Chapter II: Providence Aiding

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

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

“What holiday?” asked Craig.

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

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

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

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

“He’s out,” thrilled the whisper.

“_Tommy!_”

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

“_Hey, Tommy!_”

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

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

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

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

“There’ll be no slip.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally Craig said:

“Eddie, have I got your sacred oath?”

“By all that’s holy!”

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

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

“_Sh!_”

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

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

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

“_Hey, Tommy!_”

The call brought out his sense of leadership.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He saw Craig standing over him.

“Well, for----” the guard began.

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

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

“Stay where you are. Undress!”

“The hell----”

“You’re under orders. Quick!”

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

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

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

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

“Hurry up, Tommy!”

“Tommy, let me out, quick!”

Craig spoke from the side of his mouth.

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

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

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

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

The guard recovered his voice to some extent.

“I got a family, boys.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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