I suppose Clark lacked a certain sensitiveness, though I would not have called him callous. I do not think it was because he did not care: it was just that he could not estimate the effect his words had upon others.
“I’m a thief and I think they suspicion me,” he said.
I must have said something like “Oh, go on,” or “Quit kidding,” but I knew he had no sense of humor and was quite incapable of kidding. I looked at him. He seemed to think I had not heard him. “I’m a thief and I think they suspicion me,” he repeated. And when he took me to his room and showed me a flat-top trunk half full of bolts of cloth, I believed him.
“But what are you going to do with this stuff? If they suspect you and come——”
“I’m going to get shut of it,” he said stoically. “I’m going to get shut of it now in a few minutes.” He was stuffing the bolts of cloth into two battered valises.
“What are you going to do? How are you going to get rid of it?”
This time he did not answer, but swung the valises off the bed, brushed past me and went down the hall.
The next time (and the last time) I talked with Clark was in the Ninth Precinct jail. He was arrested on a Saturday. On Sunday a newspaper reporter who covered the precinct telephoned me, saying that Clark wanted to see me. I did not like it. I was vexed by the fear of somehow becoming involved in his trouble. I went with reluctance. The desk sergeant, I thought, eyed me suspiciously when I asked for Clark, but perhaps it was just my nervousness, for he called another officer who, taking a key, led me through some doors and along a tier of empty cells. Clark was in the last cell on the tier and he must have heard us coming, for I found him standing expectantly. He smiled stiffly when he saw me, but waited until the policeman had gone before he spoke.
“They got me,” he said.
My mood was not pleasant, I’m afraid, nor talkative. I had no wish to draw him out. If he had anything to say to me, I thought, then he would damned well say it without help from me. He was still smiling stiffly.