Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/202

178 ingenuity cannot trail down the man who committed it.

“I judge that I was not intended for business of this sort. I cannot fight out in good order. With me a retreat is a rout. I have abandoned everything. I have thrown away every plan. I am trying now to save myself from the hangman, or at least the penitentiary. I have not waited to be caught; I have come to you at once.” The man seemed to relax and settle back in his chair.

“Now,” he added, with the utter dependence of a patient stretched upon the table of the surgeon, “you must save me.”

The eyes of Randolph Mason flattened as though they were being pressed down from above, and the lines of his face deepened and widened into rugged furrows.

“There are two methods of evading the law,” he said. “The escape ipso jure planned before the fact; and the escape ipso jure after the fact. The first is a matter of no great difficulty, and may easily be prepared by any man reasonably conversant with the law of the place