Three sevens A detective story

THREE SEVENS THREE SEVENS _A Detective Story_ _By_ Perley Poore Sheehan

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[Illustration]

NEW YORK CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERS Three Sevens Copyright, 1927, by CHELSEA HOUSE Printed in the U. S. A. All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. “SOLITARY” 11 II. PROVIDENCE AIDING 21 III. HEADQUARTERS 29 IV. BY PROCESS OF LAW 38 V. “YOUR WORK!” 48 VI. JUST AND UNJUST 58 VII. THE PROMISE 63 VIII. IN SAN PEDRO 74 IX. OLD RAGS! 83 X. SANCHO 94 XI. LIVE FREIGHT 104 XII. THE SECOND VERSION 112 XIII. SHIP AND BEACON 117 XIV. AUNT KATHERINE 124 XV. QUARRY 131 XVI. MERE RUMORS 138 XVII. GATHERING STORM 148 XVIII. TOWARD SUNDOWN 156 XIX. THE LULL 164 XX. THE MAGNET 170 XXI. PARLEY 176 XXII. THE UNDERWORLD 184 XXIII. THE LETTER 191 XXIV. IN THE THROES 202 XXV. GHOSTS 213 XXVI. RIGHT AND LEFT 224 XXVII. TIGERS’ DEN 234 XXVIII. TWELVE 242 THREE SEVENS CHAPTER I “SOLITARY” It mattered not at all to Craig that he had at least another ten years of prison ahead of him, nor that at least another month of this unexpired term would have to be passed here in the “cooler.” He had already considered these facts through long hours, and had found them as unproductive as stones. But the cat was a brand-new fact. He stroked her fur. He tickled her under the chin. In a sort of tremulous delight he wondered how she got here--where she came from--who owned her. At this last phase of his happy speculation it was as if his mind gave a slight start of surprise. Did she come as a heritage, so to speak, from Chi Slim? Here in San Pedro Prison, the punishment cells were a row of boiler-iron boxes, each of them approximately a five-foot hollow cube--six of them in all, ranged along one side of a dark subcellar. In each cell there was an iron door with two openings in it--one near the top, through which the guard could flash his light, when he made his rounds, and thus see what the inmate of the cell was doing; and the other at the bottom, through which things could be pushed, such as food and water pans, without the door being opened. They took no chances with a prisoner, once he was in his cell. There he stayed. The door wasn’t opened until his time was up, and then there would be plenty of guards on hand to handle him--if he still required it, which wasn’t likely. He could groan. He could claim that he was sick. He could plead until he was hoarse. He could hammer on it, as had occasionally happened, until he was a senseless pulp. That door remained shut. It did, that is, unless the inmate died. And that was what had happened to Chi Slim. So they took Chi out and put Craig in. “Welcome to our club!” Craig knew all about it before he had been in the cell five minutes. The other cells were occupied, all of them, and there was a waiting list, whence the allusion to the club. The prisoners talked when the guard was away. And they told Craig that he ought to feel honored. He not only had the cell with the biggest rivets in the floor, thus making it impossible either to sit down or lie down without torture, but he was the successor to an aristocrat. That was right, too. For Chi Slim, notwithstanding his youth, had been one of the most famous crooks in the United States. And, more than that, he had died untamed. As Craig stroked the cat’s soft fur he wondered at the hidden side of Chi Slim’s nature that had made it possible for him to tame the creature, win its trust. For Chi Slim had been bad--all bad. He had been a thief and a killer. He was never worse than when the odds were against him. As in prison, for example, where, twice, he had maimed his guards and made clean get-aways. Chi had been famous as a jail breaker, scoffing at the trial judge on the bench, mocking the wardens, shrieking vengeance at the guards who mistreated him when they thought they had him safe, and then somehow or other, getting away in spite of them all. Of course he had never, or hardly ever, accomplished his get-aways single-handed. Chi had been a man of many friends. It would have been hard to find a prison in the United States where some friend of his was not, or some friend of a friend equally ready to aid and abet any plan Chi Slim might evolve, from the murder of the warden to the bribery of a guard. But San Pedro had got him and held him--right here in this same boiler-iron box, from the day of his reception to this, his last and cleanest get-away of all. Craig meditated all this as he toyed with the cat, and prayed fervently that she wouldn’t leave him. It wasn’t surprising that a cat should have found her way into the dark subcellar. The place was swarming with rats. And even the rats had been useful in giving the inmates of the dark cells something to think about and talk about. It was almost like work to get a rat into a cell and then to get it out again. It was a guarantee against madness, anyway. But that a cat should have picked out Chi Slim for a companion, that was surprising. That the cat hadn’t visited the other cells Craig made sure. No, she was Chi Slim’s cat. Chi had made blasphemous recommendations to the other prisoners neither to touch the animal nor speak to her nor attempt to feed her. His! His! And, finally, the feline had accepted Chi’s proprietorship. Why not? He himself was a man cat, as ever was. Later on, not much later, Craig was to discover evidence that Chi Slim might have done a little rat-catching on his own account. Like that, perhaps, had he first come into pussy’s good graces. But, first of all, there came that other discovery. Not a discovery; a revelation! It came just as a hiss here and there from the other cells warned the six inmates of the “punishment block” that a guard was at hand. All the time that Craig was hearing the stealthy grating of the key in the outer lock, and the slight sibilance of hinges as the door of the subcellar was opened, and the later sibilance as the guard approached in his felt slippers, pausing before each iron cell to flash his light into it, he sat there blinded by another sort and greater light. The cat, by this time, was against his knees, stretched out luxuriously on the iron floor that was torture to him, while Craig continued to caress her and prayed that the guard wouldn’t see--wouldn’t suspect. He raised his face. The light that flashed in upon him was like a bath of cold fire. It came so unexpectedly, although he had been expecting it. He had longed for it a while back. But now he had dreaded it and would have dreaded it even if it hadn’t blinded him. “Father, have mercy,” he said piously. It seemed as if the light were still there even after it was gone, and after the guard himself was gone, locking the door of the subcellar back of him and climbing up the stone stairs to the guardroom at the top of the stairs. For, as Craig was running his fingers gently over the cat’s neck he had felt a roughness. A scar, perhaps; an unhealed wound. And he had avoided the spot. But he had found a similar roughness back of the animal’s ears. Then he had gently investigated. That was strange. The cat was wearing some sort of a collar. It was right then that he got his revelation. It all came to him in a flash. Prison will do that for men--turn them into half-wits or develop them into quick and subtle thinkers. And in that flash he understood why Chi Slim had tamed the cat, and let it be known, no doubt, in certain other quarters of the prison that the cat visited him, and thus might be used as a courier of sorts. The cat was wearing a collar, all right. It was a collar of five fine steel saws. There was one good thing about this club of darkness to which Craig had been elected against his will. Its membership included no stool pigeons, no informers. And only six members in all. There would be no saw work without their knowing it. Their ears were as nicely tuned to the small noises of this living tomb in which they dwelt as were the ears of the rats themselves. But this did not mean betrayal. “Boys,” whispered Craig. “Is he gone?” There was a longish silence, while the others listened. “He’s gone,” said Jim Bartow, of No. 1 cell--which was nearest the foot of the stairs. “I heard him close the door at the top.” “Because,” said Craig, “I have something to tell you.” And he did tell them. “The saws came from Solly Wells,” whispered some one from the other end of the cellar. “Solly’s in the hospital, expectin’ to croak. He didn’t know Chi’d beat him to it.” There was a riot of subdued excitement. All speech took place in whispers, for there was no telling when some sneak of a guard might not take the trouble to come down and listen at the keyhole, but it was loud enough for the brethren of the lodge. Some of them lamented that the saws had fallen into the hands of a greenhorn, but the general temper was high. “How’ll I use them?” Craig inquired. It was Jim Bartow who instructed him. First of all, he was to take his time. He wasn’t to get excited. Otherwise, he would be spoiling those saws, one after the other, and nothing would be accomplished. He could get one hand through the top hole in his door, couldn’t he? Yes. Well, he could start sawing there. “And oil it with your soup,” some one whispered. “Yeh,” said Bartow, “and paint a sign board so as the guard won’t overlook nothing! He’ll have to do the job cold and dry--and, at that, this boiler iron ought to cut like cheese.” Craig set to work. Overhead and all about, San Pedro Prison was a factory. Like a factory it began its day, and that was signaled to those who dwelt in the darkness of the punishment block by certain signs and sounds. It was then that there came to them the muted whirring of the engine room and, fainter yet, the rumbling tremor of the westbound train. There were those among them with senses so fine that they could tell whether the train had stopped or not, whether it was going fast or slow. Then came the noon hour, with another shake rather than a sound, which meant that the prison whistle blew. Then night, with the finest tremor of all--that given off by the dynamos of the lighting plant. But through all these other periods of the dark dial that was their