Thus, there came a day when I caught the code at the right initial, listened to two clear sentences of conversation, and, the next time they talked, failed to understand a word.  But that first time!

“Say—­Ed—­what—­would—­ you—­give—­right—­now—&s
hy;for—­brown—­papers—­and—­a—­sack—­of—­Bull—­Durham!” asked the one who tapped from farther away.

I nearly cried out in my joy.  Here was communication!  Here was companionship!  I listened eagerly, and the nearer tapping, which I guessed must be Ed Morrell’s, replied: 

“I—­would—­do—­twenty
—­hours—­strait—­in—­the—­jacket—­for—­a—­five—­cent—­sack—­”

Then came the snarling interruption of the guard:  “Cut that out, Morrell!”

It may be thought by the layman that the worst has been done to men sentenced to solitary for life, and therefore that a mere guard has no way of compelling obedience to his order to cease tapping.

But the jacket remains.  Starvation remains.  Thirst remains.  Man-handling remains.  Truly, a man pent in a narrow cell is very helpless.

So the tapping ceased, and that night, when it was next resumed, I was all at sea again.  By pre-arrangement they had changed the initial letter of the code.  But I had caught the clue, and, in the matter of several days, occurred again the same initialment I had understood.  I did not wait on courtesy.

“Hello,” I tapped

“Hello, stranger,” Morrell tapped back; and, from Oppenheimer, “Welcome to our city.”

They were curious to know who I was, how long I was condemned to solitary, and why I had been so condemned.  But all this I put to the side in order first to learn their system of changing the code initial.  After I had this clear, we talked.  It was a great day, for the two lifers had become three, although they accepted me only on probation.  As they told me long after, they feared I might be a stool placed there to work a frame-up on them.  It had been done before, to Oppenheimer, and he had paid dearly for the confidence he reposed in Warden Atherton’s tool.

To my surprise—­yes, to my elation be it said—­both my fellow-prisoners knew me through my record as an incorrigible.  Even into the living grave Oppenheimer had occupied for ten years had my fame, or notoriety, rather, penetrated.

I had much to tell them of prison happenings and of the outside world.  The conspiracy to escape of the forty lifers, the search for the alleged dynamite, and all the treacherous frame-up of Cecil Winwood was news to them.  As they told me, news did occasionally dribble into solitary by way of the guards, but they had had nothing for a couple of months.  The present guards on duty in solitary were a particularly bad and vindictive set.

Again and again that day we were cursed for our knuckle talking by whatever guard was on.  But we could not refrain.  The two of the living dead had become three, and we had so much to say, while the manner of saying it was exasperatingly slow and I was not so proficient as they at the knuckle game.