Part 17 (1/2)
”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 punis.h.i.+ng 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.”