Part 12 (1/2)

and it was as ”James Herbert Weyburn” that I had been arraigned and convicted, that was not, strictly speaking, my right name. I had been christened ”James Bertrand,” after my father. My mother had always called me ”Jimmie,” but for others the ”Bertrand” was soon shortened into ”Bert” and from that a few home-town formalists had soon evolved the ”Herbert,” a change which my own boyish and unreasoning dislike for ”Bertrand” was ready enough to confirm. So, when the inspector asked me my name I answered promptly, ”James Bertrand.”

”Write it,” was the curt command, and a pad and a pencil were shoved at me across the desk.

Since the name was two-thirds of my own, I was able to write it without any of the hesitation which might otherwise have betrayed me if I had chosen a combination that was unfamiliar.

”Where are you from?” was the next question.

Here, as I saw it, was one of the holes in which a lie might be profitably planted--profitably and safely. So I said, glibly enough: ”Cincinnati.”

”Street and number?”

I had given Cincinnati merely because I chanced to be somewhat familiar with that city, and now I gave the location of a boarding-house near the river front where I had once stayed over-night.

”Where were you born?”

”In the country, about forty miles from Cincinnati.”

”Traveling for your health, I suppose? Where's your baggage?”

I saw that I should have to call a halt somewhere, and this seemed as good a point as any.

”See here,” I broke out; ”you've got the wrong man, and you know it, and I know it! You have no shadow of right to arrest me without a warrant. Neither have you any right to try to tangle me in my statements so that I shall fall down and give you an excuse for locking me up!”

”Say, young fellow--you cut all that out and quiet down!” advised the plain-clothes man who had nipped me at the railroad terminal.

”That's the one thing I shan't do!” I retorted boldly. ”You have arrested me without authority, and now you are trying to give me the third degree. You've got me here, and you may make the most of it--until I can find a lawyer. Lock me up if you feel like it; and are willing to stand for the consequences.”

At this the three of them put their heads together and once more compared the thumb-prints. Suddenly the inspector whirled upon me with his lips drawn back and his hand balled into a fist as if he were going to strike me.

”How about that little job you pulled off with a forged check in Chicago last week?” he rapped out.

He was evidently counting upon the effect of a shock and a surprise, but, naturally, the ruse fell flat.

”I don't know anything about a forged check; and I was never in Chicago in my life,” I replied; and since both statements were strictly true I could make them calmly and without hesitation.

For the third time they put their heads together. I think the inspector was for letting me go without further ado. But the man who had arrested me was apparently still suspicious and unsatisfied. As a compromise they did the thing which determined my second flight. They took me into a room at the rear of the building; a barn-like place bare of everything save a screen and a tripoded photographer's camera; and within the next five minutes I had been posed and ”mugged.”

”Now you may go,” said the harsh-voiced inspector; and I left the building knowing that the Colorado capital had been effectually crossed off in the list of possible refuges for me. With my photograph in the police blotter, discovery and recapture would be only a question of time, if I should stay where I could be identified by the local authorities. Once during my prison term I had seen an escaped man brought back from far-away Alaska.

Since there was no immediate danger, however, there was time to plan thoughtfully and prudently for a second disappearance. After a lunch-counter meal, eaten in a cheap restaurant within a block or so of the City Hall, I made a round of the employment offices. In front of one of them there was a bulletin-board demand for railroad grade laborers on the Cripple Creek branch of the Colorado Midland.

At that time I knew next to nothing about the geography of the Rocky Mountain States, and the great mining-camp at the back of Pike's Peak was merely a name to me; though the name was familiar, in a way, because the mine in which Abel Geddis had sunk his depositors' money was said to be in the Cripple Creek district. What chiefly attracted me in the bulletin-board notice was the announcement that free transportation would be given to the work. With only a few dollars in my pocket, the free ride became an object, and I entered the office.

The arrangement was easily made. I gave the agent his fee of two dollars, and let him put a name--not my own or any part of my own, you may be sure--on his list for the evening s.h.i.+pment. It appeared to cut no figure with this employment shark that I bore none of the marks of a successful pick-and-shovel man. All he wanted or cared for was his two dollars and something on two legs and in the shape of a man to put into his gang against the collected fee. I was told to show up at the Union Station at six o'clock, sharp; and after spending the remainder of the afternoon wandering about the city, I reported as instructed, was pa.s.sed through the gates with some twenty-five or thirty other ”pick-ups,” and so turned my back upon the Queen City of the Plains--for a time.

XI

Number 3126

In due deference to the ”mugging” at police headquarters, I had registered in the Denver employment office as ”William Smith.” But on the work, which proved to be the construction of a branch feeder for the Midland in the heart of the gold district, I took my own name--or rather that part of it which had been given to the Denver police inspector--arguing that the only way in which I could be traced would be by means of the photograph. Against the photographic possibility, my beard, which had been sc.r.a.ped off by the station barber during the waiting interval between trains in St. Louis, was suffered to grow again.

The railroad labor was strenuous, as it was bound to be; and for the first few days the thin, crisp air of the alt.i.tudes cut my already indifferent physical efficiency almost to the vanis.h.i.+ng point.