But at that time I was so careless that I did not even have enough sense to save fall-money, and after about nine months of freedom I fell again. One day three of us boarded a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark whom I immediately nicked for his red super, which I passed quickly to one of my stalls, Eddy. We got off the car and walked about three blocks, when Eddy flashed the super, to look at it. The sucker, who had been tailing, blew, and Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered around the super, I among them, the other stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and the sucker. No man in his senses would have picked up that gold watch. But I did it and was nailed dead to rights. I felt that super belonged to me. I had nicked it cleverly, and I thought I had earned it! I was sentenced to four years in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with shame, this time, as I was taken to the station. It was the way of life and of those I associated with, and I was more a fatalist than ever. I hated all mankind and cared nothing for the consequences of my acts.
CHAPTER XI.
Back to Prison.
I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing Sing as having been there before. I gave a different name and pedigree, of course, but the reason I was not known as a second-timer was that I had spent only nine months at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder having been passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some of the other officials had changed; and, besides, I must have been lucky. Anyway, none of the keepers knew me, and this meant a great deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a second-timer I should have had a great deal of extra time to serve. On my first term I had received commutation time for good behavior amounting to over a year, and there is a rule that if a released convict is sent back to prison, he must serve, not only the time given him on his second sentence, but the commutation time on his first bit. Somebody must have been very careless, for I beat the State out of more than a year.
Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I had served before; but they did not squeal. Even some of those who did not know me had an inkling of it, but would not tell. It was still another instance of honor among thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities, they might have had an easier time in stir and had many privileges, such as better jobs and better things to eat. There were many stool-pigeons there, of course, but somehow these rats did not get wind of me.
It did not take me long to get the Underground Tunnel in working order again, and I received contraband letters, booze, opium and morphine as regularly as on my first bit. One of the screws running the Tunnel at the time, Jack R——, was a little heavier in his demands than I thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth of the money sent the convicts from home. But he was a good fellow, and always brought in the hop as soon as it arrived. Like the New York police he was hot after the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted to rise in the world, and was more ambitious than the other screws. I continued my pipe dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were often connected. I frequently used to imagine that I was a character in one of the books; and often choked the detestable Tarquin into insensibility.
On one occasion I dreamed that I was arraigned before my Maker and charged with murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I felt that even before the just God there was no justice; but a voice silenced me and said that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary to use weapons or poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the sad faces of my father and mother, and then I knew what the voice meant. Indeed, I was guilty. I heard the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss. After many thousand years of misery I was led into the Chamber of Contentment where I saw some of the great men whose books I had read. Voltaire, Tom Paine and Galileo sat on a throne, but when I approached them with awe, the angel, who had the face of a keeper, told me to leave. I appealed to Voltaire, and begged him not to permit them to send me among the hymn-singers. He said he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be with the great elect. I asked him where Dr. Parkhurst was, and he answered that the doctor was hot stuff and had evaporated long ago. I was led away sorrowing, and awoke in misery and tears, in my dark and damp cell.
On this bit I was assigned to the clothing department, where I stayed six months, but did very little work. Warden Sage replaced Warden Darson and organized the system of stool-pigeons in stir more carefully than ever before; so it was more difficult than it was before to neglect our work. I said to Sage one day: "You're a cheap guy. You ought to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society. You can do nothing but make an aristocracy of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six months because of my health, which had been bad for a long time, but now grew worse. My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits, and my experience in prison were beginning to tell on me badly. There was a general breaking-down of my system. I was so weak and coughed so badly that they thought I was dying. The doctors said I had consumption and transferred me to the prison hospital, where I had better air and food and was far more comfortable in body but terribly low in my mind. I was so despondent that I did not even "fan my face" (turn my head away to avoid having the outside world become familiar with my features) when visitors went through the hospital. This was an unusual degree of carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so gloomy was that I was now unable to get hold of my darling hop.
I was so despondent in the hospital that I really thought I should soon become an angel; and my environment was not very cheerful, for several convicts died on beds near me. Whenever anybody was going to die, every convict in the prison knew about it, for the attendants would put three screens around the dying man's bed. There were about twenty beds in the long room, and near me was an old boyhood pal, Tommy Ward, in the last stages of consumption. Tommy and I often talked together about death, and neither of us was afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die during my experience in state prisons and I never heard one of them clamor for a clergyman. Tommy was doing life for murder, and ought to have been afraid of death, if anyone was. But when he was about to die, he sent word to me to come to his bedside, and after a word or two of good-bye he went into his agony. The last words he ever said were: "Ah, give me a big Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the last rites of the Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to bury him. So Tommy's cell number was put on the tombstone, if it could be called such, which marked his grave in the little burying ground outside the prison walls.
Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious con (confidence game) into a convict. Often, while we were in chapel, the dominie would tell us that life was short; but hardly one of the six or seven hundred criminals who were listening believed the assertion. They felt that the few years they were doing for the good of their country were as long as centuries. If there were a few "cons" who tried the cheerful dodge, they did not deceive anybody, for their brother guns knew that they were sore in their hearts because they had been caught without fall-money, and so had to serve a few million years in stir.
After I got temporarily better in health and had left the hospital, I began to read Lavater on physiognomy more industriously than ever. With his help I became a close student of faces, and I learned to tell the thoughts and emotions of my fellow convicts. I watched them at work and when their faces flushed I knew they were thinking of Her. Sometimes I would ask a man how She was, and he would look confused, and perhaps angry because his day dream was disturbed. And how the men used to look at women visitors who went through the shops! It was against the rules to look at the inhabitants of the Upper World who visited stir, but I noticed that after women visitors had been there the convicts were generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse of those who lived within the pale of civilization warmed their hearts. After the ladies had gone the convicts would talk about them for hours. Many of their remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some of the men were broken down with feeling and would say soft things. They would talk about their mothers and sweethearts and eventually drift back on their ill-spent lives. How often I thought of the life behind me! Then I would look at the men about me, some of whom had stolen millions and had international reputations—but all discouraged now, broken down in health, penniless and friendless. If a man died in stir he was just a cadaver for the dissecting table, nothing more. The end fitted in well with his misspent life. These reflections would bring us around again to good resolutions.