the other explored his garments one after the other. “All right,” said Jennings; “nothing on him.” He turned his eyes upon 9009. “Thought you’d lam out, eh?” he said with the slightest sneer.
But 9009 did not answer. He was stupefied. And when Jennings ordered him come, he followed at a shambling gait, dazed, to the dungeon.
He sat there for several hours, on the steel floor, in the blackness, his hands hanging loose between his drawn-up knees. Gradually, out of the whirl of his mind, two pictures emerged. He saw Nichols, the confidence-man, walking slowly backward toward the inner corridor; he saw him shoot the burglar and run to his cell; he did not understand that. Then he saw himself bounding out into the yard—and stopping before six rifles; he did not understand that. His brain, anyway, was making but dull efforts to understand. All it did was this: it presented to him the two pictures, mechanically, passionlessly, as for inspection—the stony-faced confidence-man
