Chapter XVIII: Book III: I (7)

"I have come here, I have humiliated myself to ask you to do a favor for me," she said. "You are not ready to do it, I see." She was glad; she felt now the dreadful anxiety of one who is about to escape an awful dilemma. "To me it seems a very simple little thing, but--"

She was going.

"Elizabeth!" he said, "let me think it over. I can not think straight just now. You know how I want to help you. You know I would do anything--anything for you!"

"Anything but this," she said. "This little thing that hurts no one, a thing that can bring nothing but happiness to the world, that can save my father and my mother and me--a thing, perhaps the only thing that can save my poor, weak, erring brother--who knows?"

"Let me think it over," he pleaded. "I'll think it over to-night--I'll send you word in the morning."

She turned then and went away.

XXVII

Elizabeth let the note fall in her lap. A new happiness suddenly enveloped her. She felt the relief of an escape. The note ran:

DEAR ELIZABETH:

I have thought it all over. I did not sleep all night, thinking of it, and of you. But--I can not do what you ask; I could not love you as I do if I were false to my duty. You know how hard it is for me to come to this conclusion, how hard it is for me to write thus. It sounds harsh and brutal and cold, I know. It is not meant to be. I know how you have suffered; I wish you could know how I have suffered and how I shall suffer. I can promise you one thing, however: that I shall do only my duty, my plain, simple duty, as lightly as I can, and nothing now can give me such joy as to find the outcome one perhaps I ought not to wish--one which in any other case would be considered a defeat for me. But I ask you to think of me, whatever may come to pass, as

Your sincere
JOHN EADES.

She leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes; a sense of rest and comfort came to her. She was content for a while simply to realize that rest and comfort. She opened her eyes and looked out of the window over the little triangular park with its bare trees; the sky was solid gray; there was a gray tone in the atmosphere, and the soft light was grateful and restful to her eyes, tired and sensitive as they were from the loss of so much sleep. She felt that she could lie back then and sleep profoundly. Yet she did not wish to sleep--she wished to be awake and enjoy this sensation of relief, of escape. After that night and that day and this last night of suspense, it was like a reprieve--she started and her face darkened,--the thought of reprieve made her somehow think of Archie Koerner. This event had quite driven him out of her mind, coming as it had just at the climax. She had not thought of him for--how long? And Gusta! It brought the thought of her, too. Suddenly she remembered, with a dim sense of confusion that, at some time long ago, she and Gusta had talked of Archie's first trouble. Had they mentioned Dick? No, but she had thought of him! How strange! And then her thoughts returned to Eades, and she lifted the note, and glanced at it. She recalled the night at the Fords', and his proposal, her hesitation and his waiting. She let the note fall again and sighed audibly--a sigh that expressed her content. Then suddenly she started up! She had forgotten Dick--the trouble--her father!

Marriott knew what she had to say almost before the first sentence had fallen from her lips.

"I'll not pretend to be surprised, Elizabeth," he said. "I haven't expected it, but now I can see that it was inevitable."

He looked away from her.

"Poor boy!" he said. "How I pity him! He has done nothing more than to adopt the common standard; he has accepted the common ideal. He has believed them when they told him by word and deed that possession--money--could bring happiness and that nothing else can! Well--it's too bad."

Elizabeth's head was drooping and the tears were streaming down her cheeks. He pretended not to see.

"Poor boy!" he went on. "Well, we must save him, that's all."

She looked up at him, her gray eyes wide and their lashes drenched in their tears.

"How, Gordon?"

"Well, I don't know, but some way." He studied a moment. "Eades--well, of course, he's hopeless."

She could never tell him of her visit to Eades; she had told him merely of Hunter's interview with the prosecutor. But she was surprised to see how Marriott, instantly, could tell just what Eades would do.

"Eades is just a prosecutor, that's all," Marriott went on. "Heavens! How the business has hardened him! How it does pull character to shreds! And yet--he's like Dick--he's pursuing another ideal that's very popular. They'll elect Eades congressman or governor or something for his severity. But let's not waste time on him. Let's think." He sat there, his brows knit, and Elizabeth watched him.

"I wish I could fathom old Hunter. He had some motive in reporting it to Eades so soon. Of course, if it wasn't for that it would be easy. Hm--" He thought. "We'll have to work through Hunter. He's our only chance. I must find out all there is to know about Hunter. Now, Elizabeth, I'll have to shut myself up and do some thinking. The grand jury doesn't meet for ten days--we have time--"

"They won't arrest Dick?"

"Oh, it's not likely now. Tell him to stay close at home--don't let him skip out, whatever he does. That would be fatal. And one thing more--let me do the worrying." He smiled.

Marriott had hoped, when the murder trial was over, that he could rest; he had set in motion the machinery that was to take the case up on error; he had ordered his transcripts and prepared the petition in error and the motions, and he was going to have them all ready and file them at the last moment, so that he might be sure of delay. Archie had been taken to the penitentiary, and Marriott was glad of that, for it relieved him of the necessity of going to the jail so often; that was always an ordeal. He had but one more visit to make there,--Curly had sent for him; but Curly never demanded much. But now--here was a task more difficult than ever. It provoked him almost to anger; he resented it. It was always so, he told himself; everything comes at once--and then he thought of Elizabeth. It was for her!

He thought of nothing else all that day. He inquired about Hunter of every one he met. He went to his friends, trying to learn all he could. He picked up much, of course, for there was much to be told of such a wealthy and prominent man as Amos Hunter, especially one with such striking personal characteristics. But he found no clue, no hint that he felt was promising. Then he suddenly remembered Curly.

He found him in another part of the jail, where he had been immured away from Archie in order that they might not communicate with each other. With his wide knowledge and deeper nature Curly was a more interesting personality than Archie. He took his predicament with that philosophy Marriott had observed and was beginning to admire in these fellows; he had no complaints to make.

"I'm not worried," he said. "I'll come out all right. Eades has nothing on me, and he knows it. They're holding me for a bluff. They'll keep me, of course, until they get Archie out of the way, then they'll put me on the street. It wouldn't do to drop my case now. They'll just stall along with it until then. Of course--there's one danger--" he looked up and smiled curiously, and to the question in Marriott's eyes, he answered:

"You see they can't settle me for this; but they might dig up something somewhere else and put me away on that. You see the danger."

Marriott nodded, not knowing just what to say.

"But we must take the bitter with the sweet, as Eddie Dean used to say." Curly spoke as if the observation were original with Dean. "But, Mr. Marriott, there's one or two things I want you to attend to for me."

"Well," consented Marriott helplessly, already overburdened with others' cares.

"I don't like to trouble you, but there's no one I like to trust, and they won't let me see any one."

He hesitated a moment.

"It's this way," he presently went on. "I've got a woman--Jane, they call her. She's a good woman, you see, though she has some bad tricks. She's sore now, and hanging around here, and I want her to leave. She's even threatened to see Eades, but she wouldn't do that; she's too square. But she has a stand-in with McFee, and while he's all right in his way, still he's a copper, and you can't be sure of a copper. She can't help me any here, and she might queer me; the flatties might pry something out of her that could hurt me--they'll do anything. If you'll see Danny Gibbs and have him ship her, I'll be much obliged. And say, Mr. Marriott, when you're seeing him, tell him to get that thing fixed up and send me my bit. He'll understand. I don't mind telling you, at that. There's a man here, a swell guy, a banker, who does business with Dan. He's handled some of our paper--and that sort of thing, you know, and I've got a draw coming there. It ain't much, about twenty-five case, I guess, but it'd come in handy. Tell Dan to give the woman a piece of it and send the rest to me here. I can use it just now buying tobacco and milk and some little things I need. Dan'll understand all about it."

"Who is this swell guy you speak of--this banker?"

Curly looked at Marriott with the suspicion that was necessarily habitual with him, but his glance softened and he said:

"I don't know him myself. I never saw him--his name's Hunt, no, Hunter, or some such thing. Know him?"

Marriott's heart leaped; he struggled to control himself.

"Course, you understand, Mr. Marriott," said Curly, fearing he had been indiscreet, "this is all between ourselves."

"Oh, of course, you can depend on me."

He was anxious now to get away; he could scarcely observe the few decencies of decorum that the place demanded. And when he was once out of the prison, he called a cab and drove with all speed to Gibbs's place. On the way his mind worked rapidly, splendidly, under its concentration. When he reached the well-known quiet little saloon in Kentucky Street, Gibbs took him into the back room, and there, where Gibbs had been told of the desperate plights of so many men, Marriott told him of the plight of Dick Ward. When he had done, he leaned across the table and said:

"And you'll help me, Dan?"

Gibbs made no reply, but instead smoked and blinked at Marriott curiously. Just as Marriott's hopes were falling, Gibbs broke the silence:

"It's the girl you're interested in," he said gruffly, "not the kid." He looked at Marriott shrewdly, and when Marriott saw that he looked not at all unkindly or in any sense with that cynical contempt of the sentimental that might have been expected of such a man, Marriott smiled.

"Well, yes, you're right. I am interested in her."

Gibbs threw him one look and then tilted back, gazed upward to the ceiling, puffed meditatively at his cigar, and presently said, as if throwing out a mere tentative suggestion:

"I wonder if it wouldn't do that old geezer good to take a sea-voyage?"

Marriott's heart came into his throat with a little impulse of fear. He felt uneasy--this was dangerous ground for a lawyer who respected the ethics of his profession, and here he was, plotting with this go-between of criminals. Criminals--and yet who were the criminals he went between? These relations, after all, seemed to have a high as well as a low range--was there any so-called class of society whom Gibbs could not, at times, serve?

"Let's see," Gibbs was saying, "where is this now? Canada used to do, but that's been put on the bum. Mexico ain't so bad, they say, and some of them South American countries does pretty well, though they complain of the eatin', and there's nothing doing anyway. A couple of friends of mine down in New York went to a place somewhere called--let's see--called Algiers, ain't it?"

Marriott did not like to speak, but he nodded.

"Is that a warm country?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"It's on the shores of the Mediterranean."

"Now that don't tell me any more than I knew before," said Gibbs, "but if the climate's good for old guys with the coin, that's about all we want. It'll make the front all right, especially at this time o' year."

Marriott nodded again.

"All right, that'll do. An old banker goes there for his health--just as if it was Hot Springs."

Gibbs thought a moment longer.

"Now, of course, the kid's father'll make it good, won't he? He'll put up?"

"Yes," said Marriott. He was rather faint and sick about it all--and yet it was working beautifully, and it must be done. Even then Ward was pacing the floor somewhere--and Elizabeth, she was waiting and depending on him. "Shall I bring you his check?"

"Hell, no!" exclaimed Gibbs. "We'll want the cash. I'll get it of him. The fewer hands, the better."

Marriott was wild to get away; he could scarcely wait, but he remembered suddenly Curly's commissions, and he must attend to them, of course. He felt a great gratitude just now to Curly.

When Marriott told Gibbs of Curly's request, Gibbs shook his head decidedly and said:

"No, I draw the line at refereeing domestic scraps. If Curly wants to go frame in with a moll, it's his business; I can't do anything." And then he dryly added: "Nobody can, with Jane; she's hell!"

XXVIII

One morning, a week later, as they sat at breakfast, Ward handed his newspaper across to Elizabeth, indicating an item in the social column, and Elizabeth read:

"Mr. Amos Hunter, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Agnes Hunter, sailed from New York yesterday on the steamer _King Emanuel_ for Naples. Mr. Hunter goes abroad for his health, and will spend the winter in Italy."

Elizabeth looked up.

"That means--?"

"That it's settled," Ward replied.

She grew suddenly weak, in the sense of relief that seemed to dissolve her.

"Unless," Ward added, and Elizabeth caught herself and looked at her father fearfully, "Hunter should come back."

"But will he?"

"Some time, doubtless."

"Oh, dear! Then the suspense isn't over at all!"

"Well, it's over for the present, anyway. Eades can do nothing, so Marriott says, as long as Hunter is away, and even if he were to return, the fact that Hunter accepted the money and credited it on his books--in some fashion--would make it exceedingly difficult to prove anything, and of course, under any circumstances, Hunter wouldn't dare--now."

Elizabeth sat a moment idly playing with a fork, and her father studied the varying expressions of her face as the shades came and went in her sensitive countenance. Her brow clouded in some little perplexity, then cleared again, and at last she sighed.

"I feel a hundred years old," she said. "Hasn't it been horrible?"

"I feel like a criminal myself," said Ward.

"We are criminals--all of us," she said, dealing bluntly, cruelly with herself. "We ought all of us to be in the penitentiary, if anybody ought."

"Yes," he acquiesced.

"Only," she said, "nobody ought. I've learned that, anyway."

"What would you do with them?" he asked, in the comfort of entering the realm of the abstract.

"With us?"

"Well--with the criminals."

"Send us to the penitentiary, I suppose."

"You are delightfully illogical, Betsy," he said, trying to laugh.

"That's all we can be," she said. "It's the only logical way."

Then they were silent, for the maid entered.

"Have we really committed a crime?" she asked, when the door swung on the maid, who came and went so unconsciously in the midst of these tragic currents. "Don't tell me--if we have."

"I don't know," said Ward. "I presume I'd rather not know. I know I've gone through enough to make me miserable the rest of my life. I know that we have settled nothing--that we have escaped nothing--except what people will say."

"Yes, mama, after all, was the only one wise enough to understand and appreciate the real significance."

"Well, there's nothing more we can do now," he replied.

"No, we must go on living some way." She got up, went around the table and kissed him on the forehead. "We'll just lock our little skeleton in the family closet, papa, and once in a while go and take a peep at him. There may be some good in that--he'll keep us from growing proud, anyway."

Ward and Marriott had decided to say as little to Elizabeth as possible of their transaction. Ward had gone through a week of agony. In a day or two he had raised the little fortune, and kept it ready, and he had been surprised and a bit perturbed when Gibbs had come and in quite a matter-of-fact way asked for the amount in cash. Ward had helplessly turned it over to him with many doubts and suspicions; but he knew no other way. Afterward, when Gibbs returned and gave him Hunter's receipt, he had felt ashamed of these doubts and had hoped Gibbs had not noticed them, but Gibbs had gone away without a word, save a gruff:

"Well, that's fixed, Mr. Ward."

And yet Elizabeth had wondered about it all. Her conscience troubled her acutely, so acutely that when Marriott came over that evening for the praise he could not forego, and perhaps for a little spiritual corroboration and comfort, she said:

"Gordon, you have done wonders. I can't thank you."

"Don't try," he said. "It's nothing."

She looked troubled. Her brows darkened, and then, unable to resist the impulse any longer, she asked:

"But, Gordon, was it right?"

"What?" he asked, quite needlessly, as they both knew.

"What you--what we--did?"

"Yes, it was right."

"Was it legal?"

"N-no."

"Ah!" She was silent a moment. "What is it called?"

"What?"

"You know very well--our crime. I _must_ know the worst. I must know just how bad I am."

"You wish to have it labeled, classified, as Doctor Tilson would have it?"

"Yes, tell me."

"I believe," said Marriott looking away and biting his upper lip, "that it's called compounding a felony, or something of that sort."

He was silent and she was silent. Then he spoke again.

"They disbarred poor old Billy Gale for less than that."

She looked at him, her gray eyes winking rapidly as they did when she was interested and her mind concentrated on some absorbing problem. Then she impulsively clasped her white hands in her lap, and, leaning over, she asked out of the psychological interest the situation must soon or late have for her:

"Tell me, Gordon, just how you felt when you were--"

"Committing it?"

She nodded her head rapidly, almost impatiently.

"Well," he said with a far-away expression, "I experienced, especially when I was in Danny Gibbs's saloon, that pleasant feeling of going to hell."

"You just _won't_ reassure me," she said, relaxing into a hopeless attitude.

"Oh, yes, I will," he replied. "Don't you remember what Emerson says?" He looked up at the portrait of the beautiful, spiritual face above the mantel.

She looked up in her vivid literary interest.

"No; tell me. He said everything."

"Yes, everything there is to say. He said, 'Good men must not obey the laws too well.'"

XXIX

When Eades read the announcement of Hunter's departure for Italy he was first surprised, then indignant, then relieved. Hunter had reported Dick's crime in anger, the state of mind in which most criminal prosecutions are begun. The old man had trembled until Eades feared for him; as he sat there with pallid lips relating the circumstances, he was not at all the contained, mild and shrewd old financier Eades so long had known.

"We must be protected, Mr. Eades,"--he could hear the shrill cry for days--"we must be protected from these thieves! They are the worst of all, sir; the worst of all! I want this young scoundrel arrested and sent to the penitentiary right away, sir, right away!"

Eades had seen that the old man was in fear, and that in his fear he had turned to him as toward that ancient corner-stone of society, the criminal statute. And now he had fled!

Eades knew, of course, that some one had tampered with him; and, of course, the defalcation had been made good, and now Hunter would be an impossible witness. Even Eades could imagine Hunter on the stand, not as he had been in his office that day, angry, frightened, keenly conscious of his wrong and recalling minutely all the details; but senile, a little deaf, leaning forward with a hand behind his ear, a grin on his withered face, remembering nothing, not cognizant of the details of his bookkeeping--sitting there, with his money safe in his pocket, while the case collapsed, Dick was acquitted in triumph--and he, John Eades, made ridiculous.

But what was he to do? After all, in the eye of the law, Hunter was not a witness; and, besides, it was possible that, technically, the felony might not have been compounded. At any rate, if it had been he could not prove it, and as for proceeding now against Ward, that was too much to expect, too much even for him to exact of himself. When a definite case was laid before him with the evidence to support it, his duty was plain, but he was not required to go tilting after wind-mills, to investigate mere suspicions. It was a relief to resign himself to this conclusion. Now he could only wait for Hunter's return, and have him brought in when he came, but probably, in the end, it would come to nothing. Yes, it was a relief, and he could think hopefully once more of Elizabeth.

The fourteenth of May--the date for the execution of the sentence of death against Archie--was almost on him before Marriott filed his petition in error in the Appellate Court and a motion for suspension of sentence. He had calculated nicely. As the court could not hear and determine the case before the day of execution, the motion was granted, and the execution postponed. Marriott's relief was exquisite; he hastened to send a telegram to Archie, and was happy, so happy that he could laugh at the editorial which Edwards printed the next morning, calling for reforms in the criminal code which would prevent "such travesties as were evidently to be expected in the Koerner case."

Marriott could laugh, because he knew how hypocritical Edwards was, but Edwards's editorials had influence in other quarters, and Marriott more and more regretted his simple little act of kindness--or of weakness--in loaning Edwards the ten dollars. If the newspapers would desist, he felt sure that in time, when public sentiment had undergone its inevitable reaction, he might secure a commutation of Archie's sentence; but if Edwards, in order to vent his spleen, continued to keep alive the spirit of the mob, then there was little hope.

"If he could only be sent to prison for life!" said Elizabeth, as they discussed this aspect of the case. "No,"--she hastened to correct herself--"for twenty years; that would do."

"It would be the same thing," said Marriott.

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth leaned forward with a puzzled expression in her gray eyes.

"All sentences to the penitentiary are sentences for life. We pretend they're not, but if a man lives to get out--do we treat him as if he had paid the debt? No, he's a convict still. Look at Archie, for instance."

"Look at Harry Graves! Oh, Gordon,"--Elizabeth suddenly sat up and made an impatient gesture--"I can't forget him! And Gusta! And those men I saw as they were taken from the jail!"

"You mustn't worry about it; you can't help it."

"Oh, that's what they all tell me! 'Don't worry about it--you can't help it!' No! But you worried about Archie--and about"--she closed her eyes, and he watched their white lids droop in pain--"and about Dick."

"I knew them."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "you knew them--that explains it all. We don't know the others, and so we don't care. Some one knows them, of course, or did, once, in the beginning. It makes me so unhappy! Don't, please, ever any more tell me not to worry, or that I can't help it. Try to think out some way in which I can help it, won't you?"

Meanwhile, Edwards's editorials were doing their work. They had an effect on Eades, of course, because the _Courier_ was the organ of his party, to which he had to look for renomination. And they produced their effect on the judges of the Appellate Court, who also belonged to that party, but, not knowing Edwards, thought his anonymous utterances the voice of the people, which, at times, in the ears of politicians sounds like the voice of God. The court heard the case early in June; in two weeks it was decided. When Marriott entered the court-room on the morning the decision was to be rendered, his heart sank. On the left of the bench were piled some law-books, and behind them, peeping surreptitiously, he recognized the transcript in the Koerner case. It was much like other transcripts, to be sure, but to Marriott it was as familiar as the features of a friend with whom one has gone through trouble. The transcript lay on the desk before Judge Gardner's empty chair and therefore he knew that the decision was to be delivered by Gardner, and he feared that it was adverse, for Gardner had been severe with him and had asked him questions during the argument.

The bailiff had stood up, rapped on his desk, and Marriott, Eades and the other lawyers in the courtroom rose to simulate a respect for the court entertained only by those who felt that they were likely to win their cases. The three judges paced solemnly in, and when they were seated and the presiding judge had made a few announcements, Gardner leaned forward, pulled the transcript toward him, balanced his gold glasses on his nose, cleared his throat, and in a deep bass voice and in a manner somewhat strained, began to announce the decision. Before he had uttered half a dozen sentences, Marriott knew that he had lost again. The decision of the lower court was affirmed in what was inevitably called by the newspapers an able opinion, and the day of Archie's death was once more fixed--this time for the twenty-first of October.

A few weeks later, Marriott saw Archie at the penitentiary. He had gone to the state capital to argue to the Supreme Court old man Koerner's case against the railroad company. Several weeks before he had tried the case in the Appellate Court, and had won, the court affirming the judgment. This case seemed now to be the only hope of the family, and Marriott was anxious to have it heard by the Supreme Court before the learned justices knew of Archie's case, lest the relation of the old man and the boy prejudice them. He felt somehow that if he failed in Archie's case, a victory in the father's case would go far to dress the balance of the scales of justice and preserve the equilibrium of things. It was noon when Marriott was at the penitentiary, and he was glad that the men who were waiting to be killed were then taking their exercise, for he was spared the depression of the death-chamber. He met Archie under the blackened locust tree in the quadrangle. Archie was hopeful that day.

"I feel lucky," said Archie. "I'll not have to punish,--think so, Mr. Marriott?"

"We've got lots of time," Marriott replied, not knowing what else to say, "the Supreme Court doesn't sit till fall."

Pritchard, the poisoner, laid his slender white hand on Archie's shoulder.

"Good boy you've got here, Mr. Marriott," he said jokingly, "but a trifle wild."

Marriott laughed, and wondered how he could laugh.

Just then a whistle blew, and the convicts in close-formed ranks filed by on their way to dinner. As they went by, one of them glanced at him with a smile of recognition; a smile which, as Marriott saw, the man at once repressed, as the convict is compelled to repress all signs of human feeling. Marriott stared, then suddenly remembered; it was a man named Brill, whom he had known years before. And he, like the rest of the world, had forgotten Brill! He had not even cast him a glance of sympathy! He felt like running after the company--but it was too late; Brill must go without the one little kindness that might have made one day, at least, happier, or if not that, shorter for him.

The last gray-garbed company marched by, the guard with his club at his shoulder. The rear of this company was brought up by a convict, plainly of the fourth grade, for he was in stripes and his head was shaved. He walked painfully, with the aid of a crooked cane, lifting one foot after the other, flinging it before him and then slapping it down uncertainly with a disagreeable sound to the pavement.

"What's the matter with that man?" asked Marriott.

"They say he has locomotor ataxia," said Beck, the death-watch, "but he's only shamming. He's no good."

XXX

Archie had lived in the death-chamber at the penitentiary for nine months. Three times had the day of his death been fixed; the first time, by Glassford for the fourteenth of May, the second time by the Appellate Court for the twenty-first of October. Then, the third time the seven justices of the Supreme Court, sitting in their black and solemn gowns, sustained the lower court, and set the day anew, this time for the twenty-third of November. Then came the race to the Pardon Board; where Marriott and Eades again fought over Archie's life. The Pardon Board refused to recommend clemency. But one hope remained--the governor. It was now the twenty-second of November--one day more. Archie waited that long afternoon in the death-chamber, while Marriott at the state house pleaded with the governor for a commutation of his sentence to imprisonment for life.

Already the prison authorities had begun the arrangements. That afternoon Archie had heard them testing the electric chair; he had listened to the thrumming of its current; twice, thrice, half a dozen times, they had turned it on. Then Jimmy Ball had come in, peered an instant, without a word, then shambled away, his stick hooked over his arm. It was very still in the death-chamber that afternoon. The eight other men confined there, like Archie, spent their days in reviving hope within their breasts; like him, they had experienced the sensation of having the day of their death fixed, and then lived to see it postponed, changed, postponed and fixed again. They had known the long suspense, the alternate rise and fall of hope, as in the courts the state had wrangled with their lawyers for their lives. Not once had Burns, the negro, twanged his guitar. Lowrie, who was writing a history of his wasted life, had allowed his labor to languish, and sat now moodily gazing at the pieces of paper he had covered with his illiterate writing. Old man Stewart, who had strangled his young wife in a jealous rage, lay on his iron cot, his long white beard spread on his breast, strangely suggestive of the appearance he soon would present in death. Kulaski, the Slav, who had slain a saloon-keeper for selling beer to his son, and never repented, was moody and morose; Belden and Waller had consented to an intermission of their quarrelsome argument about religion. The intermission had the effect of a deference to Archie; the argument was not to be resumed until after Archie's death, when he might, indeed, be supposed to have solved the problem they constantly debated, and to have no further interest in it. Pritchard, the poisoner, a quiet fellow, and Muller had ceased their interminable game of cribbage, the cards lay scattered on the table, the little pins stuck in the board where they had left them, to resume their count another time. The gloom of Archie's nearing fate hung over these men, yet none of them was thinking of Archie; each was thinking of an evening which would be to him as this evening was to Archie, unless--there was always that word "unless"; it made their hearts leap painfully.

Just outside the iron grating which separated from the antechamber the great apartment where they existed in the hope of living again, Beck, the guard, sat in his well-worn splint-bottomed chair. He had tilted it against the wall, and, with his head thrown back, seemed to slumber. His coarse mouth was open, his purple nose, thrown thus into prominence, was grotesque, his filthy waistcoat rose and stretched and fell as his flabby paunch inflated with his breathing. Beside the hot stove, just where the last shaft of the sun, falling through the barred window, could fall on her, a black cat, fat and sleek, that haunted the chamber with her uncanny feline presence, stretched herself, and yawned, curling her delicate tongue.

When Archie entered the death-chamber, there had been eleven men in it. But the number had decreased. He could remember distinctly each separate exit. One by one they had gone out, never to return. There was Mike Thomas; he would remember the horror of that to the end of his life, as, with the human habit, he expressed it to Marriott, insensible of the grim irony of the phrase in that place of deliberate death, where, after all, life persisted on its own terms and with its common phrases and symbols. The newspapers had called it a harrowing scene; the inmates of the death-chamber had whispered about it, calling it a bungle, and the affair had magnified and distorted itself to their imaginations, and they had dwelt on it with a covert morbidity. The newspapers next day were denied them, but they knew that it had required three shocks--they could count them by the thrumming of the currents, each time the prison had shaken with the howl of the awakened convicts in the cell-house. Bill Arnold, the negro who had killed a real estate agent, had been the most concerned; his day was but a week after Thomas's. The strain had been too much for Arnold; he had collapsed, raved like a maniac, then sobbed, fallen on his knees and yammered a prayer to Jimmy Ball, as if the deputy warden were a god. They had dragged him out, still on his knees, moaning "God be merciful; God be merciful."

They had missed Arnold. He was a jolly negro, who could sing and tell stories, and do buck-and-wing dancing, and, when Ball was away, and the guard's back turned, give perfect imitations of them both. They missed him out of their life in that chamber, or rather out of their death. It seemed strange to think that one minute he was among them, full of warm pulsing life and strength--and that the next, he should be dead. They missed him, as men miss a fellow with whom they have eaten and slept for months.

These men in the state shambles were there, the law had said, for murder. But this was only in a sense true. One was there, for instance, because his lawyer had made a mistake; he had not kept accurate account of his peremptory challenges; he thought he had exhausted but fifteen, whereas he had exhausted sixteen; that is, all of them, and so had been unable to remove from the jury a man whom he had irritated and offended by his persistent questioning; he had been quite sarcastic, intending to challenge the man peremptorily in a few moments. Another man was there because the judge before whom he was tried, having quarreled with his wife one morning, was out of humor all that day, and had ridiculed his lawyer, not in words, but by sneers and curlings of his lip, which could not be preserved in the record. Another--Pritchard, to be exact--was there, first, because he had been a chemist; secondly, because he, like the judge, had had a quarrel with his wife; thirdly, because his wife had died suddenly, and traces of cyanide of potassium had been found in her stomach--at least three of the four doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination had said the traces were of cyanide of potassium--and fourthly, because a small vial was discovered in the room in which were also traces of cyanide of potassium; at least, three chemists declared the traces were those of cyanide of potassium. And all of them were there for some such reason as this, and all of them, with the possible exception of Pritchard, had taken human life. And yet each one had felt, and still felt, that the circumstances under which he had killed were such as to warrant killing; such, indeed, as to make it at the moment seem imperative and necessary, just as the State felt that in killing these men, circumstances had arisen which made it justifiable, imperative and necessary to kill.

Though Archie waited in suspense, the afternoon was short, short even beyond the shortness of November, and at five o'clock Marriott came. He lingered just outside the entrance to the chamber in the little room that was fitted up somehow like a chapel, the room in which the death chair was placed. The guard brought Archie out, and he leaned carelessly against the rail that surrounded the chair, mysterious and sinister under its draping of black oil-cloth. The rail railed off the little platform on which the chair was placed just as a chancel-rail rails off an altar, possibly because so many people regarded the chair in the same sacred light that they regarded an altar, and spoke of it as if its rite were quite as saving and sacerdotal. But Archie leaned against the rail calmly, negligently, and it made Marriott's flesh creep to see him thus unmoved and practical. He did not speak, but he looked his last question out of his blue eyes.

"The governor hasn't decided yet," Marriott said. "I've spent the afternoon with him. I've labored with him--God!" he suddenly paused and sighed in utter weariness at the recollection of the long hours in which he had clung to the governor--"I'm to see him again at eight o'clock at the executive mansion. He's to give me a final answer then."

"At eight o'clock?" The words slipped from Archie's lips as softly as his breath.

"This evening," said Marriott, dreading now the thought of fixity of time. He looked at Archie; and it was almost more than he could endure. Archie's eyes were fastened on him; his gaze seemed to cling to him in final desperation.

"Oh, in the name of God," Archie suddenly whispered, leaning toward him, his face directly in his, "do something, Mr. Marriott! _something_! _something_! I can't, I can't die to-night! If it's only a little more time--just another day--but not to-night! Not to-night! Do something, Mr. Marriott; _something_!"

Marriott seized Archie's hand. It was cold and wet. He wrung it as hard as he could. There were no words for such a moment as this. Words but mocked.

He saw Archie's chest heave, and the cords tighten in his swelling neck. Marriott could only look at him--this boy, for whom he had come to have an affection--so young, so strong, with the great gloom of death prematurely, unnecessarily, in his face!

But the face cleared suddenly,--Archie still could think, and he remembered--he remembered Curly, and Mason and old Dillon, and Gibbs, he recalled the only ideals he knew--like all of us, he could live up only to such ideals as he had--he remembered that he must be game. He straightened, Marriott saw the fine and supple play of the muscles of his chest, its white skin revealed through his open shirt.

"So long, Mr. Marriott," said Archie, and then turned and went back into the death-chamber.

Outside, in the twilight that was filling the quadrangle, Marriott passed along, the gloom of the place he had left filling his soul. The trusty who had conducted him to the death-chamber paced in silence by his side. He passed the great tree, gaunt and bare and black now, the tree under which he had seen that summer day these doomed men take their exercise, with the Sunday-school scholars standing by and gazing on with curious covert glances and perverted thoughts. He wished that time had paused on that day--he had had hope then; this thing as to Archie, it then had seemed, simply could not be; it might, he had felt, very well be as to those other doomed men; indeed, it seemed certain and irrevocable; but as to Archie, no, it could not be. And yet, here it was, the night before the day--and but one more hope between them and the end. He hastened on, anxious to get out of the place. Any moment the whistle might blow and he would have to wait until the men had come from their work; the gates could not be unlocked at that time, or until the men were locked again in their cells. They were passing the chapel, and suddenly he heard music--the playing of a piano. He stopped and listened. He heard the deep bass notes of Grieg's _Ode to the Spring_, played now with a pathos he had never known before.

"What's that?" he asked the trusty.

"That playing? That's young Ernsthauser. He's a swell piano player."

"May we look in?"

"Sure."

They entered, and stood just inside the door. A young German, in the gray convict garb, was seated at a piano, his delicate hands straying over the keys. One gas-jet burned in the wall above the piano, shedding its faint circle of light around the pianist, glistening on the dark panels of the instrument, lighting the pale face of the boy--he was but a boy--and then losing itself in the great darkness that hung thick and soft and heavy in the vast auditorium. Marriott looked and listened in silence; tears came to his eyes, a vast pity welled within him, and he knew that never again would he hear the _Ode_ without experiencing the pity and the pain of this day. He wished, indeed, that he had not heard it. The musician played on, rapt and alone, unconscious of their presence.

"Tell me about that fellow," said Marriott, as they stole away.

"Oh, he was a musician outside. The warden lets him play. The warden likes music. I've seen him cry when Ernsthauser plays. He plays for visitors, and he picks up, they say, a good bit of money every day. The visitors, except the Sunday-schools, give him tips."

"How long is he in for?"

"Life."

The word fell like a blow on Marriott. Life! What paradoxes were in this place! What perverted meanings--if there were any meanings left in the world. This one word life, in one part of the prison meant life indeed; now it meant death. Was there any difference in the words, after all--life and death? Life in death; death in life? With Archie it was death in life, with this musician, life in death--no, it was the other way. But was it? Marriott could not decide. The words meant nothing, after all.

The delay in the chapel kept Marriott in the prison for half an hour. He would not watch the convicts march again to their cells; he did not wish to hear the clanging of the gong nor the thud of the bolts that locked them in for the night.

The warden, a ruddy and rotund man, spoke pleasantly to him and asked him into his office. The warden sat in a big swivel chair before his roll-top desk, and, while Marriott waited, locked in now like the rest, they chatted. It was incomprehensible to Marriott that this man could chat casually and even laugh, when he knew that he must stay up that night to do such a deed as the law required of him. The consciousness, indeed, must have lain on the warden, try as he might not to show it, for, presently, the warden himself, as if he could not help it, referred to the event.

"How's Archie taking it?" he asked.

Marriott might have replied conventionally, or politely, that he was taking it well, but he somehow resented this man's casual and contained manner. And so, looking him in the eyes, and meaning to punish him, he said:

"He's trying to _appear_ game, but he's taking it hard."

"Hard, eh?"

"Yes, hard." Marriott looked at him sternly. "Tell me," he emboldened himself to ask, "how can you do it?"

The warden's face became suddenly hard.

"Do it? Bah! I could switch it into all of them fellows in there--like that!" He snapped his fat fingers in the air with a startling, suggestive electric sound. And for a moment afterward his upper lip curled with a cruelty that appalled Marriott. He looked at this man, this executioner, who seemed to be encompassed all at once with a kind of subtle, evil fascination. Marriott looked at his face--then in some way at the finger and thumb which, a moment before, had snapped their indifference in the air. And he started, for suddenly he recalled that Doctor Tyler Tilson had declared, in the profound scientific treatise he had written for the _Post_, that Archie had the spatulate finger-tips and the stubbed finger-nails that were among the stigmata of the homicide, and Marriott saw that the fingers of the warden were spatulate, their nails were broad and stubbed, imbedded in the flesh. And this man liked music--cried when the life-man played!

"Won't you stop and have dinner with me?" the warden asked. "You can stay for the execution, too, if you wish."

"No, thank you," said Marriott hurriedly. The thought of sitting down to dine with this man on this evening was abhorrent, loathsome to him. He might have sat down and eaten with Archie and his companions, or with those convicts whose distant shuffling feet he heard; he could have eaten their bread, wet and salt with their tears, but he could not eat with this man. And yet, sensitively, he could not let this man detect his loathing.

"No," he said, "I must get back to my hotel--" and the thought of the hotel, with its light and its life, filled him with instant longing. "I have another appointment with the governor this evening."

"Oh, he won't do anything," said the warden.

The words depressed Marriott, and he hurried away with them persistently ringing in his ears, glad at least to get away from the great pile that hid so much sorrow and misery and shame from the world, and now sat black against the gathering night, under the shadow of a mighty wing.

At eight o'clock that evening Archie was sitting on the edge of his cot, smoking one of the Russian cigarettes Marriott had brought him in the afternoon. The pungent and unusual odor filled the death-chamber, and the other waiting men (who nevertheless did not have to die that night) sniffed, some suspiciously, some with the air of connoisseurs.

"Ha!" said Pritchard, turning his pale face slowly about, "imported, eh?"

Then Archie passed them around, though somewhat reluctantly. Marriott had brought him several boxes of these cigarettes, and Archie knew they were the kind Marriott smoked himself. He was generous enough; this brotherhood of doomed men held all things in common, like the early Christians, sharing their little luxuries, but Archie felt that it was useless to waste such cigarettes on men who would be alive to-morrow; especially when it was doubtful if there would be enough for himself.

The warden had sent him a supper which was borne in with the effect of being the last and highest excellence to which the culinary art could attain. If there was anything, Ball reported the warden as having said, that was then in market, and was not there he'd like to know what it was. The generosity of the warden had not been limited to Archie; the others were treated to a like repast; there was turkey for all. Archie had not eaten much; he had made an effort and smiled and thanked the warden when he strolled in afterward for his meed of praise. Archie found the cigarettes sufficient. He sat there almost without moving, smoking them one after another, end to end, lighting a fresh one from the cork-tipped stub of the one he was about to fling away. He sat and smoked, his eyes blinked in his white face, and his brows contracted as he tried to think. He was not, of course, at any time, capable of sustained or logical thought, and now his thoughts were merely a muddle of impressions, a curiosity as to whether he would win or lose, as if he were gambling, and all this in the midst of a mighty wonder, vast, immeasurable, profound, that was expanding slowly in his soul.

How many times had he waited as he was waiting now, for word from Marriott? May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third. What day was this? Oh, yes, the twenty-second. What time was it now? ... Kouka?--Kouka was dead; yes, dead. That was good ... And he himself must die ... Die? What was that? ... May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third. He had already died three times. No, he had died many more times than that; during the trial he had died again and again, by day, by night. Here in the death-chamber he had died; here on this very cot. Sometimes during the day, when they were all strangely merry, when Bill Arnold was doing a song and dance, when they had all forgotten, suddenly, in an instant, it would come over him, and he would die--die there, amidst them all, with the sun streaming in the window--die with a smile and a joke, perhaps while speaking to one of them; they would not know he was dying. And in the night he died often, nearly every night, suddenly he would find himself awake, staring into the darkness; then he would remember it all, and he would die, live over that death again, as it were. All about him the others would be snoring, or groaning, muttering or cursing, like drunkards in their sleep. Perhaps they were dying, too. Now, he must die again. And he had already died a thousand deaths. Kouka had died, too, but only once....