I knew the voice. It was Warden Atherton’s. And I knew myself for Darrell Standing, just returned across the centuries to the jacket hell of San Quentin. And I knew the touch of finger-tips on my neck was Warden Atherton’s. And I knew the finger-tips that displaced his were Doctor Jackson’s. And it was Doctor Jackson’s voice that said:
“You don’t know how to take a man’s pulse from the neck. There—right there—put your fingers where mine are. D’ye get it? Ah, I thought so. Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer.”
“It’s only twenty-four hours,” Captain Jamie said, “and he was never in like condition before.”
“Putting it on, that’s what he’s doing, and you can stack on that,” Al Hutchins, the head trusty, interjected.
“I don’t know,” Captain Jamie insisted. “When a man’s pulse is that low it takes an expert to find it—”
“Aw, I served my apprenticeship in the jacket,” Al Hutchins sneered. “And I’ve made you unlace me, Captain, when you thought I was croaking, and it was all I could do to keep from snickering in your face.”
“What do you think, Doc?” Warden Atherton asked.
“I tell you the heart action is splendid,” was the answer. “Of course it is weak. That is only to be expected. I tell you Hutchins is right. The man is feigning.”
With his thumb he turned up one of my eyelids, whereat I opened my other eye and gazed up at the group bending over me.
“What did I tell you?” was Doctor Jackson’s cry of triumph.