by Ruskin Bond
'Say, Three-fifty-four, don't you know what he is going to see you for?' he asked.
Masterick looked up with a spot of fear in his eyes.
'You're going out to-morrow, Three-fifty-four. Didn't you know? Oh, you poor devil!'
That last was because Thomas Masterick had trembled a little, grinned a little, and slid down to the floor with the mutton broth spreading all over his chest.
'My Gawd!' said the warder in the mess-room half an hour later. 'Now what the devil was that Number Three-fifty-four living for? Eh? What was he looking forward to? He wasn't even keeping tally of his time. He's the first one I've ever known who couldn't tell you to a second how many hours he still had to do—at any time of the day or night.'
'Well, you see,' Thomas Masterick was informing his basin at that moment, 'when I was a Feast and Thanks giving down there by the doctor's shop, I had it all written up in the whitewash. Got a splinter off the floor boards, I did. And scratched 'em all up in the whitewash. All in bundles of ten. And I scratched one out at each breakfast. Five thousand four hundred and eighty days. That's what they give you for a lifer. And I had 'em all written up.
'The first time I lost count was years and years ago. While we were out in the exercise, the maintenance party came round and put fresh whitewash up in the cells. And when I tried to think down to how many I'd done and how many I still had to do, I got a dizzy. And then, just when I had it nearly all put to rights again by licking off a lot of the new whitewash, they went and changed my cell and made me an Ember Day.'
When the chaplain came he found Masterick very quiet and subdued.
'How are you, Number Three-fifty-four?' he asked with kindly austerity. 'Well, I hope?—and prepared for your big adventure tomorrow?—I really and sincerely trust we shall never see you again?'
Masterick turned his eyes to the window-patch.
'Well, sir, that all depends on how They look at it,' he said, a little distantly. 'I never quite know what They're going to do with me next. You never ought to have seen me to start with. Not really. Because I never killed Fred Smith. But you know that, don't you? I told you.'
'You; but I want to know what you are going to do. I can probably help you with your arrangements and help you to get settled down again. Have you any people living to whom you can definitely go?'
'That I can't say, sir. You see, I've been here a tidy long while. And most likely all the people I used to know have died. Perhaps, even Fred Smith has died, too. A tidy long while I've been here. There's been a war finished and done with since I've been here. And you see that little flag-pole against my bit of window? Well, I always thought that was a flag-pole from the day it first went up, five months back. But that ain't a flag-pole. It's a wireless. So Southampton Jack tells me. I'll have to step very quiet till I pick up that lot of ropes outside again.'
'Yes, quite. H'm! A great pity you haven't somewhere definite to go—something definite to do. Perhaps I may be able to exert——'
'Oh, I've got something definite to do all right, sir.'
'Oh, you have. Oh, well, of course, that's splendid. Regular employment is it?'
'Pretty regular, maybe. I want to take the mike out of that cocksure crowd in the court. Because, you see, sir, I never killed Fred Smith.'
The chaplain who had heard that curiously uncomplaining fact reiterated with such steady persistence that he had almost come to believe it himself, made a mental note that Thomas Masterick was a case which would have to be watched pretty closely when he got clear of the prison.
But he needn't have worried. The authorities admitted two months later that their suspicions about Masterick were groundless, and They called off the System. He had harboured no dark animosity against those connected with his trial—a trial which, except for the fact that Thomas Masterick did not kill Fred Smith, was perfectly honest and fair. In fact, he made what they called 'quite a good recovery'. He picked into the old ruts with deliberate, if painful, endeavour. He got a job down about the docks and set about his task of climbing back into civilisation again with calm stolidity. In his case They did not fear for the recidivist.
And yet, a month after that, they freely admitted that it would have been far better for them and for the pomp and vanity of all the legal world if Thomas Masterick had gone straight out, bought a gun and kicked up ten different hells according to his own half-burned-out lights. For the problem that Thomas Masterick flung at them with cold and calculated deliberation when the time was ripe shook the law-officers of the Crown to their finger-tips. He knocked the Law clean out. He left it flat and gasping. He sent every legal mind in the country hectically scampering through old and ancient tomes for light and guidance. But there was no light and guidance. Thomas Masterick had floored them utterly and completely, ludicrously and horribly.
For, three months after his release from prison, and quite by accident, he met the long, lanky devil in the black gown. Counsel for the Crown was also wearing a Knighthood and a K.C. Thomas Masterick was not to know that. Not that it would have mattered to that numb, pulseless soul, even if he had known it.
It was by the 'Griffin', where Fleet Street melts into the Strand, and he walked up to him, and he said:
'Hey, mister—you know all that lot of stuff you said about me?'
The K.C. looked down at him shrewdly, and paused for a moment.
'No,' he said evenly. 'I don't think I do.'
'Yes, you remember—that lot of stuff you said about me in the court. To the judge.'
The K.C.'s eyes contracted ever so slightly. Somewhere, right away in the back blocks of memory there came a tiny, fleeting picture—a glimpse.
'Oh, yes—I believe I do,' he said. 'Let me see, now—er—wasn't it—er—'
'Yes, mister; that's what it was. And it was all wrong. All the whole lot of it. I said so at the time, didn't I? And I'm saying so again. I never killed Fred Smith. Not in spite of all what you said. Honest I didn't. And one of these days I'll prove it to you. I'll give you the surprise of your life. And that surprise of everybody else's life who was in that court.'
The K.C. drew in a long breath, slowly.
'Ye gods!' he breathed, almost too low to be heard. 'So you—you have only just come out, have you?'
'Yes, mister. A couple of months ago.'
'Are you working? I mean, have you got anything to do?'
'Yes, mister. Got a regular job. Wapping to Convent Garden. I'm often along here.'
'That's a good man.' The K.C. slipped a fiver into his hand. 'Get yourself a nice new Sunday suit,' he said, with a pat on his shoulder.
'Thank you very much, mister.' Thomas Masterick pocketed the fiver and hung around. After a moment he said:
'Could you—would you give me a word of advice, too, sir?'
'Certainly, certainly. What's the trouble?'
'Well, supposing I ever found that Fred Smith you said I killed. See, just supposing. How would I have to go about it?'
The K.C. whistled under his breath. 'Well!' he said, 'that would be a poser. Perhaps the best thing you could do would be to come along and see me—here in my chambers. Any of the bobbies here will show you—just here in the Inner Temple.'
'Because down in my lodging-house there's a White Star man says he's seen Fred Smith—that's since you said I killed him. It was in 'Frisco, he said Fred was running grain in the hog-backs. Got tired o' sail, he did.'
'Well, look here, old man, if ever you do manage to get hold of him, you come along and see me. I'll do all I can to help you.'
'I wouldn't half be able to take the mike out of that cocky lot of devils, wouldn't I?'
'You would what?'
'Prove 'em a lot of unholy liars.'
'You certainly would.'
'Not 'arf, I wouldn't,' said Thomas Masterick tonelessly. 'I'd do more than that, too!'
The K.C. nodded genially and went off with a little pity and a lot of amusement in his heart. He was a good soul in his way, was the K.C, but the acid of t
he Law ran tart in his veins. His perceptions were too subservient to the dictates of logic.
But it happened that he heard from Thomas Masterick again. On a most propitious day, too. The K.C. was lunching a few legal friends in his chambers. There were three other K.C.'s, a former Chancellor, and two judges of the High Court among them.
The K.C.'s secretary entered and slipped behind his chair. 'There's a very persistent fellow outside, sir—a man who calls himself Thomas Masterick. He says you wouldn't turn him away for anything. That it's very important. And that he's got Fred Smith with him!'
'Good God!' said the K.C, swinging round. 'Here? He's got Smith here.'
'There is another man with him, sir, yes—frightened-looking man.'
'Goodness gracious me!' The K.C. turned to his lunch-party with wild excitement in his eyes.
'Well, if that isn't the most amazing thing!' he cried. 'Listen here, you fellows. I've got the most unique course just coming in you've ever sampled in your lives. This is a lunch you'll remember and talk about for years. A real tit-bit. Do you—do you remember that dock murder fifteen years or so ago? Feller named Masterick killed a chap called Fred Smith. I was conducting for the Crown. You, Rumbold, you were judge at the time. He got the black cap—obvious from the first; but the Home Sec. Commuted. That, too, was obvious. He——'
Rumbold nodded and the others all intimated their precise memory of the case.
'Well, Masterick is here and Smith is here!' cut in the K.C. with a rush. In a few words he outlined the details of the case to them and the history of his last meeting with Thomas Masterick in Fleet-street.
'Show them in, Plender,' he said. And the two men came in—Masterick calm and a little bit suspicious; Fred Smith openly scared.
'Who's all this lot?' demanded Masterick, nodding once at the guests.
'Friends of mine, old chap. Friends who are, I am sure, quite as eager to hear you and help you as I am myself. I doubt if any man in the world ever had such an array of legal talent—ha, ha, that's one for you, Rumbold—to help him as you.'
'I don't want any help,' said Masterick flatly. He dragged Smith farther into the room. 'I've had a hell of a hunt to find him,' he announced. 'And when I did find him he wouldn't come along—not till I told him about you, mister. I ain't got much to say—I'm afraid I've got a dizzy coming on; that's what comes of trying to think too hard. But the way I look at it is this. You were a cocksure crowd of devils in that court, weren't you? Wouldn't listen to reason, no ways. I told you a hundred times I never killed Fred Smith, but you wouldn't have it; you was that damned cocky about it. You lagged me for fifteen years for murdering that swipe there. And I hadn't done it. But I've done the punishment for it, blast you!
'And now'—he suddenly pulled out a gun and shot Fred Smith clean through the heart where he stood— 'now I've done the murder for which I've already been punished.' He thundered. 'And what the hell are you going to do about it?'