“Yes,” he said, “we’ll all be together in hell. Each of us is just as bad as the other. We weigh the same, and we’ll sink to the same level.”
“No,” said Phil Bray. “The kid, here, don’t belong with us. He ain’t done much. He’s only been careless.” Dave Lister tilted back his head and half closed his eyes.
“Joseph Mantry,” he said, “the murderer? Careless? How many men have you killed, Joe?” “Aw, shut up,” said Mantry.
“Twenty-one years old. Seven dead men behind him. Yes, he’s been a little careless. Just a little careless. Matter of fact, you’ve never been happy except when you were careless, Joe. Am I right about that?”
“I got a mind to sock you on the chin,” said Joe Mantry.
Dave Lister caressed his long, pointed, fragile chin. He smiled at Mantry.
“That’s all right, boy,” he said.
“But count the chief out,” said Mantry. “Phil looks hard, but he’s got a heart as big as a mountain.”
“Of course he has,” said Lister, “and made of what makes mountains, too. Rock! Phil Bray is a lion; you’re a murdering fox, Joe.”
“And what about yourself?” asked Mantry.
“I’m a snake,” said Lister.
“Yeah, with a lot of poison in your tooth, too,” accused Mantry.
“Of course,” said Lister, growing absent-minded. “Of course, plenty of poison.”
He turned his attention to his writing, doing a word at a time, sprawling out the letters with a fine dash and flourish, and then pausing until he had the next word in mind and had moved his pen for a moment in the air in order to prepare his hand for the next stroke on the paper.
He continued to write for some time, while Joe Mantry, growing tired of the card game, pushed back his chair, left the table, and sauntered to the bars of the cell. Two guards were on duty in the corridor. Mantry said:
“Hello, Bill. Want a drink?”
The three had asked for whisky for their last night, and they had two bottles of it at hand.
Bill licked his lips, started to rise from his chair, and then slumped back into it. He shook his head.
“You know I can’t take a shot while I’m on the job,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Joe. “I’d like to have a drink with you, Bill, and talk about your family.”
“You know my family?” asked Bill innocently.
“Sure,” said Joe Mantry. “I met your father in New York, where he was shoveling coal with a lot of other cross-eyed dumb-bells, and I saw your greaser mother down in Mexico City, where she was scrubbing floors on her hands and knees.”
Bill got up from his chair with a howl of anger.
“Joe!” called Philip Bray. “Quit it!”
“Aw, all right, all right,” said Joe Mantry. He turned his reckless head toward Bray. “Why can’t you leave me alone while I stir up this blockhead?”
“It’s because of Jeff Bergman,” said Phil Bray. “He’s given us a break, letting us spend the last night together. If you start a brawl up here, you’re double-crossing him. What good would it do? There ain’t any use double-crossing a bird unless you can get something out of it.”
Joe Mantry listened to this bit of philosophizing with a grin. He cast a lingering glance toward Bill, the guard, who was still cursing, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“All right, Phil,” said Mantry. “But I’m tired of cards. Tell me a story to pass the time of day, will you?”
“Sure,” said Phil Bray, nodding. “What kind of a story?”
“A fairy story.”
“Good fairies or bad?” asked Bray, grinning.
“Good fakies. That’s the kind I need just now. Tell me a story about Jim Silver and Parade.”
“I never seen him,” said Bray. “What would a mug like me get out of Jim Silver except a rap on the chin or a chunk of lead through the bean?”
“Look, Phil,” said Joe Mantry; “you’re a handy gent with your hands. You got plenty of size and plenty of nerve, and you know the game. Would you be scared of big Jim Silver if you got into a fist fight with him? I mean, suppose guns was barred, would you be scared of him?”
“I remember a gent by name of Cyclone Ed Guemey,” said Phil Bray. “The Cyclone was two hundred and twenty, and all of it mean. He was right in there with the best of ‘em, and only the booze parted him from the headliners in the end. But Cyclone Ed got himself back into training to take a crack at Jim Silver with his fists, and when he was in good shape again, and could do an hour of shadow boxing and still breathe clean, he picked on Jim Silver one day.”
The voice of Bray died out, and his eyes grew reminiscent.
“Go on,” said Mantry.
“Well,” said Bray. “I seen Cyclone Guerney about a month afterward, and he still couldn’t talk except out of one comer of his mouth. The cuts had healed up a good deal, and the bruises was just pale-green. But he didn’t look nacheral.”
“Had he done anything to Silver in the scrap?” asked Mantry curiously.
“Cyclone Ed told me that socking at Silver was like punching at a shadow, and every time Silver hit him it was like being slapped with the butt end of a blacksnake.”
“What does this hiid Silver get out of his game?” demanded Mantry. “Where does he pull down the long green?”
“It ain’t the cash that he wants. It’s the fun. His idea of a good time is finding a hard nut and cracking it. That’s all.”
“Why don’t he get a job as a sheriff, then?”
“He’d have to stay put in one place. And he likes to keep on moving.”
Mantry yawned.
“To the devil with Silver and all the other funny birds,” said he. “Dave, what you writing?”
“I’m writing,” said Lister solemnly, “the whole truth about Jimmy Lovell and how he double-crossed us and let us down—the dirty dog! I got it written up to the point where we were cornered, and no way out, and how the three of us made a living ladder up the rock, and how Jimmy climbed up over us and got away.”
“Wait a minute,” commanded Bray. “Lemme see that.”
He took the sheet of paper and glanced over the contents. Then he tore it up, rending it to small bits, in spite of Lister’s angry protest.
The heap of fragments Bray put into a saucer, lighted them, and watched them throw up a strong flame and then a cloud of smoke.
“There’s a couple of hours of work in that job!” exclaimed Lister. “What’s the matter with you, Phil?”
“We ain’t going to put the police on Jimmy Lovell,” said Bray. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“You mean to let him get away with the loot while we go to hell?” demanded Lister.
“I don’t know,” muttered Bray. “All I know is that if we can’t get our hands on him, we ain’t going to let anybody else have the pleasure. They wouldn’t do a job. They wouldn’t do a good job, and it’s better not to start on Jimmy Lovell at all unless he can be finished the way that we would finish.”
“Here’s the warden,” said Mantry.
The door at the end of the corridor opened, and big Jefferson Bergman walked in.
V—WAYLAND’S OFFER
Bergman loved that prison, and had worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder. He had begun by scrubbing floors, advanced to the proud uniform of a guard, distinguished himself in stopping two jail breaks, and finally had been appointed warden. He wore the signs of his stormy years in his battered face. He was a big fellow, with a bullet head which he kept closely clipped, so that one could see the large, fat wrinkles bulging above his neck and over the base of his skull.