HICKS was sitting within by a plain board table, reading. It was a whitewashed room and had a window with rusted bars. The door banged, and the key again creaked in the lock. The jailor walked to and fro in the corridor.

Hicks looked up from his reading, and stared in a half-comprehending way.

“I have a selfish thirst for knowledge, Mr. Hicks,” said Hennion.

He took the chair on the opposite side, and looked at the book on the table. The feeble gas jet stood some six inches out from the wall, directly over the table.

“It's the Bible,” said the other. “It needs to be made modern, but there's knowledge in it.”

“I didn't mean that.”

“Lazarus and Dives. That's fanciful justice. A trick to pacify Lazarus. But there's knowledge. Notice what the dogs did. That's satire.”

It seemed a trifle uncanny, the place, the little man with the absorbed manner, metallic voice and strange language, black hair and beard, intent black eyes. Hennion had never interviewed a criminal before.

“I'm not a reporter, Mr. Hicks, nor a lawyer.”

Hicks marked his place and closed the book.

“I know who you are.”

“I was a friend of Wood's, in a way, but I'm not here in malice. I gathered you hadn't anything personal against him. It seemed to follow you had some sort of a long-range motive in it. I wanted to ask you why you shot Wood.”

Hicks' gaze grew slowly in intentness as if his mind were gathering behind it, concentrating its power on one point. The point seemed to be midway between and above Hennion's eyes. Hennion had an impulse to put his hand to the spot, as if it were burnt, but his habit of impassiveness prevented. He thought the gaze might represent the way in which Hicks' mind worked. A focussing mind was a good thing for anyone who worked with his brains, but it might have extravagances. An analysis concentrated and confined to an infinitely small point in the centre of the forehead might make an infinitely small hole to the back of the head, but it would not comprehend a whole character. A man's character ran to the ends of his hands and feet.

“I'm an engineer,” Hennion went on, “and in that way I have to know the effectiveness of things I handle and apply. And in that way men too are to me so much effectiveness.”

“I know about you,” said Hicks sharply. “Your men like you. You've never had a strike.”

“Why—no.”

Hicks' manner had changed. It was quick, excited, and angular.

“You're wrong. They're something more to you, that you didn't count in. Why do they like you?”

“I don't know.”

“Exactly. But it's something effective, ain't it?”

Hennion paused and felt confused. A man of such sharp analysis and warped performance as this, how was one to get to understand him? He leaned back in his chair and crossed his knees. The sharp analysis might be a trick Hicks had caught from listening to Aidee's speeches. It sounded like Aidee.

“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hicks, in the way of effectiveness, why did you shoot Wood?”

Hicks' eyes were little pin-points of concentration.

“He sold the people to the corporations.”

“Well. But suppose he did. Will the next man do any better? If not, where's the effectiveness?”

“He won't be so sharp.”

“You thought Wood was too sharp to be downed Aidee's way?”

“He was the devil's latest scheme. I sent him to the devil.”

“And shoulder the consequences. I like that. But the next man. Suppose I were the next man.”

Hicks' teeth clicked together. His hands moved across the table. They were thin and claw-like, and the nails scratched the boards. He said softly:

“Look out what you do.”

“What shall I do? I'm looking around for advice. Does it seem queer if I ask some of you?”

Hennion felt brutally master of the situation. There seemed something unfair in his greater size, his colder nerves and more untroubled brain, unfair to the little man opposite, with his hot impulses, his sad and sordid tragedy. Hennion felt so much at ease as to wonder why he did not feel more repulsion for Wood's murderer, and consoled himself by thinking Wood himself had been tolerant of hostilities and extremities, and would probably feel no repulsion for Hicks. Perhaps the key to Hicks was that he was created without tolerance. He was made up of intense convictions and repulsions and inflamed nerves. Whatever goal his purpose fixed on would become a white-hot point, blinding him to circumstances. And this focussing nature, which acted like a lens to contract general heat into a point of fire, was a natural phenomenon in dynamics. It seemed a characteristic of better service for starting a fire, and furnishing the first impulse of a social movement, than for running steady machinery. Some people claimed that society was running down and needed a new impulse. If so, it needed the Hicks type. If not, the trouble with Hicks might be that he was a phenomenon occurring at the wrong time, a fire that had to be put out.

“You ask me!”

“Then it does seem queer? But I ask it. Could a man be a party boss, and satisfy you?”

Hicks' gaze was now troubled and wild, as if he were trying to find the centre of the conception with his focus, and could not; as if the attempt to look at the conception with other than a set hostility was to break up the organisation of his mind. He drew back, his finger nails scratching across the table, and hid his face. Hennion rose.

“I beg your pardon.”

“You ask me!”

“Well, I don't think your method is the right one. If a clock's out of order, I don't think shooting into it is the right method. I dare say it expresses the way a man feels, but I don't see that it mends the clock. But if I were undertaking to mend it, and didn't know any too much about it, I might like to ask the man that was for shooting what his idea was. I told you I had a selfish thirst for knowledge. Under the circumstances, I beg your pardon.”

“Why do you ask me?” Hicks' fingers shook on the table. “There's a man who can tell you. He can lead you. He led me, when I wasn't a fool.”

“Who? You mean Aidee?”

Hicks nodded, and fell to glowering at his nervous fingers, absent and brooding.

“He didn't tell you to shoot Wood. I know better than that.”

“No, he didn't.”

“Why, there's another thing I'd like to know. What did Aidee do?”

“Do! He held me back! He was always holding me back! I couldn't stand it!” he cried sharply, and a flash of anger and impatience went over his face. “He shouldered me like a log of wood on his back. Maybe I liked that papoose arrangement, with a smothered damn fire in the heart of me. No, I didn't! I had to break loose or turn charcoal.”

Hennion wondered. The man reminded him of Aidee, the same vivid phrase, the figures of speech. But Aidee had said that he did not know him. It appeared that he must know him. If Aidee had been lying about it, that opened sinister suggestions. Hennion did not like Aidee, neither did he like in himself this furtive sense of satisfaction in the suggestions.

“Aidee told me he didn't know you. I hadn't thought he would lie about it.”

“By God, don't call him a liar to me!” Hicks jumped to his feet, and had his wooden chair swung over his back in an instant.

“I don't. I want it explained,” Hennion said coolly. “You can't do anything with that. Sit down.”

“He's the only man alive that dares tell the truth. You're all hounds, cowards, thieves! He's a saint in hell!”

“Likely enough. You're a hot disciple. Still, I'm waiting for an explanation.”

“Don't you call him a liar!”

“Haven't. Sit down.”

Hicks sat down, his thin hands shaking painfully. His eyes were narrowed, glittering and suspicious. Hennion tipped his chair back, put his hands into his pockets, and looked at the weak, flickering gas jet, and the ripples of light and shadow that crossed the whitewashed ceiling. They were wild, disordered, and fugitive, as if reflections from the spirit behind Hicks' eyes, instead of from the jet at the end of a lead pipe.

“I'll help you out with a suggestion,” Hennion said slowly. “You don't mean to leave Aidee in that shape, since you feel about him in this way. But you don't know whether your story would go down with me, or whether it might not get Aidee into trouble. Now, if I'm forecasting that story, it's something like this. You knew each other years ago, not in Port Argent.”

Hicks said nothing.

“Carried you around papoose-fashion, did he? But there's some likeness between you. It might happen to be a family likeness.” Still no comment.

“If it so happened, you might be related. You might be twins. And then again you might not. You might have been his first convert. Partners maybe in Nevada. That: was where he came from,—silver mines and what not. It's no business of mine.”

He paused and meditated, looking at the pulsating light; then brought his chair down and leaned forward.

“I take the liberty to disagree with you. I'm no exception to the run of men, and I'm neither a hound, nor a coward, nor a thief, nor yet a liar.”

“I know you're not.”

“However, your story, or Aidee's, is no business of mine. I gave you those inferences because they occurred to me. Naturally you'd suspect they would. So they do. Gabbling them abroad might make some trouble for Aidee, that's true. I shan't gabble them.”

“I know you won't.”

“I wanted your point of view in shooting Wood. If you don't see your way to give it, all right. I judge it was the same way you were going to club me with a chair. Simple enough and rather silly. Goodnight, then. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes.”

Hennion leaned back and studied the gaslight, and disliked himself. Hicks clasped and unclasped his hands on the table.

“It won't hurt him,” he said hoarsely, “between you and me. Besides, you can do that for me. He's my brother, old Al. But I cut away from him. I kept off. I kept away from him for a while, but I couldn't live without seeing him. You see? I couldn't do it. Then he came here, and I followed him, and I lived with a shoemaker across the river and cobbled shoes. But I heard every speech he made in Port Argent, though he never saw me. He thinks I'm dead, don't he? I dodged him pretty slick.” He flushed and smiled—“I liked it,” he whispered, growing excited. “It was better'n the old way, for we got along all right this way. You've heard of him! Ain't he wonderful? Ain't he a great one, hey? That was Al. I liked it, but he didn't know. You see? How'd he know when he thought I was dead, didn't he? I watched him, old Al!”

His face was lit up with the warm memory of it. He clicked his teeth, and swayed to and fro, smiling.

“We got along all right this way. All right. My idea. Wasn't Al's. I kept the other side the river, mostly. Nobody can touch him when he's fired up, can they? They didn't know Al like I knew him. They called him the Preacher. He scared 'em like prairie fire. He's got his way. I've heard him. I watched 'em, and I knew him, but they didn't, did they?”

He focussed his excited eyes suddenly on Hennion.

“You! I know you; I know your men that live on the east side. I heard a man say you'd got a heart like a baked potato and don't know it. That fat-headed foreman of yours, Kennedy, he can tell you more 'n you ever thought of. Think you're a composite of steel and brick, set up according to laws of mechanics, don't you? Oh, hell! Go and ask Al. He's a wonder. Why do your men like you? Go and ask 'em. I've told you why. Why'd I shoot Wood? Al wouldn't have let me, but it 'll do good. He scares 'em his way, I scare 'em mine. You wait and see! It 'll do good.”

Hennion studied the gas jet, until he could see nothing but an isolated impish dancing flame, until it seemed as if either the little man across the table were chattering far away in the distance and darkness, or else he and the gas jet were one and the same.

Aidee had been four years in Port Argent, and so Hicks had been following and watching him, cobbling shoes, living a fanciful, excited life, maniacal more or less. Hennion fancied that he had Hicks' point of view now.

“You wait and see! It'll do good.”

“Well,” said Hennion, “I dare say you've answered the question. You haven't told me yet what I can do for you.”

Hicks' excitement died out as suddenly as it had risen. He reached a trembling hand across the table, and whispered:

“I thought—— What do you think they'll do to me?”

“I can't help you there. You'll have counsel.”

“No, no! It's this. I thought I'd write a letter to Al, and you'd give it to him afterwards, a year afterwards—supposing—you see?”

He hesitated pitifully.

“All right, I'll do that.”

“I won't write it now.”

“I see.”

“You'll keep it still? You won't tell? You won't get a grudge against Al? If you do! No. I know about you. You won't tell.”

“No, I won't. Well, good-night, then.”

“Good-night.”

His voice was husky and weak now. He put out his hand, hesitating. Hennion took it promptly. It felt like a wet, withered leaf.

Hennion went and knocked at the door, which Sweeney opened. Hicks sat still by the table, looking down, straggling locks of his black hair plastered wet against his white forehead, his finger nails scratching the boards.

The door clanged to, and the noise echoed in the corridor.

“I heerd him gettin' some excited,” said the jailor.

“Some.”

“Think he's crazy?”

“That's for the court to say.”

“Ain't crazier'n this old jail. I need a new one bad, Mr. Hennion. Look at them windows! I seen mighty clever boys here. A sharp one could dig out here some night, if he had the tools.”

“Then you'd better not suggest it to Hicks.”

“Ho! He ain't thinkin' of it. He's a weakly man.”

“No, probably not.”

“He ain't got the tools, either. I know the business. Look at the experience I've had! But I need a new jail, Mr. Hennion, bad, as I told Mr. Wood.”

“Better write out a statement of the case. Good-night. Much obliged for your trouble.”

The jailor talked busily till they came to the outer door. Hennion broke away, and left him in the doorway smoking his short pipe.

He came presently to sit in the tall Champ-ney library, and heard Henry Champney speaking in that tone and accent which made an ordinary remark sound like one of the Ten Commandments. Camilla was silent.

“Do you then, ha! cross the Rubicon?” Champney asked.

“Wood's organisation, sir? Carroll and the city jailor both seem to think it a foregone conclusion. Sweeney thinks if one of his 'boys' had a crowbar, or chisel, or a pair of tongs, he'd return to the community; so he wants a new jail, thinking it might include a new salary.”