Dick's mother had a faded red shawl wrapped about her head. She was twisted and bent. A bit of gray hair, coarse and curly, fell over her ear. She had fixed herself up, thinking she might catch a glimpse of her boy:
"And they won't let his old mother see the lad, my poor little Dick—the poor child!" The sobs caught in her throat. She pressed her face against the wicket, her gnarled wasted hands shaking the iron bars.
The poor old creature was just crazy for a sight of her son. Dick was not 100 yards away. They wouldn't let these two have that scrap of joy. Not in four million years could the law understand the agony it had wrought.
"But I thought I might catch the look of him, by chance, maybe." She looked up at me with a pitiful hope in her dim eyes. It hurt the heart to wound the poor creature. I had to tell her that Dick could not come, that I had sent for her, that I would tell Dick anything she wanted to say, that she must not let the guards know who she was.
"Dick is the foreman of the machine shop and the smartest man in the prison," I told her. A prideful smile came like a sunbeam into her eye.
"Sure, I know it, that pert he was a baby." She began to grope into the pocket of her skirt and brought out an envelope tied in red ribbon. Carefully wrapped in brown paper were a couple of pictures. One was of a big-eyed, laughing youngster of four or five.
"A prettier bairn never drew breath. 'Tis happy we were in that time. 'Twas before the drink got the better of poor John."
The other picture was of Dick just before he had been arrested the last time. He was a boy of 19. The face was sensitive, clean-looking, determined.
"He doesn't look chipper like that now," she looked at me hoping I would contradict her fears. "Twas the gay tongue that he had and the laugh always in his heart. Such a tale as he would be telling me of the good home he would buy. The poor child, does it go very hard on him in here, he was that fond of a cheery place?"
Fifty questions she asked me. Every answer was a lie. The truth would have killed her as it was ending Dick.
I told her Dick was happy. I told her he was well. I said he might get a pardon. It was all I could do to talk. I knew that Dick was doomed. He was actually wasted with tuberculosis. But the promises seemed to give her comfort. She stood silent a moment.
"Will you be after telling him his old mother's prayers are with him? And just let on to him that I come down by the walls every blessed night to be that near to him."
Poor Dick, he was waiting in the range for me that night. He never said a word. He just looked at me. I told him everything she had said. I told him how pretty, like a grandmother, she looked. I said that she came down to the prison at night to pray for him. He didn't speak. He walked off. Four times he came back and tried to thank me. At last he sat down, covered his face with his hands and burst out crying.
It was only a few months later that I was caught trying to escape. Dick Price tried to take the punishment in my stead. He went to the deputy and swore he had given me the saws. It was a guard who had done it. If I had snitched on him he would have got ten years.
The deputy knew that Dick had lied. I told him that he did it in gratitude—that I had got a letter to his mother and he wanted to save me from the contract.
So I cleared him of the charge, but he was reduced to the fourth grade and compelled to fall in with the lockstep. It was going pretty hard with him. His work in the shop was exacting. Sometimes he would get a fit of coughing that left him weak for an hour.
When I was transferred to the post-office, I used to go over and visit Dick. I had money then, too, and we used to swap pies and doughnuts. Dick would talk about the reform school. The things he told were appalling. They made me bitter with hatred. Little fellows of 11 or 12 were just put through a training school for hell.
Several times I tried to get another letter to the old woman. Something always happened.
After I had been appointed private secretary to the warden, it looked as though Dick's chance had come. He performed a service of great value to the State. He saved the papers of the Press-Post Publishing Company. The Governor promised him a pardon.
The Press-Post Publishing Company had been placed in the hands of a receiver. Wholesale charges of thievery were bandied about. The stockholders had been robbed. They blamed the directors, the directors put it up to the treasurer. They secured a warrant for his arrest. He locked the safe and fled.
Columbus was agog over the scandal. Some of the biggest men in the city were implicated. The court had to get the papers out of the safe. It occurred to somebody in authority that there might be a cracksman in the pen who could help them out of the difficulty. The warden was very eager to accommodate them.
"Is there any fellow here who can do it?" he asked me. Warden Darby was a prince. He had improved prison conditions. The men all liked him.
"There are perhaps forty here who can do it. I can do it myself. A little nitroglycerine turns any combination."
"They can't take the risk of dynamite. They want the papers recovered intact."
I thought of Dick Price. He had told me of the method of safe-cracking which he had originated. He could open any combination on earth in from ten to fifteen seconds with his bare hands. A dozen times he had told me of the feat.
"See, I filed my nails to the quick," he said, "crosswise through the middle, until I filed them down to the nerve. It made them sensitive. I could feel the slightest jar. I held those fingers over the dial. I turned the combination with my right hand. The quiver of the tumbler passing its mark strides through the nerves. I would stop, turn backward. It never failed."
I wondered if Dick would do the trick now for the State. "Could you get a pardon for him?" I asked the warden. Dick was really dying with his cough.
"If he'll do it, I'll move heaven and earth to win it."
I went to Dick. I told him he might get a pardon. His thin face flushed.
"She'd be glad. Hell, Al, I'd do anything for you."
The warden got a closed carriage. Early that afternoon the three of us went to the office of the Press-Post Publishing Company. Dick wanted me with him.
We scarcely spoke. There was a strained, nervous hush over us. The warden fidgeted, lit a cigar, and let it go out without taking a puff. He was worried.
So was I. I was afraid Dick couldn't make good. I figured that he probably had lost his art through disuse. Then it occurred to me that he might have exaggerated. Sixteen years in prison knocks the props from a man's brain often enough.
The warden had wired Governor George K. Nash of Ohio. He promised the pardon if the safe was opened. What a sore humiliation to Warden Darby if Dick failed!
Not a word had been said, but Dick looked up with that young, magnetic smile of his. "Don't Worry, Al," he grinned. "I'll rip hell out of it if it's made of cast iron and cement." His confidence made us feel easier.
"Give me the file." Dick had cautioned me to get him a small, rat-tailed file and to make sure that the edges were keen. I handed it to him. He scrutinized it as though he were a diamond-buyer looking for a yellow speck in a gem. Then he started to work. The warden and I shuddered.
Half way down the nail across the middle he drew the file. His nails were deep and beautifully shaped. Back and forth he filed until the lower half of the nail was separated from the upper by a thin red mark. He filed to the quick. Soon only the lower half of the nail remained.
Light and deft, his sensitive hand worked. I watched his face. It didn't even twitch. He was completely absorbed in the process and seemed to have forgotten the warden and me. Once or twice he champed his teeth and his breath came a bit short. The fingers bled a little. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed them clean. Then he sat back. He was finished.