“The crooks down there called him ‘Wild’ Kinney, and were pretty well scared of him.  Swanson, one of the lieutenants of the Seattle force, whom I know well as I know you, told me that he was a power, sort of a king in the underworld from the very first, largely because he was afraid of nothing, absolutely desperate, and willing to take any chance.  He wasn’t a hop-head, yet they all looked at him as sort of queer; though ready to follow him to the last ditch, yet some way they thought him off his head.  And Swanson believes that his career of crime started after he reached Seattle, not before—­that he hadn’t grown up to crime like most of the men in his gang.  He didn’t know anything about the ’profession’—­as far as skill went he was a rank amateur, but he made it up with daring and cunning.  Once or twice he got in a fight down there, and they all agree he fought like a mad man, the most terrible fighter in the whole district, and it took about a half dozen to stop him.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.  Anybody who can swing a pick like that—­”

“Now let me tell you how they happened to catch him.  Maybe you heard—­he and Dago Frank were in the act of breaking into the Western-Danish Bank.  Part of this I’m giving you now came straight from Frank himself.  He says that they were in the alley, in the act of jimmying a window, and all at once Kinney straightened up as if something had hit him and let the jimmy fall with a thump to the pavement.  Frank said he thought that the man had ‘gone off his nut,’ but it’s my private opinion that he had been somewhat deranged all the time he was in Seattle, and he just came to, more or less, that minute.  The man hardly seemed to know what he was doing.  ‘Have you lost your guts, Kinney?’ Frank asked him; and Kinney stood there, staring like he didn’t know he was being spoken to.  He put his hands to his head, then, like a man with a headache.  And the next instant a cop came running from the mouth of the alley.

“Kinney was heeled, but he didn’t even pull his gun.  He still stood with his hands to his head.  All his pards in the underworld always said he’d die before he’d give up, but he let the cop take him like he was a baby.  Frank got away, but they got him, you remember, three weeks later.  After some kind of a trial Kinney was sent down here.”

Sprigley paused and shifted his gun from his right to his left shoulder.  “You’ll say that’s all common enough,” he went on.  “Now let me tell you another queer thing.  You know, the chief has started a system here to keep track of all the prisoners, with the idea of making them good citizens when they get out.  He has them all fill out a card.  Well, when this man Kinney turned in his card, he had written ‘Ben’ on it, but the rest was absolutely blank.

“Mr. Mitchell thought at first that the man couldn’t write.  It turned out, though, that he can write—­an intelligent hand, and spell good too.  Then Mitchell decided he was just sulking.  But his second guess was no better than his first.  I haven’t got Mitchell persuaded yet, and maybe never will have him persuaded, but I’m confident I know the answer.  The reason he didn’t fill out that card was because he couldn’t remember.