From Now On

by Frank L. Packard

I—CONVICT NO. 550

FROM somewhere far along the iron gallery, a guard's boot-heel rang with a hollow, muffled, metallic sound;' from everywhere, as from some strange, inceptive cradle, the source out of which all sounds emanated, and which, too, was as some strange sounding-board that accentuated each individual sound as it was given birth, came a confused, indeterminate, scarcely audible rupture of the silence that never ceased its uneasy, restless murmur. It was like water simmering in a caldron—only the water was a drear humanity, and the caldron was this gray-walled, steel-barred place.

A voice, low, quite inarticulate, falling often to little more than a whisper, mumbled endlessly on. That was the old bomb-thrower, old Tony Lomazzi, the lifer, in the next cell. The man was probably clinging to the bars of his door, his face thrust up against them, talking, talking, talking—always talking to himself. He did not disturb anybody. Everybody was used to it; and, besides, the man did not talk loudly. One even had to listen attentively to catch the sound of his voice at all. It had become a habit, second nature; the man was incorrigible. Presently the guard would come along, and perhaps rap the old man on the knuckles; after that Lomazzi would retire to his cot quite docilely. It had been that way night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year.

Dave Henderson laid the prison-library book, that he had been fingering absently, down on the cot beside him. It was still early evening in early summer, and there was still light in the cell, though hardly enough to read by; but he had not been reading even when there had been better light. His mind was too active to-night. And now there was a curiously wistful smile on his face. He would miss that stumbling, whispering voice. A most strange thing to miss! Or was it the old man himself whom he would miss? Not to-morrow, not even next week, there still remained sixty-three days—but sixty-three days, with all the rest of the five years behind them, gone, served, wiped out, were like to-morrow; and, as against a lifer's toll, it was freedom, full born and actually present. Yes, he would miss Tony Lomazzi. There was a bond between the old man and himself. In almost the first flush of his entry into the penitentiary he had precipitated a fight amongst his fellow convicts on account of old Tony. Two of them had gone into the hospital, and he, Dave Henderson, had gone into the black hole.

He sat suddenly bolt upright on his cot. He had not forgotten the horror of those days of solitary confinement. He was not likely to forget them—the silence, the blackness. The silence that came at last to scream and shriek at him in myriad voices out of the blackness until he was upon the verge of screaming and shrieking back in raving, unhinged abandon; the blackness that was as the blackness of the pit of hell, and that came at last to be peopled with hideous phantom shapes that plagued him until, face down on his cot, he would dig his fists into his eyes that he might not see—the blackness! His hands clenched hard as the memory of it surged upon him; but a moment later he laughed a little under his breath. It had been bad, bad enough; but he wasn't there now, was he? Old Tony hadn't deluged him with any excessive thanks. The old man had simply called him a fool—but there had been a difference after that. On the march out from the cells, old Tony was always the man behind him, and old Tony's shoulder touch in the lock-step wasn't as perfunctory as it had been before. And there had been years of that. Yes, he would miss old Tony Lomazzi!

Instinctively he turned his head in the direction of that voice that whispered through the bars of the adjoining cell, and his face, lean and hard, softened, and, tinging the dead-white prison pallor, a flush crept into his cheeks. The man was a lifer. A lifer! God, he knew what that meant! Five years of a living hell had taught him that. Five years that were eternities piled upon eternities, and they were only a short step along the path toward the only goal to which a lifer could look forward—death!

Yes, he knew! The massed eternities, that were called five years by those who walked outside in the sunlight, where men laughed, and women smiled, and children played, had taught him why old Tony Lomazzi clung to the bars and whispered.

Five years! Was it only five years since he had stood in the dock in that courtroom, and the judge had sentenced him to—five years? The scene was vivid and distinct enough! Even the ages that spanned the gulf between the now and then could not efface that scene, nor dim it, nor rob it of a single stark and naked detail. Tydeman had been there—Martin K. Tyde-man, that prince of royal sports. Tydeman was about the only man in that courtroom whose presence had made him uneasy; and yet Tydeman, too, was the only man in that courtroom who had been friendly toward him. It was probably due to the old millionaire's plea for leniency that the sentence had been five years, and not ten, or fifteen, or twenty, or whatever it might be that the erect, spare little figure on the bench, with the thin, straight lips, had had the right to pronounce. And Tydeman was dead now.

Dave Henderson stirred uneasily on the edge of the cot. He drew his hand slowly across his eyes. He had wished from the start, hadn't he, that it might have been some one else rather than Martin K. Tydeman? But it had been Tydeman's money, and the hundred thousand dollars alone was all that had counted, and Tydeman was dead now, had been dead two or three years, and on that score that ended it—didn't it?

The dark eyes, that had wavered abstractedly around the cell, narrowed suddenly, and from their depths a smoldering fire seemed to leap as suddenly into flame. But there was another score that was not ended! Bookie Skarvan! Baldy Vickers, Runty Mott and the rest of Baldy's gang had lied speciously, smoothly, ingeniously and with convincing unanimity. They had admitted the obvious—quite frankly—because they could help themselves. They had admitted that their intention had been to steal the hundred thousand dollars themselves. But they hadn't stolen it—and that let them out; and they proved that he, Dave Henderson, had—and that saved their own hides. Also they had not implicated Bookie Skarvan.