Brent said, “That’s what I call real adventure; escaping from a prison and beating it off to some lonesome mountain and being taken away in an airplane. That fellow has old Monte Cristo beaten twenty ways. Some convicts are lucky. I’d like to be that chap.” That’s just the way he talked.
Harry said, “You might forge a couple of checks if you happen to think of it sometime.”
Brent said in that funny way of his, “If I could only be sure of escaping and being carried off by an airplane. But it would be just my luck to—to——”
“Languish,” Pee-wee shouted; “that’s what they do in jails—languish.”
“And just serve out my term studying logic,” Brent said. “But if I thought there’d be a chance to escape, I think I’d—let’s see, I think I’d—what do you think of counterfeiting, Harry?”
“Burglary’s better,” Harry said.
“It’s the dream of my life to be a convict,” Brent kept up. “These little crimes don’t amount to anything; what I’d like to do is to hit the high spots, get sent up for life, and then escape in a boat or an airplane. Somebody could send me a file or a saw in a bunch of flowers. What do you say? This convict is having the time of his life. That’s the life—being a fugitive.”
Harry said, “Well, I hope you get your wish.”
Pee-wee said, “You’re crazy, that’s what I say.”
I said, “Gee whiz, there’s fun enough making a cross country trip in four autos and running into a stranded Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company with bloodhounds and everything, without being sent to jail.”