Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/23

Rh Warden Zug had begun to dip his pen. He looked up at Johns with a quick craftiness, stirring his pen around in the shallow ink-well. "Judge Purvis?" he said. "A 'D. & C.' case?"

And Johns, without releasing a muscle of his fat impassivity, dropped a solemn, sly wink of guile at him.

Zug scrutinized his pen-nib a moment and then returned to the paper before him. "'Unmarried,'" he said, scribbling it in on a blank line. "Daneen, eh? Huh. 'R. C.' Let it go at that. Where 've you put him?"

"Number one cell-house, Warden—till I find out where he 's goin' to work."

"Uh-huh." The warden thought it over. He said, absent-mindedly: "That 'll be all right, I guess," and held out the paper to the captain.

The man took it with an air of official indifference, but he had noticed the passage of looks between Johns and Zug, and he resented his exclusion from the secret. When the door had closed behind him, Johns hitched his chair up closer to the desk and said under his voice: "I did n't see the trial. Warden. I was off to the convention. But I remember when he was arrested. Gerter found him asleep 'n under a tree near the track, an' run him in on the chance."

"How many was killed?"

"About thirty, mebbe. I forget."

"Huh!" Zug nodded shrewdly. "What was it? Spread rails?" Johns looked as wise as a joss—to conceal his