Al Jennings - Through the Shadows with O'Henry

He kneeled before the safe, put his bruised fingers across the dial, waited a moment, and then turned the combination. I watched every quiver of his strong, delicate hands. There was the slightest pause, his right hand went backward. He turned the dial again, pulled the knob gently toward him. The safe was opened!

The miracle seemed to strike everyone dumb. The room was stiller than silence. It was spellbound. The State officials stood as though riven. I looked at my watch. It was just twelve seconds since Dick had begun.

He got up and walked off. The warden sprang toward him. The tears were crowding into Darby's eyes. His face was flushed with pride. He put his arm on Dick's shoulder.

"That was fine, lad. God bless youl"

Dick nodded. He was an indifferent sort.

On the ride back to the pen the warden leaned over and put his hand on Dick's. "You're the noblest fellow God ever made," he said. "If they gave me the deal you got, hell itself wouldn't have made me do it."

Dick shrugged his shoulders and started to speak. His lip trembled. He looked out of the carriage window, watching the people and the houses. He couldn't keep his glance from the streets. He was leaning forward as though fascinated.

"Look at that, look at that!" He caught me quickly and pointed to a little boy of ten or so carrying a rollicking youngster of three or four. I saw nothing unusual in the spectacle. Dick sank back as though a vision had passed.

"That's the first kid I've seen in sixteen years." He didn't look out again. We said nothing further during the drive back to the prison.

The next morning every newspaper in Columbus was full of the sensational story. The warden had given his word to Dick that the process would not be revealed. Not even the two men who had watched knew how the feat was accomplished. To them it seemed as witchcraft. All sorts of explanations were given.

A prisoner in the Ohio Penitentiary, serving a life term a prisoner who had been sent up as a boy and who was now dying had opened the safe, with a steel wire, one daily said. Another paper said he used a paper-cutter. They were all mystified. Only one spoke of the pardon promised the convict. I went to the warden about it.

"Dick's cough is pretty bad. They ought to hurry it up."

"They will hurry," Darby promised. I know he meant what he said. I brought the word to Dick. He was back at the machine shop.

"I don't care," he said, in a fit of morose indifference. "I don't believe them. I did it for you, Al." He looked up quickly. "I wonder if the old woman saw the paper. I'd like her to know I did it. It would give her a sniff over the neighbors. Could you get her to know?" He walked to his cell and turned.

"Al," he said, "don't worry about me. I know I'll never get the pardon. I'm about done in, anyhow."

When the cell door closed on Dick I stood watching the range, hoping he would come out again. In prison men grow superstitious. I wondered if his bitter con- viction that the pardon would never be granted was a premonition. I went back to the office—the chill breath of fear putting down the ardent hope the warden's promise had raised.

Every man in the pen knew what Dick had done. They talked about it, advancing the most fantastic theories as to Dick's method.

Bill Porter came over to the warden's office that night. His visits were always welcome. There was in Bill's warm, quiet humor, a sunny cheer, an uplifting happiness that seemed to catch one by the neck of the spirit and shake him free from the harassing pettiness of prison life.

When Billy Raidler and I could not rouse each other, we kept our ears tuned for Bill's voice at the door. He would come in, sniff the moodiness in the air and breeze it away with a dash of his buoyant gaiety.

Bill's humor was not the off spark of happiness, but of the truth as he saw it. He was not an incorrigible optimist. There were times when silent gloom hovered like a black wraith about him. But he had an abiding faith in the worth of life and a sane, poised viewpoint that all the cruel injustice of his prison sentence could not distort.

Bill accepted life on its own terms. There was in him none of the futile cowardice that quarrels with the bargain of existence; mocks and sneers and exhausts itself in self-pity. To him life was but a colossal experiment marked by millions of inevitable failures, but destined, none the less, for an ultimate triumph.

His heart was crushed in prison, but his mind did not lose its clear, unbiased insight. He would send out a word, a phrase that seemed to puncture through the film of our dissatisfaction. The grotesque world, fabricated of depression, set itself aright and we were compelled to laugh and agree with Bill's droll honesty.

"Colonel, I surmise you were Pandora's imp when the Post's box of troubles was opened?" He handed me an account he had just read in one of the evening papers. It was the first time I had ever seen him manifest the slightest curiosity.

I told him about Dick. He wanted to know exactly how the safe had been opened. The thought of a man filing his nails to the quick and then filing until the nerves were exposed bothered him. He had a dozen questions to ask.

"I should think he could have taken an easier way," he said.

"Suppose he had sandpapered the ball of his fingers? It would be less cruel, do you think it would be as effective? Did it seem to pain him? He must be a fellow of enormous grit. B-r-r-r! I couldn't do it even if it would open the bars of our little private hell here. What is Dick Price like? What gave him the idea in the beginning?"

I was amazed at his gossipy quizzing.

"Hell, man, you must be first cousin to the Spanish Inquisition," I rallied. "Why are you so much interested?"

"Colonel, this is a wonderful episode," he said. "It will make a great story."

I had not thought of it in such a light. Bill's mind was ever on the alert. It was like some wizard camera with the lens always in focus. Men, their thoughts and their doings, were snapped in its tireless eye.

All life, as he tells us in "The Duplicity of Hargraves," belonged to him. He took thereof what he pleased and returned it as he would.

Once he had taken it, it was his. He stored it up in his mind. When he called upon it, it came forth bearing the stamp of his own originality.

Bill took no notes. Once in a while he would jot a word or two down on a scrap of paper, a corner of a napkin, but in all of our rambles together I never noticed the pencil much in evidence. He preferred to work his unfailing memory.

It seemed to have boundless space for his multitudinous ideas. He kept them mentally pigeonholed and tabulated, ready to be taken out and used at a moment's notice. It was years before he made Dick Price immortal in the story of Jimmy Valentine. I asked him why he had not used it before.

"I've had it in mind, colonel, ever since you told me of it," he answered. "But I was afraid it would not go. Convicts, you know, are not accepted in the best society even in fiction."

Porter had never met Dick Price. One night I brought them together in the warden's office. It was odd to note the instantaneous sympathy between these two unapproachable men.

Both held aloof from the other prisoners ; Dick because he was moody, Bill because of his reticence. And yet, between the two there seemed to spring up an immediate understanding.

Porter had brought over a new magazine. He was privileged to receive as many as he liked. He handed it to Dick. The fellow looked up, a glance of wistful swiftness darting across his flushed face.

"I've hardly seen one since I've been here," he said, snatching it quickly and sticking it under his coat. Porter did not understand. When Dick left, I told him what his sentence had been—that he could not receive a book, a visit or even a letter.