must have nearly died. I can
actually sympathize with him--thirty-five pounds of dynamite loose in
the prison.
They say that Captain Jamie--that was his nickname--sat down and held
his head in his hands.
"Where is it now?" he cried. "I want it. Take me to it at once."
And right there Cecil Winwood saw his mistake.
"I planted it," he lied--for he was compelled to lie because, being
merely tobacco in small packages, it was long since distributed among
the convicts along the customary channels.
"Very well," said Captain Jamie, getting himself in hand. "Lead me to
it at once."
But there was no plant of high explosives to lead him to. The thing did
not exist, had never existed save in the imagination of the wretched
Winwood.
In a large prison like San Quentin there are always hiding-places for
things. And as Cecil Winwood led Captain Jamie he must have done
some rapid thinking.
As Captain Jamie testified before the Board of Directors, and as
Winwood also so testified, on the way to the hiding-place Winwood
said that he and I had planted the powder together.
And I, just released from five days in the dungeons and eighty hours in
the jacket; I, whom even the stupid guards could see was too weak to
work in the loom-room; I, who had been given the day off to
recuperate--from too terrible punishment--I was named as the one who
had helped hide the non-existent thirty-five pounds of high explosive!
Winwood led Captain Jamie to the alleged hiding-place. Of course they
found no dynamite in it.
"My God!" Winwood lied. "Standing has given me the cross. He's
lifted the plant and stowed it somewhere else."
The Captain of the Yard said more emphatic things than "My God!"
Also, on the spur of the moment but cold-bloodedly, he took Winwood
into his own private office, looked the doors, and beat him up
frightfully--all of which came out before the Board of Directors. But
that was afterward. In the meantime, even while he took his beating,
Winwood swore by the truth of what he had told.
What was Captain Jamie to do? He was convinced that thirty-five
pounds of dynamite were loose in the prison and that forty desperate
lifers were ready for a break. Oh, he had Summerface in on the carpet,
and, although Summerface insisted the package contained tobacco,
Winwood swore it was dynamite and was believed.
At this stage I enter or, rather, I depart, for they took me away out of
the sunshine and the light of day to the dungeons, and in the dungeons
and in the solitary cells, out of the sunshine and the light of day, I
rotted for five years.
I was puzzled. I had only just been released from the dungeons, and
was lying pain-racked in my customary cell, when they took me back
to the dungeon.
"Now," said Winwood to Captain Jamie, "though we don't know where
it is, the dynamite is safe. Standing is the only man who does know,
and he can't pass the word out from the dungeon. The men are ready to
make the break. We can catch them red-handed. It is up to me to set the
time. I'll tell them two o'clock to-night and tell them that, with the
guards doped, I'll unlock their cells and give them their automatics. If,
at two o'clock to-night, you don't catch the forty I shall name with their
clothes on and wide awake, then, Captain, you can give me solitary for
the rest of my sentence. And with Standing and the forty tight in the
dungeons, we'll have all the time in the world to locate the dynamite."
"If we have to tear the prison down stone by stone," Captain Jamie
added valiantly.
That was six years ago. In all the intervening time they have never
found that non-existent explosive, and they have turned the prison
upside-down a thousand times in searching for it. Nevertheless, to his
last day in office Warden Atherton believed in the existence of that
dynamite. Captain Jamie, who is still Captain of the Yard, believes to
this day that the dynamite is somewhere in the prison. Only yesterday,
he came all the way up from San Quentin to Folsom to make one more
effort to get me to reveal the hiding-place. I know he will never breathe
easy until they swing me off.
CHAPTER III
All that day I lay in the dungeon cudgelling my brains for the reason of
this new and inexplicable punishment. All I could conclude was that
some stool had lied an infraction of the rules on me in order to curry
favour with the guards.
Meanwhile Captain Jamie fretted his head off and prepared for the
night, while Winwood passed the word along
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