In the county jail there was a madman, or one not very far from it. As long as Mr. Graham was with him, Qualley had maintained his cool and indifferent air and had never for an instant given up the possibility of obtaining his release by some cunning scheme or inducement. He offered no resistance whatsoever and walked into the jail with the dignified mien of an injured and misjudged man. In fact he told Mr. Graham that he was sorry to see him following this false scent because he knew that he was really a just man and would some day sorely regret his hasty action.
It was so that Mr. Graham left him with no regrets and an earnest request that the jailer watch his prisoner with the greatest caution because he was a bad one. He told him that on no account should the prisoner be allowed to communicate with any one on the outside because he was only one of a large gang and would probably make a desperate attempt to warn his friends.
Left alone, a complete change came over Qualley. His studied dignity fell from him and the look of calm indifference gave way to a burning glare of hatred which contorted his whole face. He sprang to the window and watched Mr. Graham’s shadowy form disappear into the darkness with the look of a wild beast glaring through the bars of its cage.
When the last trace of the supervisor had died away Qualley seemed to lose all control of himself and became a maniac. He shook the bars of his cell furiously, pounded the walls with his bare fists and cursed till he frothed at the mouth. The jailer came to quiet him but fled at the mere sight of him. It seemed that, unarmed as he was, he must break through those concrete walls and iron bars by the sheer fury of his efforts.
The mood passed almost as suddenly as it had come upon him and he threw himself upon the bed panting from his exertions. “Fool,” he growled to himself, “where will that get you? They enjoy seeing you that way.”
Calmly now he began to think over the situation. He was caught and there was not much chance of his escape. There might possibly be some way out of that cell but it would not be by butting down the concrete wall with his head or biting off the iron bars with his teeth. If he was to get out he must use his head but not in the way he had been using it a few minutes before. He was thoroughly ashamed of that.
The first thing to do was to see if he could find a weapon or tool of any kind. There were seldom prisoners in that jail who were under a grave enough charge to make it worth their while really to try very hard to get out and the jailer might have become careless. He began a careful search of the room. The door was locked and seemed to be in good repair as near as he could tell in the dark. The bars in the window were not very heavy but they were too strong to break and they seemed to be firmly set in the concrete. One of them rattled a little and the concrete around the base of it seemed a little rough but it was solid enough. The floor was concrete like the walls.
He dropped to his knees and crawled slowly over the floor. There were only two articles of furniture in the room, a small bed and a chair, both of wood. If he only had a piece of iron and they would give him enough time he felt sure that he could work out of one of those window bars. Even wood might do it in time, but he doubted if they would keep him there long enough. Nevertheless, it would be something to do and something to live for so he set to work to wrench one of the rounds out of the chair.
The round came out easier than he had expected and he tried a few tentative scratches on the concrete at the base of the bar. It raised a little dust, but he realized that it would mean long hours of labor before he could accomplish anything in that way, and there was something else which must be done at once. He did not give a rap for Roberts and, as Murphy had predicted, would have seen him hung without so much as raising a finger to help him. Moreover, he knew that Roberts in a like situation would never have done anything to help him. Just the same he was extremely anxious to get word to Roberts at all costs, not to save Roberts but to warn him that the Service men would be looking for him in the morning so that he would be well prepared. If Roberts could ambush them and murder them he, Qualley, would feel that his debt of hatred had been paid and, too, he might stand some show of getting free, for there was not any one else around there who knew anything about his crime or would be likely to prefer charges against him. Moreover, with Roberts captured, he would not stand any show at all. He very well knew that Roberts would tell everything he knew about him and would rather die than see Qualley get away if he could not make it himself.
So the first thing to do was to get word to Roberts; there would be time enough for the digging when that was done. Perhaps he could catch somebody going by before the jailer was up. He took up his position by the window and watched patiently, but the jail was in an out-of-the-way place and he heard some one moving about in the jail before he had seen any one outside.
Well, possibly the jailer was not above a bribe. He had made plenty of money in the last two years out of the logs he had stolen, he was rich, and he could offer the jailer more money than he had ever dreamed of. He waited anxiously for some one to bring his breakfast. It was about eight o’clock when he heard a door open somewhere and the jailer himself appeared with a tray.
“Calmed down a little, have you?” the jailer asked, eyeing him somewhat doubtfully.
“Yes,” Qualley admitted with a sheepish laugh, “I lost my head for a few minutes last night. It is enough to drive any man crazy to be popped into jail on a false charge with no chance to explain. It’s tough.”
“Y............