"I can't eat that soap. It will make me sick!"

"You've said it! But eat that soap--a little at a time--and see what the prison doctor says. It isn't easy to fool prison doctors--but I've been on this job long enough to know how."

That was Wagg's longest speech to date. His earnestness impressed the young man. He managed to eat a bit of the soap after the guard had departed. He ate more in the morning before his release from the cell.

He put some crumbs of the soap in his pockets and choked down the hateful substance when he found an opportunity during the day.

That night Wagg had a few more words to say on the subject. "One of the biggest birds they ever caged at Atlanta fooled the doctors and got his pardon so that he could die outside the pen. Did he die? Bah-bah! Soap!

Just soap!"

"So you think the pardon plan can be worked in my case, do you?"

"Pardon your eyes!" scoffed Wagg. "That isn't the idea at all!"

He fed the soap to the prisoner for many nights, but he did not give any information. However, Wagg had the air of a man who knew well what he was about, and Vaniman was desperate enough to continue the horrible diet, having found that Mr. Wagg was a very touchy person when his policies were doubted or his good faith questioned.

Then, one day the prison doctor, who had been observing Vaniman for some time, took the bookkeeper into his office and examined him thoroughly; he gravely informed the warden that the young man had symptoms of incipient kidney trouble and ought to be less closely confined.

When Vaniman found himself out in the sunshine, intrusted with the sinecure of checking up barrow-loads of dirt which convicts wheeled past him where he sat in an armchair provided by the warden from his office, the prisoner perceived that the Wagg policies were effective in getting results.

Having added respect for Mr. Wagg's ability in general, Vaniman was not surprised to find the guard following the favored prisoner into the new field of operations. The young man was quite sure that the guard had not opened up on his princ.i.p.al plan.

One morning Wagg came with a stool and a rifle and located himself close beside the armchair; he sat on the stool and rested the rifle across his knees and smoked a corncob pipe placidly. And there was plenty of opportunity for talk, though Wagg obtrusively kept his face turned from Vaniman's and talked through the corner of his mouth.

"Now you see, I hope! In a prison you've got to step light and go the other way around to get to a thing. I'm favored here, and I'm supposed to be nursing rheumatism." He leaned forward to knock out his pipe dottle and found an opportunity to give Vaniman a wink. "I arranged to come off the wall--knowing all about your case. I could ask to come out here, having found that night work didn't help me! Sunshine is good. But you couldn't ask for sunshine. When a prisoner asks for a thing, they go on the plan of doing exactly opposite to what he seems to want. From now on, having seen how I can operate, I expect you to do just what I tell you to do."

Vaniman looked at the rifle. Wagg waved it, commanding a convict to hurry past.

"Yes, sir! You've got to do just as I say!" insisted the guard when the convict had gone out of earshot.

"How can I help myself?"

"Oh, I don't mean that I'm going to team you around with this rifle! I want you to co-operate."

"Don't you think I can co-operate better if you give me a line on what all this means?" pleaded the prisoner.

"Sure and slow is my policy. I'm not just certain that I have you sized up right, as yet. I'm of a suspicious nature. But I'm finding this sunshine softening." Mr. Wagg rambled on, squinting up at the sky.

"Seven years is a long while to wait for a good time to come. Figuring that your time will be paid for at the rate of about ten thousand dollars a year, while you're in here, helps to smooth the feelings somewhat, of course. But now that you're in here you're counting days instead of years--and every day seems a year when you're looking forward. The newspapers said it was about seventy-five thousand dollars in good, solid gold."

Wagg bored Vaniman with a side glance that was prolonged until a toiling convict had pa.s.sed to a safe distance. The young man was eyeing the guard with a demeanor which indicated that the tractable spirit commended by Mr. Wagg was no longer under good control. However, Vaniman did manage to control his tongue.

After the silence had continued for some time, the guard slipped down from the stool and marched to and fro with his rifle in the hook of his arm, affording a fine display of attention to duty.

After he had returned to his stool, Wagg gave the ex-cashier plenty of time to take up the topic. "Considering my position in this place, I reckon I've said about enough," suggested the guard.

"I think you have said enough!" returned Vaniman, grimly.

"What have you to say?"

"I didn't take that money from the Egypt Trust Company. I don't know where it is. I never knew where it went. And I'm getting infernally sick of having it everlastingly thrown up at me."

"I thought I had you sized up better--but I see I was wrong," admitted Wagg.

"Of course you're wrong! You and the chaplain and the warden and the jury! I didn't take that money!"

"I didn't mean I was wrong on that point," proceeded Wagg, remorselessly. "But I had watched you bang around your cell and I concluded that you was ready to make about a fifty-fifty split of the swag with the chap who could get you out of here. If you're still stuffy, you'll have to stay that way--and stay in here, too!"

He took another promenade, pursuing his regular policy of starting the fire and letting the kettle come aboil on its own hook.

"What good would it do me to escape from this prison--to be hounded and hunted from one end of the world to the other?" Vaniman demanded, when Wagg had returned to the stool. "I do want to get out. But I want to get out right! I have a job to do for myself when I'm out of here!" Mr. Wagg nodded understandingly. "And that job is right in the same town where I have been living."

"Exactly!" agreed the guard. "And speaking of a job, you don't think for one moment, do you, that I'd be earning a fifty-fifty split by boosting you over that wall or smuggling you out of the gate to shift for yourself? Small wonder that you got hot, thinking I meant it that way.

My plan will put you out right! My plan is a prime plan that can be worked only once. Therefore, it's worth money."

"d.a.m.n it, I haven't the money!" Vaniman, exasperated by this pertinacity, was not able to control his feelings or his language.

"It's too bad you are still at the point where you _think_ you haven't got it," returned Mr. Wagg. "I'm a terrible good waiter. Reckon I have showed that kind of a disposition already. When you get to the other and sensible point where you want to be out of here, and out right, with n.o.body chasing and hectoring you, you and I will do business on the fifty-fifty basis. It may seem high," he pursued. "But all prices are high in these times. They're so blamed high that I'm in debt, simply trying to give my family a decent living. The state won't raise my wages. The state practically says, 'You'll have to do the best you can!'

The state owes me a living. So I'll grab on to the a.s.sets that the state has hove into my reach, and will speculate as best I know now."

"You think I'm your a.s.set, eh?"

"You're not worth a cent to me or yourself until I operate. And when you're ready to have me operate--fifty-fifty--give me the high sign. And something will be done what was never done before!"

Then Wagg carried his stool to the lee of a shop wall, seeking shade--too far away for further talk.

CHAPTER XIX

AND PHARAOH'S HEART WAS HARDENED

By the wiles of Wagg and a soap diet Frank Vaniman had been able to secure his modest slice of G.o.d's sunlight.

There was aplenty of that sunshine in Egypt. It flooded the bare hills and the barren valleys; there were not trees enough to trig the sunlight's flood with effective barriers of shade.

Tasper Britt walked out into it from the door of Files's tavern.

He had just been talking to the landlord about the tavern diet. His language was vitriolic. Even Vaniman could not have used more bitter words to express his detestation for soap as a comestible.

Britt's heat in the matter, the manner in which he had plunged into the diatribe all of a sudden, astonished Mr. Files tremendously. Britt seemed to be acting out a part, he was so violent. Usually, Britt did not waste any of the heat in his cold nature unless he had a good reason for the expenditure. There seemed to be something else than mere dyspepsia concerned, so Files thought. He followed Mr. Britt and called to him from the door. Britt had stopped to light his cigar.

"I've had my say. I'm all done here. Let that end it," declared the departing guest.

There were listeners, the usual after-dinner loafers of the tavern's purlieus. Mr. Britt did not seem to mind them. He even looked about, as if to make sure of their numbers.

"All you needed to do was to complain in a genteel way, and I would have been just as genteel in rectifying," pleaded Files.

"The people of this town are still saying that I'm a hard man. If that's so, I'm waking up to the reason for it--your grub has petrified me.

My real friends have noticed it." Here was more of Britt's unwonted garrulity about his private concerns. "Some of those friends have taken pity on me. I have been invited to board with the Harnden family."