THE BIT OF LUCK.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14705, 4 June 1920, Page 6

THE BIT OF LUCK.

I (By A. S. M. Hutchinson.)

"Escape impossible! Of coursenot impossible. Nothing's impossible ui this me, and though that's a canting platitude ana generally a lie on tiic n<lrt ot the bind of person who says it/, it's darn true, lake my word. •''.those chaps'"—he pointed out his pipe toward the gang or convicts working in two long iiues at the toot of the tor below, us, "those chaps can escape all right, as ajuan can do-any-thing anywhere, provided he sets his rnuiu to it." "auu provided," I said drowsily— I was three parts asleep—"provided ne's the right sort ot man with the right sort 01 mind." "Well, you needn't worry about that, either. it he's not the right surt with the right sort of mind, he won't start on one of your' impossible stunts—prison-breaking, or flying, or any other. .No, there's only one thing you've' got to make provision for in these 'impossible' jobs, and that's luck—-the little bit of luck that always cuts in one side or the other in every risky tiling a chap lays out for. Good luck, and he pulls out a heaven-sent miracle; bad luck,-and the whole bottom rips right out of the miracle he's rnadfe on his own." 1 said, "That's all right. But you're getting away from it. It's about getting away from that place"—l indicated the distant prison—"that we're arguing." He had been lying (as was I) on his back, his hands beneath his head, his voice coming sepulchrally from under his hat, pulled over his face against the sun. ' He sat up with a jerk that brought his hands to his toes, and turned toward me. "Don't you worry. That's what I am talking about. That's just a case in point for you. You're the j first man outside of me and another that'll hear it. Look here, you're one of these writing chaps. - ;Make a story out of this." I said "Good enough," and snuggled my heqtl and, adjusted my hat against the sun a' bit more comfortably to doze - off. In my caapcity as one of those writing chaps I had been given stories before. "Good enough. Go ahead." "What'll you call it?" "Call it? Man alive, how the devil do I know?" 'l'his was the rottenest way of- being pleasantly lulled to sleep by a story—the way of the man who keeps digging you in the ribs with questions. So I spoke irritably, and finished "How do I know? I don't even know what it's about." "I tell you"—lie had assumed an annoyingly deep voice, as though he really had something big to tell—"I trll you, it's about what I was saying. About how a bit of luck always outs in when a man's up against it. Cuts ] in this side or that. And about a ca -o in I point right here in breaking out of this prison." Infernally annoying. " Getting much too near to be pleasantly drowsifying. I couldn't help saying in surprise—and how can you sleep if you're going to be surprised? "Here, was it? This prison?" "Here? Of course it was here! Darnit, it wa6 right- there on that very road where those chaps are working now." I echoed his "Darn it." ' "What was?" "Why, the breakaway. This breakaway from that prison that I'm going to tell you about. Look, there's ihc very spot. See those two boulders on the* left of the road, and how the moor gets up into a bit of an embankment on the right? See?" I I could tell he was pointing and wait- | ing for me, and I have suffered all my life from an infernal-politeness which makes bruskness almost impossible in me. Moreover, the story was starting with a realism that I knew would prove delusive —they always do —but which insisted on attention. So I groaned, and struggled up to sitting position, and squinted at his beastly boulders and embankment, and grunted,- and lay down again. No peac-e. "Well, what'll you callit. then ?" he repeated. Oh. h ! I cast back to what he had said when he first nut the (mention. Something about- the bit- of luck in everything, wasn't? "What about 'The Bit of Luck'?" I grunted into my hat. t Couldn't'see him, but conld feel lie was mentally visualising this suggestion in print.* Apparently he found * dramatic look about it —imagined it in I the sprawling great headline capitals of a cheap illustrated magazine."Yes. that's good,' 'hr said. "That's wh"t it was, anyway. It- sure was. Right. ; Now I'll -start." I He started and I went io sleep. . . . He droned, I suppose (liens-en knows how long) and I slept. A question aroused me. "What'll I call him ?" he was saying. Eh?" - How on earth was I to know? 1 didn't even know who he -was talking about, let alone whether it was an adjective or a surname he wanted to apply to the chap. I raised my heavy litis. The sun mflccting through my hat showed me the maker s name. "Call liim Tabor." I suggested. He commented doubtfully: "Tabor? Hum name." "Makes rum hats." I muttered. It was a poor hat. "What?" "I say he was a rum chap." The wild shot was obviously good and obviously pleased him —the suggestion of an attentive listener. He said pleasedly. "He was. wasn't lie? Rum! He'sure was. Yes. that's good. A rum name for a rum chap. Clever, -that. I suppose you writing chaps get into the knack of* it. Right, we'll call him Tabor. Not a scrap like his real name: and that's right too. isn't it? "Saves trouble," I agreed; "libels and all that." "Well, there he was, yon. sec," he went on (presumably where he had left off). "There he was, this chap Ta — what was it?" I "Tabor. F. F. Tabor, Hat——" "That? Tabor.F. F. Tabor —F. for Fred, eh?—this Fred Tabor, in about* as bad a hole as a an could be in. Wasn't- it, eh?" I hadn't the remotest idea: So I agreed, "Rather!" . "Absolute black ruin in front of him unless he could meet this bill, and' a .sporting chance of getting the wholebusiness plumb 011 its feet again if only he could lav his hands on the ready to tide over. Say, you can imagine liim sitting there in hi.-; office —darn well furnished office, the latest fittings and contrivances, two clerks in the outer room, slap-up girl stenographer —nice girl, she was. Took her to the theatre one night. Supper and all. Cost me seven noun' ten. Absolutely straight, you know. Nothing in it-slap-up girl stonogra a little room alongside. Every sign aiid "-nark of "prosperity. Whole thing 1-uilL up by his own hands —head, rather. Respected bv evervone he traded with. Liked above a bit. by everyone who knew him. Stenographer used to keep a photo of him in her desk —showed it to me. And there was this poor | devil hunched up at bis big writingfable. elbows on the crimson leather, fists at his temples, black ruin hanging up its hat in the lobby and just about to walk in. "All for the want of "the ready just to tide over. You get that, don't you? Stick that in your story, because that's vital, if you're going to make a job of it.' Right; well, at that very dam moment the opportunity comes. Trust • funds. Tide, him over slick. Absolutely. .Him and bis wife and kid—mutual idolisation society, those three—: and his good' name-and his old mother and his young brother (never saw brothers so thick as those two) and the slap-up stenographer and the two clerks and the whole caboodle of them. -What a brute of a temptation to come at.a chap, eh? Like a. darn life-belt popping up under 'the nose of a drowning man—and about as likely to be let float by. what? Don't care who the chap might he. This chap—this Ta what was it?" •"■Tabor.'' "This Tabor was as clean white as the: Archbishop of Canterbury. No more idea of playing it down than the. Pop- till that momei't. Tdea—opportunity—plumped into his hand* he sat there. Trust funds. Misappropriation- Embezzlement. Took n cii-uiri-oii it. Lost. Bv George, hr? was at the Old Bailev niul falling down th---stairs with c even rears' ' before lie-darn well had time to real's" ho'* T done it." • This was it dramatic touch and had me more awako than I had been so far.

But now he tided off into a long ramble in which' cuiub to me incoherent re- i ferences to the nun Tabor's first bitter J years in prison, and tho slap-up steild-' grapher, and his wife, and one, ttutig I arid on the tide "of -wLich;"l | dozed off again; 1 might till in Hw | blank perhaps, while he tamed and I ruost comfortably slept, by saving that I had run into .him casually a before while doing- a holiday in a -bit of a cottage on the moor, i was walking and fishing. He appeared to spend his timer--whenever 1 happened upon him —in sitting motionless on some upland like a statue of the moor's own granite and-brooding over the prison. What he waa and what his job ■ v- as 1 never knew —nor—troubled . to conjecture till he gave me this story. -lil the course of it —when he got me interested —I guessed once or twice, but wronglj*, I think. At it; conclusion L guessed again, and not far off, 1 amagine. I thought first he was the man Tabor himself, but he clearly wasn't—the stuff about the stenographer and later his own part of the business dished that. I thought last—and I suspi-, cion it still—that he had taken on labor's job; the odd job >ycu shall hear ina minute. Tabor dead (or, -by Jove, it comes to me, in prison again perhaps) and liis money and his enthusiasm left to this chap. He'd have teen a good man for it. anyway. A biggish chap, taller than he looked because of his enormous chest and shoulders. Arms to match. Brown, as mahogany and ivbout as hard ed to wear a singlet arid no shirt/ and the sleeves of his flannel jacket, slipping back, disclosed the terrific lim thev covered. Hands to match. face. Curiously kind of thrusting for; ward cheekbones and the skin stretc-b----ed verv tight, without hollows or gawitness. "Seemed to lie from, or to have lived in, Canada or the States by sonic of his speech, but—well, what does it. matter anyway ? There he was, and this is his story. . Next thing ! heard him sa\mg one of the most painful questions a polite man —who knows he's guilt; can have addressed to him: "louie not asleep, are you?" , , . I muttered into my hat, jEiatnti not," and found to my great discomfort of mind thai; the man, labor was now out of prison ogam.. Well. tJwi e • lie was, a free man again—, ana tin. story presumably ended vviS-iout luj having the faintest- notion how bo had eifected this wonderful escape of Ins, I lav there-—wide awake no',v.- trying to catch, a hint or how it had i.eon done, and then suddenly realised that tho storey far from being ended, was only just" beginning; that this mail labor hadn't escaped, or tried to but had served his time and been released, and that the- prison-breaking with, the -OH of luck that was to be the point of it all, was bv Tabor contrived for anothei man: to get another man out olthe just short- of'seven un^ • J"' L hell he'd" been through himself. I s.U un and began to take notice. I was invited to tho outset to imagine this poor devil Tabor free again and come to wife dead, kid dead, mother dead—he didn't mention u tue stell °: ■xrapher were dead also-all his world, but his yaung 'brother dead as and in the place where his heart u ? ed -to be, a live coal of scorching, flaming hate against the laws that had takei such a toll of him for his one mad =lip: that and an appalling horror or the thought that other men, clean afc he, blameless, but for that aceursec juxtaposition of trial and temp tat ini; as he, were going through what he ,had been tlirougli —''down there./ "Look, it's this way. Down tliefe, and in all the long-sentence convict prisons there's two classes of convicts. Different as chalk and cheese. One s the bornj criminal. Ready-made lor tile iob iust as much as the bqrn poet. You know the type. Born in crime dragged up m crime, lives in crime and"Uies in crime. Born m a filthj slum room, three or four other families Iking in' it. Filthy slum mother.Never knew his father; mother probablv didn't either. Has a drop of gin to keep him quiet as often as a drop of milk. Blasphemes fluently betore hc'.s out all his teeth. Grows tip tiue to Ivp;-. Can't vou see him? Sloping forehead, sloping chin, sloping shoulders, thick cars .sticking straight out, rotten -teeth, pigeon chest, arms liu.e an ape-t-rfaching to Ins knees, gooo to prison on long sen+'-'ice as soon as he t. old enough, and lives . there permanently for the rest of his life m mteivals of ticket of leave. , ''The other tvpe. Other type a the man like TaTior—clean, honest, _gemle. Sudden impulse. Sudden necessity and opportunity. Finds himself down theie. Warders all know his sort. Always sec-, it go the same way. starts with the old habits. Says: 'Thank you,' -and 'Please.' Stands upright. yio'-i ebrisklv. Keeps his his eyes wide open. Bit bv bit. day bv day. month by month"— ah. man alive, eternal grinding year by eternal grinding year, the prison shuts down on him and. cruanes him down ,down. just as if the root and walls of his cell were contracting on him. Down he goes, bit by bit. The 'Thank yous' go, and the 'Pleases o'o and the straight back goes, and the brisk walk* goes and the wide eyes go. Everything' that was m lum goes, and thev let him loose and he shufiles out. and he finds everything that was of him gone. Just hate left in him, and- horror. Like Tabor. "Now look. Tsibor. bong the sort or chap he had been, had the horror of it all uppermost-. 2.eM not been out a week when a. forgotten relative in Australia cr some dajji _plnce died in—just, like thev do in stories, in What is it?" " - "Intestate." "Sure —intestate, arid left him quite a respectable, little pot of money. Wouldn't you think he'd clear off somewhere strange and quiet, and start' in to sit down and get back to life and enjoy it? Wouldn't you?" Ji nodded assent, "Do you know, lie sot up right there in London, and set. down to the oddest idea, ever —prison-snatrher, convictsnatclier. Had the craze —and by darn he was right. He sure .was —that escape could be worked from outside if word could lie got to the chap before he went in- " -± I interposed: "But now would tlia't be done?" "llight when the chap was sentenced. Listened to me. Tabor set himself to sit in Court every criminal sessions, andgjf he saw a- clean chap, like, he had been, brought there by sudden chance and impulse, like he's been brought there, to get in touch with the chap's relatives —old father or poor wife or some sueli —and say to em : Look. When you go down to the* cells to say good-bye to that boy of yours, tell him 'Hope.' There's a sport going to ©Scape you. Hope. Never give up hope, boy. Soon or late, he says, he'll get you out-, and he sure will. Be says i you're never to give up hoping. Get up every morning saying. It will sure be : to-day, and go to bed every night saying, 'lt will sura be tomorrow. ' Re savs watch for it. .Keep bright for it. Jump right when itcomes, it'll come, boy.. J t sure will. Hope.' . "That- was Tabor's idea—to keep a good man from going down, down, down, :is prison crushed him down, by giving hint hope. To keep the thankvous and the pleases and-the straight I back and the brisk walk and the wide eye in' him by hope, and to yank him out before ever the- hope began to crumple." He leaned forward and tapped me impressively on the knee— — "By darn, d'you know who was the very "first ease of the sort Tabor was looking for what came into the dock under him sitting watching, in the gallery? Tt was his.own young brother." He certainly had me surprised by this development.. I suppose,another man in my place would have remarked cynically that these sudden, these guiltless, lapses seemed rather to run- in the Tabor family, but I never can say that sort of thing and sometimes I'm glad I can't. I was here. He made ar humanly natural case for Tabor the younger. This was. sudden and unpremeditated crime of another kind. In three words, "shooting with intent," and in half a dozen, a girl who was no> better than she might- have been and another man. and young-Tabor drawing on him with, the man's own gun fin the man's own fiat* and leaving him for dead and never coming to his senses again until his brother, .in the; cells below the court, -tears running down his; face, was whispering to him the words he had. meant to communicate to. a prisoner, hut which were unthinkable pain to_ have to say to ; his own idolised young brothel*: * i

" "Hope, old m'an. Never lose hope. You know I was going to get other chaps out of inhere yoir re going; ftly.. Gbdj I never thought it'd be you ! Dear old man, it'll be' all the more siire, all the quicker. Watch for it, old man. Day and night, watch; hope. Good-bye, old man." . It was just over a year that he had to hope and "to watch for it, as things turned out. The end of that time found Tabor'the younger, after brief sojournihgs in various jails, lodged at the prison that lay in our view; and now at last I was given the straight story of the escape, and began to look out fdr t-lle "bit- of luck" which had been promised as the pith of the adventure. "Tabdr came and .lived down here," he continued; "spoilt- Hours watching from this very rise where- we sit, and worked out his plan. I'd atrattged to help him. He came up to town to me. 'Going to get young Bill'—that was his brother's name —'out of it this month,' ho told me. 'You're on?' 'Sure.'. 'You can drive a car?' 'Sure thing. Most any make.' 'Come and look- at 6ne ; I've .bought.' .4 , . ~. "By darn, that was a- car. Last' thing off thfi market in autos, and ..left the rest like bassinets. Six-cylinder TelhamFlyte. But what made- me wince was heT color. Bright, scarlet. Bright! It made every red I'd ever seen look like tinned salmon. 'Going to rush him away in that,' says Tabor. " 'By darn, you're going to advertise the journey,' I said. ' 'That color would shout loud enough for a vaudeville_ star or a colore'd boxer. X reckon a blind man would remember that car.- " 'That's right,' says Tabor. 'That s what it's for. Now look. Stand away a bit and look.' j "With that he steps to her and rouncr her and flicks down cunningly rolledup things buttoning under her on studs., and by George, in two ticks she was; .a dun-cOlored old craft, solemn enough to take the chief mourner to a funeral. Canvas covers, it was —that hooked down all over her paint work. Cute. Give you word. , . " 'Now you can get the idea,' says Tabor, and he starts in and tells it me. Simple as falling off ar house. His brother was in a gang working on a road—that road down there —and likcl.v to be oil it- quite a piece of time. We d rush that road in the scarlet car —twice. First time we'd have a> breakdown right alongside where the. boy was working, and whisper him the word: 'Next time we come, jump for it.' Next day we'd come again. Breakdown again. Yoiuig Bill'd jump for it. Us off like hell behind us. Stop in a few miles. Pull I down the covers on the- car. Double | 011 our tracks and, while they were wiring all over 'the country to hold up a scarlet auto, amble the boy leisurely to safety in our solemn old mourningcoach." - • • .1 "By Jove, it was a scheme, I said. "Go on." j "It sure was. Dandy. Aud there's not much more go on to go. We ran it slick. I tuned that auto up a day I or two., till I got to know her so I could run her blindfold into hell an' out again. Then I fetched her down here. We ran.round a. bit so the warders should get- the idea, of us- —wealthy tourist doing the moor in his swell red streak. Then one day we let out down that road. Young Bill.we'd fixed with field-glasses from this knoll here. The convicts were working about ten yards apart each side the route. Opening up the drainage ditching was the job. Warders pacing about. Young Bill fortunately working within - twenty yards of the head of the line—if he'd been midway—tliey stretched a. quarter mile, I daresay—we'd have stood a risk of some one jumping into l the road in the hallaballoo when we got off, and getting tangled up in the wheels and stopping us. As it was, we ran into the road from this ' end see? Up toward those boulders —and through the two lines c-f the poor devils them all glad of an excuse to stop their digging' and have a stare and a scowl or a grin. Han up slow till we were close upon young Bill. I saw his face go white and red, but he stood steady and. rested 011. his spade, one foot in the ditch and one 011 the roadside. Tabor stepped out and came round my side ' against whero Bill stood. Opened the bonnet and put- his liead in and tinkered a bit. Then he said low and clear: 'To-morrow, Bill. .Tump in the minute I shout-,' got back alongside me, and we pulled out and got away. day we fixed her ready. A big fur rug we lashed across to cover the back seat so that a man sitting there would only show his head above it. On the seat were roomy trousers, shooting jacket and a big lentlier coat that young Bill could" wriggle into over his broad-arrow suit-. Tabor got in behind -this time. - Plan-of it was for him to step out- alongside young Bill and leave the door open and the side of the rug turned up, so young Bill'd make , just one dive and be on the seat. Tabor was to walk round the front of the car, come to the seat alongside me as if for a spanner or such, get his hand on the door, and then shout 'Now!' and the two of 'em would jump for it. "By darn, I felt like I'd got a cold fish down between , my shirt and my spine as we lit down that rood to lift our passenger. Tabor was breathing through his nose so I could hear him above the engine. It was sure jumpy work until we got something to jump for, which was when we re-started, and tho shouting and shooting began." - I said "Shooting! By gad, the warders fired- at you, did they?" "They did sure. Three of' em were ' st-'.nding with their carbines 011 that bit of an embankment right above young Bill's head and where we pulled tip. Tabor slips out from behind according to programme, leaves the door on the swing, and comes steady : round the front of the car, young Bill standing resting on his spade pretty much as he'd been the day before. "Then something switched in we hadn't figured on. A warder above young Bill bends over and sings out 'Two-forty! Get 011 with your work there! .Standing staring!' "The shout staggered Tabor a bit-. Nonplussed him. That's the word you'd use, eh? He stops and has a squint inside the bonnet to collect himself arid to watch out of the back of his eye what young Bill would do. Young Bill -took a wrong turn. Stead of making a. show of getting 011 with his .digging he remained as he was, resting on his spade, ready to jump at the shout. Tabor fetches round from the boiinet and comes to'the door. Puts his fist on the handle and his foot 011 the step and opeiis his mouth to shout. "Things got tight then. The darn warder that'had sung out to young Bill smgs out. again, 'Damn you, two-forty,' he sings out, 'get on with it!' and as if their tongues had been pulled with the same string. Tabor chooses tho>very same moment to let fly. 'Now !' he shouts, an' out of every second in the whole blamed year couldn't ha ve chosen a worse one. The warder with his 'Get on with it!' jumps down into the trench bv young Bill and iust about hit the earth With Tabor's 'Now!' "Bill islugged . him with t-lie spade. Drove the handle - into the pit of--his stomach good and hard and jumped for the car and I slipped home the clutch, and by darn, the twenty seconds that auto took to pick tip her stride taught me more about eternity than a churchful of bishops could explain in ten years. It sure did." He paused as if to reflect again .upou those long-age moments while the car crawled into her speed, then went on again: "Shouts—hell's own shouting—and shots. . I took a squint round as sne ■began to rip. Young Bill sitting bolt upright, dead pale, darn grim, bis chin i u-st above the hitched-no rug. The two warders on the embankment down on one knee letting fly and the one with the stomach-ache stooping for liis guii. " 'They're shooting to hit the tyres,' says Tabor. . . " 'They're darn near hitting me,' I savs. /'aiid one conies nee-whit between our darn heads and slick through the wind-screen in front of us. By darn, we-lit out after that bullet till T. reckon we came mighty near- catching it. Trust me for that. J. sure shook up that car. We were round n bend,and greasing up the miles,'and I think I'd never nave stopped from then to now if Tabor badn-t hollered to me about getting the disguise covers down over the pain.tr work. ; So I stopped her and he nipped down and pulled the canvases' over her. "He's practised that till he could do it in sixteen seconds, and T reckon he did it in nearer sjx. Never even for a word with younq Bill.' I took 1 a' look at vdung Bill while we waited, t Just got his chin over the rug-just like j I'd first seen him. J reckon he was

frown stiff with the' strain arid the reaction. Dead still. Eyes half shut. Little blue bruise middle of his forehead where.l reckoned he d hit his head jumping in. I gave him a g rl ®> and Tabor sings out to him, Get those clothes on, Bill. Over your things. On the seat beside you,' and drops in next me find I ripped, her off again. "We'd got the route figured- om. plumb. Another four miles and we swung left to double back, and let out all we knew. At the turn. Tabor put his hand on my arm. JI 11 go behind now .to Bill,' he said. j 'We're safe. By God, we've done it.' " , , And mv narrator struck a match ana put it to his pipe. "We were, ho said. "By darn, we had. I got out- my own pipe. xes, by Jove, that's a story." I said. ' A switt business, my word, it -was. I say, there's one thing, though. Where exactly did the bit of luck come in? You started out to show how a bit ot luck always just turn's the scale in tnese things, one side." . ■ "Or the other. Sure. The bit ot luck comes into the story right ftere. It came into the prison-snatching lay right at- the very moment we got young Bill aboard and pulled away." "All. How?" , He inhaled a long breath from his pipe and blew it away to the full ol hislUngs. ' r "When Tabor went round at the turn to join young Bill behind, he found him' what, he'd been from the start—stone dead." I gave an exclamation. . "Yep. That little blue bruise on his forehead 'was where the bijllet lit out. You've got to count on luck. You sure have."