The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery

by William Augustine Leahy

  CHAPTER XXI.

  THE BREWING STORM.

  Friday was to be the last day of Warden Tapp's tenure, and Robert wasaware that the convicts had determined to celebrate his removal by somedemonstration of their joy. Everybody was dissatisfied with hisgovernment--the public, his deputies, his charges, alike. Stalking aboutwith that inveterate preference for his own company which had won himthe nickname of "The Pelican," he gnawed his huge mustache in a mannerthat seemed to betray that he was not oversatisfied with the resultshimself.

  The prison which he had taken from his predecessor, as orderly as anybarracks the world over, he left to his successor (a military man)slovenly, rebellious and tunneled with secret avenues of communicationto the outside world. He had begun with leniency and a smiling face.Vice, indolence and a thousand weedy growths flourished up under hiselevated chin. When he awoke at last his rigor in uprooting them wasintemperate and ineffectual. Several felons escaped. A riot broke outand the warden had been helplessly holding the reins behind a runawayhorse ever since.

  He had flogged men for not saluting when he passed, yet he was hooted atevery time he showed his head to the crowd. He had strung threebrushmakers up by the thumbs for idling, yet every shop except theharness-makers, in spite of free labor, showed a deficit for the lasthalf-year. The cells were so littered with storage that it was almostimpossible to enter them. Contraband tobacco, gift books, tools, birdcages, shirts and shoes smuggled from the workshops, even knives andrevolvers, were found in them.

  The "block," or dark dungeon, was always full. If some dozen of theconniving deputies had been sent there, Warden Tapp might have had lessto extenuate.

  "It's quiet this evening," said Robert to Dobbs on Thursday.

  "That's the lull before the storm, my boy," said the cracksman.

  "You think we'll have trouble, then?"

  "Keep your 'ead in, my boy, when it rains. These 'ere coves 'll get awetting that'll spoil their Sunday duds. They 'aven't no hart."

  "No what?"

  "No hart, no hingenuity. They hask first and then try to take it. We'lltake what we want first--honly a little fresh air, Bobbs--and then we'llhask 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, butFloyd knew nobody 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 mugin the quicksilver and ee's never found it since."

  This conversation had been conducted face to face in the dark throughthe aperture formed by the removal of four bricks on each side of thepartition. Dobbs had already outlined a general plan to Robert by whichthey 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 'isroyal 'ighness' trousers didn't meet round 'is royal 'ighness'waistband."

  "I doubt if even six will be wide enough. The bricks are only eight byfour apiece, and I think I'm more than sixteen by twelve."

  "Can a cat jump through a keyhole? No-sirree. But a corpuscle can wigglethrough a capillary."

  About 11 o'clock the next morning the entire prison force was summonedto the rotunda to hear the farewell address of the warden. The rotundawas a great round hall at one end of the bastile, or prison proper,communicating through two double doors with the warden's office, fromwhich it was only a step to the street. Looking around at the desperategallery of 600 faces, all shaven, but ill-shaven, and most of thembrutal from the indulgence of hateful passions, Robert thought how smalla chance the forty keepers stood if that sullen herd should everstampede.

  But the walls of the rotunda were undressed bowlders of granite and thewindows all around were double-barred with iron rods that looked strongenough to hold up a mountain. Only the rear doors were vulnerable atall, and these simply led through the kitchen to the cells, or right andleft into the yard, at the end of which, and all along one side,abutting the rotunda, were the workshops, while the other side wasimpregnable with its twenty-foot wall.

  Flanked by Gradger and Longlegs, the Pelican rose to address hismutineers. At his approach there was such a tremendous joggling in thecrowd, that for a time it looked as if the volcano would burst then andthere. But three spokesmen who had wriggled their way to the frontstepped forward with their hands clasped over their heads as a token ofpeaceful intentions and requested the privilege of a word to the warden.They were all marked men, undergoing long sentences and recognized asdangerous criminals. The difference of type between them was conspicuousas they stood in front of the surging crowd--Dickon Harvey, the RightSpur and Minister Slick.

  Dickon Harvey was a diamond thief, polished in person and of fluentaddress. Like those madmen in asylums whom the casual visitor findsperfectly rational and indeed delightful companions, Dickon Harvey neverfailed to convince callers at the prison of his moral sanity. Headmitted past misuse of undeniable talents, though stoutly denying theparticular crime upon which he was sentenced. His legends of earlytemptation and ambition to reform had softened the heart of many aphilanthropist to pity. But his cold eye glittered with a point of lightsharp enough to cut the Koh-i-noor, and a turnkey of exceptional abilitywas assigned to the ward which contained Dickon Harvey.

  The Right Spur derived his sobriquet from his position as head of therooster gang. There was little of what Dobbs called "hart" in his lineof work, which consisted simply in sandbagging and garroting picked-upacquaintances or passers-by. But in the crude occupation of the footpadhe had displayed a brute daring that had surrounded his name withassociations of terror, and this diabolical halo had been brightened andenlarged by his turbulence in jail. He was middle-sized andbarrel-built, with the complexion of a teamster, a wicked smile and ascar.

  Minister Slick's career would be pictured by a line more excursive thanthe 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 offorty he had been able to delude several congregations into a belief inhis fitness for the sacred ministry. His sermons had been noted no lessfor unction than for orthodoxy, their only heresies being grammaticalones. Then came a fall, sudden and irretrievable. In a few months he haddeveloped unusual skill as a confidence man, in which he was aided by acertain oiliness of manner and insinuating ease of speech. He was talland dignified, with a long gray beard, which Tapp permitted him to wearon account of a chronic quinsy, though his kennel-mates whispered thiswas all in your eye--a strange location to be sure, for a clergyman'ssore throat--but minute veracity was never expected of Minister Slick.

  "Mr. Warden," said Dickon Harvey, "I am desired, with myfellow-spokesmen, by the entire community, to tender you our deepestrespect upon your retirement from the office whose duties you have soconscientiously fulfilled."

  Tapp's lips quivered. Was this irony or praise?

  "If you have not always met with success, if our interests and yourshave seemed to clash at times, believe me there are few among us who donot appreciate that the fault is in the system and not the man."

  "The system, the system," there rose a murmur among the men, which diedaway 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, andthe petition we present is, we believe, in line with most of the reformsyou suggest."


  "You desire to present me a petition. 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 document?"

  Dickon Harvey removed a paper from his "budge."

  "A seriatim schedule of the reforms which we respectfully ask to beenacted."

  "Take the paper to your office," whispered Longlegs to the warden, butthe obstinate official only flushed angrily at his presumption.

  "I will hear what you have to say," he said, weakly clutching at thislast hope of favor among the convicts. Dickon Harvey proceeded to readhis production.

  "To the Warden of Georgetown State Prison: We, the undersigned, being inmates of your institution 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 waggedapproval.

  "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 identity, be abolished, and each man allowed free choice in the matter of his personal appearance, which concerns himself so deeply and nobody 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 Tappseemed impotent to quell.

  "9. That favoritism and privilege shall be a thing unknown."

  Another bellow greeted this, and Floyd knew from the glance that theclause was a blow at himself. The cell he occupied was known as "theparlor" from its greater width, its ventilation and its possession of areading-table and cupboard. There was jealousy, moreover, because he hadbeen allowed to do light work about the greenhouse (which he wasentirely competent to supervise, from his botanical knowledge) insteadof being put at a bench. They forgot that his status was different fromtheirs. The labor was quite voluntary.

  "10. That the indeterminate sentence be put into effect, so that through the specious pretext of punishing 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."

  Harvey handed the petition to Tapp. It was, on the whole, an enlighteneddocument. Two of the men who prepared it were probably as able as any ofthe officials of the prison. Robert could see the different hands atwork in its composition. The "past peccadilloes" were Dickon Harvey's"flim-flam" adventures, while the demands for more tobacco, for Hawkins'removal and the reduction of his own "privilege" were a concession tothe ruffian element, represented by the Right Spur of the Rooster gang.Yet several of the recommendations were as wise and sound as though allthe prison associations in the country had indorsed them.

  "Prisoners----" Tapp started to reply.

  "No gammon," interrupted the Right Spur, scowling, while a hundred otherscowls immediately gathered on the foreheads of his particularfollowers.

  Tapp colored again. His obstinacy was aroused. He was not a timid man.

  "It would be a breach of courtesy toward my successor to offer him suchsuggestions. I do not propose to recommend the discharge of employeswhose only offense is their fidelity to duty; neither do I propose toconstitute myself the spokesman of a mob of law-breakers."

  A hiss--the most hateful sound that issues from the human throat, withits serpentine suggestions and its vagueness of origin--greeted thischallenge. The keepers gripped their guns, awaiting an order, but thePelican stood helpless, furious, perplexed.

  "To the shops!" he cried at last, and the triumphant convicts weredriven like a herd of cattle to their tables and tools. There weremuffled yells from the offenders buried in the block when they passedit; and at dinner, when the men filed up to the kitchen slide andcarried off their platters of bread and pork, a dozen unruly boarderswere only subdued to moderate quiet at the rifle's point.