Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/21

Rh been condemned for transgressing those commandments of society which we call, proudly, "laws."

The sunlight that had shone on Sam as he mounted the entrance steps to the administration building shone on him again as he crossed the quadrangle to the hospital building, where he would be numbered, photographed, bathed and shaved, and photographed a second time in his stripes. But the difference between the sun in the courtyard and the sun on the steps was this: no matter how long Sam, might live to see the sun shining in the courtyard, he would never again see the sun shining on the steps.

Johns went at once to "talk politics" in the warden's office, where he was as welcome as a country peddler who brings all the neighborhood news. And he was still there—his hat pushed back from his bald forehead, his hands clasped pudgily across the bulge of his waist—when the day captain returned from entering Sam according to the prescribed formalities, and stood frowning at a paper in his hand till the warden should recognize him.

Warden Zug was merely a political henchman thriving in a political office. It was his business to make easy the fulfilment of prison contracts by faithful partisans, without public scandal—to collect his own graft on supplies and not be too greedy of the larger profits of the contractors—to find places on the prison staff for the lesser parasites of the party and see that in their