The Great Oakdale Mystery

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  THE TWO PRISONERS.

  As the key rattled in the lock of the heavily barred door the woundedprisoner looked up from the cot on which he was lying and saw the secondcaptive marched into the room by Constable Hubbard.

  “I guess,” said the constable, “I can chance it to take the irons off yewhile you’re in here, for we’ve got the place guarded by men who wouldshoot ye quick as they’d spit if you ever did break out, which ain’tnohow prob’le.”

  “Thank you,” said the man, as Hubbard removed the handcuffs. “I won’ttry to break out, I promise you that.”

  “And I’d be a fool if I took any stock in your promise,” said the fatofficer, as he backed out of the room, closing and relocking the door.

  With a grimace of pain, the wounded man lifted himself to a sittingposture on the cot. The eyes of the two prisoners met.

  “So they nabbed you after all, Thirteen-thirteen,” said the firstprisoner. “Tough luck, old pal. I told yer to lay low.”

  The other man shrugged his shoulders. “I did,” he answered; “but theysurrounded the place and had me pinched, so there was no use trying tomake a run for it. If I’d tried that, the chances were a hundred to onethat the damage to your wing wouldn’t have been a patch compared to whatwould have happened to me.”

  “Tough luck,” repeated the other. “But they can’t do anything to yer forthis job we made such a rotten mess of. I won’t forget how you tied upthis shoulder of mine, nor how the kid did his best to give me a show toget away. I’ll swear you wasn’t mixed up in the job here.”

  The younger man smiled wearily. “It’s not fear of their nailing thisbusiness onto me that gets me,” he said; “it’s the old case against me.I was supposed to be dead and buried, you know. Yes, it’s tough luck. Iwas born under an unlucky star on the thirteenth day of the month. Inprison I was ‘Number 1313,’ and that was a double sign of bad luck.”

  “You made a great break, you and your two pals. When they nabbed theother pair and couldn’t find you, it seemed that all the luck was yours.Course, arter I did my bit and was turned loose, I heard you hadcroaked. When I was sitting on that box just at day peep trying to stopthe blood that was leaking out of me and you stepped out to give a handat the job, you certain looked like a ghost. I couldn’t believe you wasold Thirteen-thirteen till you owned up to it. Then the youngster comeon us, and we had to——”

  “That’s the thing I regret most. Look here, Riley, you owe me something,don’t you?”

  “Anything you say, old pal.”

  “I bound up your wound the best way I could. My brother caught me at it.Then we had to bring him into the business, knowing that the searcherswere likely to trace you to that place. If they did so, it was a surething that I’d be nabbed, which must lead to the public knowledge thatClarence Sage, escaped convict, had not been drowned in the Hudson. Inhopes of avoiding this, my brother guided you into the woods and helpedyou as best as he could to get another start in your flight.”

  “The kid done his part all right, pal.”

  “Now I want you to do yours, Riley.”

  “Spiel it off. Lay it out. Put me on. What am I to do?”

  “Not one word about my brother and the part he played must escape yourlips. He did it for me, not for you, but you owe him this much: you mustprotect him.”

  “Bank on it, cull—bank on it. They’ll never jimmy a word of it outerme.”

  “Thanks,” said Clarence Sage, taking the single chair which the lockupcontained and seating himself near the cot. “That relieves my mind in ameasure. Fred’s a fine boy, and it would be a shame to have suspicionfall on him. My misfortune has cast enough stigma on my unfortunatefamily.”

  “Say, ’bo, there’s just one thing about you that I don’t like. You don’thave to put up this misfortune bluff to me. Course it’s always hard luckwhen we get laid by the heels on any little job, but seems to me you’rethrowing it out that you was on the level.”

  “I was,” asserted Clarence Sage grimly, almost fiercely. “I wasarrested, tried and convicted for a crime I never committed. If thiswere not true, I wouldn’t think of saying so now. Somebody else lootedthe bank, and I believe I know the man. It was on his testimonyprincipally that I was convicted. He saved himself, but the knowledgethat he sent an innocent man to Sing Sing may possibly have caused himsome uneasy and regretful moments.”

  “Well,” said Riley slowly, as he narrowly eyed his fellow prisoner, “youspiels it like you was talking gospel. Mebbe it’s true.”

  “It _is_ true,” asserted Clarence Sage. “Think what it meant, Riley, notonly to me, but to my people. I have the finest mother a boy ever had.The thought of her shame and suffering has been gall and wormwood tome.”

  “My old mother,” said Riley, with a touch of sentiment, “was dead andburied before I was pinched the first time, thank Heaven!”

  Sage bowed his head and spoke in a low tone, his gaze fixed upon thefloor.

  “It was to get another look at my mother’s face that I returned toOakdale. I was here a week ago, and I went away without obtaining aglimpse of her. In all the years that I was supposed to be dead I havecarried her image in my heart, and it was the knowledge of her faith inme—for she never believed me guilty—that kept me straight, I believe.I’ve knocked about in many places and associated with all sorts of men,some of them honest, but many more who were crooks. I’ve roughed it inAlaska, sailed before the mast, starved and nearly died from fever inthe Philippines, tried my hand at coal mining in Australia; and throughit all the knowledge of my mother’s faith has kept me straight, eventhough I’ve had many a chance to turn a good thing by crookedness. Atlast, believing there was little danger, I came back and hunted for mypeople. I found them here, and here I have likewise found my undoing.”

  “Tough luck,” said Riley again. “They’ll send you back to the jug.”

  “No doubt of it. I’ll have to serve out my term, with an additionalperiod hitched on to it because of my break. There’s water in my veins,Riley; the dread of what I’m up against takes the heart out of me.Perhaps you don’t know what it is to be sent to prison with theknowledge that you’re innocent and serving time for the crime of anotherman.”

  “It must be fierce,” said Riley sympathetically. “And you say he put iton you at the trial? Pal, if I was in your boots, he’d get hisn someday. When I’d done my turn and been discharged, I’d look the gent up andhand him something he’d remember—if he was in shape to rememberanything.”

  “That would be poor satisfaction to me. It wouldn’t clear my name of thecrime. It might mean that I’d be sent up again for another, stillgreater, crime. The only thing in this wide world that can ever give methe least satisfaction is proof of my innocence. I’ve dreamed ofit—dreamed of it a million times. I’ve dreamed of standing before theworld free and exonerated. Of going to my old mother and feeling herarms about my neck and her tears upon my cheeks, and hearing her gladcry, ‘I knew it, my boy—I knew it!’ Nothing but that, Riley, can eversatisfy me, and if there’s any justice under Heaven it will come someday.”

  “I hope so, pal—I hope so,” said Riley, with genuine sympathy. “I’m justa plain crook, and nothing else; but for an honest man to be marked as acrook by the bulls and people in general—why, that’s blazes, sure.”