The Case and Exceptions Part 10

There is not much to be seen in Sing Sing except the State Prison, but Mr. Constable saw that very thoroughly. For two days he spent all the time allotted to visitors in making himself acquainted with convict life. He was writing a novel, he told the Warden, and wanted local colour. No--he did not know any one in the prison--he was an Englishman, and only on a visit to this country. Would he like to make a tour of the buildings with the Warden? Nothing, he declared, would give him greater pleasure--he was interested in every detail. So, escorted by the Warden, he pa.s.sed through the clean, well-aired corridors, inspected the orderly kitchens and the huge laundries, viewed the immense workshops filled with convicts toiling in splendid, disciplined silence, watched the men file to their meals, their hands hooked over one another's shoulders, their heads bent down, eyes upon the ground, bodies close together, and their feet keeping time in the lock-step prescribed by the regulations.

It was all very impressive, he told the Warden--a wonderful triumph of system and discipline. He congratulated the official, and was invited into the private office for a smoke and chat.

Did the Warden suppose there were any innocent men in the cells? Very likely there were some--it was not uncommon for prisoners to have new trials granted them, and occasionally a man would be acquitted on these second trials. Did many of the men return after serving sentence? Yes, a good many. Why? Well, princ.i.p.ally, the Warden supposed, because it was hard for an ex-convict to get an honest job after he got out. "d.a.m.ned near impossible, unless he has mighty good friends," the official added feelingly.

Was not that a reflection on the system? Well, the Warden wasn't there to pa.s.s on that--the Prison a.s.sociation had undertaken to handle the question, but he couldn't see that they'd done much with it.

But the innocent men--the men who were afterwards acquitted--they would be--they were not ex-convicts? No, the Warden guessed they were all right. And the pardoned ones? The Warden smiled.

"I'm not very strong on pardons myself," he admitted. "I'd about as soon employ an out-and-outer. Too much politics in pardons for me. Moreover, sometimes they're not appreciated. We had a queer fellow here once who served five years, and was a model prisoner too. Well, when he was discharged someone met him at the station with a pardon from the Governor. 'You cur,' he shouted at the man who handed it to him, 'get pardons for those who need them!' With that he tore the paper into bits, threw the pieces in the man's face and gave him a terrible thrashing. We never learned what the trouble was, though the fellow served two more years for the a.s.sault. But some of us thought he must have been innocent all the time. However, when he came out again n.o.body offered him another pardon."

The next day Mr. Constable visited the prison without the escort of the Warden. In the work-rooms the silence of the workers oppressed him, but it was better than the language of some of the under-keepers which fairly sickened him. He had heard foul-mouthed men hurl epithets and profanity back and forth often enough, but never before had he seen the frightful answers which human beings can make without the utterance of a syllable. Many times that day he saw murder done with the eyes--the foulest, fiercest, most glutting murder of which the human heart is capable. In every regulation he saw manhood debased, individuality destroyed, education neglected, reformation defeated, and glancing from the faces of the convicts to those of the keepers, he could not say which this "splendid system" had most brutalised.

Then Mr. Constable returned to his cheerless room at the hotel and locking himself in, lay down on the sofa, only to offer his body as a pavement for files of close-cropped and shaven men who pa.s.sed over him with the steady tramp-tramp, tramp-tramp of the lock-step, stamping him into the ground gladly and sternly, gloatingly and viciously--deeper and deeper, until he felt the damp earth upon his face and heard less and less clearly the tread of those marching feet.

Then it ceased altogether and Mr. Constable smiled in his sleep as he dreamed he was dead, only to awake with a shriek when he felt that he was living.

The next morning the Warden met him on the street.

"How's the local colour getting on?" he asked pleasantly.

"I was working with it all last night."

The Warden stared silently at the speaker for a moment, frowned slightly and pa.s.sed on.

"Good G.o.d!" he muttered to himself, "if it makes a man look like that to write, I never want to read again."

Mr. Constable left Sing Sing for Niagara, where he stopped long enough to write a letter in the public writing-room of an hotel. The composition of this missive, however, consumed several hours, for the writer kept glancing apprehensively over his shoulder and when anyone approached the table he covered his paper with the blotter and waited until he was alone again. But when at last the letter was finished he omitted to sign it, which was the more neglectful since no one could possibly have recognised the shaky handwriting as that of the snappy, energetic, confident Mr. Theodore Constable. Even the clerk in the New York Post Office who handled the envelope cursed the writer as he puzzled out the address.

Mr. Constable next visited Detroit presumably for the sole purpose of dictating curious statements to the hotel typewriter. These he mailed to New York with some enclosures, addressing the envelopes in large, childish capitals.

The rest of his vacation was spent in the bedroom of a second cla.s.s boarding-house in Chicago.

At the end of three weeks he returned to New York looking far worse than when he went away. Mr. Hertzog therefore hesitated to tell him that Horton had moved for another trial on newly-discovered evidence.

But the matter could not be kept secret, for Horton's counsel had done more than claim he could prove his client's innocence; he not only produced one or two strikingly significant exhibits received anonymously from Detroit, but also a.s.serted he was daily obtaining clues from unknown friends in other cities which might lead to the discovery of a conspiracy, if not to the conspirators themselves.

Even a careless student of human nature must have observed the marked change which had taken place in Mr. Constable.

The lines that come gradually with age and experience give meaning and character to the face--even the traces of illness are not without a certain dignity. But when care begins to crease the face of self-complacence its effects are distortions, terrible as those which some iron implement of torture would suddenly produce.

Mr. Constable's florid countenance was without a line until it was wrinkled and furrowed and scarred.

Mr. Hertzog was shocked by the appearance of his partner. Was the man going mad? He had seen such changes foreshadow insanity. But if he was going mad--from what cause? He must make sure.

Mr. Constable sat in the junior partner's private office reading a copy of the affidavits supporting the latest move in Horton's long fight, and Mr. Hertzog watched him. He noted that the trembling hands left little spots of perspiration on the pages, he saw the twitching lips every now and then forming words--he counted the rapid throbbing of the arteries in head and neck. All this he had expected and discounted, but he was unprepared for the horrid look of cunning in the man's eyes, as he glanced up from his reading.

For a few moments neither of the partners spoke. Then Mr. Constable broke the silence.

"You think--you would say these papers were--that they made a strong case?"

Mr. Constable's eyes were fixed upon his partner in anxious inquiry, like a sick man waiting the decision of a doctor testing the heart or lungs.

"Yes, it's strong. Too d.a.m.ned strong."

The answer given slowly and with emphasis was received with a smile such as the face of a dead man might attempt with cracking skin and snapping muscles.

"And the papers--are they--should you say they were well drawn?"

"Yes--that fellow Mackenzie seems to have learned something during these years--d.a.m.n him! By the way, how long did he get?"

"Who?"

"Horton, of course."

"Three, I think--yes, it was three years."

"Then he's served two years and--let's see--two years and three months."

Mr. Hertzog pushed the electric b.u.t.ton in his desk. "Get me the Revised Statutes covering Sing Sing regulations," he said to the boy who answered the summons. The book was brought and Mr. Hertzog began studying its pages, his head resting on his hands and his elbows on the desk. For five minutes--ten minutes, there was silence.

"Don't let's take up this thing, Hertzog--I think--I think he'll win."

Mr. Constable's voice was almost a whisper.

But Hertzog, engrossed in the volume before him, did not hear. Mr.

Constable glanced at the stern Hebraic face, flushed and changed his remark to a question.

"Do you think he'll win?"

The junior partner started up nervously.

"How the devil can I tell!" he burst out angrily. "What's the use of sitting there parroting 'Do-you-think-he-can-win?

Do-you-think-he-can-win?' He's got a d.a.m.ned good case on the merits.

There's something in the Code that may fix him, but I don't count on it.

Don't ask such idiotic questions. Of course I think he can win, but I also think he mustn't. If you want my opinion"--Mr. Hertzog swung himself about and cast a searching glance at the shrivelled, mean little figure crushed into the leather easy-chair beside him. "If you want my real opinion, Constable," he repeated, "I think we've _got_ to win.

Haven't we?"

For a moment Mr. Constable stared silently at his partner. Then shaking his head he mumbled a word or two, stopped, put his hand to his throat, began again, stammered a disjointed sentence and suddenly poured forth a torrent of confused and incoherent words that thickened into a clotted gurgle and freed itself in a sputter swelling to peal upon peal of hideous, shattering, mirthless laughter--laughter which forced the man to his feet and rocked him with its spasms.

Hertzog leaped toward the door and fastened it. The clerks must not hear the horror of this. Then he darted to the window, but by the time he had closed it the laughter had died out, and Constable was quivering upon the floor, the blood gushing from his mouth.

IV.

"O, I know, Nurse, but I won't excite him--I'll go a long way toward curing him. You can trust me for that."

Mr. Hertzog pushed himself into the sick-room and walked toward the bed, waving a telegram in his hand. Mr. Constable smiled feebly at his visitor.

"Now, old man, I'm the doctor to-day. Are you up to taking my prescription in the form of a story?"