IV
Scars
I was twenty-five years old, almost to a day, when Judge Haskinspronounced the words which were to make me for the next five years orless--the period to be determined upon my good behavior--an inmate of theState penitentiary. Lacking the needful good behavior, five long yearswould be taken out of the best part of life for me, and what was worse (Irealized this even in the tumultuous storm of first-moment impressionsand emotions), my entire point of view was certain to be hopelesslytwisted and distorted for all the years that I might live beyond myrelease.
Surely little blame can attach to the confession that out of the tumultcame a hot-hearted and vindictive determination to live for a singlepurpose; to work and strive and endure so that I might be the sooner freeto square my account with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. I need make nosecret now of the depth of this hatred. At times, when the obsession wasstrongest upon me, the fear that one or both of them might die before mychance should come was almost maddening. They were both old men, and inthe nature of things there was always a possibility that death mightforestall me.
So it was this motive at first that made me jealous of my good-conductmarks; made me study the prison regulations and live up to them with arigidity that knew no lapses. I am not defending the motive; Icheerfully admit that it was unworthy. None the less, I owe itsomething: it sustained me and kept me sane and cool-headed at a timewhen, without some such stimulus, I might have lost my reason.
Of the three succeeding years and what they brought or failed to bringthe least said will be, perhaps, the soonest mended. I am glad to beable to write it down that my native State had, and still has, a fairlyenlightened prison system; or at least it is less brutalizing than manyothers. During my period of incarceration the warden-in-office was anupright and impartial man, just to his charges and even kindly andfatherly when the circumstances would warrant. After my steadydetermination to earn an early release became apparent, I was made a"trusty," and for two of the three years I was the prison bookkeeper.
Study as I might, I could never determine how the prison life affected myassociates; but for me it held few real hardships beyond the confinement,the disgrace, and the fear that before I could outlive it I should becomea criminal in fact. Fight the idea as we may, environment, association,and suggestion have a great deal to say to the human atom. I was treatedas a criminal, was believed to be a criminal, and mingled daily withcriminals. Put yourself in my place and try to imagine what it wouldmake of you in three changes of the calendar.
During the three years I received but one letter from home, and wrote butone. Almost as soon as my sentence period began I had a heart-brokenletter from my sister. She and my mother had returned from Canada, onlyto find me dead and buried to the world. I answered the letter, beggingher not to write again, or to expect me to write. It seemed a refinementof humiliation to have the home letters come addressed to me in a prison;and besides, I was like the sick man who turns his face to the wall,wishing neither to see nor to hear until the paroxysm has passed. I maysay here that both of these good women respected my wishes and my foolishscruples. They wrote no more; and, what was still harder for my mother,I think, they made no journeys half across the State on the prisonvisiting days.
It will be seen that I have cut the time down from the five-year limitimposed by my sentence; and so it was cut down in reality. After I hadbeen promoted to the work in the prison offices my life settled into amonotonous routine, with nothing eventful or disturbing to mark thepassing weeks and months; and by living strictly within the prisonrequirements, working faithfully, and never once earning even a reprimandfrom the kindly warden or his deputy, I was given the full benefit of my"good time," and at the end of the third year, with a prison-providedsuit on my back and five dollars of the State's money in my pocket, I wasparoled.
Though I have been its beneficiary and victim, and have been made tosuffer cruelly under its restrictions, I make here no arraignment of thelaw which provides in some States--my own among the number--for theindeterminate prison sentence. The reform was doubtless conceived inmercy and a true spirit of sociological lenity toward the offender. Butin practice it may be so surrounded with safeguards and limitations, sowrapped up in provisos and conditions, as to completely defeat its ownend and reverse its intent.
Under the law as it stood--and still stands, I believe--in my owncommonwealth, I was required to remain in the State; to report, at leastonce a month, by letter to the prison authorities, and in person to thechief of police in any city in which I might be living; to retain my ownname; and to bind myself to tell a straightforward story of my convictionand imprisonment at any time and to any one who should require it. Theomission to comply with any of these restrictions and requirements wouldautomatically cancel my parole and subject me to arrest andre-imprisonment for the unexpired period of the original sentence.
Again I ask you to put yourself in the place of a man paroled under suchconditions. With such handicaps, what possible chance can a released manhave to secure honest employment? Fortunately for me, I was still onlytwenty-eight--young and hopeful; and I started out to do my best, sayingonly that nothing should tempt me to go back to Glendale where, I wastold, my mother and sister were still living in retirement and under theshadow of the family disgrace.
Knowing that the released convict usually heads for the largest city hecan reach, thus obeying the common-sense instinct which prompts him tolose himself quickly in a crowd, I planned to do the opposite thing. Itold myself that I was not a criminal, and therefore would not follow thecriminal's example. I would board an interurban trolley and expend aportion of my five dollars in reaching some obscure town in a distantpart of the State, where I would begin the new life honestly and openlyin any employment that might offer.
There was nobody to meet me as I forthfared from the prison gates, but Iwas not expecting any one and so was not disappointed. None the less, onmy way to the central trolley station I had a half-confirmed convictionthat I was followed; that the follower had been behind me all the wayfrom the prison street.
After making several fruitless attempts I finally succeeded in fixingupon the particular person in the scattering sidewalk procession who madeall the turns that I made, keeping always a few paces in the rear. Hewas a man of about my own age, round-faced and rather fleshy. In myGlendale days I should have set him down at once as a traveling salesman.He looked the part and dressed it.
Farther along, upon reaching the interurban station, I was able tobreathe freer and to smile at the qualms of my new-liberty nervousness.Just as I was parting with two of my five dollars for a ticket to thechosen destination my man came up to the ticket window, followed by ahotel porter carrying a grip and a sample case. I saw then how facilelyeasy it was going to be to take fright at shadows. Evidently the youngman was a salesman, and his apparent pursuit of me had been merely acoincidence in corner turnings. And in the recoil from the apprehensiveextreme I refused to attach any significance to the fact that he waspurchasing a ticket to the same distant town to which I had but now paidmy own passage.
During the leisurely five-hour run across the State the object of mysuspicions--my foolish suspicions, I was now calling them--paid noattention to me, so far as I could determine. Save for the few minutesat noon when the interurban car stopped to permit its passengers tosnatch a hasty luncheon at a farm-town restaurant, he did not once leavehis place, which was two seats behind mine and on the opposite side ofthe car. On the contrary, like a seasoned traveler, he made himselfcomfortable behind the barricade of hand-baggage and wore out the entiretime with sundry newspapers and magazines. Moreover, at our commondestination he did not follow me to the one old-fashioned hotel; instead,he led the way to it, and was buying a cigar at the little countershow-case when I came up to bargain, with another of my precious dollars,for the supper, lodging and breakfast which were to launch me upon thenew career.
After this, I saw the fat-faced traveling man
but twice, and both timescasually. At supper he had a small table to himself in one corner of theroom; and the following morning, when I went out to lay siege to my newworld, he was smoking in the hotel office and again buried in anewspaper. Two hours later I had found employment driving a grocer'sdelivery wagon, and in the triumph of having so soon found even thishumblest of footholds in a workaday world, I had completely forgotten him.
Having thus made my cast for fortune and secured the foothold, it took meless than a week to learn that I had made a capital mistake in choosing asmall town. Under that condition of my parole which required me toreport in my true character to the town marshal I assured myself that Imight as well have published my story in the county newspaper. Beforethe end of the week half of my customers on the delivery route werebeginning to look askance at me, and when the Saturday night came I wasdischarged. I knew perfectly well what was coming when the boss, abig-bodied, good-natured man who had made his money as a farmer and wasnow losing it as the town grocer, called me into his little box of anoffice at the back of the shop.
"Say, Weyburn; when I asked you where you had been working before youcame here, you didn't tell me the truth," was the way he began on me.
"I told you I had worked in a bank in Glendale," I protested; "which wasand is the truth."
"I know; but you didn't tell me that you'd put in the last three years inthe pen, and were out on parole."
"No, I didn't tell you that. But I would have told you if you had askedme."
"I can't stand for it," he grumbled, chewing at the unlighted cigar whichwas his Saturday night indulgence. "And if I could, the customerswouldn't. I suppose as many as a dozen women have been to me in the lastfew days. They say they can't afford to be watchin' the back door everytime you come 'round with the groceries. You see how it is."
I saw; but I was still foolish enough to try to stem the pitiless tide.
"Would it make any difference if I were to say that I was as innocent ofthe crime for which I was convicted as any of these frightened women?" Isuggested.
"They all say that," was the colorless retort. "The point is, Weyburn,that you was convicted. There ain't no gettin' 'round that. You've wornthe stripes, and you'll just have to make up your mind to live it downbefore you can expect people to forget it."
If I hadn't been the wretched victim of this paradox it might haveprovoked a smile.
"How am I ever going to live it down, Mr. Bucks, if nobody will give me achance?" I asked.
"I know," he agreed readily enough. "But I'm losin' money here, everyday, as it is, and I can't afford to make experiments. I'm sorry foryou, honestly, Weyburn; but you see how it is."
"Yes, I see," I returned. "You think I ought to be given a chance, butyou prefer to have somebody else give it to me. I don't blame you.Perhaps under similar conditions I'd do the same thing myself. Pay meand I'll disappear."
He did pay me, and tried to give me two dollars more than the agreedweekly wage, generously putting it upon the ground of the lack of notice.I shall always be glad that I still had pride enough left to refuse thecharity. Even at this early twisting of the thumb-screws I was beginningto realize that self-respect would be the first thing to go by the board,and the fight to save it was almost instinctive.
Before leaving Bucks I tried to find out how he had learned my story;this though I was definitely charging the exposure to the town marshal asbeing the only person who could have spread it abroad. To my surprise,the grocer defended the marshal promptly and warmly.
"That shows how little you know Cal Giddings," he retorted. "He's thelast man on top of earth to go 'round givin' you a black eye of thatsort."
"May I ask what reason you have for thinking so?" I inquired.
"Sure you may. I've known Cal ever since we was little kids together.I've seen him every day this week, and he knew you was workin' for me.If he'd 'a' told anybody, it would 'a' been me; you can bet your hat onthat."
"Then where did you hear the story?" I persisted.
"Why, I dunno just where I did hear it first. Everybody in town seems toknow it," he asserted; and with this unsatisfying answer I was obliged tobe contented.
The next attempt was made in a small industrial city on the opposite sideof the State. This time I went to the chief of police as soon as Iarrived, and after making the required report, I had it out with him inplain speech.
"I am going to try to get work here in your city," I said, "and I'd liketo know beforehand how much leeway you are going to give me."
The portly thief-taker leaned back in his chair and regarded me with acoldly appraisive eye. He was a coarse-featured man with a face thatwould have fitted admirably in any rogues' gallery in the land.
"You're in bad, young fellow," he growled. "We've got plenty and morethan enough of your kind in this town, without takin' on any more."
"But I am keeping my parole," I pleaded. "I have come to you like a manthe first thing, and have made my report according to the conditions.Somebody has got to give me a chance."
"You'll earn it, damn' good and plenty, if you stay here to get it," wasthe gruff response. "What kind of a job are you lookin' for?"
It was hard to confide in such a man, even casually, but I had no choice.
"I am willing to take anything I can get, but my experience has beenmostly in office work," I told him; adding: "I suppose I might callmyself a fairly expert bookkeeper."
"Umph!" he grunted, shifting his cigar from one corner of the hard-bittedmouth to the other. "That means that you want to try for a job where youcan work the till-tapping game again."
Not having as yet learned my lesson line by line, I was incautious enoughto say: "I have yet to work it the first time."
"Like hell you have! See here, young fellow--you needn't spring thatkind of talk on me. I know you and your kind up one side and down theother. You say you've put three years in 'stir' and that settles it."At this point he broke off short, righted his chair with a snap andreached for a bill-spindle on his desk. After a glance at one of theimpaled memoranda he sat back again, chewing his cigar and staring intovacancy. A full minute elapsed before he deigned to become once moreaware of my presence. Then he whirled upon me to rap out an explosivequestion.
"What did you say your name was?" and when I told him: "Aw right; youcome back here this afternoon and we'll see whether you stay or move on.That's all. Now get out. I'm busy."
I went away and killed time as I could until the middle of the afternoon.Upon returning to police headquarters I found the hard-faced chief tiltedin his chair with his feet on his desk, looking as if he hadn't movedsince my visit of the forenoon. When he saw who it was cutting off theafternoon sunlight he straightened up with a growl, rummaged in a file ofpapers and jerked out a typewritten sheet which he glanced over as onewho reads only the headings.
"James Bertrand Weyburn, eh?" he rasped. "I know all about you now, andyou may as well can all that didn't-do-it stuff. Forget it and come downto business. You say you want to hit the straight-and-narrow: how woulda job in a coal yard fit you?--keepin' books and weighin'-in the coalcars?"
I told him, humbly enough, that I was too nearly a beggar to be achooser; that I'd be only too glad to get a chance at anything at which Imight earn a living.
"Aw right," was the curt rejoinder. "You hike over to the ConsolidatedCoal Company's yard on the West Side, and tell Mullins, the headbook-keeper, that I sent you, see? Tell him to call me on the 'phone ifhe wants to know anything more about you. That's all. Pull your freightout of here and get busy--if you don't want to get the 'move on' out ofthis burg."
Notwithstanding this crabbed speech, matching all the other things thisman had said to me, I left police headquarters with a warm spot in myheart, thinking that I had lighted upon a diamond in the rough and hadn'thad discernment enough to recognize it.
Yet there was a small mystery thrusting itself into this second interviewwith the chief. What was the content of the typew
ritten sheet he hadconsulted, and who had written it? If it had been a telegram I mighthave concluded that he had wired the warden of the penitentiary for acorroboration of my story. But it was not a telegram.
I was still puzzling over the mystery half an hour later when I found thecoal yard and the bookkeeper, Mullins, a red-faced Irishman who winkedsolemnly when I told him that Chief Callahan had sent me.
"Know anything at all about the railroad end of the coal business?" wasthe first inquiry shot at me; but it was not made until after thebook-keeper had shut himself into the telephone booth, presumably for awire talk with Callahan.
I shook my head. "None of the details. But I can learn."
"Maybe you can, and maybe you can't. We'll try you out on the railroaddesk, and Peters 'll show you what you don't know. Peel your coat andjump in. Hours eight to six; pay, sixty dollars a month: more bimeby ifyou're worth it."
Robert Louis Stevenson's cheerful little opening verse:
"Light foot and tight foot, And green grass spread; Early in the morning, And hope is on ahead,"
was ringing in my ears when I squared myself at the railroad desk andattacked the first big bunch of "flimsies," as the tissue copies of thewaybills are called. It was almost unbelievable that my luck had turnedso soon, and yet the fact seemed undeniable. I had a job to which I hadbeen recommended by the one man in the city who knew my record. Noquestions had been asked, and the inference seemed to be that none weregoing to be asked.
I was all of a busy week getting a firm working hold upon the routine ofmy desk, and during that time I didn't exchange a dozen words withMullins, who appeared to be the head and front of Consolidated Coal,locally, at least, and whose word, in the office and about the yards, waslaw. None the less, the little mystery connected with this easy findingof a job in a strange city persisted, and it kept me from dwelling toopointedly upon the object for which I meant to live and work; namely, thesquaring of accounts with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers.
Singularly enough, it took me, trained accountant as I was, a full monthto find out what I had been let in for, and why the job I was holdingdown had been given to an ex-convict. It was my duty to check therailroad waybills on consignments of coal, to correct the weights, and tomake claims for overcharges and shortages. I made these claims as I hadbeen told to make them, taking the figures of the weights from Peters,who, in turn, took them from the scale men in the yard. It was Peterswho gave the snap away one night when we two were working overtime in theotherwise deserted offices.
"Say, Weyburn; you've got about the coldest nerve of any fellow I've everrun up against," he said, looking up from his place across theflat-topped desk.
"What makes you say that, Tommy?" I asked.
"Because it's so. I've been watching you. You've been sitting on thelid for an even month, now, and never batting an eye when these railroadfellows come at you and make their little roar about the overcharges.Believe me, it takes nerve to do that--and carry it off as if you werereading 'em a verse out o' the Bible. Blaisdell, the lad who was herebefore you, went batty and talked in his sleep. Told me once he couldn'tsee anything but stripes, any way he looked."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, with a sudden sinkingof the heart. "Why should it take nerve to tell a railroad agent he'sbeen overcharging us?"
Peters's laugh was a cackle. "You're the traffic man of this outfit: doyou know the rates on coal from the mines to Western Central commonpoints?"
"Of course I do."
"Got 'em all down in the printed tariff, so you can't help knowing 'em,eh? Consolidated Coal pays these rates, doesn't it?--all according toHoyle and the Interstate Commerce laws?"
"I suppose we pay them. I check the bills as they are presented."
"Exactly. But every little so-while you have to make a whaling big claimon the railroad company for overcharges, and maybe you've noticed thatthese claims are always paid--or maybe you haven't?"
I was beginning to see the hole in the millstone.
"I make the claims on the weights as you give them to me, Peters. Do youmean to tell me that you've been giving me false figures?"
The yard clerk stuck his tongue in his cheek. "I'm not telling youanything. You know as well as I do that it's against the law to give orreceive rebates. But if you're not a heap greener than you look, youknow that we're getting our cut rates, just the same. All we need is aman right here at your desk who has the nerve to make out the claims, andis fly enough to do a little bluffing and ask no questions. You're allright, Bertie."
"But the figures of the weights," I insisted. "You are the man who givesthem to me, and you are responsible if they are wrong."
"Not in a thousand years!" was the prompt retort. "I never put anythingon paper--you're the man that does that--and if the Interstate Commercepeople should break in, I'd have the best little forgettery of anyclock-watcher in the works. Nix for me, Weyburn; you are the chap withthe figures, and the only man in the shop who has them down in black onwhite. When the roar comes, it'll be up to you, and Mullins will throwup his hands and accuse you of having a private graft of some sort withthe railroad clerks in the claim office. That's about what he'll do."
My overtime companion had finished his job and was putting on his coat.I let him go without further talk, but after he had gone, I stayed longenough to check over the files of the yard-master's blotter. When thechecking was completed I knew perfectly well why I had been hired sopromptly, and why Mullins had been willing to take on an ex-convict. Mybasing figures, which Peters had been giving me verbally, were all wrong.The majority of the claims I had been making from day to day werefraudulent, and in paying them the railroad company was merely rebatingthe coal rates for Consolidated Coal.
It was easy to see where I stood. A scapegoat was necessary, and with aprison record behind me I had about as much show as a rat in a trap. Ifthere should be an investigation, Mullins would swear that I had entirecharge of the claim department. And having no written data to fall backupon, I should be helpless.
The date of this disheartening discovery chanced to be the 25th of themonth--our regular pay-day, and I had my month's salary in my pocket whenI left the office about eleven o'clock to go to my boarding-house. Atthe nearest street corner I met the patrolman on the beat.
"Hello, cully!" he growled as I was passing him; and then with a hand onmy arm he stopped me. "You're forgettin' somethin', ain't you?"
"I guess not," I answered.
"I guess yes," he retorted. "It's pay-day at the works, and you gottacome across."
Here was the remainder of the conspiracy made plain as day. The crookedchief of police had turned me over to the crooked coal company to docrooked work, and I was to be held up for a graft on my salary. With aswift return of the blood-boiling which had once helped me to manhandlethe deputy, Simmons, I faced the patrolman.
"And if I don't come across--what then?"
The policeman grinned good-naturedly. "You're goin' to 'produce' allright. You're a paroled man, and you can't afford to have the chief getit in for you."
It was just here that the three nerve-breaking years got in their work.I couldn't face the grafter down, and--I confess it with shame--I washorribly afraid.
"How much?" I asked, and my tongue was dry in my mouth.
"This is the first mont', and we'll let you down easy. You fork over aten-spot for the campaign fund and we'll call it square. Next mont'it'll be more."
I paid the blackmail with trembling hands, and when the patrolman was outof sight around the corner I ran to reach my boarding place, intent onlyupon flight, instant and secret, from this moral cesspool of a city. Iremembered that there was a westbound train passing through at midnight,and by hurrying I hoped to be able to catch it.