; now and then, for exercise, they tried chinning themselves from the little iron gallery that ran around the cells of the upper tier. Twice a day they were fed on bologna and coffee and bread. At night they were locked in cells, the lights were put out, and the place became a hideous bedlam. Men snored from gross dissipations, vermin crawled, rats raced about, and the drunken men, whose bodies from time to time were thrown into the place, went mad with terror when they awoke from their stupors, and cursed and blasphemed. The crawling vermin and the scuttling rats, the noises that suggested monsters, made their delirium real. The atmosphere of the prison was foul, compounded of the fumes of alcohol exhaled by all those gaping mouths, of the feculence of all those filthy bodies, of the foul odors of the slop-pails, of the germs of all the diseases that had been brought to the place in forty years. Archie could not sleep; no one could sleep except those who were overcome by liquor, and they had awful nightmares.
His few moments of relief came when the turnkey, a man who had been embruted by long years of locking other men in the prison, opened the door, called him with a curse and turned him over to Kouka. Then the respite ended. He was subjected to new terrors, to fresh horrors, surpassing those physical terrors of the night by infinity. For Kouka and Quinn took him into a little room off the detectives' office, closed and locked the door, and then for two hours questioned him about the robbery of the post-office at Romeo, about countless other robberies in the city and out of it; they accused him of a hundred crimes, pressed him to tell where he had stolen the revolver. They bent their wills against his, they shook their fingers under his nose, their fists in his face; they told him they knew where he had got the revolver; they told him that his companions had confessed. He was borne down and beaten; he felt himself grow weak and faint; at times a nausea overcame him–he was wringing with perspiration.
The first day of this ordeal he sat in utter silence, sustained by dogged Teutonic stubbornness. That afternoon they renewed the torture; still he did not reply.
The morning of the second day, though weakened in body and mind, he still maintained his stubbornness; that afternoon they had brought McFee with a fresh will to bear on him. By evening he told them he had stolen the revolver in Chicago. He did this in the hope of peace. It did gain him a respite, but not for long. The next morning they told him he had lied and he admitted it; then he gave them a dozen explanations of his possession of the revolver, all different and all false. Then, toward evening, Kouka suddenly fell upon him, knocked him from his chair with a blow, and then, as he lay on the floor, beat him with his enormous hairy fists. Quinn, the only other person in the room, stood by and looked on. Finally, Quinn grew alarmed and said:
"Cheese it, Ike! Cheese it!"
Kouka stopped and got up.
Archie was weeping, his whole body trembling, his nerves gone. That night he lay moaning in his hammock, and the man in the cell under him and the man in the cell next him, cursed him. In the morning they took him again up to the detective's office; this was the morning of the third day. Archie was in a daze, his mind was no longer clear, and he wondered vaguely, but with scarcely any interest, why it was that Kouka looked so smiling and pleasant.
"Set down, Arch, old boy," Kouka said, "and let me tell you all about it."
And then Kouka told him just where he had stolen the revolver, and when, and how–told him, indeed, more about the hardware store and the owners of it than Archie had ever known. And yet Archie did not seem surprised at this. He felt numbly that it was no longer worth while to deny it–he wondered why he ever had denied it in the first place. It did not matter; nothing mattered; there was no difference between things–they were all the same. But presently his mind became suddenly clear; he was conscious that there was one unanswered question in the world.
"Say, Kouka," he said, "how did you tumble?"
Kouka laughed. He was in fine humor that morning.
"Oh, it's no use, my boy," he said; "it's no use; you can't fool your Uncle Isaac. You'd better 'ave taken his advice long ago–and been a good boy."
"That's all right," said Archie, a strange calm having come to him because of the change in the world, "but who put you wise?"
Kouka looked at Quinn and smiled, and then he said to Archie:
"Oh, what you don't know won't hurt you."
Then he had Archie taken back to the prison, but before they locked him up Kouka gave him a box of cigarettes he had taken from a prostitute whom he had arrested the night before, and he left Archie leaning against the door of the prison smoking one of the cigarettes.
"What have they been doing to you?" asked a prisoner.
"The third degree," said Archie laconically.
The knowledge which Kouka preferred to shroud in mystery had been obtained in a simple way. Glancing over the records in the detective's office, he had by chance come across an old report of the robbery of a hardware store. Kouka had taken the revolver found on Archie to the merchant, and the merchant had identified it. That evening Marriott read in the newspapers conspicuous accounts of the brilliant work of Detective Kouka in solving the mystery that had surrounded a desperate burglary. The articles gave Kouka the greatest praise.