McAllister sought the Judge's eye in vain.
"I have nothing to say," he replied faintly. There was a renewed scratching of pens.
The Judge conferred with the clerk for a moment.
"Any question of the prisoner's identity?" he asked.
"Oh, no," replied Tom conclusively. "The fact is, yer onner, we took him by accident, as you may say. We laid a plant for a feller doin' second-story work on the avenoo, and when we nabbed him, who should it be but Welch! Ye see, they wired on his description from Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, but we couldn't find hide or hair of him in the city, and had about give up lookin'. Then, quite unexpected, we scoops him in. Here's his indentity," handing the Judge a soiled telegraph blank. "It's him, all right," he added with a grin.
The magistrate glanced at the form and at McAllister.
"Seems to fit," he commented. "Have you looked for the scar?"
Tom laughed.
"Sure! I seen it when he was gettin' his measurements took, down to headquarters."
"Turn around, Welch, and let's see your back," directed the magistrate.
The clubman turned around and displayed his collarless neck.
"There it is!" exclaimed Tom.
McAllister mechanically put his hand to his neck and turned faint. He had had in his childhood an almost forgotten fall, and the scar was still there. He experienced a genuine thrill of horror.
"Well," continued the magistrate, "the prisoner is entitled to counsel, and, besides, I am sure that the complainant, Mr. Brown, has no desire to be delayed here on Christmas Day. I will set the hearing for ten o'clock to-morrow morning, at the Tombs police court. I shall be sitting there for Judge Mason the rest of the week, beginning to-morrow, and will take the case along with me. You might suggest to the Warden that it would be more convenient to send the prisoner down to the Tombs, so that there need be no delay."
The complainant bowed, and the officer at the bridge slapped McAllister not unkindly upon the back.
"You'll need a pretty good lawyer," he remarked with a wink.
"Next!" ordered the Judge.
In the patrol wagon McAllister had ample time for reflection. A motley collection of tramps, "disorderlies," and petty law-breakers filled the seats and crowded the aisle. They all talked and joked, swinging from side to side and clutching at one another for support with harsh outbursts of profanity, as they rattled down the deserted streets toward New York's Bastile. Staggering for a foot-hold, between four women of the town, McAllister was forced to breathe the fumes of alcohol, the odor of musk, and the aroma of foul linen. He no longer felt innocent. The sense of guilt was upon him. He seemed part and parcel of this load of miserable humanity.
The wagon clattered over the cobblestones of Elm Street, and whirling round, backed up to the door of the Tombs. The low, massive Egyptian structure, surrounded by a high stone wall, seemed like a gigantic mortuary vault waiting to receive the "civilly dead." Warden and keepers were ready for the prisoners, who were now unceremoniously bundled out and hustled inside. McAllister stood with the others in a small anteroom leading directly into the lowest tier. He could hear the ceaseless shuffling of feet and the subdued murmur of voices, rising and falling, but continuous, like the twittering of a multitude of birds, while through the bars came the fetid prison smell, with a new and disagreeable element—the odor of prison food.
"Keepin' your mouth shut?" remarked the deputy to McAllister, as he entered the words "Prisoner refuses to answer," and blotted them.
"We're rather crowded just now," he added apologetically. "I guess I'll send you to Murderer's Row. Holloa, there!" he called to someone above, "one for the first tier!"
A keeper seized the clubman by the arm, opened a door in the steel grating, and pushed him through. "Go 'long up!" he ordered.
McAllister started wearily up the stairs. At the top of the flight he came to another door, behind which stood another keeper. In the background marched in ceaseless procession an irregular file of men. In the gloom they looked like ghosts. Aimlessly they walked on, one behind the other, most of them with eyes downcast, wordless, taking that exercise of the body which the law prescribed.
McAllister entered The Den of Beasts.
"All right, Jimmy!" yelled the keeper to the deputy warden below. Then, turning to McAllister. "I'm goin' to put you in with Davidson. He's quiet, and won't bother you if you let him alone. Better give him whichever berth he feels like. Them double-decker cots is just as good on top as they is below."
McAllister followed the keeper down the narrow gangway that ran around the prison. In the stone corridor below a great iron stove glowed red-hot, and its fumes rose and mingled with the tainted air that floated out from every cell. Above him rose tier on tier, illuminated only by the gray light which filtered through a grimy window at one end of the prison. The arrangement of cells, the "bridges" that joined the tiers, and the murky atmosphere, heightened the resemblance to the "'tween decks" of an enormous slaver, bearing them all away to some distant port of servitude.
"Get up there, Jake! Here's a bunkie for you."
McAllister bent his head and entered. He was standing beside a two-story cot bed, in a compartment about six by eight feet square. A faint light came from a narrow, horizontal slit in the rear wall. A faucet with tin basin completed the contents of the room. On the top bunk lay a man's soiled coat and waistcoat, the feet of the owner being discernible below.
The keeper locked the door and departed, while the occupant of the berth, rolling lazily over, peered up at the new-comer; then he sprang from the cot.
"Mr. McAllister!" he whispered hoarsely.
It was Wilkins—the old Wilkins, in spite of a new light-brown beard.
For a few moments neither spoke.
"Sorry to see you 'ere, sir," said Wilkins at length, in his old respectful tones. "Won't you sit down, sir?"
McAllister seated himself upon the bed automatically.
"You here, Wilkins?" he managed to say.
Wilkins laughed rather bitterly.
"I've been in stir a good part of the time since I left you, sir; an' two weeks ago I pleaded guilty to larceny and was sentenced to one year more. But I'm glad to see you lookin' so well, if you'll pardon me, sir."
"I'm sorry for you, Wilkins," the master managed to reply. "I hope my severity in that matter of the pin did not bring you to this!"
Wilkins hesitated for a moment.
"It ain't your fault, sir. I was born crooked, I fancy, sir. It's all right. You've got troubles of your own. Only—you'll excuse me, sir—I never suspected anything when I was in your service."
McAllister did not grasp the meaning of this remark; he only felt relief that Wilkins apparently bore him no ill-will. Very few of his friends would have followed up a theft of that sort. They expected their men to steal their pins.
"Mebbe I might 'elp you. Wot's the charge, sir?"
With his former valet as a sympathetic listener, McAllister poured out his whole story, omitting nothing, and, as he finished, leaned forward, searching eagerly the other's face.
"Now, what shall I do? What shall I do, Wilkins?"
The latter coughed deprecatingly.
"You'll pardon me, but that'll never go, sir! You'll have to get somethin' better than that, sir. The jury will never believe it."
McAllister sprang to his feet, in so doing knocking his head against the iron support of the upper cot.
"How dare you, Wilkins! What do you mean?"
"There, there, sir!" exclaimed the other. "Don't