XII
Archie was looking well that Monday morning in January on which his trial was to begin. He had slept soundly in his canvas hammock; not even the whimpering of Reinhart, the young sneak thief whom every one in the jail detested, nor the strange noises and startled outcries he made in his sleep—when he did sleep—had disturbed him. The night before, Utter had allowed Archie a bath, though he had broken a rule in doing so, and that morning Archie had borrowed a whisk from Utter, brushed his old clothes industriously, and then he had put on the underwear his mother had washed and patched and mended, and the shirt of blue and white stripes Marriott had provided. Then with scrupulous care he set his cell in order, arranged his few things on the little table—the deck of cards, the yellow-covered dog’s-eared novel and a broken comb. Beside these, lay his fresh collar and his beloved blue cravat with the white polka dots; his coat and waistcoat hung over the back of his chair. At seven o’clock Willie Kirkpatrick, alias “Toughie,” a boy who, after two terms in the Reform School, was now going to the Intermediate Prison, had brought in the bread and coffee. At eight o’clock Archie was turned into the corridor, and with him Blanco, the bigamist, whose two young wives were being held as witnesses in the women’s quarter. Blanco was a barber, and he made himself useful by shaving the other prisoners. This morning, with scissors, razor, lather-brush and cup, he took especial pains with Archie. Now and then he paused, cocked his little head with its plume of black hair, and surveyed his handiwork with honest pride.
“I’ll fix you up swell, Dutch, so’s they’ll have to acquit you.”
From the cells came laughter. The prisoners began to josh Blanco—it was one of their few pastimes.
“Don’t stand for one of them gilly hair-cuts, Dutch,” cried Billy Whee, a porch-climber. “It’ll be a fritzer, sure.”
“Yes, he’ll make your knob look like a mop.”
“When I was doing my bit at the Pork Dump,” began O’Grady, in the tone that portends a story; the cell doors began to rattle.
“Cheese it,” cried the voices. They had grown tired of O’Grady’s boasting.
After Archie had returned to his cell, an English thief whom they called the Duke, began to sing in a clear tenor voice, to the tune of Dixie:
“I wish there were no prisons,
I do, I does—’cause why?—
This old treadmill makes me feel ill,
I only pinch my belly for to fill,
Wi’ me ’ands,
Wi’ me dukes,
Wi’ me clawrs,
Me mud hooks.”
Archie scowled; he wished, for once, the Duke would keep still. He was trying to think, trying to assure himself that his trial would turn out well. Day after day, Marriott had come, and for hours he and Archie had sat in the long gray corridor, in the dry atmosphere of the overheated jail, conferring in whispers, because Archie knew Danner was listening at the peep-hole in the wall. Marriott was perplexed; how could he get Archie’s true story before the jury? He had even consulted Elizabeth, told her the story.
“Oh, horrible!” she exclaimed. “But surely, you can tell the jury—surely they will sympathize.”
He had shaken his head.
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Marriott, “the rules of evidence are designed to keep out the truth.”
“But can’t Archie tell it?”
“I don’t dare to let him take the stand.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll be convicted if he does.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“The same result—he’ll be convicted. He’s convicted now—the mob has already done that; the trial is only a conventional formality.”
“What mob?”
“The newspapers, the preachers, the great moral, respectable mob that holds a man guilty until he proves himself innocent, and, if he asserts his innocence, looks even on that as a proof of his guilt.”
Eades had announced that Archie would be tried for the murder of Kouka, and Elizabeth had been impressed.
“Wasn’t that rather fine in him?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Marriott, “and very clever.”
“Clever?”
“He means to try him for the murder of Kouka, and convict him of the murder of Margaret Flanagan.”
This morning then, Archie awaited the hour of his trial. The night before he had played solitaire, trying to read his fate in the fall of the fickle cards. The first game he had lost; then he decided that he was entitled to two out of three chances. He played again, and lost. Then he decided to play another—best three out of five—he might win the other two. He played and won the third game. He lost the fourth. And now he stood and waited. At half-past eight he drew on his waistcoat and his coat, giving them a final brushing. The Duke was singing again:
“An’ I wish there were no bobbies,
I do, I does—’cause why?—
This oakum pickin’ gives me such a lickin’,
But still I likes to do a bit o’ nickin’,
Wi’ me ’ands,
Wi’ me dukes,
Wi’ me clawrs,
Me mud hooks.”
The last words of the song were punctuated by the clanging of the bolts.
“Koerner!” called out Danner’s voice.
He was throwing the locks of Archie’s cell from the big steel box by the door. Archie sprang to his feet, gave his cravat a final touch, and adjusted his coat. The steel door went gliding back in its hard grooves. He stepped out, thence through the other door, and there Danner waited. Archie held out his right hand, Danner slipped on the handcuff and its spring clicked. As they went out, cries came from the cells.
“So long, Archie! Good luck to ye!”
“Good luck!” came the chorus.
Archie, standing in the strange light outside the prison, seemed to take on a changed aspect. He had grown fat during his two months’ idleness in jail; his skin was white and soft. Now in the gray light of the January morning, his face had lost the ruddy glow Blanco’s shaving had imparted to it, and was pale. The snow lay on the ground, the air was cold and raw. Archie gasped in the surprise his lungs felt in this atmosphere, startling in its cold and freshness after the hot air of the steam-heated jail. He filled his lungs with the air and blew it out again in frost. A shudder ran through him. Danner was jovial for once.
“Fine day,” he said.
Archie did not reply. He hated Danner more than he hated most people, and he hated every one, almost—save Marriott and Gusta, and his father and mother and the kids, and Elizabeth, who, as Marriott had reported to him, wished him well. The air and the light gave him pain—he shrank from them; he had not been outdoors since that day, a month before, when he had been taken over with Curly to be arraigned. He looked on the world again, the world that was so strange and new. Once more there swept over him that queer sensation that always came as he stepped out of prison, the sensation of fear, of uncertainty, a doubt of reality, the blur before his eyes. The streets were deserted, the houses still. The snow crunched frigidly under his heels. The handcuff chain clicked in the frost. A wagon turned the corner; the driver walked beside his steaming horses and flapped his arms about his shoulders; the wheels whined on the snow. Archie looked at the man; it was strange, he felt, that a man should be free to walk the streets and flap his arms that way.