The Rose in the Ring Part 65

"Look here," demanded d.i.c.k savagely, "ain't poor Ernie to have any o'

these things? Is he to set by and see me eat--what?"

"You are to be treated alike, of course," cried David quickly. d.i.c.k's face cleared. He looked down in evident embarra.s.sment.

"Excuse me, kid. I--I always get riled when I think of him getting the worst of anything. I'm sure we'll both be terrible grateful to Chris--to Mrs. Jenison. She's an angel,--as of course you know, kid.

Sending me books, eh? Tell her I like d.i.c.kens, will you? And, say, there's _one_ book she needn't go to the trouble of sendin' me."

"You mean the--the Bible?"

"Yes."

"d.i.c.k, you don't really mean that. You--"

"I've already got one," said the prisoner simply. His eyes fell with curious inconsistency. They saw his chin and lower lip quiver ever so slightly. He sc.r.a.ped the floor with his foot a time or two, and his fingers tightened on the bars. "It's a little one my mother gave me when I was a kid. I've always kept it. Funny little old Bible, with print so small you can't hardly read it, 'specially that place where all them guys with the jay names were being begot. They seem to run together a good deal--I mean the names. I guess they must have run together considerable themselves, if accounts are true. Yes, my ma gave it to me for being a good boy once."

His eyes were wet when he looked up at David's face again. His smile seemed more twisted than usual.

"Where is it now, d.i.c.k?" asked Jenison, a lump coming into his throat.

Joey was plainly, almost offensively amazed.

"Why,--why, Ernie's got it. He didn't have anything else to read, so he took it a couple of weeks ago. I--I guess I'll ask him for it some day soon. Oh, yes, there _is_ something I want to speak to you about, Joey.

A couple o' years ago I took out a life insurance policy in favor of Ernie, and also an accident policy. I couldn't keep up the accident one, but the other's paid up to next January. Maybe I won't have to pay on it again. It's for five thousand. I want you to see that he gets the money if--if I--well, you know. The policy is in the safe over at old Isaac's p.a.w.nshop,--you know the place. I'll write and ask him to come down and see me, and I'll tell him to give you the paper, if you don't mind, Joey."

"Sure, d.i.c.k. I'll take charge of it. You're very good to Ernie, and thoughtful, lad."

"Well, I guess I ought to be," remarked d.i.c.k dryly.

David from the first had been more or less certain that d.i.c.k was not the one who shot Grand. He could not drive the ugly conviction from his mind. It occurred to him at this juncture to put his theory to the test, hoping to catch d.i.c.k off his guard.

"The police are now saying that you did not do the shooting, d.i.c.k." He watched the other's face narrowly.

There was not so much as a flicker of alarm.

"They don't think the old boy committed suicide, do they?" asked d.i.c.k, with a chuckle of scorn for the obtuseness of the police.

"No. They're working on some new evidence, that's all."

"It's grand to have a reputation like mine," grinned the amiable rogue.

"They won't even believe me when they catch me red-handed. Once a liar, always a liar. That's their idea, eh? If I was to turn around and say I didn't do it, I suppose they'd believe me? Well, nix! I guess not!"

David and Joey left almost immediately after this, promising to visit him from time to time, and to do all in their power to aid Mr. Prull.

"Well, so long," said d.i.c.k at parting. "Say, Joey, will you remember me to Ruby? I wish her all the luck in the world."

The summer months wore away and toward the middle of October the case of the State _vs_. Cronk and Cronk came up. There was little or no public interest in the hearing. Two sets of friends, rather small circles very widely apart, were deeply interested, and that was all.

The Jenisons and their friends formed one contingent, while the other was made up from that shifting, stealthy element of humanity known as the "under-world."--pickpockets, cracksmen and ne'er-do-wells who had been the a.s.sociates of d.i.c.k Cronk in one way or another, off and on, for years.

The plea of self-defense was ably presented by a great lawyer, but it was shattered by the State quite as easily as he had antic.i.p.ated. He made an eloquent, impa.s.sioned appeal for clemency. The jury was out not more than an hour. Their verdict was an acquittal for Ernest Cronk, a conviction for murder in the first degree against Richard, with the recommendation that he be hanged by the neck until dead.

Following the conviction came the application for a new trial, which was not granted. The record in the case was so clear of error and the proof so conclusive that Mr. Prull declined to carry the matter to the higher courts, realizing the hopelessness of such a proceeding. Then began the systematic, earnest effort to induce the governor to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. He declined to interfere.

d.i.c.k Cronk was doomed.

At eleven o'clock on the morning of a bitterly cold Friday in January a grim, sullen group of men, evil-faced fellows whose eyes were heavy with dread, and whose lips hung limp with dejection, crowded around the stove in a squalid, ill-smelling bas.e.m.e.nt room. They spoke but seldom; their voices were rarely raised above the hoa.r.s.e half-whisper of anxiety known only to men who wait in patience for a thing of horror to come to pa.s.s, an inevitable, remorseless thing from which there is no escape.

They shivered as they crouched close to the red-hot stove, notwithstanding the almost unbearable heat of the foul, windowless room in which they were gathered. Their faces were pallid, their eyes bloodshot, their flesh a-quiver.

Occasionally one or another of them would go to the door to listen for sounds in the black pa.s.sage beyond. He would resume his seat without a word to his fellows, each of whom looked up with stark, questioning eyes. Then they would fall to staring at the walls again, or at the floor, their chins in their hands. At their feet lay the newspapers, eagerly read and discarded by each and every member of this little group. There was a "noon extra," fresh from a ten o'clock press. It had been the last to fall into their hands.

They tried to smoke, but the water of mortal terror filled their mouths. The smell of dead, dank tobacco pervaded the room.

In a far corner, huddled against the wall, there was a shivering, silent figure, a Pariah even among these under-world outcasts. He sat apart from the others, denied a place in the circle, despised and abhorred by the men he once had scorned because they were the devil-may-care companions and emulators of his brother. His beady black eyes never shifted from the low, padlocked door in the opposite end of the room. He, too, was waiting for the dread news from the upper world.

His breathing was sharply audible, as of one drugged by sleep; his body had not moved an inch in an hour or more, so fierce was the suspense that held him rigid. From time to time he swallowed, although his mouth was dry and empty; there was a rattling sound accompanying the act that suggested the hoa.r.s.e croak of a frog. Always his gaze was on the door, never wavering, unblinkng, fascinated by the horror that was creeping down to him as surely as the sun crept up to the apex of the day.

Noon! Twelve o'clock, midday! The hour they were dreading!

One of the shivering thieves beside the stove drew forth from a ragged pocket the plutocratic timepiece of a millionaire victim. The way his eyes narrowed as he looked at its face told the silent observers that it was twelve o'clock and after. Unconsciously every figure stiffened, every jaw was set, every nostril spread with the intake of air. Every mind's eye in that fear-sick group leaped afar and drew a picture of the thing that was happening--then! At that very instant it was happening!

"Oh!" groaned some one, half aloud.

"It's after twelve," muttered another thickly.

"The jig's up wid d.i.c.k, kids. Blacky ought to be here wid de extry.

Wot's a keepin' him?" said the first speaker, glaring over his shoulder in the direction of the door.

"Twelve sharp, that's wot it says," shuddered a small, pinched thief.

"He's a-swingin' now."

Suddenly a wild, appalling shriek arose from the corner behind them. As one man, they whirled. Their gaze fell upon the cringing figure over there, now groveling on the floor in the agony of a terror that severed all the restraining bonds that had held his tongue so long.

They shrank back as their minds began to grasp the words he was shrieking in his madness.

He was sobbing out the thing that each man there had suspected from the first!

For many minutes they listened to his ravings, stupefied, aghast. Then a stealthy glance swept round the circle as if inspired by one central intelligence. It crept out of the corners of rattish eyes, reading as it ran the sinister circle, and hurried back to its intense, malevolent business of transfixing the quarry in the corner.

A hand reached down and grasped the leg of a short, heavy stool.

Another went lower and clutched a long, murderous bar of iron that served as a poker. Savage eyes went in quest of deadly things, and purposeful hands obeyed the common impulse.

Then they advanced....

Later, the stealthy, shivering group stole forth from the room and down the black hallway that led to the street. The last man out cast a terrified glance at the still, shapeless object in the corner as he closed the door behind him and fled after his fellows. When they came from the pa.s.sage into the full light of day, each skulker looked at his hands and found that they shook as if with a mighty ague.

Even as they blinked their eyes in the glaring sunlight, an excited young man came rushing toward them from the opposite side of the street. They paused irresolute. The newcomer was white, excited--yes, jubilant. In his hand he carried a newspaper, the heavy black headlines standing out in bold relief.

"He's got a reprieve!" he was shouting eagerly. "Look 'ere! See wot it says."

Fascinated, they slunk back into the dark pa.s.sage, to listen in stupefaction while the joyous Blacky repeated the astounding news from the prison.