My overtime companion had finished his job and was putting on his coat. I let him go without further talk, but after he had gone, I stayed long enough to check over the files of the yard-master's blotter. When the checking was completed I knew perfectly well why I had been hired so promptly, and why Mullins had been willing to take on an ex-convict. My basing figures, which Peters had been giving me verbally, were all wrong. The majority of the claims I had been making from day to day were fraudulent, and in paying them the railroad company was merely rebating the coal rates for Consolidated Coal.
It was easy to see where I stood. A scapegoat was necessary, and with a prison record behind me I had about as much show as a rat in a trap. If there should be an investigation, Mullins would swear that I had entire charge of the claim department. And having no written data to fall back upon, I should be helpless.
The date of this disheartening discovery chanced to be the 25th of the month—our regular pay-day, and I had my month's salary in my pocket when I left the office about eleven o'clock to go to my boarding-house. At the nearest street corner I met the patrolman on the beat.
"Hello, cully!" he growled as I was passing him; and then with a hand on my arm he stopped me. "You're forgettin' somethin', ain't you?"
"I guess not," I answered.
"I guess yes," he retorted. "It's pay-day at the works, and you gotta come across."
Here was the remainder of the conspiracy made plain as day. The crooked chief of police had turned me over to the crooked coal company to do crooked work, and I was to be held up for a graft on my salary. With a swift return of the blood-boiling which had once helped me to manhandle the deputy, Simmons, I faced the patrolman.
"And if I don't come across—what then?"
The policeman grinned good-naturedly. "You're goin' to 'produce' all right. You're a paroled man, and you can't afford to have the chief get it in for you."
It was just here that the three nerve-breaking years got in their work. I couldn't face the grafter down, and—I confess it with shame—I was horribly afraid.