“Gee!
It’s a wonder them guys in the mush gallery couldn’t think of somepin else besides cold beans and fried potatoes and coffee.”
“The coffee tonight . . . oh, boy! . . .
Now in the jail at Buffalo — though . . .”
“Oh, cut it out,” came from another corner.
“We’ve heard enough about the jail at Buffalo and your swell chow.
You don’t show any afternoon tea appetite around here, I notice.”
“Just the same,” continued the first voice, “as I look back on’t now, it musta been pretty good.
Dat’s a way it seems, anyhow, now.”
“Oh, Rafferty, do let up,” called still another.
And then, presumably “Rafferty” once more, who said:
“Now, I’ll just take a little siesta after dis — and den I’ll call me chauffeur and go for a little spin.
De air to-night must be fine.”
Then from still another hoarse voice:
“Oh, you with your sick imagination.
Say, I’d give me life for a smoker.
And den a good game of cards.”
“Do they play cards here?” thought Clyde.
“I suppose since Rosenstein was defeated for mayor here he won’t play.”
“Won’t he, though?”
This presumably from Rosenstein.
To Clyde’s left, in the cell next to him, a voice, to a passing guard, low and yet distinctly audible:
“Psst!
Any word from Albany yet?”
“No word, Herman.”
“And no letter, I suppose.”
“No letter.”
The voice was very strained, very tense, very miserable, and after this, silence.
A moment later, from another cell farther off, a voice from the lowest hell to which a soul can descend — complete and unutterable despair —“Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!”
And then from the tier above another voice:
“Oh, Jesus!
Is that farmer going to begin again?
I can’t stand it.
Guard! Guard!
Can’t you get some dope for that guy?”
Once more the voice from the lowest:
“Oh, my God!
Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
Clyde was up, his fingers clinched.
His nerves were as taut as cords about to snap.
A murderer!
And about to die, perhaps.
Or grieving over some terrible thing like his own fate.
Moaning — as he in spirit at least had so often moaned there in Bridgeburg.
Crying like that!
God!
And there must be others!
And day after day and night after night more of this, no doubt, until, maybe — who could tell — unless.