Page:Adventure vol-1 no-1.pdf/159

Corbin, do yo’ want my place at the Penitentiary?” Mac dropped limply into my big chair.

“You’ve ought to know,” said I. You’ve had a few days of it. But what’s up?”

Mac rolled his quid and spat gloomily into the grate.

“I’ve got a chance to go on the staff at the Post Clinic,” he rumbled in his deep bass. “But I’m not goin’ to leave unless yo’ will take my place at the Pen.” As he glowered at the fire, he looked like a man just off a sick-bed.

“What have you been doing all this week, Mac? I had just decided to look you up to-night, to see if you were still living. What have they done to you? You look down and out.”

“I feel right much that way. Theah’s hell to pay oveh theah, Corbin,” he growled.

“Tell me all about it.”

“I don’t know all about it. But this is some of it. They’ve only had a regular prison doctoh oveh theah fo’ about a yeah, an’ it didn’t work well. Duffield, the first man on the job, did what he saw ’em all doin’—grafted. He sold places in hospital to any prisoner that could pay enough. He sold the drugs furnished by the Depahtment and stuck to the money, an’ mo’ to the same tune. Of co’se the graftin’ was to be expected, but the sick men lay in their cells an’ made a lot of trouble fo’ the screws.^[1] So he got both the crooks an’ screws down on him, somebody raised a holleh, an’ Brer Duffield left in the night, or he’d be wearin’ stripes himself a whole lot. Then two other men tried the place. Didn’t stay three days. An’ when I appeared to ’em a few days ago they didn’t do a thing to me!”

“In what way?” I interposed.

“Every way!” said Mac fervently. “The crooks have about as much use fo’ a docto as the devil has fo’ skates. Besides, one of the prisonehs, the ‘drug ohderly,’ has been workin’ the hospital graft an’ has all the keepers backin’ him. I neveh did find out how he gets his pull.”

“But,” I objected, “it seems to me that anybody who would run a straight, honest service could down that crowd—unless, of course, some of the higher powers come for a rake-off.”

“They don’t. So that was just what I tried; an’ I thought I was goin’ to land. But just as I thought I was gettin’ on to my job I ran afoul anotheh snag. The Head Matron has her little ol’ graft on the women’s side an’ I stepped on its tail befo’ eveh I saw it. Yo’ can see my finish—yo’ know I can’t fight a lady.”

“So you want me to do it!” said I crisply. “Thank you, but I’m getting a pretty good service at the City Hospital.”

“Now yo’ listen to me, Corbin. This is a heap betteh sehvice an’ yo are quite somebody oveh theah, if you can make it go. Yo’ live in, an’ are well cared fo’. It'll give

1. ↑ Keepers.