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The Electric Warden
By Peter Singer
Pretty queer goings on—a hobo picked up by the warden for his butler, his teeth filled, his mole removed— and acid spilled on his leg to make a long scar... just like the warden! WHat's what he was now—a ringer for the warden!
"YOU and I are going to take a little ride together." Dan Tully, ex-gangster and ex-con, stiffened like a ramrod when he looked up from a bench in Balboa Park.
"A little ride together," repeated a stranger in a raccoon coat. "Come on, there's money in it for you!"
"Wot? Money? Kale?"
"Exactly, come on with me. I'm the warden of Bridewell Prison."
Feeling his spine turn to a jelly-like substance Dan Tully relaxed. "Pinched again," he sighed. "Th' warden! Hell!"
"You're not pinched. I want a man with your honest appearance for a job at Bridewell Prison. I'll pay you a fair wage. Follow me to the entrance of this park where we'll get in my car."
"Is this me lucky break?" Dan Tully asked himself when he trailed the raccoon coat like a hungry cat after a mouse. "Maybe this warden is afraid tuh trust his trusties. Most of them squeal on squealers."
Dan recalled that Bridewell Prison was located out of town, in a lonely spot seldom visited by anyone except those who remained to stay. He had never done a bit there.
Reaching the park entrance Dan spotted the warden's limousine, with the warden giving instructions to a gray-uniformed chauffeur, who was undoubtedly a convict. The monogram on the car was G. It had a low license number, 71.
The warden remarked when Dan had stumbled inside and sat on a pillow-like seat:
"My name is Gangler. You've heard of me? Of my soft-hearted way of treating deserving inmates?"
"Soft-hearted, eh?" thought Dan. "Dat's a hell of a thing for a warden to brag about."
The limousine glided away from Balboa Park, with the purring exhaust of sixteen cylinders.
The warden's eyes were hard ones, framed by gold-rimmed glasses. His face was broad and heavy. His neck bulged the expensive collar of a ten dollar shirt. Dan Tully noticed his large patent- leather shoes and spats.
"I could wear some of his clothes," he mused. "I wonder where he's takin' me to?"
THE warden read Tully's thoughts. "I was attracted to you," he explained, "by your neat appearance. It is often my habit to visit Balboa Park and study the flotsam. You have seen better days. I can aid you at Prison by giving you a position. We'll say as butler. I want a loyal man to protect me against the inmates."
Dan felt like pinching himself to see if it was all a dream. His gorilla-like eyebrows worked up and down. Suddenly his ears were startled by a voice, other than the warden's, in the interior of the limousine. He turned around.
"A radio," explained Warden Gangler. "A short-wave one I had installed in this car. I believe in keeping in touch with Bridewell when I'm away."
Dan Tully knew that the police did not allow short-wave radios in privately owned cars.
"This fellow must be a nut," he concluded. "Or maybe one of them reformers."
Twisting on the cushions Dan flattened his nose against a side glass of the limousine. The car had left the city's suburbs. It was purring in the direction of the hills, where expensive, solitary mansions sat perched above the plains.
Some of these mansions had been used by bootleggers for observation stations and liquor caches.
The four-wheel brakes went on when the car snaked up a driveway. It stopped at a high gray wall. Dan, at the warden's command, lumbered out. Before him was an iron gate.
"Take him through the guardroom," the warden said to the trusty driver. "Feed him in the mess hall. Then, show him the way upstairs, over my quarters. He can have that last butler's clothes."
The inmate touched his cap. He looked at the warden interrogatively.
"Yes!" Gangler snapped. "The butler is leaving. This is our new one, if he proves worthy."
Tully saw that an understanding had passed between the driver and the warden. The trusty had not known that the butler was leaving.
"I'm in soft," thought Tully. "From Balboa Park to a swell job as a warden's butler. I ken do butlerin'."
Dan's transformation to a smug-looking servant took place rapidly. He sat on the edge of the old butler's bed and considered his surroundings, after the inmate chauffeur had departed, tiptoeing downstairs.
The warden's quarters had once been an old mansion. It was surrounded by part of the prison wall. A radio antenna, consisting of many wires, held by loops at each end, ran across the roof and to a cell block.
Puffing at a cigar, Tully ran one hand under the coverlet to feel if sheets and blankets were there. He had not slept between these luxuries in years. His hand came away with a peculiar warmth in his fingers.
"Still warm," he gasped. "Somebody wuz kippin' here, not more than ten minutes ago. They must have given that other butler th' raspberry."
He squinted at the books on the shelves. Most were about advanced radios. Some had electrical titles. A very few concerned prison reform.
Getting off the bed Dan Tully admired himself in a glass. He smoothed down his iron- gray hair and sneaked to a window. Raising this he peered down, three stories, to the warden's flower bed.
To him here was a getaway, by water-spout, ledges and a leap to the prison yard. He scowled upward at the radio wires. The antenna was too large for an amateur set. It had sending connections. Tully cocked one ear and listened.
He heard a whine, somewhere in the warden's house, that indicated a generator being operated. Undoubtedly it was sending out short-wave lengths.
Deciding to prowl the house early in the morning, before the inmates were let out of their cells, Dan softly pulled down the window.
He went to bed and slept until four. His dreams were all about crooked, smiling prison wardens and eight-tube radios.
SHAVING off his chin stubble with the old butler's English razor, he dressed, all but his shoes. He gave the top floor the once over before descending to more dangerous levels. The light he used was a fat cigar, reflecting in the palm of his hand. He inspected keyholes, and opened doors. There were five convict servants on the top floor of the warden's house. The inmate chauffeur was missing. He might have a room above the prison garage.
There was one room next to Dan's, fitted with three locks. Two of these locks were unbreakable, except with a jimmy. Dan stepped back from the door. He listened and heard the sinister whine of a radio generator. It was somewhere in that locked room.
"Th' warden uses juice all of th' time. I wonder why?" Tully studied the door. He had an idea something worth inspecting was secured by the unpickable locks.
It came to him that the builder of the door had been careless. There was a slit underneath. Getting down on his haunches Dan tried to screw one eye low enough to see the room's interior.
He got up, dusted his trousers at the knees, listened and went into his room where he removed a mirror from its frame. Dawn and a soft light had arrived.
The mirror fitted under the door, then Tully pulled out a hall runner. He squatted again. There was little he could make out from the angle reflected on the mirror. Wires crossed Dan's vision. He saw the oblong of a window. On one side of this window was a shelf and a workbench. The shelf was bent with technical books. The bench supported a long beam, made of copper, that ended in a mahogany box, the size of a modern radio cabinet.
Around this box was scattered pieces of paper.
Dan Tully returned to his room and placed the mirror in its frame. He appraised the former butler's patent-leather shoes. He might wear them, but they would pinch his callouses.
"I'll try the sneaks!" he decided. "Them slippers won't make much of a rumble when I give th' lower floors th' once over."
Passing the doors on the second floor, without opening any of them, Dan descended the staircase and began nosing into a library. Another room was off the library. A faint glow there indicated an all- night lamp burning. The windows were all crisscrossed with staunch bars.
Opening a morocco-covered book, Dan was startled to see many signatures on its pages. His thumbs went through the volume. He believed he was peering at "Who's Who," in financial circles. Banker's names were there. Express Company's' officials had autographed that book. Under each signature was a notation, explaining who the signer was, with a brief history.
Twisting his features, Dan noticed the gold- stamped title on the book: "Contributors to Prison Reform."
"Dis is a stall," he gulped. "Dis book is queer! Whoever heard of a banker givin' kale to a warden? This is a autograph album that a swell forger could use to advantage. An' there's plenty in this prison!"
"I'll cop it!" he said loudly.
A COUGH swung him around. He dropped the autograph album. A prim-looking girl stood in the doorway.
"I overheard you!" she exclaimed. "What did you mean by that remark?"
"Nothin', nothin' a 'tall, Miss."
"You did! Put that book back, exactly where you found it. Are you the new inmate butler?"
"I ain't no con!" Dan retorted. "I wuz hired from outside the prison."
The sharp look the moll gave Tully upset his nerves. She seemed to have something on him, as if the warden had told her a secret.
"My name's Miss Prim," she smiled. "I'm the warden's private secretary. I have charge of his accounts, other than those of the prison."
The sound of dishes from a private kitchen told Dan that it was time he should eat. He heard the warden's voice in the dining room. Going in, Dan palmed a tray. The warden was joined by Miss Prim at the table.
Screwing his eyes Dan was pleased to see a black bottle in front of Gangler's plate. Out of it, the warden poured a glass full of aged stock. He grasped the glass with shaking hands and gulped the drink.
It was such a "shot" that Dan did not believe he could have gotten away with it himself. "Nice old party!" he thought. "I'll watch where he hides that 'belly-vengeance.'"
Miss Prim ate her grapefruit. Her fingers, Dan noticed, belonged to an artist or a forger.
"Maybe she's an ex-con," he thought. After breakfast the warden called Dan into the library. "There are two things I ought to do for you," the warden suggested. "One is the shocking condition of your teeth. Here, take this letter and go to my dentist. He'll fix you up. He has my orders. He lives two miles away from Bridewell at Duffee City."
"I ain't got any kale to pay for dental work." Dan was proud of his remaining molars.
"I'll pay for it. Go!"
The convict chauffeur motored Tully to the dentist. Dan looked backward when they rolled from the Big House. "Swell wireless mast," he suggested. "Th' warden must be nuts on radio."
"That's busted! The warden hasn't had it fixed yet."
Recalling the whine of a motor generator, Dan glared at the convict. "They ain't spillin' much information around here," he mused to himself.
"Wot's th' big idea ov me gettin' me teeth fixed? They've been me best friends for years."
He made four trips to the dentist before the job was pronounced complete. The dentist kept consulting a dental chart each time he made a new drilling or capped a tooth. He was as noncommittal as a clam.
The warden examined the completed work. He rubbed his hands and wrote out a check for the dental bill.
The moll mailed the check. She remarked hesitatingly: "The warden wants that mole on your chin removed by a dermatologist. He says it disfigures you. You must have it taken off at once."
"Wot ho!" Dan Tally sputtered. "Removed? Say, Babe, if any beauty doctor takes that off, he takes part of me chin wid it. I got that since I was born."
"You'll look much handsomer, Mr. Tally." Dan rubbed the mole, reflecting. "Suits me, then. I wuz always going to have it looked into, but didn't have th' price," he grinned, flattered by the secretary's thoughtful interest.
It occurred to him after the dermatologist had finished the job that the oily warden was getting too solicitous concerning his personal appearance.
"Tryin' to make a dude out of me! Wot's his game? He's deep as any con he's got in stir. Deeper, maybe!"
AN ACCIDENT, while the warden was carrying a bottle downstairs, startled Dan into the realization that he was being prepared for some event. The convict-chauffeur mentioned that his auto batteries required electrolyte. Gangler brought a small carboy out of the double-locked room.
Tully felt a burning sensation along his left leg when he helped the warden carry the acid to the prison garage. The burning increased to hell fire. Cloth, underwear, shoes and skin turned yellow.
"Ouch!" cried Dan. "Oh, that's too bad," smirked Gangler. "How careless of me!"
Hopping about on one leg Dan exploded:
"You did it a purpose. I resign from being butler in this stir! Gimme me pay an' I'll quit."
"Go see my doctor first," the warden ordered. "When you come back I'll give you fifty dollars out of the safe in the front office."
After pouring oil on the wounds, Dan went with the chauffeur to the doctor's, who remarked as he applied bandages:
"The warden has a burn in this same spot, on the same leg. Queer!"
"Ye—s, too damn queer!"
It came to Dan that early evening while he sat on the edge of his bed and dragged at a prison- made cigar, that it was time he was blowing from Bridewell Penitentiary. He had noticed enough swag in sterling silver, worth fifty cents an ounce, to go first class to Tia Juana, Mexico.
"I'm bein' framed! I better beat it before somethin' happens," he puffed. "Somethin' is goin' to be investigated 'round here—but I ain't goin' to be th' fall guy. Not me! That slick warden has one or two 'cons' visitin' his private quarters. Wonder if they are professional scratchers, like th' moll?"
Dan liked the job. The inside of the pen interested him. He had often talked to desperate prisoners; they declared the warden was a crook, working a secret racket, by aid of inmates. He was liable to be pinched at any moment by government operatives for having that low-wave wireless.
Getting up from the bed, Tully started a prowl that would have been a credit to Bill Sykes. The warden's silver was bundled in a rug. Dan thrust two bottles of rye in Gangler's best overcoat. He selected a ten dollar hat.
Then, going through the front gate he blinked at the darkness. Turning, he studied the high gray walls, with its guard towers. Suddenly he grinned at a larceny thought. There was a nice runabout in the prison garage that he could roll out without awakening the convict-chauffeur. It would convey the silver to a fence, fifty miles away from Bridewell Penitentiary.
Dan laid down his plunder. He slyly opened the garage door. He sniffed and smelled gasoline and oil combined.
A sound caused him to stiffen until he was rigid. Another and similar sound came from a clump of geraniums. Both sounds were remarkably like cocking of Winchesters. Dan knew the difference between a gat and a rifle when being set for action.
Bridewell was surrounded!
Slipping sideways, doubling up, getting down on all fours Dan crawled toward the warden's gate. Inside it he turned a key with shaking fingers.
"They ain't after me!" he mused. "If they were they'd of said, 'Get 'em up!' They don't act like gun-guards."
Continuing, Tully deduced: "Them wuz fly-mugs, or Secret Service dicks. It's Gangler they want, or that moll, or them inside forgers."
HE DECIDED to go to his room and stand pat in case of a raid. His right foot was on a lower step when he heard a call from a window. The warden stood looking outwardly.
"Come here!" he commanded. "Come over here, Tully. Tell me what you see over that wall."
"Look! That way. Not toward the quarry. Through those trees. Do you see a peculiar light on that hill?"
Tully strained his eyes. He pressed his nose against the glass. A greenish flare shone from the highest hill. It was an actinic ray, focused toward Bridewell.
"This window," said the warden, "is covered with non-mist like is used on auto windshields. I had that done in case of rain. The ray is a warning."
"A warnin' fer wot, warden? I don't get you!" The warden's knees began shaking slightly. He gripped Dan Tully's arm.
"Come upstairs to the radio room. I'll show you everything. Yes," he whispered hoarsely, in a tone that chilled Dan's blood. "Yes, everything! You'll know the reason I selected you from that bench in Balboa Park. The 'Hessians' are coming!"
Tully knew what Gangler meant. "Hessians" were Secret Service agents.
Following the excited warden, Dan almost stepped on his heels as they mounted to the radio room. Gangler got out a bunch of keys. His hand shook when he opened the door. He switched on the lights. Each window of the room was double- shaded inside the steel bars.
Dan squinted around the room, while the warden moved a heavy chair. This chair came under Dan's squint. It was a duplicate to the chair in Bridewell's Death House. The warden adjusted four brass tubes that were screwed to the floor. "A new invention!" he remarked cunningly.
"Have a drink. I know you like my private stock. Have known it for some time. Here's how! And, Tully, damn the Hessians!"
Tully felt menace everywhere. The drink he gulped was to steady his nerves. He felt fire running down his throat. Gangler watched him through glittering eyes. These eyes began to dance before Tully. He reeled and reached swayingly for support.
"If you don't mind," he gulped, "I'll sit down. Wot did y'u put in that drink, chloral hydrate? If you did, warden, I'll kill you!"
"You guessed right! You've taken twenty grains of chloral. Sit down in my chair, or lay on the floor, if you'll have it that way. I have prepared you for an experiment in my new hot seat."
The warden turned around when Dan fell, face downward. He threw a glance at the door. Miss Prim stood framed there. Her features were aflame.
"We are surrounded!" she cried accusingly. "I knew it would come! Your influence isn't strong enough to save you now."
"You knew, did you? I'm ready for them. Turn your back, while I change clothes with this 'butler.'"
Again Gangler ordered: "Keep your back to me. If you weaken I'll spill what I know about your penmanship. Get that?"
Unable to protest, Dan felt Gangler stripping the clothes from his body. He was lifted, and his body propped in the chair. Straps were drawn tightly around his waist and across his mouth. The warden stepped away. He selected two wires from a bench.
"These," he chuckled, "are the terminals carrying high tension current. The current will burn your head. It'll be unrecognizable when the Secret Service operators arrive. They will conclude I committed suicide."
"The pantagraph!" exclaimed the moll. "The checks? I've two ready now for transmission in the machine. The Secret Service men will find them here."
Gangler reached for a switch. "They already know about them! Somebody tipped me off. I've felt it coming for weeks. Now, this man in the chair will be blamed for everything. The current will singe his head so that only the teeth and skull can be identified."
The warden took his hand from the switch. He advanced toward the moll. She backed away from him. "Wait," she pleaded. "You are about to commit murder. The entire prison is surrounded by detectives. Where is your getaway?"
"I'm supposed to be the suicide. Don't you see I've changed clothes with Tully? I must destroy his features."
DAN came out from the effects of the chloral. He opened his eyes. He felt the moll's hand run something under his hair, when the warden strode to the wall switches.
Sizzling sparks crackled. The air was filled with ozone. Struggling and expanding his chest Dan tried to break a strap. It gave a little. He renewed the struggle.
His eyes roamed the room. Gangler and the moll had fled. "I'm done fer," Dan gasped. He ceased his efforts. Pounding thumped at the door. The door burst open letting in a squad of men. The warden followed. The chief of detectives brought up standing before the electric chair.
"Gangler's electrocuted himself!" he exclaimed. "See the electrodes. He went stark, starry mad."
Disguising his voice, the warden said: "My master's acted queerly lately. He spoke of killing himself."
Tully glared at the warden. The moll stood in the shattered doorway. Going to the wall switch the chief of the squad yanked it out and swerved toward the chair. His attention was attracted to the cabinet on the bench. Picking up two pieces of paper he hastily examined them, and passed them to an assistant.
Suddenly he swung on Tully. "That forger we captured out West—the one who passed those certified orders, had a suitcase receiver with a pantagraph in it, smaller than this one here. Warden Gangler's confederates got their signatures, forged to perfection, from this room, via wireless. It's the same idea as the apparatus used in banks and department stores for sending handwritten messages. A signature could be sent from here to Denver, via air, and written on a check. Many such electrical forgeries were passed in various states."
Dan Tully drew a breath, twisted and broke the straps around his chest. He jerked loose from the electric chair. Running his fingers over his singed head he roared:
"Grab that two-faced warden! He's Gangler! I'm no warden. He tried to throw you dicks off from pinching him by substituting me. He gave me the job as butler 'cause we were almost ringers. He knew he was going to fall hard some day. Didn't he have me teeth filled with gold, jus' like his own? He did. Didn't he spill acid on me leg? Sure! Fall on him before he draws that gat! He's half crazy!"
The gun Gangler drew from beneath the butler's coat was wrenched from his hand by an operative. Dan began to chuckle when the warden was handcuffed.
"You ken fingerprint th' two of us," he suggested, "if you want to see who's guilty of air- forgery. Me mug ain't never been took. I ain't so burned so you ken see who's who, even if we look a bit alike."
The chief of operatives asked Tully. "Why did the warden want to use a gat? To murder the moll, eh?"
Tully explained: "Sure, chief, that's it. He wanted to croak th' moll 'cause she slipped a short-circuit through my hair. It's a steel strip like is used in old-style wireless earpieces." And Dan added: "I beat the chair by it, thanks to her!"