ALLEN AIDEE lay on his back across the bed in his whitewashed cell, and smoked, swinging one foot swiftly, incessantly, like a pendulum, arguing with Sol Sweeney, and gesticulating with loose fingers. The bed was a wooden cot with a mattress on it.
Sweeney sat at the table under the gas jet, and smoked too. He had a large friendly acquaintance with jailbirds, and his placid philosophy was composed out of his knowledge of them.
“I seen folks like you, Hicks,” he said, “two or three. Trouble is you gets hold of one end of a string. Any old string 'll do. All the same to you. 'Hullo!' you says, 'this is a valyble string. Fact, there ain't any other string, not any other real string. This the only genwine. Follow it, and you gets wherever you like. It's that kind of a string,' says you. 'God A'mighty, what a string!' says you. Then you rolls yourself up in it, and there you are! Ball up! Ain't no more use! For you take a solid man like me, and he talks to you and he shows you reason, but you don't see it. Why? 'Cause you're balled up in the string, that's why.”
Allen snapped out his answer.
“I'll tell you the trouble with you.”
“Ain't any trouble with me.”
“Ain't! Well, I know this, I can stand your kind about half an hour at a stretch. Give me two hours of you—damn! I'd drink rat poison to get cooled down.”
“That's the trouble with you,” said the complacent jailor. “Ain't me.”
“Trouble! No! You ain't equal to that. You ain't capable of that! You've got no more consistency or organisation than a barrel of oil. You're all fat and hair. Solid! So's a brick solid. Damn! You're solid, but are you alive? You'll be dead before anybody sees the difference. Ain't any real difference!”
Sweeney puffed his pipe contentedly, but thoughtfully, and shook his heavy beard.