It was easy to see where I stood. A scapegoat was necessary, and with a prison record behind me I had about as much show as a rat in a trap. If there should be an investigation, Mullins would swear that I had entire charge of the claim department. And having no written data to fall back upon, I should be helpless.
The date of this disheartening discovery chanced to be the 25th of the month--our regular pay-day, and I had my month's salary in my pocket when I left the office about eleven o'clock to go to my boarding-house. At the nearest street corner I met the patrolman on the beat.
"Hello, cully!" he growled as I was passing him; and then with a hand on my arm he stopped me. "You're forgettin' somethin', ain't you?"
"I guess yes," he retorted. "It's pay-day at the works, and you gotta come across."
Here was the remainder of the conspiracy made plain as day. The crooked chief of police had turned me over to the crooked coal company to do crooked work, and I was to be held up for a graft on my salary. With a swift return of the blood-boiling which had once helped me to manhandle the deputy, Simmons, I faced the patrolman.
The policeman grinned good-naturedly. "You're goin' to 'produce' all right. You're a paroled man, and you can't afford to have the chief get it in for you."
It was just here that the three nerve-breaking years got in their work. I couldn't face the grafter down, and--I confess it with shame--I was horribly afraid.
"How much?" I asked, and my tongue was dry in my mouth.
"This is the first mont', and we'll let you down easy. You fork over a ten-spot for the campaign fund and we'll call it square. Next mont' it'll be more."
I paid the blackmail with trembling hands, and when the patrolman was out of sight around the corner I ran to reach my boarding place, intent only upon flight, instant and secret, from this moral cesspool of a city. I remembered that there was a westbound train passing through at midnight, and by hurrying I hoped to be able to catch it.
I had left the board money and a note for my landlady on the mantel in the darkened dining-room, had reached the railroad station, and was about to buy a ticket to the farthest corner of the State, when I suddenly remembered that I was running away with an additional handicap to be added to all the others. Leaving the coal company and the city without notice or explanation, I was making it impossible to keep my record clear in the monthly report to the prison authorities.