apped

"Hello, stranger," Morrell tapped back; and, from Oppenheimer, "Welcome
to our city."

They were curious to know who I was, how long I was condemned to
solitary, and why I had been so condemned. But all this I put to the
side in order first to learn their system of changing the code initial.
After I had this clear, we talked. It was a great day, for the two
lifers had become three, although they accepted me only on probation. As
they told me long after, they feared I might be a stool placed there to
work a frame-up on them. It had been done before, to Oppenheimer, and he
had paid dearly for the confidence he reposed in Warden Atherton's tool.

To my surprise--yes, to my elation be it said--both my fellow-prisoners
knew me through my record as an incorrigible. Even into the living grave
Oppenheimer had occupied for ten years had my fame, or notoriety, rather,
penetrated.

I had much to tell them of prison happenings and of the outside world.
The conspiracy to escape of the forty lifers, the search for the alleged
dynamite, and all the treacherous frame-up of Cecil Winwood was news to
them. As they told me, news did occasionally dribble into solitary by
way of the guards, but they had had nothing for a couple of months. The
present guards on duty in solitary were a particularly bad and vindictive
set.

Again and again that day we were cursed for our knuckle talking by
whatever guard was on. But we could not refrain. The two of the living
dead had become three, and we had so much to say, while the manner of
saying it was exasperatingly slow and I was not so proficient as they at
the knuckle game.

"Wait till Pie-Face comes on to-night," Morrell rapped to me. "He sleeps
most of his watch, and we can talk a streak."

How we did talk that night! Sleep was farthest from our eyes. Pie-Face
Jones was a mean and bitter man, despite his fatness; but we blessed that
fatness because it persuaded to stolen snatches of slumber. Nevertheless
our incessant tapping bothered his sleep and irritated him so that he
reprimanded us repeatedly. And by the other night guards we were roundly
cursed. In the morning all reported much tapping during the night, and
we paid for our little holiday; for, at nine, came Captain Jamie with
several guards to lace us into the torment of the jacket. Until nine the
following morning, for twenty-four straight hours, laced and helpless on
the floor, without food or water, we paid