The assistant district attorney, with a flick of his rod, summoned the man.
“Mr. Smythe’s interested in helping ex-con’s, isn’t he?” Mark Telfair asked. “Gets them jobs — that sort of thing?”
Naylor nodded. “That’s right.” He peered toward the grille. “If Mr. Smythe’s car’s outside you can see a prize specimen at the wheel who did seven years for a payroll stick-up,” he said. “Fellow with a face like a plate — Chink Mitchell. Mr. Smythe’s giving him a chance. Good driver, but I’m betting that hard pan of his is no lie.”
Mark Telfair looked down at his rod and grunted.
“Could you make another try at getting Herrington to see me voluntarily, Naylor?” he asked. “It’s nothing to you, but seeing me is Herrington’s last chance — his only chance — of living till dawn.”
The keeper nodded his gaunt, ugly head. “I’m cold,” he said. “That’s why I’m on the death house trick. But if I can get a break for one of ’em I’ll do it. They got enough against ’em without me bearing down. I’ll try. Don’t count on me succeedin’.”
He walked away. Mark Telfair carefully tucked his broken rod away in his inner breast pocket, knocked on the warden’s door and entered.
Martin P. H. Smythe was distributing cigar ash impartially over every inch of the warden’s carpet. Only a few shreds of his placid, confident courtroom manner remained. His pace was markedly agitated. He glanced at Mark and nodded; then looked more intently at the battered features.
“What happened to you?” he asked abruptly.
“Nothing — compared to what’s going to happen to your client,” Mark Telfair answered curtly.
“Done all I could,” Smythe muttered, continuing his pacing. “The man’s diamond adamant. I’ve cracked some in my time, but it’s easier to get teeth out of Herrington’s mouth than words. And that smile of his — that cunning, knowing leer when I asked him yesterday to try to save his life by giving up his loot— God!”
Mark Telfair crossed to look at the small electric clock on the warden’s desk. It was ten fifty-two.
Acting Warden Crawford sighed. “I had hoped — even prayed — that during my brief tenure of office I would not have to face — this,” he said, running a hand through his curly, grizzled hair. “Warden Grant is more — more robust in his feelings. But he is still far too ill — I am afraid—” His voice trailed off into disconsolate silence and he glanced longingly toward the vacuum bottle on the desk.
“How do you explain Herrington’s attitude?” Mark Telfair inquired suddenly of the attorney.
“Explain it!” Martin P. H. Smythe glared at his legal opponent. “Explain it!” He thrust his cigar between his teeth and clamped them down on it. “Crazy,” he said tersely.
“The doctor—” began Acting Warden Crawford. Then he shook his head and relapsed into silence.
“You’re destroying five million dollars when you destroy this man!” Counsellor Smythe blazed suddenly. “You both know that!”
Mark Telfair, with another look at the clock, studied the wrathful attorney in silence.
“You are well aware, Mr. Smythe, that neither the law nor tire governor gives us any option,” the warden said. “If I—”
The weary voice died away as Telfair softly opened the door and left the office. He waited in the hall, staring at nothing, until Naylor came back from the death house. The keeper’s face was glum; he shook his head.
“No luck, sir,” he said. “He won’t see you. That’s flat.”
“Thanks,” said Telfair. He laid a hand on the handle of the warden’s door, but the keeper stopped him and pointed his finger at a door across the hall.
“In that room is another fellow that’s doing his damnedest to see Herrington,” he said. “His brother — David Herrington — is in there waiting — and he’s wild — wild with greed and rage. He’s been hopin’ that Herrington would see him — slip him a word or two — before he went to the chair.”
“Just to keep the money in the family?” Telfair commented.
Naylor nodded assent.
“But he won’t see him, neither,” he said. “He never would. Just me and Warden Crawford and the doctor is all Herrington would ever talk to — not even the chaplain. And Mr. Smythe, of course.”
“Is he still cheerful?”
Naylor nodded. “Sort of hopped up — though not with snow,” he replied.
“Still walking up and down?”
“No — sitting. And he had a pencil in his hand.” Naylor lowered his voice. “He got up and came close to the bars and stared at me, sir. Sort of intense. His eyes kind of glittered. ‘You wouldn’t break your word of honor to me if I trusted you, would you, Naylor?’ he asks, in a sort of high voice. ‘Not if I gave it to you willingly,’ I answers. It’s funny how some of ’em talk. And he nodded and said, ‘I believe you, Naylor. I want to make sure that if there’s any— Come back a little later.’ And then I came away.”
“A pencil!” Mark Telfair muttered. He motioned toward the warden’s door. “Knock and tell the warden he’s wanted out here, Naylor,” he instructed.
The keeper obeyed. In an instant John Crawford, somewhat mystified, stepped out and closed the door behind him.
“I wanted a private word with you, Warden,” Mark Telfair explained quickly. “It’s hopeless to get any results through Smythe. Time’s getting on. I must ask you to conduct me yourself to Herrington’s cell — to use your own influence to have him hear me.”
Slowly the warden nodded his head. “I’ll do anything, of course. You think—” he paused, seeking for words. “You think we might try this... ah... without his attorney?”
“Yes.”
“Let us go, then,” the warden said.
“One moment.” Mark Telfair went as far as the barred entrance to look out into the street. Neither Martin P. H. Smythe’s glossy limousine nor Chink Mitchell, its flat-faced driver, was in sight.
The warden asked no explanation of Telfair’s movement. He led the way to the death house, received the salute of a keeper on duty, and walked down the corridor where no man slept that night. They ran the gauntlet of sullen, eyes and came to the end, near a small door, where the cell of the penitentiary’s most notorious prisoner was located.
Keeper Naylor was standing before the bars, but he moved away as they approached. Neither the warden nor Mark halted him.
In another moment they were looking through the grilled door at a man who rose alertly from his bed to face them.
“Glad to see you, Warden!” he exclaimed in a high, tense voice, and gestured jerkily toward the lock. “So sorry I can’t invite you in.”
Mark Telfair looked over the prisoner with a swift glance. Despite his prison garb, Charles H. Herrington contrived to appear almost jaunty as he met the gaze of Mark. Tall, erect, carefully shaven, his dark eyes glowed out of deep sockets. His thin lips were twisted into a smile. His whole expression conveyed a sense of sly superiority; even his voice betrayed it.
This condemned felon, about to die in the electric chair, encouraged by some secret source of strength, displayed a sort of sneaking contempt for the governor’s emissary.
Warden Crawford leaned against the iron bars and spoke solemnly:
“Mr. Herrington, I’ve brought Assistant District Attorney Telfair to talk to you. He comes from the governor. For your own sake listen to him.”
The warden stepped away a few steps, but watched anxiously.
The ex-bank cashier had folded his arms and now swayed forward and backward on his toes, burning black eyes upon Mark.
“I have nothing to say to young Mr. Telfair,” he declared. “Am I to be put through a third degree in the very shadow of the chair?”