McAllister and His Double

by Arthur Cheney Train

II

The next morning Supple Jim, sitting in the warm sunshine in the bay-window of his favorite restaurant, lazily finished a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, glancing casually, meanwhile, at the morning paper which lay open before him. At a respectful distance his attendant awaited the moment when this important guest should snap his fingers, demand his damage, and call for a Carolina Perfecto. These would be forthcoming with alacrity, for Mr. James Hawkins was more of an autocrat on Fourteenth Street than a Pittsburg oil magnate at the Waldorf. Just now the Supple James was reading with keen enjoyment how, the day before, a quick-witted old gentleman had brought a malefactor to justice. At one of the paragraphs he broke into a gentle laugh, perusing it again and again, apparently with intense enjoyment.

Had ever such a farce been enacted in the course of justice! He tossed away the paper and swore softly. Of course, the only thing that had rendered such a situation possible at all was the fact that the aged Farlan was a superlative old ass. To hear him tell his yarn on the stand, you would have thought that it gave him positive pain to testify against a fellow being. Did you ever see such white hair and such a big white beard? Why, he looked like Dowie or Moses, or some of those fellows. When Jim had tripped him up and slipped off the ring, the old chap had already swallowed half a dozen "County Antrims," and wasn't in a condition to remember anything or anybody. The idea of his going so piously into court and swearing the thing on to Monohan; it gave you the creeps! A fellow might go to "the chair" as easy as not, in just the same way. Of course, Jim had not intended to get the young greenhorn into any trouble when he had sold him the pawn-ticket. He had been just an easy mark. And when the police had arrested him and found the ticket in his pocket, there was not any call for Jim to set them straight. That was just Monohan's luck, curse him! Let him look out for himself.

But to see the patriarch carefully forging the shackles upon the wrong man, had filled Jim with a wondering and ecstatic bewilderment. The stars in their courses had seemed warring in his behalf.

Think of it! That fellow Monohan could get twenty years! It made him mad, this infernal conspiracy, as it seemed to him, between judges and prosecutors. It mattered little, apparently, whether they got the right man or not, so long as they got someone! What business had they to go and convict a fellow who was innocent, and put him, "Jim," the cleverest "gun" in the profession, in such a position? He wondered if folks in other lines of business had so many problems to face. The stupidity of witnesses and the trickery of lawyers was almost beyond belief. It was a perennial contest, not only of wit against wit, strategy against strategy, but, worst of all, of wit against impenetrable dulness. Why, if people were going to be so careless about swearing a man's liberty away, it was time to "get on the level." You might be nailed any time by mistake, and then your record would make any defence impossible. You had the right to demand common honesty, or, at least, intelligence, on the part of the prosecution.

But the main question was, What was going to become of Monohan? Well, the boy was convicted, and that was the end of it. It was quite clear to Jim that, had he been victimized in the same way, no one would have bothered about it at all. It was simply the fortune of war.

But twenty years! His own pitiful aggregate of six, with vacations in between, as it were, looked infinitesimal beside that awful burial alive. He'd be fifty when he came out—if he ever came out! Sometimes they died like flies in a hot summer. And then there was always Dannemora—worst of all, Dannemora! It would kill him to go back. He couldn't live away from the main stem now. Why, he hadn't been in stir for five years. All his prison traits, the gait, the hunch, were effaced—gone completely. His brows contracted in a sharp frown.

"What's the use?" he muttered as he rose to go. "He ain't worth it! I can stake his wife and kids till his time's up! But, God! I could never go back!"

Yet the same irresistible force which had directed him to the court-room the day before, now led him to the Grand Central Station. Like one walking in a dream, he bought a ticket and took the noon train alone to Ossining.

Following a path that led him quickly to a hill above the town not far from the prison walls, he threw himself at full length beside a bowlder, and gazed upon the familiar outlook. Across the broad, shining river lay the dreamy blue hills he had so often watched while working at his brushes. Here and there a small boat skimmed down the stream before the same fresh breeze that sent the red and brown leaves fluttering along the grass. The sunlight touched everything with enchantment, the cool autumn air was an intoxicant—it was the Golden Age again. No, not the Golden Age! Just below, two hundred yards away, he noticed for the first time a group of men in stripes breaking stones. Some were kneeling, some crouching upon their haunches. They worked in silence, cracking one stone after another and making little piles of the fragments. At the distance of only a few feet two guards leaned upon their loaded rifles. Jim shut his eyes.