The Incendiary Part 17

"No what?"

"No hart, no hingenuity. They hask first and then try to take it. We'll take what we want first--honly a little fresh air, Bobbs--and then we'll hask for it, as a matter of form. Hi'm horfully punctilious on forms, Bobbs."

Dobbs chuckled at the prospect of writing a letter to the warden, requesting his release from the safe distance of 3,000 miles.

"Hi ain't the fool of the family, ham Hi, Bobbs?"

"Who's that talking now, Dobbs?"

"The thick-mouthed cove wot gets choked with 'is hown Adam's happle? That's Quirk."

"Quirk?" It was the familiar voice he had often tried to place, but Floyd knew n.o.body named Quirk.

"What is he grumbling for? Is he a ring-leader among the men?"

"Ring-leader, ho, no. Ee lost 'is temper the first time ee saw 'is mug in the quicksilver and ee's never found it since."

This conversation had been conducted face to face in the dark through the aperture formed by the removal of four bricks on each side of the part.i.tion. Dobbs had already outlined a general plan to Robert by which they were to escape. He was only waiting, he said, for his "chummy" to "drop the sweet hinnocence game and hown up ee wasn't a lamb."

"So you expect me to climb through that hole, Dobbs?"

"If you won't gnaw your hown bars, you must."

"It's too small."

"Then we'll stretch her till she fits, as the 'aberdasher said when 'is royal 'ighness' trousers didn't meet round 'is royal 'ighness' waistband."

"I doubt if even six will be wide enough. The bricks are only eight by four apiece, and I think I'm more than sixteen by twelve."

"Can a cat jump through a keyhole? No-sirree. But a corpuscle can wiggle through a capillary."

About 11 o'clock the next morning the entire prison force was summoned to the rotunda to hear the farewell address of the warden. The rotunda was a great round hall at one end of the bastile, or prison proper, communicating through two double doors with the warden's office, from which it was only a step to the street. Looking around at the desperate gallery of 600 faces, all shaven, but ill-shaven, and most of them brutal from the indulgence of hateful pa.s.sions, Robert thought how small a chance the forty keepers stood if that sullen herd should ever stampede.

But the walls of the rotunda were undressed bowlders of granite and the windows all around were double-barred with iron rods that looked strong enough to hold up a mountain. Only the rear doors were vulnerable at all, and these simply led through the kitchen to the cells, or right and left into the yard, at the end of which, and all along one side, ab.u.t.ting the rotunda, were the workshops, while the other side was impregnable with its twenty-foot wall.

Flanked by Gradger and Longlegs, the Pelican rose to address his mutineers. At his approach there was such a tremendous joggling in the crowd, that for a time it looked as if the volcano would burst then and there. But three spokesmen who had wriggled their way to the front stepped forward with their hands clasped over their heads as a token of peaceful intentions and requested the privilege of a word to the warden. They were all marked men, undergoing long sentences and recognized as dangerous criminals. The difference of type between them was conspicuous as they stood in front of the surging crowd--d.i.c.kon Harvey, the Right Spur and Minister Slick.

d.i.c.kon Harvey was a diamond thief, polished in person and of fluent address. Like those madmen in asylums whom the casual visitor finds perfectly rational and indeed delightful companions, d.i.c.kon Harvey never failed to convince callers at the prison of his moral sanity. He admitted past misuse of undeniable talents, though stoutly denying the particular crime upon which he was sentenced. His legends of early temptation and ambition to reform had softened the heart of many a philanthropist to pity. But his cold eye glittered with a point of light sharp enough to cut the Koh-i-noor, and a turnkey of exceptional ability was a.s.signed to the ward which contained d.i.c.kon Harvey.

The Right Spur derived his sobriquet from his position as head of the rooster gang. There was little of what Dobbs called "hart" in his line of work, which consisted simply in sandbagging and garroting picked-up acquaintances or pa.s.sers-by. But in the crude occupation of the footpad he had displayed a brute daring that had surrounded his name with a.s.sociations of terror, and this diabolical halo had been brightened and enlarged by his turbulence in jail. He was middle-sized and barrel-built, with the complexion of a teamster, a wicked smile and a scar.

Minister Slick's career would be pictured by a line more excursive than the diagram with which Sterne represents the history of Tristram Shandy. His criminal twist had begun just where most men's end. Up to the age of forty he had been able to delude several congregations into a belief in his fitness for the sacred ministry. His sermons had been noted no less for unction than for orthodoxy, their only heresies being grammatical ones. Then came a fall, sudden and irretrievable. In a few months he had developed unusual skill as a confidence man, in which he was aided by a certain oiliness of manner and insinuating ease of speech. He was tall and dignified, with a long gray beard, which Tapp permitted him to wear on account of a chronic quinsy, though his kennel-mates whispered this was all in your eye--a strange location to be sure, for a clergyman's sore throat--but minute veracity was never expected of Minister Slick.

"Mr. Warden," said d.i.c.kon Harvey, "I am desired, with my fellow-spokesmen, by the entire community, to tender you our deepest respect upon your retirement from the office whose duties you have so conscientiously fulfilled."

Tapp's lips quivered. Was this irony or praise?

"If you have not always met with success, if our interests and yours have seemed to clash at times, believe me there are few among us who do not appreciate that the fault is in the system and not the man."

"The system, the system," there rose a murmur among the men, which died away like a stifled cry when Longlegs raised his gun.

"We have read with interest the article on 'Prison Discipline,' contributed by you to the last number of the Penological Quarterly, and the pet.i.tion we present is, we believe, in line with most of the reforms you suggest."

"You desire to present me a pet.i.tion. Of what value is that? Col. Mainwaring enters to-morrow. It belongs to him."

"A recommendation from yourself, Mr. Warden," answered Minister Slick, "would surely have great weight."

"What is the burden of your doc.u.ment?"

d.i.c.kon Harvey removed a paper from his "budge."

"A seriatim schedule of the reforms which we respectfully ask to be enacted."

"Take the paper to your office," whispered Longlegs to the warden, but the obstinate official only flushed angrily at his presumption.

"I will hear what you have to say," he said, weakly clutching at this last hope of favor among the convicts. d.i.c.kon Harvey proceeded to read his production.

"To the Warden of Georgetown State Prison: We, the undersigned, being inmates of your inst.i.tution and the chief sufferers by its irregularities of government, hereby offer and present the following schedule of reforms which we regard as necessary----"

"Necessary," emphasized the Right Spur, and nearly 500 heads wagged approval.

"Necessary to the quiet and welfare of the community.

"1. That the grotesque, degrading, uncomfortable and unhealthful striped garb which we are at present condemned to wear be exchanged for a uniform of gray woolen goods.

"2. That the practice of shaving, designed to destroy our self-respect and efface all evidences of our former and better ident.i.ty, be abolished, and each man allowed free choice in the matter of his personal appearance, which concerns himself so deeply and n.o.body else at all.

"3. That intervals of conversation be allowed among the whist parties. (This was the local name of the shop-gang, who, under the existing system, were compelled to work amid a silence as absolute as that of a Trappist monastery.) "4. That the dunce-cap rule be suspended and workers who happen to be unemployed for a few moments be allowed to sit at their benches instead of standing face to the wall.

"5. That the cat-o'-nine-tails and thumb-screw be abolished and punishment limited to the block or extension of sentence, and that the rules for shortening of sentence on account of good behavior be made more liberal.

"6. That the tobacco rations and weekly prune stew be restored.

"7. That the cells be lighted until 9 o'clock with a gas-jet in each, and reading or writing allowed.

"8. That Ezra C. Hawkins, Kenneth Douglas, Murtagh McMorrow and Johann Koerber be discharged for inordinate and unnecessary severity and cruelty."

This article was greeted with a swell of cheers and taunts which Tapp seemed impotent to quell.

"9. That favoritism and privilege shall be a thing unknown."

Another bellow greeted this, and Floyd knew from the glance that the clause was a blow at himself. The cell he occupied was known as "the parlor" from its greater width, its ventilation and its possession of a reading-table and cupboard. There was jealousy, moreover, because he had been allowed to do light work about the greenhouse (which he was entirely competent to supervise, from his botanical knowledge) instead of being put at a bench. They forgot that his status was different from theirs. The labor was quite voluntary.

"10. That the indeterminate sentence be put into effect, so that through the specious pretext of punishing crime, the abominable crime of depriving peaceable and perfectly harmless citizens, who have bitterly atoned for some past peccadillo and earnestly desire to demonstrate their change of spirit to the world, be not committed under the sanction of law."

Harvey handed the pet.i.tion to Tapp. It was, on the whole, an enlightened doc.u.ment. Two of the men who prepared it were probably as able as any of the officials of the prison. Robert could see the different hands at work in its composition. The "past peccadilloes" were d.i.c.kon Harvey's "flim-flam" adventures, while the demands for more tobacco, for Hawkins' removal and the reduction of his own "privilege" were a concession to the ruffian element, represented by the Right Spur of the Rooster gang. Yet several of the recommendations were as wise and sound as though all the prison a.s.sociations in the country had indorsed them.

"Prisoners----" Tapp started to reply.

"No gammon," interrupted the Right Spur, scowling, while a hundred other scowls immediately gathered on the foreheads of his particular followers.

Tapp colored again. His obstinacy was aroused. He was not a timid man.

"It would be a breach of courtesy toward my successor to offer him such suggestions. I do not propose to recommend the discharge of employes whose only offense is their fidelity to duty; neither do I propose to const.i.tute myself the spokesman of a mob of law-breakers."

A hiss--the most hateful sound that issues from the human throat, with its serpentine suggestions and its vagueness of origin--greeted this challenge. The keepers gripped their guns, awaiting an order, but the Pelican stood helpless, furious, perplexed.

"To the shops!" he cried at last, and the triumphant convicts were driven like a herd of cattle to their tables and tools. There were m.u.f.fled yells from the offenders buried in the block when they pa.s.sed it; and at dinner, when the men filed up to the kitchen slide and carried off their platters of bread and pork, a dozen unruly boarders were only subdued to moderate quiet at the rifle's point.

CHAPTER XXII.

A BATTLE IN THE ROTUNDA.

At 2 o'clock the alarm bell rang out thirteen ominous notes. This was the fire-box of the prison. The flames had broken out in the wicker-workers' shop, where the younger and lighter convicts plaited summer chairs, flower-stands and all kinds of basket articles. On a high throne set against the middle of one wall sat Johann Koerber, the deputy in charge, overseeing everything, pistol in hand. He was a t.i.tan of 300 pounds, who might have proved admirable in his proper work of putting maniacs in strait-jackets. But his selection as overseer of the work-rooms was another instance of Tapp's want of judgment. For all his formidable strength, Koerber lacked the power to govern. The slenderest boy did not fear him, while even "papa," the giant negro who loaded the teams, stood in awe of "Slim" Butler, the lightweight deputy who had charge of the harness-makers. Right under Koerber's eye, the match was applied in several places, and almost before he smelled smoke the canes and osiers were on fire.

Then came the wild riot. In every shop but "Slim" Butler's the officer in charge was overpowered before the alarm bell had ceased ringing. Butler held his men down by sheer strength of will, until the sight of others rushing about in the yard below drove the men at the windows to frenzy, and with the loss of one of their number the brave deputy was disarmed, mangled, crushed. Brushmakers, tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, teamsters and handy men, all streamed from the workshop doors, making by concert toward the wire pole in the middle of the yard. Here the Right Spur was executing a dangerous but ingenious maneuver.

Astride of the cross-bars of the pole, which he had climbed in full view of a dozen deputies, he was cutting the thick telephone wire with a huge pair of shears. The thing could be done in twenty seconds if his confederates mobbed the keepers below, and it might mean a delay of twenty minutes in the arrival of re-enforcements from the nearest station. Stupefied and absorbed, the convict crew were gazing upward at their chief on his perilous perch, when the tall form of Hawkins was seen striding down from the bath-room entrance. The other deputies had contented themselves with fronting the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, rifles leveled, like a herd of musk-bulls with lowered horns defending their females against wolves or men. Hawkins raised his rifle and fired.

The bullet missed its mark and the crack of the powder roused the convicts from their stupor. With a b.e.s.t.i.a.l cry and faces on fire, the forward rank, pushed on by those behind, swept down on the group of deputies. Chisels, mallets, hammers, tools and weapons of all kinds from a wheel-spoke to a blunderbuss were brandished in their hands. One volley and the deputies fled--all but Hawkins. Almost simultaneously, it seemed, the second barrel of his rifle hurled its missile, the Right Spur was seen to drop from his post, dragging the severed wire with him to the ground, and "Longlegs" himself was felled, bleeding and senseless, with a heavy bottle.

The mob would have been glad to outrage his body, but time was precious and d.i.c.kon Harvey had already sped to the north corner of the "bastile" and was beckoning and summoning his men to follow. They rushed in his wake, turned one corner of the bastile and then another, gave a great shout of joy as they saw the wide outlet of freedom before them.

The bastile was the great granite castle which contained the cells, a continuation of the rotunda. It projected into the yard, leaving a wide s.p.a.ce at one end and at both sides. On the opposite side from that in which the shops were located stood the greenhouses, where Robert Floyd was accustomed to work whenever he wearied of writing. He had been crouching under the slant gla.s.s roof of the conservatory, snipping off the dead leaves, when the alarm bell sounded. The cries on the other side of the bastile brought him out on the open gra.s.s plot, and he was standing there, scissors in hand, when the convict pack swept toward him around the angle 100 yards away. At the same time he heard the impatient bells of the fire-engines jingling up the street.

The riot had been ably planned. Over on this side of the yard stood the entrance for teams. It was this point that the fire engines from without and the convicts from within were making for together. The alternative offered was that of letting the workshops burn or of emptying the jail of its inmates. Outside there was a ponderous iron gate, guarded by a deputy. Within this a stout one of oak wood, which a convict was detailed to open and shut. This convict was no other than Minister Slick, who had persuaded the warden to a.s.sign him to this light duty on the score of advancing age and feebleness.

Minister Slick's door was only open a crack. He was too cunning to give the deputy outside a view of the convicts racing down the yard. Not until the outer iron gate was swung back and the fire horses came galloping along did he throw his own gate in, without any marked evidence of "feebleness." The fire engine burst through; the convicts were at hand. Before the heavy iron gate outside could be shut they would be down upon its guardian and he would be swept aside like a sapling before the moose.

Floyd was quick to take in the situation and quick to choose his course of action. The deputies were flying in every direction before the victorious mob. A hundred yards can be covered in a very few seconds, even by men who are not professional sprinters. The wooden gate must not remain open.

The fire engine shielded him from the gaze of Minister Slick, who had drawn a revolver, but, not daring to attack the outside deputy alone, stood awaiting the onset of his fellow-prisoners. Robert was upon him in an instant and drove the greenhouse scissors into his neck, then thrust him aside, swung the door to with a mighty shove and turned just in time to dodge the rush of the maddened convicts.

Fifty of them flung themselves against the gate. It groaned but held firm. The original oak had buffeted winter gales fiercer than this, when the sap was in its veins and its green leaves rustled about the spreading branches. Like a wave of ocean breaking into foam against a cliff the oncoming mob scattered and reeled back in indecision. Several of them made at Robert, hurling their weapons at his flying form. Others ran along the great wall, like tigers along their cage bars, as if feeling for an opening. Only d.i.c.kon Harvey, from the moment that the inner gate clanged, had stood still in the middle of the clashing throng, turning his head to and fro and studying the situation. He was not slow to make up his mind.

"Out by the rotunda!" he shouted, waving his hand, and the whole rabble was making for the rotunda before the fire-horses had rounded the angle of the bastile at the other end of the yard.

Now Robert, hemmed in by a broad line of 400 armed opponents, had already chosen this outlet of escape for himself. He had foiled their plan and it would go hard with him if he and they should remain within these prison walls alone. There was a possibility that the flying deputies had left the rotunda doors ajar, since they were so heavy as to require several seconds to open and shut. So through the kitchen, up the iron stairs and across the tiled floor of the rotunda he sped, with the foremost of the pursuers almost at his heels. Only one deputy, Gradger, opposed himself to his progress, gun in hand, and Robert eluded him with the ease of a football dodger.

Both doors were ajar, the outer one, however, only a dozen inches or less. Perhaps twenty feet lay between him and safety. He had almost flung himself upon the k.n.o.b, when a man coming toward him from the outside forestalled his purpose and drew the door to with a clang. It was Tapp, who from his office, unable to rally his routed deputies, was rushing to the scene of the riot, determined to retrieve by a last act of courage the numberless shortcomings of his administration.

Robert's predicament was fearful. The door barred egress, the dogs were at his heels. Something of the cowering awe that benumbs the stag when his legs at last tremble under him and he turns to face the baying pack swept through his breast for an instant. But it was no more than an instant, for the young man's blood was roused and it was not unmixed with iron. With a leap at the k.n.o.b and a mighty tug he drew the inner door between himself and the criminals.

A snarl, hardly human, burst from hundreds of throats when they saw this last avenue closed. The thick gla.s.s of the door was splintered in a jiffy and vicious hands, armed with bludgeons and cutting tools, stretched through the bars at the traitor who had twice cheated them. As green displaces yellow in the chameleon's coat, so a wave of revenge suddenly swept aside the hope of escape in the temper of the crowd. Fortunately the s.p.a.ce between the two doors was so wide that Robert could back away and avoid the blows intended for his vitals.

But he had not reckoned on d.i.c.kon Harvey. Harvey had been the first to hurl himself on the door that Robert drew between the convicts and himself. Without a word, without a moment of hesitation, he had turned back diagonally, the others making a lane for him, and thrown himself on the turnkey Gradger. The struggle was fierce. Had Harvey been alone, he would have gone down underneath in the bout. But he was not alone. Twenty hands reached at the keeper and presently Harvey came pushing through the others, waving a huge bunch of keys over his head with a shout that the whole hall echoed.

Robert looked behind him through the outer door. Tapp had disappeared into his office. There was only the clerk and some idlers about and none of these, if they could have opened the door, dared to exercise the power. It was only a question of time when d.i.c.kon Harvey would find the right key. He could see the weapons waving in bared right arms and the shouts of the rabble once more had a hopeful ring. He said nothing, did nothing. There was nothing to do. But a rippling in his cheek showed that his teeth were clenching and unclenching. Instinctively he spread his arms out, backing against the outer door, clutching the bars and facing his hunters. It was the att.i.tude of crucifixion.

"Ha!" d.i.c.kon Harvey was silent as death, but the shriek of exultation told that his wrist had turned on the handle of the key. It fitted the wards. Slowly, all too slowly for the convicts, all too quickly for Floyd, the inner door was drawn ajar and the foremost men crouched to spring. Then came a crash in the gla.s.s behind Floyd at his very ear. A long tube of steel pa.s.sed by his cheek, and, turning, he looked into the eye of Warden Tapp sighting along the barrel of a rifle. The report rang out and d.i.c.kon Harvey fell forward, the keys jangling at his feet. Robert wrenched them from his unclasping hand. They were his only weapon. He had lost the scissors.

At the fall of Harvey the men recoiled for an instant. Quickly another rifle, and another, and another were thrust through the bars behind Robert, and he was cautioned to stand motionless. Like a mountebank's daughter, whose body outlined against a board the father fringes with skillfully cast knives, each missing her by only a hair, the prisoner stood with his arms outspread, protected by the chevaux de frise of protruding guns. Several of the defenders were kneeling and one thrust his muzzle between the young man's legs.

"Retire!" said Tapp. "Clear the rotunda!" The men sullenly stood.

"One! Two----"

Before the fatal "Three" was added they broke and turned. Then the muzzles were drawn in, the door behind Robert opened and the warden, at the head of half a dozen deputies and a dozen policemen who had just arrived, charged in upon them. The odds were twenty to one, but with the Right Spur lying senseless under the telephone pole, Minister Slick wounded at the gate where Robert had stabbed him and d.i.c.kon Harvey dead on the threshold to freedom, the rabble was merely a torso of Hercules, formidable in physique but powerless without head or limbs. The clubs of the officers made heavy thuds and the red blood starting here and there splashed curious spots of color in the dingy crowd. At one stairway Robert saw the tall form of Hawkins, bleeding but revived, thrashing around with an empty gun barrel. Then the mob was driven down the stairs, dividing itself into two portions in the right and left yards.

"Open the team gate," cried Hawkins, leading the deputies and officers to the left, through the kitchen, instead of to the right through the bath-rooms, whither Tapp had started. This time the warden was content to follow and the reason became at once apparent. The solitary fire engine stood over against the burning shops, helpless without its hose. From the outside several streams were playing on the buildings and the firemen, mounting by ladders, were climbing along the roof. But access from within was necessary if any headway were to be made. The engines stood outside the gate, occupying the interval of delay by getting up their fires.

Hawkins stationed his men in a cordon across the gate and admitted the engines and hose carriages and ladder trucks. One by one they dashed by till as many as could be supplied with water from the hydrants in the yard had entered. Then the tall deputy locked the others out, detailed one squad to guard the rotunda and another to close all doors of the bastile. With the remainder of the company, re-enforced by more policemen and keepers, he began to corral his steers.

In order to do this it was necessary that his own men should maintain the solidarity of a phalanx, while deploying out like a line of skirmishers from wall to wall. Spread over the width of the yard at one side, they began their march with rifles and revolvers ready. The stragglers fled before them. Their gait was slow. Turning the upper angle, an ambush was to be feared, but the spirit of the convicts was broken and they only hurled their weapons and fled. Hawkins wheeled his line to the right, making the pivot-mark time, and pa.s.sed along the end of the yard, which was deserted. Turning the second angle, a more desperate resistance was shown. Here all was confusion, the engines and burning shops offering places of refuge, while the presence of the firemen made it impossible to shoot. Hawkins halted his command.

"All firemen in the yard fall behind this line!" he shouted. The firemen left their engines, several of them only tearing themselves away by force. Three were captured and held in front by the convicts. The others, seeing this murderous purpose, could hardly be restrained from rushing to their rescue.

"Club guns!" cried Hawkins, and the breeches instead of the muzzles were presented to the mob. But they seemed to dread this end of the weapon as much as the other, for they released the firemen and slowly withdrew, Hawkins' line continuing its Macedonian march. Suddenly from a thick nucleus among the rebels, a spokesman started forward with a white handkerchief tied to a pole. Hawkins motioned him back and the march was continued. The men were penned up against the bath-room entrance, leading into the rotunda and the bastile, where four deputies with leveled rifles prevented escape. Hawkins had cleared the hydrants and the firemen resumed their work.

"Deputies at the bath-room door fall back and guard the stairs leading up to the rotunda! The prisoners will file into their cells in the bastile!"

This was the last straw. A yell of rage burst from the mob. To be flung back into their kennels with the bitter crust of disappointment to gnaw, and the prospect of punishment for the day's misdoings, this was too much to endure without a last resistance. They turned upon their keepers with the courage of the beast at bay.

"Now!" cried Hawkins, and his line rushed forward. The hand-to-hand struggle of the rotunda was renewed more equally, for there were resolute men in the mob, men reckless of life and maddened by the goading around the yard. Nor was their accoutrement of iron tools despicable. Dozens slipped through the line, and policemen as well as convicts were seen staggering under blows. But the timid ones speedily fled into the bastile, and, thinning the mult.i.tude, robbed it of that consciousness of numerical superiority which had given it confidence. At last not more than twenty desperadoes remained, backs to the wall, in front of the line.

"Club them down!" cried Hawkins.

There was no choice but to obey. The men were of that mettle which breaks but does not bend. One by one they were beaten to the ground.

The whole of the afternoon was required to lock the mutineers up properly. With the aid of those prisoners who had not joined the riot the fire in the shops was finally put out and a good deal of the property was saved. Only one life had been lost, that of d.i.c.kon Harvey, but the hospital beds were full that night.

When Warden Tapp called Robert to the office and thanked him in person for his behavior at the team gate and in the rotunda there were tears in the proud man's eyes. This was a shameful legacy of ruin and rebellion which he was leaving to his successor.

Pa.s.sing out of the warden's room, through the rotunda, Robert heard the familiar voice which had puzzled him so often.

"Aisy, Misther Butler, aisy, for the love o' heaven," the uncouth fellow groaned.

Floyd turned and looked. "Slim" Butler, the overseer of the harness-shop, was superintending the transfer to the hospital on an improvised stretcher of the prisoner whom he had shot when his section rose against him. His own head was bandaged and his clothes were burned. The firemen had rescued them both with difficulty. But the face of the prisoner caused Robert to start, for he recognized in the convict whom Dobbs called Quirk his uncle's coachman, Dennis Mungovan.