Green Ace Read Online Free
Author: Stuart Palmer
be, that some miracle will save him, but that’s not uncommon.”
“Only that odd will he made—”
“How’d you get wind of that ?” Warden Boyington hit his desk again. “If Huff let that out of the bag—”
She shook her head. “I can’t reveal my sources of information.”
“Well, I’ll reveal something to you. It is my unpleasant duty to inform you that it’s a misdemeanor to enter a state prison under false pretenses, and a felony to forge a false name in the visitors’ book. Let’s see you fast-talk your way out of that!”
Miss Withers closed her eyes, having a clear vision of months in a dungeon cell on dry bread and water, surrounded by large slimy rats. As a desperate last resort she had to swallow what was left of her pride and implore the man to check on her bona fides with a long distance call to Spring 7-3100. “You can even reverse the charges,” she offered hopefully as a clincher.
It took some persuading, but finally Warden Boyington put through the call. He listened, relaxed a little, and then passed the instrument across the desk to her. After it was all over he painstakingly hung up the phone again and silently indicated the door. So it was with her ears still burning from the Inspector’s caustic “I told you so!” that Miss Withers gathered together her borrowed and rented finery, clinging to what little dignity was left to her.
Yet she could not resist one last attempt. “Warden,” she said, “as man to man, tell me what you think about that last will and testament of Andrew Rowan’s!”
“I think it’s a practical joke, that’s what I think! Men in the condemned row sometimes develop an odd sense of humor. They love to send comic valentines and doggerel poetry, sometimes to me and sometimes to the police or the district attorney or whoever on the outside they blame for their being here. There’s the old unfunny gag about the convict who had one last little request as they led him to the chair—he said he wanted the warden to sit on his lap.”
She frowned. “And how would you feel about executing an innocent man?”
“I wouldn’t feel any different. I’m only a servant of the people, carrying out orders of the court. Personally I am opposed to capital punishment, and my wife sneaks sedatives in my coffee at dinner every day we have an execution. But I’m not an individual, I’m an instrument.”
“Monsieur de Paris at least wore a black mask!” snapped the schoolteacher, and stalked out of the place.
“Almost!” she sighed dismally to herself as the gates clanged. But almost was to no avail, almost was but to fail. And with the one question she had wanted to ask Andy Rowan still unanswered. Eight days from now he might not be alive to answer it. She had no very clear idea of what “the week of September twentieth” really meant, of whether they executed a man on Monday or kept him around until the following Sunday night, but to all intents and purposes it worked out the same. Judging by the progress she had made so far, Rowan would surely die for the Harrington girl’s murder—and the Inspector, the only man in her life even though she detested him one day and mothered him the next, would be pilloried in the press when the news of the will got out.
Immediately after a murder the press was always crying for the blood of the fiend who had perpetrated it, but after somebody had been found guilty and sentenced to death the papers were equally avid to reopen the story with a suggestion that an innocent man had been crushed under the Juggernaut of Justice. And this time, the exception that proves the rule, it might very well be true.
Somewhat baffled, the schoolteacher suffered herself to be borne back to Manhattan in her hired limousine. Then, as they went through the outskirts of Yonkers, she suddenly cried aloud, “Of all the unmitigated idiots !”
The driver, having just won a narrow victory in a brush with a truck trying to make a left turn,
“Only that odd will he made—”
“How’d you get wind of that ?” Warden Boyington hit his desk again. “If Huff let that out of the bag—”
She shook her head. “I can’t reveal my sources of information.”
“Well, I’ll reveal something to you. It is my unpleasant duty to inform you that it’s a misdemeanor to enter a state prison under false pretenses, and a felony to forge a false name in the visitors’ book. Let’s see you fast-talk your way out of that!”
Miss Withers closed her eyes, having a clear vision of months in a dungeon cell on dry bread and water, surrounded by large slimy rats. As a desperate last resort she had to swallow what was left of her pride and implore the man to check on her bona fides with a long distance call to Spring 7-3100. “You can even reverse the charges,” she offered hopefully as a clincher.
It took some persuading, but finally Warden Boyington put through the call. He listened, relaxed a little, and then passed the instrument across the desk to her. After it was all over he painstakingly hung up the phone again and silently indicated the door. So it was with her ears still burning from the Inspector’s caustic “I told you so!” that Miss Withers gathered together her borrowed and rented finery, clinging to what little dignity was left to her.
Yet she could not resist one last attempt. “Warden,” she said, “as man to man, tell me what you think about that last will and testament of Andrew Rowan’s!”
“I think it’s a practical joke, that’s what I think! Men in the condemned row sometimes develop an odd sense of humor. They love to send comic valentines and doggerel poetry, sometimes to me and sometimes to the police or the district attorney or whoever on the outside they blame for their being here. There’s the old unfunny gag about the convict who had one last little request as they led him to the chair—he said he wanted the warden to sit on his lap.”
She frowned. “And how would you feel about executing an innocent man?”
“I wouldn’t feel any different. I’m only a servant of the people, carrying out orders of the court. Personally I am opposed to capital punishment, and my wife sneaks sedatives in my coffee at dinner every day we have an execution. But I’m not an individual, I’m an instrument.”
“Monsieur de Paris at least wore a black mask!” snapped the schoolteacher, and stalked out of the place.
“Almost!” she sighed dismally to herself as the gates clanged. But almost was to no avail, almost was but to fail. And with the one question she had wanted to ask Andy Rowan still unanswered. Eight days from now he might not be alive to answer it. She had no very clear idea of what “the week of September twentieth” really meant, of whether they executed a man on Monday or kept him around until the following Sunday night, but to all intents and purposes it worked out the same. Judging by the progress she had made so far, Rowan would surely die for the Harrington girl’s murder—and the Inspector, the only man in her life even though she detested him one day and mothered him the next, would be pilloried in the press when the news of the will got out.
Immediately after a murder the press was always crying for the blood of the fiend who had perpetrated it, but after somebody had been found guilty and sentenced to death the papers were equally avid to reopen the story with a suggestion that an innocent man had been crushed under the Juggernaut of Justice. And this time, the exception that proves the rule, it might very well be true.
Somewhat baffled, the schoolteacher suffered herself to be borne back to Manhattan in her hired limousine. Then, as they went through the outskirts of Yonkers, she suddenly cried aloud, “Of all the unmitigated idiots !”
The driver, having just won a narrow victory in a brush with a truck trying to make a left turn,
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