The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative eyes—in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and fame.
The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with him.
"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden.
Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For each—the would-be murderer and the man he had shot—in the self-same instant recognised the other.
At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to clutch a heavy, brass-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He looked at the Warden.
"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is permissible."
"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the room with the paper he had been looking for.
As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions."
Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them.
"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you—the one who was caught?"