"You talk as if you had the sidewalk means in your hand," I said, yielding a little to his enthusiasm in spite of my suspicions of him and my feeble efforts to stand alone.
"I have!" he announced oracularly. "I have here"—slapping a second folded paper which he had drawn from his pocket—"I have here a petition for your free and unconditional pardon, addressed to the Governor and signed by the trial judge, the prosecuting attorney, and by ten of the twelve members of the jury. Oh, I tell you, young man, I've been busy these last three days. You may have been setting me down as a hard-hearted old lawyer, toughened to all these things, Bert, but when I read that newspaper story, of how you were kidnapped, as you may say—torn from the arms of a loving wife and dragged aboard of a train and railroaded back to prison—every drop of blood in me rose up in protest, and I swore then and there that if there was any such thing as executive clemency in this broad land of ours, you should have it!"
If I had been wholly well and out of prison perhaps the cheap bombast in all this would have been apparent at once. But I was neither well nor free. And Polly's heart was breaking; I didn't need Whitredge's word for this—I knew it by all the torments of inward conviction.
I understood well enough what he was asking me to do: to tip the scale against what might be Barrett's and Gifford's better judgment, and to sign a paper which would stamp me for all time as a criminal pleading, not for justice, but for pardon. In spite of this knowledge the pressure Whitredge had brought to bear was well-nigh irresistible. Barrett and the Colorado lawyers evidently had their hands too full to think of me; and, in any event, I could not see what possible chance they might have of reopening my case and proving my innocence. At the end of it I was reaching for the pen in Whitredge's hand, but at the touch of the thing with which I was to sign away my fighting rights for all time a little flicker of strength came.
"You must give me time, Whitredge; a little time to think this over," I pleaded. "Four years and a half ago I told you I was innocent—I tell you so again. You are asking me to confess that I was guilty; if I sign that petition it will be a confession in fact. I have sworn a thousand times that I'd rot right here inside of these walls before I'd ask for a pardon for a crime that wasn't mine. Leave these papers and let me think about it. Give me a chance to convince myself that there is no other way!"
He looked at his watch, and if he were disappointed he was too well schooled in his trade to show it.
"All right; just as you say," he agreed. "Shall we make it this afternoon—say, some time after three o'clock?"
"Make it to-morrow morning," I begged.
This time he hesitated, again pulling out his watch and consulting its face as if it were an oracle. I had no means of knowing—what I learned later—that he was making a swift calculation upon the arriving and departing hours of certain railroad trains. None the less, he agreed somewhat reluctantly to the further postponement; but when the turnkey was unlocking the door he gave me a final shot.
"I don't want to influence you one way or the other, Bert—that is, not against your best interests; but while you're making up your mind don't leave the little woman out. I shall see her at dinner to-night, and she'll want to know what's what. I'm going to give her your love and tell her you're trying mighty hard to be reasonable. Is that right?"