Black Mask (Vol. 22, No. 2 — Mary 1939)

No. 7544, watching the cane dart toward him and swing above his head, dodged quickly and leaped to the table for a kick at the guard’s wrist. The cane harmlessly drummed the floor as he came down on the guard’s side of the table. And then he was driving the guard back with short punches to a well rounded belly. The guard turned greenish white and sagged like a comic dancer.

With a triumphant cry No. 7544 put his heel on the guard’s outflung hand, laughed at the scream of pain that followed.

“Pretty hard, aren’t you?” said the rifleman. “But we’ll soften you up plenty in the next twenty years. Back up, quick!”

The leveled rifle carried plenty of authority, and No. 7544 moved away from his retching victim. A cane whistled behind him and its shadow streaked across the floor. Something exploded at his head and he drifted away in red fog, the words, “Guess that’ll teach him,” trailing along.

During a week of solitary confinement Hugh Baxter — listed in the pen as Hank Sholes, No. 7544 — had enough time to think about the crazy scheme that had brought him to fog-wrapped Sattley Prison.

Jack Baxter, Hugh’s brother, had been a guard at Sattley for ten years. Though popular with officials and cons, he was the one who got a tin shiv through the ribs, from behind — the one who laid down his life for the discovery of a bundle of loaded revolvers buried in the exercise yard.

Hugh Baxter, ace undercover agent, wasted no time. He told Governor Warner he was going into Sattley, under faked commitment papers, to find those responsible.

“Suicide,” the governor pointed out. “Those desperate killers will slit your throat in a hurry if they find you out Besides, we can’t spare you. You’ve done too much good work in our cities.”

“I want Jack’s killer, and you want the prison cleaned up. Or don’t you?”

The conference lasted a long time, but finally Warner agreed. After that Baxter personally investigated the whole Sattley staff — and found one man with a perfect record, Guard Captain Donald McCall. The governor himself gave McCall detailed instructions, and Baxter, praying there would be no leaks, was brought to Sattley in irons...

Baxter’s eyes were swollen; they had strained too hard to pick out the dim light that somehow caused oblique shadows on the corridor floor. His ears still rang with the dead silence, and his nostrils fought the stench of old sweat.

When they called for him, he stumbled out of his cell and mumbled his thanks. His eyes had a bleary focus, but they picked out the insignia on the coat sleeve of a gray-haired man with a barrel-shaped body and loose jowls — Deputy Warden Bill Gardner.

Gardner’s watery eyes, full of mockery, held Baxter’s. “Still tough?”

“No,” said Baxter meekly.

“Sir!” Gardner prompted, his jaw muscles working.

“No, sir.”

“You’ll find us plenty tough, Sholes. Move!”

Their feet clumped hollowly on the way to ground level. And then they were outside, blinking in fog whose bleakness matched that of the turrets on the spiked walls. Baxter shivered.

A one-story stone building housed the furniture shop, with its rows of drill presses, saws and planers. At the single exit were two steel-lined rooms in which the men changed clothes before leaving in pairs. A maze of pipes hung from the ceiling.

“We don’t take chances here,” said one of the guards. “If trouble comes, we just turn a little valve, like this, and gas shoots down on you. Remember that.”

A beefy man with corded forearm muscles was working industriously at a bench. He looked up quickly, and Baxter had a glimpse of his eyes — wide, colorless, wild. His cheeks were puffed, but his lips were thin and pale. And his hair was as curly and heavy as a girl’s.

“From now on, Sholes,” Gardner was saying, “you work here. Convict 7233 will tell you what to do when the inspector is at the other end of the shop. Carry on!”

During the whole afternoon No. 7233 spoke only to give curt orders. He muttered to himself continually, keeping his eyes focused on Baxter.

At six o’clock Baxter changed clothes, found his numerical place in the yard line-up and lock-walked to the mess hall. He was putting his point over. Who would suspect such a tough mean prisoner of being an undercover man?

One hour later he and the others were moving in unbroken lines to the cell houses. Baxter’s group went to Cell House 3, and his division climbed a steel staircase. Baxter stood at the last cell, waiting for the clank of the door-opening mechanism.

No cell faced his on Tier B level, and the next one was separated from it by solid steel plates. Evidently the guards were trying to isolate him — exactly what he wanted. A cellmate would only prevent conversation with McCall, who would signal him during the third inspection round.

After a while the lights went out and Baxter pulled his coarse blankets over him. He was tossing restlessly when the night guard’s flash-light put a halo around his head. Then he fell asleep, but a dream of his dead brother’s good-natured face tortured him.