The Union Club Mysteries Read Online Free Page A

of a revolt and might even deliberately stir one up where none would otherwise take place.
    One must, therefore, Plumb would say, learn to recognize the leader, the man who is clearly respected, or admired, or feared by the prisoners generally and, while matters are as yet quiet, transfer him to another prison. The prison which he has left then remains quiet because the prisoners are without a head and it will take time for another to arise. The prison which he enters does not know him and it will take time for him to rise to a position of leadership.
    Plumb's advice was taken on a number of occasions and, if the transfer were followed by at least some improvement in prisoner treatment, riots were invariably aborted.
    Some years ago, at one particular prison—it wouldn't be wise to mention its name—conditions for a riot seemed to be mounting. The prison guards reported a dangerous restlessness among the inmates, a clear spirit of rebellion.
    Plumb was called in and, of course, his first question was for the name of the prisoners' leader. He was astonished when the prison officials, from the warden down, professed complete ignorance on the subject. There was no one prisoner who was clearly at the head.
    "There must be one," said Plumb. "A mob doesn't move by general consent. Someone has to shout, 'What are we waiting for? Let's go!'"
    There was a collective shaking of heads. If there was a leader, he had cannily kept such a low profile he was unrecognized.
    Plumb, deeply worried, came to me. He knew me well enough to know that no one could help him, if I couldn't.
    He said, "Griswold, I have a master criminal here, the kind who is so skilled that his machinations are invisible. How do I identify him out of three thousand or so inmates?"
    I said, "The prison authorities may not know who he is, but at least some of the prisoners must. Question the prisoners."
    He favored me with a look of contempt. "That won't be any help at all. Prisoners are men who wouldn't talk, and you know that. We all have a code against snitching, and criminals, in particular, are strong on that. It is their one sure homage to virtue. They may kill, steal or rape; but they are not so lost to shame and decency as to be tattletales.
    "Besides," he went on, "each prisoner has to live with the rest of them. Anyone known to have cooperated with the authorities, anyone suspected of having cooperated with the authorities, can expect nothing less than constant sadistic mistreatment from the prisoners generally—possibly he may be killed by them."
    I said, "You've got to choose the right one, Plumb. There's such a thing as a leader, and there's also such a thing as a nonfollower: someone who stands out against the crowd even when it's dangerous to do so."
    Plumb said, "Not that much danger. The oddball will be the first one suspected. Even if we promise to transfer him, he'll be sure that the grapevine will carry the news to the new prison. And if we promise to get him out of prison altogether, he might well be afraid he wouldn't be safe from revenge even then."
    I could see that there was something to that, but I said, "Just the same, consult the warden and find out if there's someone in the prison who is an intellectual, is afraid of violence, has a horror of the other prisoners, and who expects to get out soon. If he works in the library and therefore feels superior to the other prisoners, so much the better."
    Plumb said, "Even if I found such a man, I couldn't use him. If I questioned him in privacy, the prisoners might not know what he said, but they will suspect he lacks the guts to resist. They will haze him afterward and if we should get our man, even if it were for reasons that had nothing to do with your intellectual, they would still kill him."
    I said, "You don't call him alone. Call a hundred men, a thousand, as many as you can handle. Call him somewhere in the middle. Let him know you're asking every person in the prison and he just might work