Ryerson glanced at his watch.
“Half-past three. I have four hours to live.”
“What!”
“They’ll come for me at seven o’clock when they find I haven’t carried out my orders, and I’ll be taken to the prison yard and—shot or—hanged. It’s the best thing that can happen to me, but—I’m sorry for you.”
“See here, Ryerson,” I broke in. “If you’re such a rotten coward and liar and sneak as you say you are, what are you doing here? Why didn’t you go ahead with your bomb business?”
He sat rocking back and forth on the side of the bed, with his head bent forward, his eyes closed and his lips moving in a sort of thick mumbling.
“I’ve tried to, but—it’s my sister. God! She won’t leave me alone. She said she’d be praying for me and—all night I’ve seen her face. I’ve seen her when we were kids together, playing around in the old home—with Mother there and—oh, Christ!”
I pass over a desperate hour that followed. Ryerson tried to kill himself and, when I took the weapon from him, he begged me to put an end to his sufferings. Never until now had I realised how hard is the way of the transgressor.
I have often wondered how this terrible night would have ended had not Providence suddenly intervened. The city hall clock had just tolled five when there came a volley of shots from the direction of Monument Avenue.
“What’s that?” cried my poor friend, his haggard face lighting.