Through the Shadows with O'Henry

CHAPTER XVIII. Story of convict Dick Price; grief for his mother; her visit to the prison; the safe-opening; promise of pardon.

Porter gives Dick the chance in the story that he never had in life. The history of the real Jimmy Valentine, shadowed, embittered, done to death in the stir, was just another of the tragedies that ripped through the film and showed Bill Porter the raw, cruel soul of the "upper crust."

Dick Price had been in prison ever since he was a little fellow of 11. There were a few wretched years in the outer world. It was not freedom.

Bill Porter took but one incident out of that tragic life for his story, "A Retrieved Reformation." His Jimmy Valentine is a rather debonair crook—but in the moment when he throws off his coat, picks up his tools and starts to open the safe, in that moment there is crowded the struggle and the sacrifice of a lifetime. It goes to the heart, quick and piercing, when Jimmy's chance of happiness seems lost; it sends the breath into the throat with a quiver of joy when he wins out in the end. Porter has touched the strings so deftly because the whole shadow of Dick Price's broken life hovers in the background of the story.

Dick was what convicts call a "stir bug." He had been in the pen so long he had become morose, sour, a brooding sort. But he was as square a man as Christ ever put on the earth. Dick was the fellow that tried to save me from the beating and the contract after my attempt to escape. I had done him a little favor and he was ready to have his flesh torn to ribbons in gratitude.

He was in under the "habitual criminal act." In Ohio a man caught at his third offense is given a life sentence in the penitentiary and denied all privileges. Only the man that has been half blinded in solitary, that has been cooped in wretched cells and denied the right to read or write—only the fellow that has had the spirit beaten down in him by the agonized screams of tortured men, can know what Dick Price's sentence meant.

He was about 20 when he was thrown into prison on his third offense. And because it was the third he was robbed of all human comforts. He couldn't have a book or a paper. He wasn't allowed to write a letter; he wasn't even allowed to receive one. And if there was a kind, anxious soul in the outer world eager to hear from him, to see him, it made no difference. For 16 years not one stray word, not one bit of cheer had come to him from the world.

I never saw anything so terrible as the way that fellow's heart was breaking. He had an eternal hankering to hear from his old mother. It whipped him ceaselessly. He wanted to know if she was alive, if she had to work as hard as before, if she thought of him. He had a passion to get a word from her that was driving him mad.

I got the word for him. And he was ready to die for me in his gratitude. Because of that word he opened the safe of the Press-Post Publishing Company.

I met Dick first walking about the cell ranges at night. It was just a few months after I arrived. I was in the transfer office and was about the last man to be locked up. Dick had been there so long the deputies trusted him and gave him passes to leave his cell and wander about the corridors. I used to see his small, nervous figure pacing back and forth. He had a keen, dark face and a restless gray eye. One night I came upon him sitting in a corner, eating a piece of pie.

"Have a slice, pardner?" he called to me. The other men shunned Dick a bit because he was moody and nerve-racked because, too, he had a sharp, almost brilliant mind, much superior to the average convict.

I accepted, and it was then that he told me of his longing for news of his mother. "I tell you it's hell, to think the way she's made to suffer. I'll bet you she stands outside these infernal walls at night—I'll bet she'd tear her heart out to hear from me. You know---"

Dick swung into his story. Men in prison hunger for conversation. They will tell their histories to any one who will listen to them.

Little Dick was a gutter snipe, he said. His father was a Union soldier He died of delirium tremens when Dick was a few years old. After that the kid just belonged down in the alley with the tin cans. His mother took in washing. She tried to give the boy enough to eat. She sent him to school. Sometimes there was soup and bread for dinner ; sometimes Dick took his meals out of the rubbish piles.

And one day the poor, ravenous little ragpicker broke into a box car and stole a 10-cent box of crackers.

"And they sent me to hell for the rest of my life for that," a look of bitterness lashed like a dark wave over his face. "I might have put these to good use if I'd had a chance." He looked down at his hands. They were the strongest, most perfectly shaped hands I have ever seen. The fingers were long and tapered, muscular yet delicate. "They said my mother didn't take care of me. They sent me to the Mansfield reformatory and they turned me out a master mechanic at 18."

His graduation papers were of no value. A man named E. B. Lahman controlled all the bolt works in the Ohio penitentiary. Convicts loathed him, and because he knew the danger of employing any upon their discharge, he made it a rule that no ex-convict would be given work in his shops. Dick Price had a job there. Somebody found that he had been dragged up in a reform school. He was fired.

He couldn't get a job. His mechanical training made him adept at safemanipulating. He cracked one, took a few hundred dollars, got a jolt for it.

It was the same story again when he was released. No one would give him a job. He could starve or steal. He cracked another safe, got caught and was given life.

"You know, the old woman came to the court," he told me. "And, gee, I can hear it yet, the way she bawled when they took me away. It's just awful. You know, Jennings, if you could write to her, I'd die for you."

I managed to get a note smuggled out to her. The most pitiful broken, little mispelled scrawl I ever saw came back.

And when that bent, heart-broken old mother stumbled across the guardroom floor and stood with her feeble hands shaking the wicket, I'd like to have died. I couldn't speak. Neither could she.

She just stood there with the tears running down her rough cheeks and her poor chin trembling.

Dick's mother had a faded red shawl wrapped about her head. She was twisted and bent. A bit of gray hair, coarse and curly, fell over her ear. She had fixed herself up, thinking she might catch a glimpse of her boy:

"And they won't let his old mother see the lad, my poor little Dick—the poor child!" The sobs caught in her throat. She pressed her face against the wicket, her gnarled wasted hands shaking the iron bars.

The poor old creature was just crazy for a sight of her son. Dick was not 100 yards away. They wouldn't let these two have that scrap of joy. Not in four million years could the law understand the agony it had wrought.

"But I thought I might catch the look of him, by chance, maybe." She looked up at me with a pitiful hope in her dim eyes. It hurt the heart to wound the poor creature. I had to tell her that Dick could not come, that I had sent for her, that I would tell Dick anything she wanted to say, that she must not let the guards know who she was.

"Dick is the foreman of the machine shop and the smartest man in the prison," I told her. A prideful smile came like a sunbeam into her eye.

"Sure, I know it, that pert he was a baby." She began to grope into the pocket of her skirt and brought out an envelope tied in red ribbon. Carefully wrapped in brown paper were a couple of pictures. One was of a big-eyed, laughing youngster of four or five.

"A prettier bairn never drew breath. 'Tis happy we were in that time. 'Twas before the drink got the better of poor John."

The other picture was of Dick just before he had been arrested the last time. He was a boy of 19. The face was sensitive, clean-looking, determined.

"He doesn't look chipper like that now," she looked at me hoping I would contradict her fears. "Twas the gay tongue that he had and the laugh always in his heart. Such a tale as he would be telling me of the good home he would buy. The poor child, does it go very hard on him in here, he was that fond of a cheery place?"

Fifty questions she asked me. Every answer was a lie. The truth would have killed her as it was ending Dick.

I told her Dick was happy. I told her he was well. I said he might get a pardon. It was all I could do to talk. I knew that Dick was doomed. He was actually wasted with tuberculosis. But the promises seemed to give her comfort. She stood silent a moment.

"Will you be after telling him his old mother's prayers are with him? And just let on to him that I come down by the walls every blessed night to be that near to him."

Poor Dick, he was waiting in the range for me that night. He never said a word. He just looked at me. I told him everything she had said. I told him how pretty, like a grandmother, she looked. I said that she came down to the prison at night to pray for him. He didn't speak. He walked off. Four times he came back and tried to thank me. At last he sat down, covered his face with his hands and burst out crying.

It was only a few months later that I was caught trying to escape. Dick Price tried to take the punishment in my stead. He went to the deputy and swore he had given me the saws. It was a guard who had done it. If I had snitched on him he would have got ten years.

The deputy knew that Dick had lied. I told him that he did it in gratitude—that I had got a letter to his mother and he wanted to save me from the contract.

So I cleared him of the charge, but he was reduced to the fourth grade and compelled to fall in with the lockstep. It was going pretty hard with him. His work in the shop was exacting. Sometimes he would get a fit of coughing that left him weak for an hour.

When I was transferred to the post-office, I used to go over and visit Dick. I had money then, too, and we used to swap pies and doughnuts. Dick would talk about the reform school. The things he told were appalling. They made me bitter with hatred. Little fellows of 11 or 12 were just put through a training school for hell.

Several times I tried to get another letter to the old woman. Something always happened.

After I had been appointed private secretary to the warden, it looked as though Dick's chance had come. He performed a service of great value to the State. He saved the papers of the Press-Post Publishing Company. The Governor promised him a pardon.

The Press-Post Publishing Company had been placed in the hands of a receiver. Wholesale charges of thievery were bandied about. The stockholders had been robbed. They blamed the directors, the directors put it up to the treasurer. They secured a warrant for his arrest. He locked the safe and fled.

Columbus was agog over the scandal. Some of the biggest men in the city were implicated. The court had to get the papers out of the safe. It occurred to somebody in authority that there might be a cracksman in the pen who could help them out of the difficulty. The warden was very eager to accommodate them.

"Is there any fellow here who can do it?" he asked me. Warden Darby was a prince. He had improved prison conditions. The men all liked him.

"There are perhaps forty here who can do it. I can do it myself. A little nitroglycerine turns any combination."

"They can't take the risk of dynamite. They want the papers recovered intact."

I thought of Dick Price. He had told me of the method of safe-cracking which he had originated. He could open any combination on earth in from ten to fifteen seconds with his bare hands. A dozen times he had told me of the feat.

"See, I filed my nails to the quick," he said, "crosswise through the middle, until I filed them down to the nerve. It made them sensitive. I could feel the slightest jar. I held those fingers over the dial. I turned the combination with my right hand. The quiver of the tumbler passing its mark strides through the nerves. I would stop, turn backward. It never failed."

I wondered if Dick would do the trick now for the State. "Could you get a pardon for him?" I asked the warden. Dick was really dying with his cough.

"If he'll do it, I'll move heaven and earth to win it."

I went to Dick. I told him he might get a pardon. His thin face flushed.

"She'd be glad. Hell, Al, I'd do anything for you."

The warden got a closed carriage. Early that afternoon the three of us went to the office of the Press-Post Publishing Company. Dick wanted me with him.

We scarcely spoke. There was a strained, nervous hush over us. The warden fidgeted, lit a cigar, and let it go out without taking a puff. He was worried.

So was I. I was afraid Dick couldn't make good. I figured that he probably had lost his art through disuse. Then it occurred to me that he might have exaggerated. Sixteen years in prison knocks the props from a man's brain often enough.

The warden had wired Governor George K. Nash of Ohio. He promised the pardon if the safe was opened. What a sore humiliation to Warden Darby if Dick failed!

Not a word had been said, but Dick looked up with that young, magnetic smile of his. "Don't Worry, Al," he grinned. "I'll rip hell out of it if it's made of cast iron and cement." His confidence made us feel easier.

"Give me the file." Dick had cautioned me to get him a small, rat-tailed file and to make sure that the edges were keen. I handed it to him. He scrutinized it as though he were a diamond-buyer looking for a yellow speck in a gem. Then he started to work. The warden and I shuddered.

Half way down the nail across the middle he drew the file. His nails were deep and beautifully shaped. Back and forth he filed until the lower half of the nail was separated from the upper by a thin red mark. He filed to the quick. Soon only the lower half of the nail remained.

Light and deft, his sensitive hand worked. I watched his face. It didn't even twitch. He was completely absorbed in the process and seemed to have forgotten the warden and me. Once or twice he champed his teeth and his breath came a bit short. The fingers bled a little. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed them clean. Then he sat back. He was finished.

I took his hand and looked at it. It was a neat job, but cruel. The index, middle and third fingers of his left hand looked as though the nails had been pared half off and the quick bruised and sand-papered.

Dick was so tense with suppressed excitement that he bolted out of the carriage as soon as it stopped and walked so quickly the warden and I had to run to keep pace with him. When we reached the office about a dozen men were waiting.

"Is this a show, Al?" Dick snapped the words out. He was full of impatience. We stood around about ten minutes. Dick looked at me angrily. I was beset with alarm anyway. I took his look to mean that his fingers wouldn't respond if we didn't hurry. I ran over to the warden, bumping against two gossipy, stupid looking officials.

"Hurry up or the job is up." His face took on the scaredest, grayest shadow I ever saw. Dick put his hand to his mouth and laughed. I whispered to the warden that the men would have to remain outside. Only two State representatives, the warden, Dick and I went into the room where the safe was kept.

"That's it," one of the men said.

Dick went over to it. There wasn't a breath of hesitation in his answer.

"Take the time, Al." There was a chuckle of triumph in the challenge. His thin face was quiet as a statue's. The cheekbones were smudged with red and his eyes unnaturally brilliant.

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."