by Jack Boyle
“How much time are they going to give you, Ann?” asked Blackie, turning his head to hide his eyes.
“The limit—twenty years,” she answered calmly and without regret. “That’s the deal we made. The ’cutor was to be free to do his worst to the Pullman thief.”
“Twenty years! Oh Annie,” ejaculated Blackie, “this is awful!”
“It’s a long time, Blackie, an awful long time, but it was the best I could do,” said Ann, growing suddenly grave.
“Do you know how old I’ll be in twenty years?” she asked after a long pause. “Nearly sixty! A white-haired old woman fit for nothing but the poorhouse.”
The weary, haggard look was stealing back over her face.
“There is one last favor I’m going to ask you, Blackie,” she said unsteadily. “Tom is upstairs in the anteroom waiting to be taken back to the County. If I don’t see him now to say good-by, I never will see him, Blackie—never again as long as I live. Will you try to fix it for me to be taken up there just for one moment?”
“I won’t try to fix it; I’ll do it,” Blackie answered.
The Glad-rags Kid was sitting with his back toward her, when Ann caught her first glimpse of him. Beside him, and with her hands clasped in his, sat Dessie Devries.
Alibi Ann, as she caught sight of the girl, caught her breath in a quick, choking gasp. Then slowly she managed to force back to her lips the smile that had been on them when she entered.
“I’ve come to say good-by, Tom,” she said gently.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” answered the Glad-rags Kid, looking up with a sneer. “Now that I’ve got myself out of danger, you turn up like a bad penny that’s not wanted anywhere. It strikes me you have your nerve with you to be here at all.”
His anger and disdain grew as he talked.
“That was a swell little note you sent me,” he continued. “That showed you up for what you are. I’d be headed for a death-cell by now if I had depended on you for anything. Didn’t even have the dough to help pay my lawyer, did you? But now when you’re in trouble yourself, you come sneaking back looking for sympathy. Nothing doing with me.”
With the fear of death now safely behind him, the Glad-rags kid was his old swaggering bullying self again.
Alibi Ann stood looking down at him for a full minute with immeasurable love in eyes that seemed to be searching and memorizing every line in his face. Suddenly she stooped and kissed him.
“Good-by Tom dear,” she whispered softly. “It’s the last time we will ever see each other in this world.”
She was gone before his jeering reply reached her.
“Why didn’t you tell him you have paid for his life with twenty years of your own?” demanded Blackie as the door clanged shut behind them.
“I didn’t want him to know,” Ann answered in the detached, far-away tones he had heard on the deck of the Piedmont. “It will be easier for him to think of me as he does now than to know that I’m doing time for his sake. I hope that girl will be decent enough to visit him. Prison life is going to be hard on him, poor boy.
“No, I won’t let myself be sorry she is up there with him now,” she continued, speaking as if to herself alone. “No matter how kindly he felt toward me, we could never, never meet again, anyway. I’ll be a woman of sixty when I come back—if I do come back. It’s all over forever.”
For the first time Ann let the grief and loneliness in her tortured heart sweep away all self-control. Even crook women are women beneath their masks. Dropping her head, Ann sobbed as women do when the first clods of falling earth touch the caskets of their dead.
After many minutes the flood of tears gradually ceased, and Ann looked up at Blackie with eyes that were resolutely courageous behind their wet lashes.
“Two lines of a poem I read years and years ago have been running through my mind for days,” she said. “Listen, Blackie:
“The sins ye do two by two Ye shall pay for one by one. “That comes home to me now, Blackie, particularly that last line. It is ‘one by one’ that Tom and I are going to pay—yes, one by one—apart.”
Again her eyes flooded with tears, but she brushed them aside.
“Anyway, I have something precious to take across to the prison with me, Blackie,” she said with a smile on her lips and her eyes that was not forced. “And it’s something no one and nothing—not even penitentiary walls—can take away from me. It’s the memory of the little home out on Lyons Street—the home that was a little bit of Heaven while it lasted.”
Alibi Ann took Boston Blackie’s hand in hers. “Anyway, old pal,” she said, “I’ve played the game, haven’t I?”
CHAPTER XXII
FOR FIFTEEN YEARS
Coming in with the dripping sea fog which San Franciscans love clinging to him in glistening crystals, Boston Blackie found Mary crouched over the open fire. As she smiled up at him he saw new and deep emotion in her eyes.
“What’s happened, little woman?” he asked solicitously.
“Blackie, I’ve been over to San Quentin prison to-day to visit Alibi Ann, and I found her—.” The unfinished sentence ended in a sob. “Found her how, dear?”
“Happy—absolutely happy, Blackie. Think of it! The fact that she’s sacrificed herself for The Glad-rags Kid has brought her peace and contentment even behind the walls of that gloomy old penitentiary. Blackie, that’s the truest and best love in the world.”
“Sacrifice is the rock upon which real love is built,” said Blackie reverently. “And yet—poor Ann.”
“Her only thought still is for him,” continued Mary, with glistening eyes. “Mitt-and-a-half Kelly owes Ann some money. What do you suppose her only request was?”
“That I collect it and send it to that worthless young rotter,” guessed Blackie.
“Exactly. Poor, poor Ann! And yet at last she has found happiness—far more perfect happiness than there ever was for her in the little flat on Lyons Street when he was with her.”
“I’ll have to do as Ann has asked, but I hate to,” said Blackie grudgingly. “Kelly lives at the Carteret. I’ll see him to-night after the theatre.”
Blackie and Mary spent the evening at the Orpheum theatre. A supper at a downtown restaurant after the performance kept them until just midnight. Then Blackie sent Mary home in a taxi.
“I may have to wait quite a while for Kelly,” he said as they parted. “He’s a nighthawk, and besides he and his ‘mob’ have been planning a stunt for some night this week, unless I am mistaken.”
At a quarter past twelve Blackie entered the dingy south-of-Market-Street lodging house, frequented by crooks not welcomed at Mother McGinn’s. The place was dimly lighted and apparently deserted. Blackie climbed the worn stairs to the second floor and, with the freemasonry of his craft, opened Kelly’s door and entered when there was no response to his knock. No one was within.
“He’ll surely be back soon,” thought Blackie, settling himself in a chair and picking up a paper.
Half an hour passed. Then Blackie heard the street door open and close with a bang. Listening intently he heard staggering steps slowly climbing the stairs.
A groping hand clutched the door knob. A fumbling key sought the lock. The door opened and Mitt-and-a-half Kelly stood on the threshold.
Blackie sprang to his feet with a low cry of alarm. Blood was streaming from Kelly’s clothes. His left arm swung helplessly at his side.
“A ‘rumble’ and a bad one, from your looks, Kelly,” ejaculated Blackie, seizing the wounded man’s arm and leading him to a chair. “What happened?”
“We made a try for the Buffalo Brewery safe,” groaned Kelly. “We got the box open and the ‘dough’ packed up. Then as we were leaving a ‘harness bull’ turned the corner. He saw us and drew his gun. We got him. He’s dead I think, but he got me. The worst of it is I’ve left a clear trail of blood all the way here. The others got away but the ‘coppers’ will follow me here sure. I’ve go
t to get out quick.”
Blackie slipped the man’s coat from his shoulders and slit his shirt with the skill of experience.
“I’ll stop this bleeding and then you had better go,” he agreed. “This looks like a bad night’s work, Kelly, if the ‘copper’ is dead.”
Deftly he bound the wound. Then he threw off his own coat and slipped the wounded crook’s uninjured arm into it.
“That will keep you until you can get out of town and to a doctor to-morrow,” he said. “And now, Kelly, it’s leaving time for you.”
The man pressed Blackie’s hand.
“Thanks, pal,” he said. “I’m going by the alley. They may be at the front door any minute.”
As the door closed behind Kelly, Blackie looked at himself in the mirror. His hands, face and arms were covered with blood.
“Bad business,” he ejaculated. “This shows the result of using bullets instead of brains. Kelly and his bunch never did have any judgment.”
As he turned toward the washstand he heard the street door open again and heavy feet tramped up the stairway.
“The coppers!” cried Blackie.
He looked about him. Kelly’s bloody coat lay on the floor. Blood was everywhere. Blackie glanced toward the window, weighing its possibilities as a means of escape. Then he straightened up, folded his arms and waited.
“What’s the use of running,” he thought. “They can’t tangle me in this business.”
There was a knock at the door, plainly from a heavy gun butt. Blackie threw it open.
“Here he is,” cried the leader of the group of policemen that stood outside. “We’ve got him, boys.”
Blackie, unarmed, was powerless to resist, even had he wished to. A policeman’s club crashed against his skull and he dropped to the floor, unconscious, with a thousand scintillating points of light flashing through his brain.
When Boston Blackie recovered consciousness he was in the hospital with a policeman on guard at either side of his cot. His bandaged head ached horribly.
“Ho, ho, me bucko, yer’re comin’ round, eh,” said one of the officers vengefully as Blackie opened his eyes. “Better fer ye, me lad, if yer head hadn’t been so hard. Now ye’ll live to be hanged. McManus, the boy ye shot, is dead.”
“I shot nobody. I wasn’t even armed, as you know. I wasn’t in on this brewery job. If I had been nobody would have been killed.”
“Ye’ve a mighty good idea what happened fer a mon what wasn’t there,” persisted the policeman slyly. “Th’ Chief will be after wantin’ to see ye soon.”
That afternoon Blackie was led to the office of detective chief Jim Moran. Meantime he had read the papers in which the police exultingly announced the capture of the famous cracksman, Boston Blackie, after a safe robbery in which a policeman had been shot to death.
“So, Blackie, we’ve got you right, at last,” began Moran. “You’ll swing for last night’s work.”
“Listen Chief,” said Blackie. “I had no more to do with this job than you. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened.”
He did, while Moran watched him from beneath gradually contracting brows.
“You dressed this fellow’s arm, you say,” Moran interrupted. “You knew him. Who was he?”
Blackie’s shoulders straightened. He looked squarely into Moran’s eyes.
“I thought you knew me better than to ask that question, Chief. You’ll never find out from me.”
Moran’s heavy fist banged the table.
“You’ll tell,” he cried belligerently. “You’ll tell, unless you want to do his time for him. If we don’t get him we’ll get you,” the detective paused and lowered his voice while he shook his clenched fist in Blackie’s face,—“even if we have to railroad you.”
“You’re capable of it, but it can’t be done,” said Blackie quietly. “The bloody coat with the bullet hole in the shoulder will acquit me. I’ve no bullet hole in my shoulder. The only wound I have is on my head where your ‘coppers’ struck me down while my hands were up. That coat will acquit me, Chief.”
“We’ll see,” said Moran with an evil smile. “We’ll see, Blackie. I believe your story but—unless we get the right man—we’ll get you. Take your choice.”
“It’s made,” answered Blackie. “Do your worst, you ‘framer.’”
Three months later Boston Blackie, charged with murder and safe robbery, faced a jury. He was defended by a skillful lawyer. The prosecutor presented his evidence. Policemen told how at the sounds of the shots at the brewery they had rushed to the scene and found the dying policemen. They told of the trail of blood leading from the spot and that they followed it to the Cartaret and up the stairs to the door of the room in which they had found Blackie blood-spattered and dishevelled. His reputation as a safe-cracker was skillfully interjected by the prosecutor. The state rested.
Blackie took the stand in his own behalf and told the complete story of the evening.
“Who is this mythical person whose wound you say you dressed?” demanded the prosecutor on cross examination.
“I decline to answer,” was the reply.
The prosecutor turned toward the jury with a triumphant smile.
“That’s all. We want facts, not fairy tales,” he said.
Mary told how the evening had been spent at the theatre and of the supper that followed it—a supper which ended at midnight, ten minutes after the robbery was committed. The waiter remembered serving them, but was not positive as to the time. Then Blackie’s lawyer played his strongest card. He demanded the bloody coat with the bullet hole in the shoulder. The police denied all knowledge of it. They had never seen such a coat, they testified. The prosecutor waved aside the incident as pure fiction.
In rebuttal for the state the policeman who rode in the ambulance with the dying officer was called. He swore that the victim’s last words were that Boston Blackie was one of the safe-robbers he had surprised. He knew him and recognized him by the flash of the guns.
“Didn’t McManus tell you that this defendant is the man who fired the shot that struck him down?” persisted the prosecutor.
The witness twisted uneasily in his chair as he glanced toward Blackie whose black eyes were fixed on him as though they would wring the truth from his perjured lips. The policeman was willing to lie to send his man to prison, but his conscience rebelled at swearing away his life.
“He didn’t say who fired the shots. He only said he saw this man, Boston Blackie, in the bunch.”
“That’s all,” snapped the prosecutor disgustedly.
The jury, impressed by the straightforward, sincerely told story of Mary and Blackie himself refused to convict him of murder, but found him guilty of safe-robbery.
“This Boston Blackie’s story sounded like the truth,” the foreman said to his wife when he was eating his dinner that night. “Those policemen might have lied; I don’t know. But anyway the man is a safe-cracker and even if he wasn’t guilty of this he is guilty of other robberies, so we compromised and acquitted him of murder but sent him across for robbery. The Judge roasted us for it, too.”
Boston Blackie was sentenced to fifteen years in San Gregorio.
“It’s hard, Mary, but it can’t be helped,” he said tenderly as his wife clung to him on the morning he was leaving her for fifteen long years of a living death. “I’m taking a clear conscience with me, anyway. Some day I’ll be back and then—”
Their tears dropped together as Mary sobbed hysterically on his breast.
And so the police at last rid themselves of Boston Blackie, first among cracksmen.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE REVOLT
The great jute mill of the San Gregorio penitentiary was called by the board of prison commissioners “a marvel of industrial efficiency.” The thousand stripe-clad men who worked there—hopeless, revengeful bits of human flotsam wrecked on the sea of life by their own or society’s blunders—called the mil
l “the T. B. factory”—“T. B.” of course meaning “tuberculosis.” Both were right.
The mill was in full operation. Hundreds of shuttles clanged swiftly back and forth across the loom warps with a nerve-racking, deafening din. The jute dust rose and fell, swelled and billowed, covering the floor, the walls, the looms and the men who worked before them. Blue-clad guards armed with heavy canes lounged and loitered through the long aisles between the machines that were turning out so rapidly hundreds of thousands of grain-sacks, destined some day to carry the State’s harvest to the four corners of a bread-hungry world.
To the eye everything in the mill was as usual. Every convict was in his place, feverishly busy, for each man’s task was one hundred yards of sackcloth a day, and none was ignorant of what happened in “Punishment Hall” to any who checked in short by even a single yard. Outwardly nothing seemed amiss, and yet the guards were restless and uneasy. They gripped their canes and vainly sought this new, invisible menace that all felt but none could either place or name. Instinctively they glanced through the windows to the top of the wall outside, where gun-guards paced with loaded rifles. The tension steadily increased as the morning dragged slowly away. Guards stopped each other, paused, talked, shook their heads perplexedly and moved on, doubly watchful. Something was wrong; but what?
If they could have read the brain of one man,—a convict whose face as he bent over his loom bore the stamp of power, imagination and the ability to command men,—they would have known. They would have seen certain carefully chosen striped figures pause momentarily as they passed among the weavers delivering “cobs” for the shuttles. They would have guessed the message these men left—a message that would have been drowned in the roar of the machinery had it been shouted instead of spoken in the silent lip-language of the prison.