The Return of the Mucker | Page 4

something in the text before
them--a name, Harding.
Billy Byrne shook himself and commenced to read:
The marriage of Barbara, daughter of Anthony Harding, the
multimillionaire, to William Mallory will take place on the twenty-fifth
of June.
The article was dated New York. There was more, but Billy did not
read it. He had read enough. It is true that he had urged her to marry
Mallory; but now, in his lonesomeness and friendlessness, he felt
almost as though she had been untrue to him.
"Come along, Byrne," a bailiff interrupted his thoughts, "the jury's
reached a verdict."
The judge was emerging from his chambers as Billy was led into the
courtroom. Presently the jury filed in and took their seats. The foreman
handed the clerk a bit of paper. Even before it was read Billy knew that
he had been found guilty. He did not care any longer, so he told himself.
He hoped that the judge would send him to the gallows. There was
nothing more in life for him now anyway. He wanted to die. But
instead he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the penitentiary at
Joliet.
This was infinitely worse than death. Billy Byrne was appalled at the
thought of remaining for life within the grim stone walls of a prison.
Once more there swept over him all the old, unreasoning hatred of the
law and all that pertained to it. He would like to close his steel fingers
about the fat neck of the red-faced judge. The smug jurymen roused
within him the lust to kill. Justice! Billy Byrne laughed aloud.
A bailiff rapped for order. One of the jurymen leaned close to a
neighbor and whispered. "A hardened criminal," he said. "Society will
be safer when he is behind the bars."
The next day they took Billy aboard a train bound for Joliet. He was

handcuffed to a deputy sheriff. Billy was calm outwardly; but inwardly
he was a raging volcano of hate.
In a certain very beautiful home on Riverside Drive, New York City, a
young lady, comfortably backed by downy pillows, sat in her bed and
alternated her attention between coffee and rolls, and a morning paper.
On the inside of the main sheet a heading claimed her languid attention:
CHICAGO MURDERER GIVEN LIFE SENTENCE. Of late Chicago
had aroused in Barbara Harding a greater proportion of interest than
ever it had in the past, and so it was that she now permitted her eyes to
wander casually down the printed column.
Murderer of harmless old saloon keeper is finally brought to justice.
The notorious West Side rowdy, "Billy" Byrne, apprehended after more
than a year as fugitive from justice, is sent to Joliet for life.
Barbara Harding sat stony-eyed and cold for what seemed many
minutes. Then with a stifled sob she turned and buried her face in the
pillows.
The train bearing Billy Byrne and the deputy sheriff toward Joliet had
covered perhaps half the distance between Chicago and Billy's
permanent destination when it occurred to the deputy sheriff that he
should like to go into the smoker and enjoy a cigar.
Now, from the moment that he had been sentenced Billy Byrne's mind
had been centered upon one thought--escape. He knew that there
probably would be not the slightest chance for escape; but nevertheless
the idea was always uppermost in his thoughts.
His whole being revolted, not alone against the injustice which had sent
him into life imprisonment, but at the thought of the long years of
awful monotony which lay ahead of him.
He could not endure them. He would not! The deputy sheriff rose, and
motioning his prisoner ahead of him, started for the smoker. It was two
cars ahead. The train was vestibuled. The first platform they crossed

was tightly enclosed; but at the second Billy saw that a careless porter
had left one of the doors open. The train was slowing down for some
reason--it was going, perhaps, twenty miles an hour.
Billy was the first upon the platform. He was the first to see the open
door. It meant one of two things--a chance to escape, or, death. Even
the latter was to be preferred to life imprisonment.
Billy did not hesitate an instant. Even before the deputy sheriff realized
that the door was open, his prisoner had leaped from the moving train
dragging his guard after him.
CHAPTER II
THE ESCAPE
BYRNE had no time to pick any particular spot to jump for. When he
did jump he might have been directly over a picket fence, or a
bottomless pit--he did not know. Nor did he care.
As it happened he was over neither. The platform chanced to be passing
across a culvert at the instant. Beneath the culvert was a slimy pool.
Into