John Hogan gently took the yellow letter and unfolded it, while the other men bent forward, their eyes fairly bulging from their sockets. It read: ‘My Dear Mr. Frayer; Please forgive us for the condition in which you found your house. My husband came for me on the night of the 21st of September, and he stopped to take a horse for me to ride from the Sheriff’s place. The Sheriff shot at him, and he was wounded in the arm—a very bad scratch. Did you think that some one had been killed? The wound bled a great deal, but I bound it up so well that he was all right until he could see a doctor in New York City. He says I would make a good surgeon. We left New York on the following Monday and came on one of the Panama Railroad steamers to Panama. Our destination is Chile. Please accept this trifle from my husband and me.’
“This is it,” said the man, with a harsh laugh, and he drew from the faded envelope a slip of paper.
“A check for one thousand dollars,” said the four listeners in turn, and as each man looked at the check the man from Number 9 gave another harsh laugh.
“This is the key to the cottage,” said he, drawing from the envelope a rusty Yale lock latchkey. Then John Hogan read on: “I trust to you to keep my whereabouts a secret. I am never coming back to New York again. Let us hear from you. We expect to live at No. 12 Sacramento Street, Valparaiso, Chile.
“I know my people will make a search for me, but I feel sure that you will keep silent about me. I am very happy. Your grateful friend, Ada Bermugues.”
John Hogan threw the letter to Ikey and looked into space for some time, while the man from Number 9 drew a table toward him and placed upon it some other papers which he took from the inside pocket of his coat. The four men bent forward and watched him as, one by one, he unfolded the various letters and papers which were in some way connected with the story of his life. One was a pretentious-looking document with two red seals. It was his acquittal from the Governor of New York for the crime he had never committed, and was dated May 1st, 1910. Another was the petition which Ada Bermugues had presented to the Governor in behalf of the man who had been imprisoned for her supposed murder. There was not a word spoken while the papers were being perused. One would read a letter or newspaper clipping, and in silence hand it to another, until all were read and reread. The men made a weird picture in the soft moonlight, as they sat, with anxious, set faces. “You see,” the man from Number 9 continued, when the last paper was read and folded by Higgins, from whose forehead great beads of perspiration dropped, “the woman came back after a few years and lived in New York City. She didn’t know that I had ever been put in jail, because she never went about any one she had ever known before. About three months ago her father died, and she read of his death in the newspapers. Then she went to their family lawyer and made herself known to him, and when he told her about me she went straight to the Governor and had the case opened, and, after a lot of red tape, I was released. I found that letter which she wrote me from Panama twenty-five years ago in the pocket of the rain coat that I wore just before the sheriff arrested me. As I look back now, I remember that these three letters were handed to me just before the Sheriff put his hand on my shoulder to tell me I was under arrest.”
The man from Number 9 picked up the three letters indicated. “One,” he went on, “is, you will see, a bill from a horseshoer; one is from a tailor, and the other from her. I left the raincoat in my office that morning and forgot all about the letters. When I was let out of Sing Sing a cousin of mine took me to his home in my old home town. He told me that he had all the things that were in the office at the time of my arrest, and among them was the raincoat, with the letters in the pocket that might have gained me my freedom. My cousin had never looked in the pockets, and, therefore, didn’t know that they were there.”
“My God!” said John Hogan; “and the Bible says that not even a sparrow shall fall to the ground without His knowledge.” “Bible, your foot!” grunted Ikey. “If God knows everything, why didn’t he make this man think about the three letters in the pocket of the rain coat? Why didn’t He put it into the Sheriff’s mind to hunt for evidence the way they do in the story-books? He never did anything to God that most other men ain’t doing every day. He tried to do a good act. There was a girl in some trouble, and he helped her out by giving her the key of his house. It helped her, because she got away from her folks. They must have been cussed mean, like mine were when I got away from them. God can’t give back to this man his youth and health. He can’t give him the sons and daughters that he might have had if he had been left his freedom. He can’t give him anything now that will compensate for the twenty-five years in Sing Sing.” “But there’s another life,” said the man from Number 9 with awful calmness. “I have had visions of it, and have prayed to God on my bare knees, and asked Him to bring the girl back, and He brought her, didn’t He?” “Yes,” said John Hogan, “He did after twenty-five years.” “I prayed that she’d come back and tell me that she regretted that she hadn’t loved me, and she did.” “And she just said that because she thought it would make you feel good. She was sorry for you. Women can feel sorry for their worst enemies if they are in trouble,” said Ikey, cynically. “I prayed to God for peace, and He gave me peace; and I got used to Sing Sing, and would have been content to live there the rest of my life, if the girl hadn’t come back,” went on the man from Number 9.
“God can’t do more for a man than give him contentment, and I had that for many years. I had no desires like I used to have when I was a young man. I had nothing to lose. There was nothing around me that I would want to covet. I envied no human being, and no one envied me. Why, I used to lie in my narrow cell at night and wonder to myself why I was ever foolish enough to covet the silly things that I used to covet before I went to jail, and gradually everything that was most dear to me became only a memory, and the simple things of my prison life became dear to me. I was a sort of leader among the prisoners, and the worst ones among them believed that I was innocent.” “That was the potency of right and truth,” said Higgins, interrupting him for the first time.
“Schopenhauer says that truth is the only God there is, and that’s all I believe in,” said Ikey.