Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 4 (1923-04).djvu/69

City newspapers have little time and less space for the small affairs of small persons which concern only themselves. If a police reporter had not been well acquainted with the craving for publicity of a detective friend even the following brief item might never have found space in the Carrsville Journal. It occupied but eight lines:

The name of the Cockney's companion was left out of the brief story, and the readers neither noticed nor cared for the omission. If the arrest had any effect on the citizens of Carrsville, it was to make their sleep more peaceful, since they knew an escaped murderer was no longer at large, although Norton was so far from their city that they had not heard of the escape.

There was nothing spectacular in the flight of Cockney Cravens and Marshall Stollard from the Norton penitentiary. There never is anything spectacular about hard work, and that was what had effected their get-away. Six months of back-breaking, hand-blistering digging had preceded the night they crawled through the ceiling of their cell to the attic of the cellhouse, slid down a pipe, scaled a wall and dashed five hundred yards into a dense thicket on the river bank before the alarm was given.

Two men more different in every way than Stollard and Cravens would be difficult to find. The former was American born. He stood six feet, three, in his bare feet and weighed a trifle over two hundred pounds. In his college days he was captain of the football team, a basketball star and a first-class pinch hitter, while as a swimmer he won every prize for which he was permitted to compete.

His sobriquet of "Cockney" was one of the few things Cravens had come by honestly. He was an under-sized man, a foot shorter than Stollard, skinny and unhealthy. His few remaining teeth were rotted. For athletics, or any other form of physical exertion, he had the utmost contempt. In manner, too, he was vastly different from the American. The latter was, like most very strong men, soft spoken and courteous, while in speech the Englishman was as wicked and as fierce as he was small in stature.

Each was serving a life sentence for killing a fellow man. Stollard had been sent to the prison after a trial which had attracted considerable attention in the small city where he lived and was known as a rising man in the general contracting "game." He had lost patience with a stock salesman who had visited his office several times, and had pushed the solicitor out of his door. The push was given with considerable force, throwing the salesman to the floor and causing a fracture of the skull which proved fatal. Cravens, who had left the London underworld with the police hot on his trail, was in prison for stabbing a drunken sneak thief in a brawl over a woman in a red light saloon.

These men occupied the same cell in the penitentiary for three years, during which the World War came to an end and the United States adopted prohibition, much to the disgust of the Cockney, though not to his immediate personal discomfort.

The plot to escape originated with Stollard. He would have preferred to have had for a partner any other man in the prison than Cravens, or, most of all, he would have liked to go it alone. But, he felt, escape he must and, as much as he abhorred the man, Cravens must be his partner. A reform wave had swept the State and he knew that parole or pardon within a decade was a remote possibility.

By superiority of mind and body Stollard kept his cellmate at the task of removing particles of stone from the ceiling of the cell. Often the little man groaned and begged the other to let him rest during the long nights, hating physical labor more than he loved freedom. These requests were granted as often as they were refused, but Stollard's inbred sense of justice prevented his doing all the work from which each would benefit equally.

Stollard lifted the Cockney through the aperture in the ceiling. When they reached the opening in the wall they had made by a drain pipe, the little man trembled and said he could not slide down. Patiently, the American took the little man on his back and slid down with him. The big man also boosted his companion over the wall, and half carried, half dragged him along as he ran toward the river. At the bank the two drew up. Cravens was panting.

"W'y the bloody 'ell 'ave ye come 'ere?" he demanded. "There ain't no rylewy 'ere."

"We want no railroad," whispered the other. "We're going by boat."

Cravens hated water in all its forms. As a means of transportation it appealed to him as little as a beverage or a cleaning fluid. Stollard ordered him to be quiet and to remain concealed in the bushes until he returned, and started away.

"Ditch me 'ere, will ye?" shrieked the little man, but the American interrupted with a command that silenced him.

The former athlete had once been a guest at the Norton Boat Club, and was able to make his way without difficulty to the boat house, not yet open for the summer. He took the best canoe he could find and broke open several lockers. Altogether, he managed to find clothes enough for the two of them, though the costumes were motley enough in make-up. The escaped convict then covered as well as he could evidences of his visit to the club.

Cravens was surprised to see Stollard return. He donned the clothes, still grumbling, but set up a howl of protest when he saw the canoe. He declared he would not ride on a river