CHAPTER XLIV
THE LIGHTED FUSE
In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning—the same room Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy prison archway—Craig stood staring out of the open window across the yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand—the game he had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card.
He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of the escape of prisoner No. 239—a tender subject with the official, but one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate.
Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence—an alibi—he could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon—he could arrange that with the Board—would make the fellow tractable, and he could take him with him on parole.
The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative eyes—in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and fame.
The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with him.
"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden.
Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For each—the would-be murderer and the man he had shot—in the self-same instant recognised the other.
At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to clutch a heavy, brass-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He looked at the Warden.
"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is permissible."
"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the room with the paper he had been looking for.
As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions."
Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them.
"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you—the one who was caught?"
The other looked at him cunningly. "The one you swore shot you?"
Craig's fingers twitched. "Yes," he said, after a pause.
"No. I never saw him before that night."
"What did he pay you for that job?"
Paddy the Brick stared. "Good Lord! He wasn't one of us. He just happened in for a social call!" He leaned across the table. "Say," he whispered, "what did you want to hang him for?"
There was in the posture, the whisper, an inexpressible assumption of identity of interest which stung and galled the man who faced him. The blood welled into Craig's face, then very slowly ebbed.
"Would you know him again, if he had changed his appearance? If, for instance, he wore a beard?"
"Know him!" Paddy the Brick jerked his thumb toward the window. "Why, we was mates over there."
Craig looked at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then he pointed to a chair.
"Sit down," he said.
At midnight that night the home city of Harry Sevier was ablaze with lights and throbbing with the last feverish activity of a strenuous campaign. The candidate of the new party had returned that afternoon from a tour of the southern portion of the state, and plenteous bunting, everywhere displayed, testified to an enthusiasm that, carefully fostered by his lieutenants, had permeated every section and class. That evening, to ring down the curtain with a brilliant finale, a torchlight procession had been organised. Ten thousand strong, the blazing flambeaux had marched and countermarched along the city's main thoroughfares, and Harry had reviewed them from the balcony of the hotel which was the party's rendezvous.
He had flung himself into the fight with every ounce of his splendid vitality which had been deepened and strengthened by the months of mountain solitude. There was infinitely more at issue now than he had dreamed when he canvassed chances at the bungalow. The cause of the new party had then seemed inevitably a losing one. But during that long campaign—particularly in the last few weeks—it had been borne in upon him that the time had been ripe for the venture. Long arrogance and effrontery had borne their legitimate fruit in a profound resentment that had been fanned to vivid life by the quickening breath. There had been an erasure of old lines, and at length the party in power, aroused and desperate, had found itself fighting for its life. There were no odds offered that day on its victory! Once committed, however, there had been no turning back possible. Harry's bridges had been burned behind him. He could only go forward, and, fighting on, he had striven to thrust his problem, with its increasing implications, into the background of his mind. And in spite of himself the zest of victory had absorbed him. To-night's parade had been an inspiring spectacle and it had called from him the last speech of the campaign.
As he closed, amid the shouting and applause, a motor drew up at the curb and stopped just before the hotel entrance. On its fear seat, shielded from the gaze of the pavement by the leather hood, was Cameron Craig, and beside the chauffeur sat Paddy the Brick.
The crowds thinned, began to melt away; here and there the golden square of a window went black on the quieting street. Still the car made no move. At length a little knot of men issued from the hotel lobby, pausing in the lighted doorway to say good night to one another. Craig leaned forward.
"The one in the centre," he said, in a low voice. "The one with the beard."
As he spoke, Harry Sevier's look crossed the pavement and met squarely Craig's envenomed gaze. He saw the heavy head thrust forward from the hood, with the white bandage across the temple and under it the smouldering, implacable eyes. For a space that seemed interminable the eyes held each other. A ghastly expression crossed his face. Very slowly he turned and re-entered the lobby.
Brent, who was the last to leave him, looked at him anxiously.
"You're about all in," he said. "You look positively ill."
Harry tried to smile.
"It's nothing. I think I'll rest now." His voice had all at once lost its timbre, had become flat and expressionless. All the electric force, the fire and enthusiasm, had faded from it.
Brent held out his hand. "Thank heaven it's over—all but the voting!" he said fervently. "It's the reaction, I suppose."
"Yes," replied Harry, dully. "No doubt it's the reaction."
He turned and went slowly to the elevator.
In the automobile at the curb Craig touched Paddy the Brick on the shoulder. "Well?" he asked. "Is he number 239?"
Paddy the Brick looked at him with a white fury distorting his features.
"I don't know whether he's 239 or not," he said, "but I'd swear to anything that would 'fix' him! That's the lawyer that let them send me up two years ago!"